Part Twenty-Nine

Someone, probably female, probably in her late teens, with a rather tinny voice was bugging her. Something about fries. And a drink. And saving a couple dollars.

She didn't fucking care about saving a couple dollars. She just wanted to go the fuck back to sleep.

Which she couldn't do as long as the female late teen tinny voice sing-songed about having a happy fucking meal.

And she kind of wanted to retch.

With a giggle she realized was more than likely a tad hysterical, Olivia wondered if throwing up on Miss Peppy would shut her the fuck up.

As he turned to look at her, Elliot's face seemed to swim, the edges fluorescent and blinking, swirling around as though she'd looked directly at the sun for too long. "What's so funny?"

Luckily, the familiar voice wasn't at all tinny or happy. Grumpy, tired Elliot was comfortable. Something tugged at the back of her sleepy, fuzzy brain. Elliot was comfortable. But she was mad at him. She couldn't remember why, but being mad at Elliot was hardly something new or at all out of the ordinary. In fact, being pissed off at Elliot was as comfortable to her psyche as grumpy, tired Elliot was.

There'd been a question, she was sure of it, relatively. She figured he'd repeat it eventually. Her head turned away from the glaring light only to find that there was glaring light everywhere. She wondered where her sunglasses were.

And then he spoke again, except that he was suddenly female, young, excited and demanding eight-seventy-five.

It took all her strength to look and not wince at the light, seeing Elliot's face turned away from her as he paid the girl with the ridiculous visor on her head. Elliot not looking at her was familiar too, especially when she was mad, so that didn't bother her. But then Miss Peppy flashed Elliot a grin as she handed him his change. She was pretty, if on the average side, and younger than most of Elliot's children. She listened as Elliot, in a not grumpy or tired voice, thanked her.

Now, usually, Olivia wouldn't have noticed it. But usually, Olivia hadn't been drugged nor had she recently exchanged quite a few bodily fluids with her partner. So she felt she was perfect entitled to be pissy about nonexistent flirting she'd imagined.

She glared at Elliot as he accepted the bag from Miss Peppy. He didn't pay any attention to her, setting the bag on the seat between them. A minute later, her head jerked back as Elliot accelerated. She hadn't even realized she was in a car. Shaking her head to clear it, she wound up gripping the dashboard to stop her head from spinning.

He pulled to a stop a minute later, finding an empty spot. "I got you a hamburger." He reached into the bag, withdrawing a paper-wrapped sandwich and picking at the orange wrapper. "I know, I know, but I'm starving and you haven't eaten all day. Besides, you haven't had fast food in like five years, right? One burger isn't going to hurt you."

She wasn't really hungry, but the smell of food made her stomach growl. Looking around, she tried to find a landmark, something, anything, that might explain why she felt so dazed. Nothing looked familiar, not even the drab gray interior of the van. Her eyes fell on Elliot who she at least recognized, even if she was angry.

He was picking at the burger he'd unwrapped. "This one has cheese, so I'd say it's mine." He frowned. "But it has mustard. So it can't be."

Olivia frowned, hoping he wasn't expecting that she'd eat that. A burger was bad enough. She drew the line at fast food cheese. She had no desire to have a heart attack in her seat.

Elliot unwrapped the other burger in the bag. "Damn it, this one has cheese too."

Olivia snickered. Apparently, Miss Perky wasn't as skilled with the order-taking as she was with being over-excited.

He glared at her. "Hey, I don't mind the cheese." Just to drive home the point, he took a bite which included half the burger.

She shrugged, hungry enough to look in the bag for something else. There were two orders of fries in there, spilled out all over the grease covered bag. Her hands were a bit uncoordinated as she reached in and closed her fist around a couple. It took all of her concentration to try to get them to her mouth, after the first two attempts wound up with her slow, heavy hands trying to stick them in her cheek.

As Elliot balled up the wrapper from the sandwich he'd downed in just over two bites, he looked over at her with a grin. "Need help?"

"Thirsty." Why she was trying to feed herself when, in fact, all she really wanted was about five gallons of water, she didn't know. Why she was telling Elliot, who she was still mad at although she still had no idea why, was beyond her as well.

He reached down, his hand curling around a soda can in the cup holder. He rolled down the window, poured out the remaining liquid, and tossed the empty can in the back. As he was settling the one of the two plastic cups in the holder, Olivia's mouth fell open.

"You drugged me!"

His grin faltered a bit, but he didn't say a word.

"Again!"

He shrugged that time, holding the remaining plastic cup still while he popped the straw through the lid. Then he lifted it, offering the liquid to her as per her request, apparently knowing that her coordination was going to be lacking for some time.

Angrily, she turned away, gripping the door in a slight panic as the world seemed to spin around her. Fuck him if he thought she was going to trust anything he offered to her. Fuck him if he thought she was going to trust anything he said to her. Fuck him if he thought she was going to trust him. Period.

"Come on, Liv, you've been awake since the girl handed these to me. You know I didn't put anything in them." There was a smile on his face; she could hear it in his voice.

She wished she had something more substantial that a handful of fries to throw at him. Instead, she mercilessly squashed the potatoes between her fingers, trying not to whimper with sudden hunger when the scent reached her nose.

There were noises from his side of the van, noises that she recognized, yet couldn't place. Then his arm appeared in her line of vision, wrapping around her far side. She pulled back instinctively, and wound up pressing herself against his chest, apparently exactly as he'd expected.

He chuckled as he closed his arms around her, holding the drink in one hand, the disgusting deep-fried lard patty dripping with deep-fried lard cheese in the other. "Why would I drug you again? You're still malleable." He snickered as she tried to move away without any luck. "I don't want you dead, Liv, just cooperative."

She jerked her face to stare at him, her narrowed eyes ready to give him her 'if looks could kill' glare. But his face was so close and he smelled so good and his eyes were so bright blue. Fuck, she still wanted him.

She could only close her eyes, barely holding back her whimper at the sudden coiling of heat between her legs. She was acutely aware of his scent, maybe due to the running heater. She didn't want to think he could detect her shifting thoughts, her reaction to his body, but she feared he could.

If he did notice, he mercifully didn't mention it. "Come on, Liv. You need to eat something."

With his intoxicating presence on one side and the poisonous, artery-clogging feast on the other, her options were limited. She willed her mind to focus, trying to wade through the misty haze that was coating her brain. "I don't want it."

"You're going to get sick if you don't eat." The tone of his voice made her realize he probably wasn't above force feeding her.

"What difference does it make to you?" She told herself not to feel a warm, cozy sense of comfort in his embrace, especially since he'd tricked her into his arms in the first place. "You're taking me back home to be raped and murdered. What do you care if I'm well nourished when he comes for me?"

His face moved closer, his chin brushing her shoulder as his cheek pressed into hers. "No one's going to hurt you, Liv. I'll make sure someone takes care of you."

She wanted to shove him away, but not only would such an action likely result in her being covered with soda, she also couldn't force her body not to shudder when he came in contact with her. So it likely wouldn't respond to any order she gave it to move away from him.

Instead she turned toward him again, forcing a bit more contact between their faces. "Please, El, please think about this."

"The fact that you haven't picked up your gun and shot me gives me a pretty fair indication that you're not exactly yourself, Liv." He shifted so that he was still holding her, but his face was no longer near hers. "And playing on the fact that I'm attracted to you is only going to undermine your attempts to convince me how fucking fine you are."

She shoved her elbow back into him, wishing she could hold onto that intense, if fleeting, rush of burning anger. But she couldn't. It faded as quickly as it came, leaving her cold where Elliot had pulled himself away from her. She glanced at him, at the way he picked up her gun from the seat between them where she hadn't noticed it and waved it at her, and growled, her scowl firmly in place. "Fuck you."

He smiled at her, a tight, placating sort of smile she wanted to smack right off his face. "You tried that."

And then she did smack him, without actually intending to. Her hand just reached out and slapped him right across his cheek, leaving smeared pieces of French fries to fall into his lap.

He reached up, wiping at the food remnants on his reddened cheek. "See, that's more like you, but still a little soft." His hand shot out, grabbing hers and curled her fingers into a fist. "A healthy, normal, unscathed Liv would deck me for saying something like that."

She snatched her hand back and glared at him. "I've never hit you, no matter how many times you've deserved it."

He smiled. "Told you, you're fucked up in the head. By your own admission, you'd never normally hit me."

She turned away, plucking a couple more fries out of the bag. "I'd hit anyone who tried to tell me that I was healthy, normal and unscathed under any circumstances."

He threw the burger at her and went to shift the van into gear. "Eat the damn food or throw it out the window."

Catching the burger, more out of fear that it would wind up staining her coat than anything else, she glared out the windshield. They were still in the middle of nowhere as far as she could tell. "Where are we?"

Elliot shrugged, either not knowing or not caring to share. "Go back to sleep if you're not going to eat. I don't want to listen to you whining the rest of the way about how hungry you are."

She unwrapped the burger, her stomach rolling at the idea of eating it even as it growled in anticipation of food. A bit of green showed through on the side. Horrified, she picked at it, mildly relieved that it was only a pickle and not mold. With a grin that she hid behind the orange wrapper, she flung the pickle across the space between them.

It hit him square in the face, smacking into his nose with a sloppy, greasy squish before slipping down and falling into his lap.

The wrapper couldn't hide the squeal of laughter, which she blamed entirely on the pill he'd given her. Otherwise, she knew she'd never find such unbridled joy in seeing her pissed off partner with a trail of special sauce staining his face.

He slammed on the brakes before he turned to glare at her. He wasn't happy. There was a look on his face, she decided, that men learned in dad school. It was the sort of look her girlfriends from grade school had told her they got when they fought with their siblings in the backseat on car trips. It was the sort of look that would shut up a group of four screeching, overly sugar-indulged kids at the end of a day at the beach. She'd never seen such a look before, but it had the power to silence her drug-induced giggles. She swallowed hard and realized she really didn't want to deal with Elliot in a rage.

He narrowed his eyes at her, somehow managing to maintain a completely serious face even as bits of sauce dripped into his lap. She wanted to laugh, but she didn't really want to get thrown out of the car, and one look at that pissed-off-dad stare told her he'd do it. She swallowed the giggle and tried to look innocent.

"Are you done?"

She nodded.

"Good." He turned back to the road and started driving again.

A moment later, she pulled the one napkin Miss Peppy deemed them worthy of out of the bag and offered it to him. He took it without looking at her, wiping at his cheek and nose.

Quietly, Olivia turned back to her burger and ate it without feeling compelled to launch any more vegetables his way. She sipped at the drink to wash down the grease and ended the meal by shoving a few cold fries into her mouth, rounding out the most painfully unhealthy meal she'd eaten in a long time. She wished she could sleep some more, if only to keep herself from feeling sick, but the pill seemed to have worn off. Without the effects of a waning adrenaline rush to play off, the pill wasn't nearly as potent as that first night.

After what seemed like forever, she noticed the traffic started to get heavier. And then exit signs for vaguely familiar neighborhoods started appearing. Olivia's heart started to pound, instinctive fear welling up and making her regret her meal.

She turned to Elliot, who'd started obeying the speed limit all of a sudden. "Elliot?"

He didn't look at her, only shrugged instead. She knew it was a crack in his armor, that he was having second thoughts.

"Please, El, you can turn around and take me back up there. Please! I won't touch you, if that's what you want."

He shook his head, daring to glance in her direction for a brief second. "That's the last thing I want, Olivia. I think you know that by now."

She wasn't expecting tears, but she felt them slipping down her face. "Jesus, Elliot, think about what you're doing! There's someone here who wants to hurt me! And he knows a fucking shitload about me and you and-"

He reached over, grabbing her fisted hand where it rested on the seat between them and squeezing it tight. "I'll make sure you're safe, Liv. Cragen will put a detail on you, he'll keep you safe."

She tried to laugh, but it wouldn't come out, not with the tears in the way. "A protective detail? You mean like the brilliantly observant one that was watching me when you grabbed me? Yeah, that's a great idea."

"After you disappeared, he probably discovered their incompetence and fired them."

She turned away, disappointed in herself for crying, disappointed that her tears didn't have an effect on him. "Right, so there's a new team ready to display their own unique brand of incompetence. Maybe they'll find me dead in my bed instead of just missing."

"Stop it! Don't say that!" His hand squeezed hers, the tightness of his grip revealing the fear he was trying to hide. "You'll be ok."

Yanking her hand away, she wiped at her tears. "How can you promise that? You'll be in jail. You think for one second Petrovsky isn't going to try to teach you a lesson about listening to her?"

His hands locked around the steering wheel, putting all his strength into crushing it. "No one in that damn precinct is going to let you out of their sight, Olivia."

She lapsed back into silence, understanding for the first time that nothing she said was going to change his mind. Instead, she stared at the road as it transformed far too quickly, at least in her opinion, into the familiar streets of the city. And still, before she knew it, Elliot pulled the van to a stop behind the brick building that housed the one-six.

She turned to look at him, but his face was hidden behind the stone-cold mask. But she had an instinct to survive, one that told her to try one last time. "El, please."

He said nothing as he got out of the van, reaching for her arm to pull her across the seat. "Come on, show time."

She tried to hold onto the steering wheel, but her strength was no match for his, not when he pulled her fingers loose. "El, stop, please!"

It barely took anything out of him to pull her out of the van and up the stairs. The back door, the one he was pulling her toward, was technically the fire door, the one supposedly wired to set off the alarm when opened. But everyone in the precinct knew that the wires had been pulled years ago and the lock rigged open, the safe haven for smokers who'd been kicked off the roof by city ordinance about smoking on city property.

Although there were people around, many of whom were staring, no one stopped them as Elliot escorted Olivia into the elevator. She was about to ask him what he was going to do, what his plan was, but the words didn't get the chance to form. The sounds died on her lips as Elliot yanked her arms back, securing them with the damn handcuffs.

"Listen, Liv, this is for your own protection." He prodded her forward as the doors opened, past the stares of people who stopped dead in their tracks. "It's probably better that they think you were with me against your will, ok?"

She turned to look at him to respond as she crossed the threshold, passing in front of Cragen's office. The hush that fell over the room told her something was very wrong, but even as she stared at him, she couldn't accept it. She couldn't really believe it.

Yet there he was, staring her down, her hands cuffed behind her, her own gun pointed squarely at her chest in the middle of the bullpen.