Come Back to Me

Chapter Two

Zebraboymom

Disclaimer: Not mine. Sigh…

Author Notes: Liv doesn't know what she's going to find when she arrives at the beach. What if anything is left of their friendship after so many months? How did Elliot deal with the trauma of the shooting and his mother's death?

He looks out to sea and says nothing.

"Elliot, what are you doing? Why are you sitting on the beach in the middle of the night? Elliot…answer me."

He drops his head again. She knows she should go slowly, but she is so angry the words just bubble out. Neither one of them ever had a decent filter. They had hurt each other deeply over the years because of that very weakness.

"What the hell, Elliot? I have to find out from Kathy that your divorced and that your mother died?"

Elliot downs the rest of the beer in one swallow and tosses the empty bottle angrily out towards the sea. He refuses to look at her.

"El, talk to me."

"Shit. Get the hell away from me Olivia."

Liv steps in front of him now with her hands on her hips and the floodgates burst open.

"You son of a bitch! You don't get to order me around! You don't get to tell me what to do! You lost that right when you dumped me nine months ago!"

Her chest is heaving and she is so angry she feels lightheaded. Again Elliot refuses to look at her. His eyes are cast down and his voice comes out rough, but murderously calm.

"Hope you had a nice drive, Liv, now go back to the city. Go back to your life and forget about me. I'm trying to forget SVU, everything and everyone else back there."

"And that includes me: your best friend? What happened to our friendship Elliot? Is that just supposed to be a casualty of all this? Do you have any idea what it's been like for the last nine months? Not one word from you Elliot, not even a good-bye. You owed me that much Elliot. I had to hear it from Cragen!"

He is up in an instant and in her face. He looks different, thinner, but still muscled. She can't tell much more in the moonlight, but she can see that he hasn't seen a razor in some time. She is significantly shorter than him with her heels off and he leans up over her trying to intimidate her. This is the first time she finds herself afraid of him. In their entire partnership she has never feared him. This version of Elliot she does not know and she steps back involuntarily as he gets in her space.

"So help me God, Liv. Get away from me now!"

He does something then that she never expected, he shoves her down in the sand and stalks off through the screened porch and into the house banging the door. Olivia is shocked. In all the time she's known him, he has never raised a hand to her. What happened to the deeply passionate, caring man that had dominated her life for as long as she could remember almost? Where was the man she loved? She knew she loved him with every fiber of her being. There had been times in her relationship when she knew he felt something for her too. Before Eli came along and he went back to Kathy she actually had hoped that they would one day have a romantic relationship. There were even times when she thought he loved her, but other than a few hugs during a difficult case or when Eli was born, he had rarely touched her. Now to have him shove her out of the way like she meant nothing caused her eyes to fill with hot tears.

She didn't know how long she sat there in the sand crying for what she'd lost. There just had to be a way to get through to him. Kathy said if anyone could get to him, it was Liv. No one knew Elliot better than she did. This was something she had to do for him, but she had to do it for herself as well. She would never be able to live the rest of her life without him in it in some way, even if it was only a phone call and a vacation visit from time to time. It was impossible to think about spending another night without him in her life.

She liked Rollins and Amaro, but the hole Elliot left was just too big to fill with anything or anyone else. She also knew she would never be able to live with herself if he didn't find peace. Sleep would never reclaim her if she knew somewhere out here he was suffering like this. After the tears finally slowed, she stood up and with new resolve brushed off her pants and strode purposefully up to his back door. She didn't wait for an invitation, but instead jerked the back door open and entered Bernie's house.

He hadn't bothered to turn on the lights, but she spotted him right away standing at the edge of the kitchen, a fresh beer in his hand. He was staring again, just staring out the windows at the ocean. She thought his head turned slightly and his eyes flicked once to meet hers, but quickly flitted away. The tension was palpable, but he refused to speak to her. She was glad it was dark so he couldn't see what a fool she had made of herself: crying like a lost child out there on the beach. If she was going to help him, he couldn't see her break. With all the strength she had and in a measured voice she spoke into the darkness.

"I'm staying Elliot, so you better show me where I can sleep. I took some time off. I never take time off, but I did and I'm spending it with you whether you like it or not, so get used to it. I'm as stubborn as you are and you know it. I don't care if you hit me. I'm. Not. Leaving."

She watched as he slammed the beer bottle down on the counter and folded his arms across his chest. He was barefoot too and she watched as he rocked up and down on the balls of his feet in nervous agitation: another behavior she knew all too well. So he was as uncertain as she was. Good.

She strode through the house, opened the front door and literally stomped to her car. Grabbing all three bags she had brought, she returned to his sunroom, dumping them unceremoniously on the floor. She looked around and saw she was alone. The door at the end of the hallway slammed and Liv looked to see another room with the door open and the light on.

Guess that was the only invitation she was going to get. She smirked to herself. Score: Olivia 1 Elliot 0. She would find a way back into their partnership. She knew she could do it. She breathed in the salt air through the open window. It was so fresh and cleansing. For a time she could put the ugliness of the city and her job behind her and just be.

She walked down the hall and peered into the room. It was done all in pastels and had shells and lighthouses decorating it brightly. There was a queen size bed that was covered with a beautiful quilt and it called to Olivia's tired bones. She went to get her bags and brought them into the room. She could unpack tomorrow, but tonight she needed sleep. If she were going to face Elliot in the light of day, she would need all the strength she could muster. Directly across the hall from her room was a bathroom and she quickly changed into her sleep pants and a tank before she used the restroom, brushed her teeth and pulled her now long hair into a ponytail. The window in her room faced the ocean, so she opened it and allowed the breeze to ruffle the curtain and bring cooling air in. She pulled down the quilt and climbed into bed allowing her self to relax for the first time all day. It was heaven. After sleeping on her couch for most of the last nine months, this was unbelievably comfortable. She looked at the clock. It was 2:30 in the morning. For once in her life she was not going to set her alarm.

As she started to drift off, she heard the bathroom in the master suite flush and then heard the sound of the bed in the next room squeak as Elliot apparently climbed in it. From the sounds of it, his bed backed up to hers on the other side of the wall. She stifled the urge to call out to him, but she said it anyway softly to herself in the dark.

"Goodnight El."