I own no one but my own people.
A/N I know I promised this a while ago but I couldn't find the right plot or muse for the life of me. Then after I read the amazing 'Rediscovery' by Buckenberry I got a huge burst of inspiration and thus this came about. Just a one shot but I hope my fans, readers, flamers, and fellow Olivis/OE shippers enjoy. And review. But most of all enjoy :-)
"I said leave me alone!" Olivia shouted to the man following her as she all but ran out of the well to do bar slamming the door shut behind her ignoring the stunned silence from the fellow patrons who had just witnessed her and her boyfriend of four month's falling out.
"I'm sorry!" Dominick Bates, the model of perfection on the outside and an ER doctor to boot, cried as he ran out of the bar as well to catch up to her. "Olivia, wait!"
She refused to heed his words and instead stormed away from the man who had made her night absolute hell. "Will you just listen to me?" he demanded as he reached out and grabbed her by the hand and twisted her around to face him.
Olivia pushed away from his touch and glared icily at him. "Don't you EVER touch me again! "
"Okay, okay, I won't touch," he reassured her as he hands up in surrender. His dark blue eyes Olivia had found so alluring at one time were full of guilty remorse but the Detective wasn't buying it. "I'm sorry. It… it just… I mean I guess it never 'just happens', but I never meant to hurt you!"
"You never meant to hurt me?" A cold humorless laugh fell past her lips at his unoriginal lie. She crossed her arms in front of her chest as she glared at him. "I mean what? Did you think I would be thrilled to find you here necking with some teenager?"
"Veronica isn't a teenager. She's gonna be twenty one in seven weeks," he muttered as he rubbed the back of his neck as a blush rose to his skin. "And… And no, but you weren't supposed to find out. She wasn't even supposed to be here tonight, she followed me and one thing led to another. You weren't supposed to see us."
"Oh I'm sorry!" Olivia told him with a severe air of mocking sincerity. "Please forgive me for catching you cheating on me with someone not even old enough to be sitting at the bar in the first place!"
"I never cheated on you!" Dominick groaned as he ran his hands over his pale face. He muttered too low for Olivia to hear before he looked back up at her, pleading and understanding in his features. "I… I've been married to her for six months. You're actually the… the cheetie."
Olivia's face fell and her arms fell to her size. For a long minute all she could do was stand in the cold trembling as the icy wind whipped around her as his words finally began to register. Olivia, not that big breasted blonde bimbo inside the bar, had been the other woman. It was Olivia that ruined their relationship and instead of feeling the anger that had been raging inside her she now only felt guilt and shame.
She would give anything to feel the anger instead…
Tears welled in her eyes and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. Dominick placed a hand on her shoulder and as much as she wanted to Olivia didn't have the strength to push him away.
"Veronica is used for one thing and one thing only," said Dominick gently as he placed one of his fingers under her chin and raised her head until her eyes met his. "I have nothing in common with her, she's not fun, she's not intelligent, she's not independent, or funny, or anything I love about you. She doesn't make my heart beat so fast I think it's going to explode every time I see her… She doesn't even hold a matchstick to you much less a candle. That's why I started seeing you, Olivia. To get all the things I can't get from her."
"Why not leave her?" Olivia asked cringing as her voice cracked from tears. "If she's nothing to you then why didn't you just leave her when you met me?"
"I told you, Olivia, she's good for one thing and one thing only. I mean… the thing's she can do with her body? Plus any woman who can lock her ankles behind her head… I mean you don't give up, no matter how perfect someone else you find is."
Olivia stared at him for a long moment before she nodded. "I get it. I'm your eighty and she's your twenty."
Dominick smiled as he reached down and took her hand in his. "More like she's my ten and you're my ninety."
"Well then," Olivia barked with a heavy air of bitterness, making Dominick's grin fall. "Have fun with your ten."
Without warning Olivia raised her leg and as hard as she could manage kneed right between his. Dominick let out a scream so high pitched it even stunned Olivia as he collapsed on the concrete walk way clutching his groin and shaking in pain. "And I told you not to touch me," she added in a low whisper before she turned on her heel and walk away.
It wasn't until she was safely in her car on the other block did she finally break down. Olivia leaned her head against the seat and allowed her tears to come without shame as her body shook with sobs leaving trails of mascara in their wake.
"Damn it!" Olivia cried as she slammed her fist against her steering wheel several times, imagining it was Dominick's strong angled face she was hitting instead of the interior of car. After her short lived tantrum she sighed as she took several deep breaths to calm herself before she pulled out her phone.
After she deleted Dominick's number from her contact list as well as deleted the home screen photo of the two of them, she would delete the rest later, she scrolled through her contacts until she reached the 'B's', her fingers trembling as she reached the particular person she needed to talk to right now. The person she knew she would be able to break down in front of without fear of judgment.
With a quick unspoken prayer he was home, Olivia pressed the 'call' button and held the phone to her ear. After three long rings her contact had finally picked up. "Hello," Bayard Ellis answered.
Olivia closed her eyes and licked her lips, her words momentarily lost and another 'hello?' was spoken with the same voice that seemed to calm her like no one else could that also gave her the strength to answer him with a simple "hey."
"Olivia?" Ellis spoke with an air of confusion.
"Yeah," she answered, forcing herself to take another shaking breath in and out. "I um… I'm sorry for calling so late."
"No no it's fine," he told her with a sincerity that told her beyond measure he wasn't just being polite and it was truly okay for her to bother him this late at night. "Are you okay?"
Olivia felt tears swell in her eyes and her breathing turned sharp as she shook her head. "Um... Can I just… ar- are you busy right now?" Her voice broke as she answered but she didn't care as much as she should. That was what he was there for. That was why, against all odds, she remained close with him. She was allowed to break in front of him and he didn't care about her showing weakness.
"No but you're scaring me. Is everything alright?" asked Ellis, his soothing voice twinged with a hint of fret.
"I'm fine." She rolled her eyes as her sob completely contradicted his words. "But can I- can I come over for a bit?"
"Sure. Do you need me to come get you?"
"No I- I'll drive. I'll see you in a bit."
Without waiting for his reply Olivia hung up the phone and began the long drive to his upscale Manhattan loft. When she finally arrived nearly a half hour later she pulled to the front of his building and took a long deep breath. She looked in her rearview mirror and cringed when she saw the thick black mascara streaks running down her face.
Olivia searched eagerly though her purse and groaned when she didn't even have a crumpled up tissue to clear her face up with. She leaned her head against the leather head rest for the second time that night before she finally decided to just say screw it and got out of the car.
He buzzed her in after a simple 'I'm here' and Olivia made her way into the building and towards the elevator where she stood in front of it for the longest time knowing that the lift opened up right into his apartment before she finally worked up the courage to get on and ride up to his floor.
Ellis was waiting for her when she stepped off the elevator. She couldn't help but give him a teary smile when she saw him, the mere act of seeing him bringing her stress level down several levels. He had a calm serene presence about him and everything about him made her feel safe and comforted.
She could do anything, say anything, be anything with him, and he wouldn't judge her. Things only one other person knew about her he had taken in stride like they were talking about the local weather. He still looked at her the same after she confined in him, with not a hint of negative judgment in his soothing brown eyes.
Olivia gave him a timid smile as she moved a piece of stray hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. "Hey."
"Hey," Ellis answered with an air of confusion. "Are you okay? You seemed a little frazzled on the phone."
"I think calling it frazzled would be calling what I was a kindness." She shook her head in slight disgust of herself. "I can't believe I was such a blubbering idiot on the phone."
Ellis shrugged as he went over and stripped her of her coat and hung it on the coat rack next to the elevator which normally would have made a blush rise to Olivia's skin but it was different with him. His eyes didn't explore, his hands didn't trail along her skin anymore then was necessary. He was just being his normal polite self.
This made it all the more odd when Olivia had a fleeting short lived thought that she wanted his touch to linger…
"If the situation calls for it," Ellis began as he turned back towards her, "then being frazzled, or more which I don't believe you were, is perfectly acceptable."
Olivia chuckled softly as the two made their way over to the couch. "Yeah but… this time it's different. The situation was stupid this time. I was stupid this time…"
"For some reason I'm having a very difficult reason believing that," Ellis told her and Olivia chuckled as she glanced down at the floor playing with a loose piece of thread from her form fitting top, the same top that Dominick had given to her as a birthday gift.
"Trust me it's not that hard to believe." Ellis looked at her curiously as she spoke. "I did something that… that I hate myself for." Her voice was soft and held a certain rasp to it like she was on the verge of crying. Sure enough her eyes filled with tears once more and she sniffed as she wiped them away with the back of her hand. She looked up towards the high ceiling and took a shuddering breath. "And as hard as I want to tell myself it's not my fault I can't."
At her final word a sob escaped her and her eyes shut against the tears. After a long moment Olivia looked over towards him and felt herself actually wanting to break in front of him. She didn't want to pretend to be strong and determined. She wanted to have someone else be the burden for once.
And she thanked God that she had found the one man on earth she was comfortable enough to let carry her curse.
Even with… with him, she had to pretend she was strong. She would break down in front of him on a very rare occasion but more often than not she was terrified of him thinking less of her so she kept that icy exterior that refused to let others, including her best friend and partner, in.
But with Ellis it was different. It wasn't like she wanted him to be the same way she had been but she wanted to feel normal for once in her life. She didn't want strength; she wanted weakness, to an extent, and that was something Ellis was more than willing to let her have
"What happened?" Ellis asked in his trademark gentle, easy voice. Olivia couldn't help the miniscule smile that grew on her lips. Not 'what did you do?' but 'what happened?' the difference in the two simple statements meaning the whole world to her.
Olivia swallowed hard as she turned towards him and after a long moment of silence she finally spoke; her voice a quivering whisper. "I… I dated for a married man."
Ellis narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Dominick?"
Olivia nodded wordlessly. "He- he's married to some twenty year old he's only keeping around for sex. He told me the only reason he was with me because I'm everything he can't have with her. If I had known he was married-."
"But you didn't," Ellis interrupted with not a hint of judgment or prejudice. "So why should you feel stupid about someone else's mistake?"
"I know I shouldn't," Olivia said with her head still bowed. "But I ruined their marriage."
Ellis looked at her as if she had suddenly grown three heads. "No you didn't. The man who married a twenty year old strictly for what was between her legs did. The person who decided he would rather stay with a woman he apparently had no feelings for and has you for merely a side dish ruined their marriage. Olivia… you did nothing wrong here. You have no reason to feel guilty or stupid or any of those things."
A trembling breath left her as she shook her head and looked up towards the ceiling. "I just… I'm sick of being tired, I'm sick of being alone, I'm sick of everything, Ellis. Just when I think I have something good it gets ripped away from me. I finally find a family and then Simon up and moved to California. I get custody of Calvin and then his mother takes him away from me out of spite.
Me and my… my partner were best friends for thirteen years and I haven't heard from him in months." Olivia chuckled humorlessly and turned towards Ellis who held a look of not exactly pity but something else she couldn't exactly identify. "I'm just counting the days until Cragen fires me and you tell me you're sick of hearing my problems and that you never wanna see me again."
Ellis' heart sank at her last statement. He grabbed her hand and gently intertwined it with his. Olivia glanced down at their hands before she looked up until she met his eyes. She swallowed hard and her heart began to race. "Good things don't just happen to good people and bad things don't just happen to bad people. You should know this better than anyone with your line of work. And yeah, you've had a lot of good things you wanted for a long time ripped away from you and it's not fair on any count but there's always second chances. There are always different opportunities for you right around the corner."
"I think I've about used up all my second chances," Olivia admitted to him still unable to tear her eyes away from him. "I'm about on my eleventh chance."
"So hope for the best for the twelfth and if that doesn't work then you hope that the thirteenth works out for you and you keep trying and trying, no matter how long it takes," he told her with a shrug. "You know it'll happen for you, Olivia. It may take longer than others and you may have to walk through life so tired you feel like you're sleep walking, but you find ways to wake yourself up again. As for Cragen firing you I doubt that he would up and fire you simply to continue the pattern of bad things happening in your life."
"What about you?" Olivia asked before she could stop herself, "because as sad as it is you're about the only good thing in my life right now."
"Better to have one then nothing. And I'm not going anywhere," he told her with a soft smile.
"You promise?" Olivia's voice was wet with tears that she didn't try to hide; her gift when she was with him. "Because I don't think I can handle losing someone else I care about."
"I promise," Ellis said as he gently ran his thumb over her hand.
The lawyer and the cop looked at each other for a long moment and Olivia felt her breath still and her blood boiled beneath the surface. She swallowed hard and cleared her throat as she ripped her hand away from his.
"I gotta go," she whispered faintly before she got off from the couch and headed towards the elevator.
"Olivia, wait," Ellis protested gently as he got up and followed her as she pressed the 'down' button in rapid succession but had no such luck. "Don't go," he pleaded as he stood behind her.
"Thanks for listening but I'm fine now," she lied as she pressed the button even more of a hurry. "I just, I need to get out of here."
"Why?"
Olivia sighed as she turned around and faced him. "Because this is too good to ruin. I know I'm never gonna have a chance to be what I wanna be with another person and I don't want to give up being able to drop the façade of having strength at all hours of the day."
"Who says you have to give it up?" Ellis questioned evenly. Once again his words washed over her like she had just sunk into a hot bath. Easy and soft and calming, Olivia couldn't help but close her eyes and some of her pain eased away.
God what she wouldn't give to have this all the time… With him it would be easy. Simple. Perfect. The fact that they were on two different spectrums of the law made no difference to her and she knew it didn't matter to him either. Yes he was a Defense Attorney but he was, like everything else about him, different then most everyone else she had met. He wasn't a sleaze in a 900 dollar suit doing it for the money who acted like he was king of the world every time he won a case nor did he believe his multiple wins gave him an all access pass to act like a smug prick at all times.
Olivia slowly reopened her eyes and found him staring at her and she swallowed hard as he reached up and stroked her cheek, never breaking eye contact with the woman before him, before he leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips. After a moment of shock Olivia melted into his touch and kissed him back.
The kiss wasn't frantic or overly sexual or passionate to the point she needed him right then and there. It was slow and gentle, as if he was trying to prove to her that this was how it would be with them until she decided otherwise.
It was the most incredible first kiss she had ever been given.
Ellis pulled away first and Olivia slowly opened her eyes to find him gazing tenderly into her eyes
"The next move is up to you," Ellis told her, his usual calming comforting voice mingled with something more. Something different then what he usually spoke to her with. Something Olivia definitely wanted to hear more of. "We either stay where we are, no regrets, nothing changing including our friendship, or we move as fast as you decide."
"I think," Olivia said in a soft whisper of a voice as she draped her arms around his neck with a smile on her lips. "That staying still isn't something I'm going to be fond of any longer."
Ellis beamed at her before he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer to him. "Just promise me something," Olivia said.
"Anything."
"Promise me that… that I won't have to change who I am around you because of this."
Ellis, without a single hesitation, nodded. "I promise."
With those two words meaning more to her than any other words spoken to her by any of her previous lovers because she knew it would be kept no matter what, Olivia leaned forward and the Detective and Lawyer kissed once more.
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