well, here's another chapter. the decision has been made and I CAN'T BELIEVE I STARTED THIS STORY WHEN I WAS IN THE WINTER OF MY SOPHOMORE YEAR. I am now a Junior, and have finally had my first share of a slightly successful relationship (two months, woohoo) only to break up with him about a week ago. Icky situation. So I finally know what love isn't supposed to feel like. Double woohoo. And now I don't have to complain about not being able to drive anymore.
A lot of people have actually PMed me about the new chapter, and I am so happy to hear from everyone again. I wish I hadn't been such an idiot and taken the time off, but now I'm going to try to make up for it. Therefore: another new chapter, COMPLETE WITH LURVE. That's right I owe you all something big (maybe even blow jobs for the select few, Ahah.)
Yeah, so anyone else kind of hate Dani to death? I've pretty much plotted her destruction a gazillion times. But liekwhoa, I have seen some super awesome scripts from the next couple of episodes later on, and there is an OLIVIA WET DREAM!!! Not even kidding. There is a moan. And continual whispering of his name. A-HAH THAT, DICK WOLF!
so here it is. love you all more than ever before. (and the switch between past and present is on purpose. significance and such. and laziness on my part, mayhaps.)
…
Finger brushed against the back of his neck and his eyes flew open, slowly and surely and there she was. Sitting beside him with the cup of coffee he didn't remember asking for, eyes just as tired as his were now, face just as worn as his had always been. In the blink of an eye they'd become the victims, and now he wanted it to stop: the questions, the interviews, the files he couldn't write himself. Cragen said they couldn't do their own case, couldn't touch their own paperwork.
"You're off the case, that's it." Cragen had said earlier, standing above the desk with the phone in his hand, humming discontentedly at its unbalanced state. "You're the vics, and you're sure as hell not going to go stampeding into investigations meant for finding your own perp."
But the hell with it. He didn't care. He wanted out of it right now- out of the business, the job, the life. He wanted back to the little world they'd made on those nights when everything else had begun to implode, back to the tiny corner of the world where things were warm and moist with hope. She was falling asleep again, she was falling onto his shoulder. He was wondering what the difference was, because either one was something he needed.
Love isn't about birds and cathedrals and soft songs that play when you're still up at midnight. Love is about elbows and shoulders and awkward places to lay heads when everything else is covered. Love is about bodies, colliding and drifting and then colliding again.
The kids had gone home with Kathy. He knew there were policemen everywhere outside her apartment now, keeping constant watch over his two last refuges in the dangerous future. He wasn't sure what was going to happen to everyone in a few years. Maybe he'd be lost without the kids. Maybe he'd be happy with them. Maybe he'd be dead.
She shifted against him, cheek brushing against the inside of his jacket as she settled onto his arm, eyes closing again in exhaustion. One thing was for certain, and he smiled at that one thing when it laid a quiet hand on the back of his wrist.
"Are we almost done?" She whispers into the cuff of his sleeve, the palm of his hand, the edge of his neck, his well-accommodated shoulder. Her voice manages to fill his whole being with this insatiable sense of completeness. Here in the dark and busy corridor between daylight and offices, the precinct and the reality, here he's finding comfort in her. They are still and it reassures him that chaos only leads to calm.
"I think so."
"Now I know why all of those rape victims are in such a rush to get home."
"At least we're not on the case anymore." But he hates being the victim, the dangerous one, the timebomb in the corner of the precinct. Before he was made of predictable turmoil, but now someone else was calling the shots on the distribution of common chaos. Now he could no longer storm head-on at the problem, screaming and cussing and fighting for the last gasp. Now he had her to follow behind and to walk beside and to hold onto when the weakness came. He had memories of sweat-soaked nights and quiet afternoons and tiny little beings who could never realize their fates.
"I'd rather be solving the problem than cowering from it." She rolls against him again and then draws back, turbulent waves slowing when they meet the rock and find it can crumble. "But I'm so tired…" She could insert a reason, but they both understand. Home is very far away, and yet it is near. She is his new refuge, and he's happy living things out from the viewpoint she creates when she spreads her arms and allows him to look through, eyes like windows into time and fate.
"I know," He kisses the top of her head so no one can see, but honestly, he wouldn't care either way. He is too fucking exhausted to put up a fight, but too fucking exhausted to carefully let it pass into oblivion. He wants everyone to know now, now while he's crazy and chaotic and drawn to her scent like a moth to the flame. "I wish we could just give ourselves up."
"What?" She lifts her chin to face him, and he detects the presence of her eyes upon him as he always has, but he doesn't need to look back down. "Give ourselves up for what?"
"I don't know." Exhaustion is talking, and what is it saying? Who is he now, now that the wind has blown him aside and the waters are rising too fast to leave the bay in which he tentatively floats? "I just feel like this job is killing me…us."
"It's not the job- it's just the case. We couldn't stop working here." She squeezes his arm, a small reminder with larger reactions. "You know how many times you've said this place is your first home. We can't leave."
"I want bigger things, though. I want you."
"I'm here."
The answer is simple, but it's enough to kill him. Suddenly, he sees that their dreams have gone in that pivotal different direction. She wants to stay, maybe because she thinks he's going to change his mind and stay too. But something about his life can only tell him one thing, and that is that everything he's ever come to love has been broken on the job. Torn by the job. Worn threadbare until it can no longer be salvaged. He sees her and his future begins to unravel, knowing that the more they sit at that desk the more they damn themselves.
Cragen is here again, but in his exhaustion he's just a part of the backdrop, pair of eyes staring out from wooden walls and breaking apart and noticing the dark things approaching from behind.
Cragen blinks slowly, another moment lost to oblivion when he faces them. "Go home." Command in a can, Elliot has to reach out and grab it with tired fingers before it ever sinks in. Olivia has gotten to her feet, and he has to let go of her for that split second where she obeys and he questions. As always, she's right, and she's right first.
The car ride home is silent, if only in his mind. Maybe they are talking, conversing about weather and days gone by and moments he can't recapture in his jar of light. But in the back of the mind that steers the wheel and faces the road, there is nothing but self-absolution stirring to life and then to death.
And looking out the window, three cars follow, three cars that stand between them and the rest of the dangerous world. The policemen nods in the mirror and he doesn't nod back, because Elliot is tired of acknowledging.
Today he had to run away, and he hates it.
…
"And how did you get involved?"
Munch rubbed his temples as the man responded, prison breakout and child rapist and all at once perpetrator to the world of the precinct. If he cooperated, he wouldn't have to go back to prison. But then there would be one more pervert on the street. And if he didn't cooperate, two dead cops would need replacements.
"We started getting contacts in the cells. Names and numbers were passed around and you figured somebody got a hold of it eventually, but mostly you gave your i.d. to the contact that came around every few weeks. He got you hooked up with someone, and you'd hear back in a week. I got pulled three weeks ago."
"Can you give me names?"
"Will it help my sentence?"
"Everything you say is another month out of jail."
"Yeah, I'll write them down." He wasn't talking before, just a few slurred curse words, but the sentences being lifted were able to life the clamp on his tongue too. "Hey, what about that asshole who hit me? He work here?"
"Nope." Munch eyes the man carefully, seeing what sort of intentions he has. But for now they only seem like blunt vengeance for a bad migraine. "And even if he did, I couldn't tell you. Who told you to find the woman and kids?"
"I don't know what his name is. We didn't get anything out of the higher-ups."
"How did he contact you?"
"When they got me out, they took us to a warehouse and he talked to us there. Made offers, sealed deals. Specific groups got specific tasks. It was big."
They were lucky such a weak conscience had been chosen for this job. His tongue was looser than a drunk's right now, all of the promises the law offered him sounding better and better. He must have had one hellish time in prison, Munch thought, to want out so bad. Probably one too many broom handles up the ass.
"Could you id. any of the people you were with?"
"Yeah, probably."
"How about the man who spoke with you about what you had to do?"
"Definitely. He was a walking dick. Some rich bastard."
"Do you know the address for where you were?"
"It'd have to be in Jersey- we only were out for an hour when we got there. I didn't see much, but if I saw pictures I'd know which one it was."
"You're being very helpful, Murray. Thanks for that. It's helping your sentence with every sentence you say."
"I'm not an idiot." The man responded simply, his eyes falling to his arms, resting menacingly across his chest.
Munch nodded, leaving the room to join his partner on the other side of the window.
Fin grinned. "That's the nicest good cop act you've ever done."
"I wish we could just skip the routine and beat the shit out of him, but alas, law and order in this country." Munch winced for a moment, rubbing his shoulder and giving the window a long look. "Fuck, this hurts."
"I told you to take another day. You just got out of the hospital- hell, can you walk right?" Fin gave him a cautious but upbeat glance as they sat down at their desks, handing him a coffee. "It's not like I couldn't have asked a few questions."
"Yeah, but could you pull off the friendly policeman face as well as me? No, I think not." He set the coffee down without touching it, tired of the familiarities in his routine. "And I'm not sitting around with this sort of thing on the line. This is the worst case we've had- I'd let Liv and Elliot down if I pulled out now."
"Hey, nobody's going to blame you if you take a breather every once and a while. You're a victim too, you know."
"Was. This wound's healing fine, and I can work." He shook his head at the papers now scattered on his desk. "Shit, we're on double duty papers, aren't we?"
"Better get to work, then." Fin gave his partner one last look of brotherly concern. "Man, if you screw yourself up anymore, I'm going to have to get a new partner."
"One of the opposite sex, if you're lucky."
"Well, only Stabler has had the privilege of doing his fellow employee on a regular basis, so there's not much chance of that." He leaned across the desk, giving Munch his usual threatening eye. "But hey, I mean it. Keep yourself in one piece or I'll beat the living shit out of you, you hear me?"
"Well, you're not frightening when you're being protective, are you?" Munch said, rolling his eyes. "And yes. I'll watch myself from now on."
"Good." Fin returned his gaze to the massive stack of papers beneath him, frowning. "If they're having sex right now, I'm going to kill them."
…
"Liv…" The whisper brings her out of a silent dream, and she lets out a short groan, ignoring the call. She had been somewhere in the ocean, just standing there with the waves lapping silently around her feet. Someone was waving from the shore, but she didn't want to go back on land. She wanted to dive back in and swim until she could swim no more. She wanted to be free for just a moment, at least enough to taste it like a drug and feel that high for a few seconds more.
"Liv…" The whisper calls her back, and she turns lifting one eyelid to stare angrily at him where he lays beside her, blanket up to the collar of the tank he's sleeping in. "Sorry," He says, as if it could help. "Were you asleep?"
"Up until a second ago." She grunts again when she sees the time. "How are you awake right now?"
"I've been thinking."
"You were exhausted." The pillow is calling her back and she wants so desperately to obey, take in its essence with every fiber of her being until she and the pillow are one, one giant mocha-eyed piece of downy goodness.
"But I've been thinking." It's insistent, and she opens the other eye just to see if it's all correct, if he really is laying here with his eyes the size of saucers when he faces her in the moonlight.
"Can you tell me about it in a few hours?"
"Please, Liv. I've been thinking about it all night, and I can't get it out of my head."
"It's technically morning anyway. Just hold it there for a few more hours and then you can discuss it over breakfast-"
"Liv." He reaches out and touches her cheek, warm fingers bringing back the hot blood she hasn't savored in a few days. "It's about us."
"What about us?" She whispers back, her attention all his.
"About what's going to happen to us. I want to make a decision, one that could change both of our lives."
"No big decisions until I'm fully awake, please."
"It has to be mutual, or else we can't go through with it at all."
"Elliot…" She pleads with him with her eyes, but he is pleading right back, and it doesn't work.
"I love you, but I can't keep this up. Not in this way we have had to go about it. I want to leave the force with you, and I want to start over again."
"What?"
It catches her right in the middle of her throat, along with all the other surprises life has shoved in her general direction. But she fights it because she doesn't want to hear it.
"The job is killing us, and it's breaking us both apart. I don't want to endanger our relationship like this."
"We're not." She sits up, emotions suddenly pulling her back to reality like quickening steps. "I'm not. I've already told you that I want to stay, and I won't change my mind, you know that. What makes you think that our job is the problem?"
"Why else would I feel this way? I'm doing this so we can be together. I'm doing this so we can restart somewhere else."
"I don't want a new life. I love my life." She gives him a desperate smile. "You're in my life."
"But how can it stay that way?"
She falls back onto the pillow, a groan out before she can stop it. "Jesus Elliot, I can't talk to you when you're in one of your dark-humored Irish moods."
"I'm not being pessimistic. I'm being realistic. How many times in the past month has our life been threatened?"
"That's because of a case, Elliot. Not because of the job." She sighs, stares at the ceiling. She watches the red light from the alarm clock flickering across the bedspread. "There's always going to be the few difficult ones…but it's not like we can't deal with it. And who would you rather be, the helpless victim, completely in the dark as to what's going on? At least this way we can deal with it with all the information, and have as much backup as we need if we ever need it."
"But they almost killed us." His voice is quieter, but its impact is more severe than ever. "They just keep coming and…they…they murdered our child."
"We don't know that." She whispers, not letting the tears form in the corners of her eyes. "And I should have known."
"It wasn't your fault. It was their fault-"
"No." She reaches out and stops the hand that's come to stroke her cheek. No, no, no. "Don't you work the baby into this like that. You're not going to just let all of that anger blow everything out of proportion and you sure as hell are not going to use our child as your excuse."
"That's not what I'm doing-"
"Is it?" She stands up, her own emotions beginning to overflow, out of the corners of an overtired pair of eyes and out of her mouth, now free-flowing as the river she's been struggling in for years. "I know your life hasn't been easy for the past year, and I know you're looking for something to blame for everything you've been through, but you are not going to bring me or my child into that."
"Olivia!" He grabs her wrist, but she pulls away. So this is what she couldn't see before? "Olivia, I'm not blaming anyone, especially not-"
"You're blaming your fears." Her keys are on the table, and she reaches for them. She knows he can see her now, and he throws himself toward her, desperation in his eyes. "I can't live with you if you're running away. I can't start over again if it's only a start away from everything you're afraid of. We can't live our lives in fear, Elliot."
"I'm…I just…" He falters, falls back toward the bed. She's too distant now, too far away to reach again.
"You want me to run." She shakes her head, avoiding his eye. "I can't do that."
"I want you to be safe."
"But I want to live."
Maybe it was because he mentioned the baby. Maybe it was because she knew where he was going, always knew where he was going. She knew they'd run, and she knew he'd try to separate ties with everything.
But she couldn't. Not even for his sake.
She reaches for the door, and then she's gone. And this time, she knows she can't come back.
…