"If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down
Cause all I really want is to be with you, feeling like I matter too
If I hadn't blown the whole thing years ago, I might be here with you"
-Hey Jealousy, Gin Blossoms

Saturday, June 24, 2023
Afternoon

Noah is a sweet kid. Elliot has to hand it to Olivia, she managed to raise a child in this terrifying, cruel world and he's not jaded or angry or rude or resentful that his mom works all the time. He's nice. He's thoughtful. He's gentle. And it scares Elliot, the way he knows it scares Olivia, that this world is going to absolutely crush him someday, the way it crushes everyone.

Noah gives him the card he's holding, and it's a generic sympathy card, but it's the only one he's gotten that is simply addressed to Elliot, not the whole family, and that alone brings tears to his eyes, but then Noah is reaching out to hug him because that's what sweet kids do when someone starts to cry and Elliot sees the way Olivia moves to stop him because kids aren't particularly gentle with hugs and Elliot is barely held together with glue and paper clips at this point, but he waves her off and accepts the painful squeeze from Noah because fuck he needs a goddamn hug right now.

When Noah is sitting down on the couch beside him instead of in the armchair, Elliot forces himself to focus on Noah rather than Olivia because he's trying to sober himself up and get control of his emotions and looking at Olivia isn't going to help with either aim. Elliot swallows back the lump in his throat. "Thank you, Noah," he motions at the card and clears his throat. "This means a lot." And it does, in a way that he can't possibly explain to a child.

Noah glances at his mom and then turns back to Elliot. "I'd be really sad if my mom died. Maybe we could go to a baseball game to cheer you up."

He suspects from the baffled expression on Olivia's face that Noah isn't a baseball fan and he knows she hadn't authorized this impromptu invitation because she would have told him first, given him a heads up and likely told him whether or not to accept. Instead, Elliot has to guess. He takes a second, his eyes pulling away from Olivia again and falling on the half-packed boxes, and he isn't sure he's going to be in town long enough to plan an outing.

He smiles. "Thank you for the invitation, but I'm not really a baseball fan."

Noah's eyes seem to light up at the rejection. "Me either."

He nods, instinctively knowing the child isn't a football fan either, which would have been a far more enticing prospect, except Elliot is absolutely sure he won't be in town for football season so he doesn't bother to make the suggestion. "I heard you were sick, Noah, are you feeling better?" He's hoping the change of subject will defuse some of the tension in the room.

"Yeah, they gave me a new medicine for my asthma." Noah starts to reach out, his hand moving towards one of the angry red scars on Elliot's arm. "Does that hurt?"

It does, it hurts like fucking hell, and he wishes he'd put the sling back on before he'd walked out of his bedroom, but he'd been storming away from Olivia at the time and wasn't thinking straight because he rarely thinks straight around Olivia and never thinks straight around Olivia when they're fighting, which is clearly all they do anymore.

He shakes his head and lies through his teeth. "No, it's getting better now."

"Mom said you got hurt at work. Did you get shot?"

He swallows hard and he's sure Olivia didn't tell the kid for a reason and defers to her judgement regarding what her son needs to know. He pulls the sleeve of his shirt up and shows Noah more of the long scar and hopes like hell Noah doesn't call him out on his left turn. "This is where the doctor had to put pieces of metal in my arm so it'll heal straight."

"Metal? Cool." Noah is a kid, not a cop, and so he takes the distraction as he's meant to, leaning in to see the scabs and the half-peeled off steri-strips still covering parts of the scar. "If your arm is metal, will you be able to punch really hard?"

He'd be happy if he could lift the damn thing, but he just smiles. "Maybe."

"Were you in the hospital a long time?"

It felt like a long time. It felt like lifetimes had come and gone. "Almost two weeks. Seemed like a long time."

Once again, Noah's eyes widen. "I was only in the hospital five days and I thought that was a long time!"

Elliot doesn't bother to point out he was unconscious for a fair part of it nor does he reveal his horror at how sick the poor kid must have been, but he does feel like he's finally believing Fin's words about why he didn't see Olivia after he woke up. "I was bored. Were you bored?"

Noah nods. "I had a lot of video games. What about you?"

He has to fight to find a smile then, thinking about how he stared at the walls and tried not to think of his mom while her funeral was going on. "No, there was just a TV." Not that he turned it on.

The discussion is interrupted by Olivia's phone ringing and she steps into the kitchen to answer, leaving Noah and Elliot alone in the living room. Elliot figures it's work related and hopes it's quick because there's something about the way Noah's looking at him now they're alone that makes him nervous.

It doesn't take long for Noah to reveal that he was waiting for just this opportunity. "You were shot, right? And your friends were shot too? The ones that died, I mean. Mom went to their funerals."

He's really been trying not to think about that, not since three days earlier when he was being discharged from the hospital but had to wait an extra hour to answer a barrage of questions regarding the attempted arrest and the utter shitshow that ensued and obviously pointed questions as to how he might have wished his supervisor had better prepared him for the operation. He'd told them where they could shove their witch hunt and tried to take all the blame on himself. He'd already felt he was responsible simply because he hadn't thought vests were necessary and Whelan and Evans would have listened if he'd suggested them and he hadn't been able to draw his gun in time to get a shot off and they were between him and the man with the gun so he lived because two other men died.

Elliot is fighting the tears and the pain and he really wishes Olivia would come back from the kitchen already and she's not even on the phone anymore, but she's smashing the takeout containers into the trash can and she's wiping off the counter and recognizes that she starts cleaning when she's uncomfortable because he's seen it a few times now and he can feel Noah's eyes on him waiting for an answer while he's remembering lifting Olivia onto that counter and her legs wrapping around him and her hands sliding across his skin and he's thinking about what she said later, about blaming him for what happened and how he wasn't there when she needed him and how it got a hell of a lot worse while referring to a vow he hadn't intended to make to her while he meant every word and he's on his feet and in the kitchen and hoping like hell his body language conveys how important this is to him because he's out of breath from moving so fast and he can't possibly keep up with her if she decides to run away. She senses something is off and her eyes drift over him as though she's looking for an obvious injury and then she's looking at Noah who is sitting on the couch with his mouth hanging slack in confusion and then she's looking back at Elliot and she already knows what he's thinking because she always knows what he's thinking.

"My son is ten feet away, Elliot."

He nods as he chews on his lip, trying to calm the way he's still winded and fighting to breathe like he was just in a foot pursuit. "Liv," he pleads.

She nods at the boxes in the living room. "Moving?"

He tries to hide his wince because he wasn't really sure about it and he didn't mean for her to find out, at least not until he decided, except he thinks he has sort of decided. "Thinking about it."

"Back to Italy?" There's venom dripping from her voice and he knows this entire day has gone off the rails and judging from the look on her face, he suspects their entire relationship has too.

"Seattle." He leans on the counter and wonders how pathetic he'll look if he asks if he can sit down for a moment before continuing this discussion, but he knows she'll just walk away and so he tries to steer it back under control. "My kids are grown, my mom is gone, my career is over," he manages to catch her eye finally when she looks at him in surprise and nods toward his arm. "It's my right arm, Liv, I'm never going to be able to fire a weapon again."

"You don't know that. They tried to get me to retire." She's defensive about the job and he thinks it's because she assumes that's what's really holding him here.

"Even if I can requalify, the damn job isn't worth staying for." He means that she's the reason he'd stay.

But he hears her sharp inhale as though he's just punched her in the gut and he realizes that she equates them with the job and he hasn't for some time now because he's fully aware that how he feels isn't at all professional and he's not sure if that means she'll always think of them as work friends or if there will ever be a real chance for them to move forward and once again he's thinking about that night and why she's mad and maybe she needs to tell him about what happened so she can stop blaming him or forgive him or something.

"Olivia, you said you still blame me for what happened-"

"No, I blame you for not being here, which is clearly your MO." She motions back at the moving boxes and he's struck by how much that must hurt. "I should go."

He wants to point out that both of them are good at running away, but that definitely won't help. He shifts into her path. "I can't apologize until I know what happened."

"I don't want you to apologize for what happened. I want you to apologize for leaving, but" she motions angrily towards the boxes again, "obviously, you're not sorry."

He's trying to understand and he was drunk that night and he's drunk now but he remembers that she was kissing him and touching him and she didn't seem to get upset until things were getting a little more intimate, until he'd dared to reach under her shirt he thinks, and he can only assume she was raped and that she thinks he might have been able to stop it somehow and he's trying to keep breathing as it starts to sink in that someone hurt her like that, and fuck he wants to stick his fist through a wall, but he can't lift the right and if he uses his left he won't have any working limbs left. "Liv, please-"

"Not now."

He hears the warning in her low growl, the urgency added to her tone with her hushed voice, but he doesn't heed it, he can't. He'd been so close to finding out something important that night and she'd probably had every right to be pissed about it and he'd tried asking when Olivia had dispatched Fin to check on him and Elliot had gotten nothing out of their friend. "Olivia, what happened? What wasn't I there for?"

Her jaw is clenched and she's squeezing her eyes closed and he knows this was a bad idea and that she already told him he doesn't want to know, but he feels like he has to know because she admitted she still blames him for it and, even if she was drunk, he suspects she was being honest.

She shakes her head and she's fighting back her emotions and she pulls in a shaky breath that makes him step toward her to offer comfort, but she immediately steps back and barely forces out words through her clenched teeth. "Ask Fin."

He's already tried, but maybe there's something specific he needs to say, some sort of signal that it's ok with Liv. "What should I ask him?"

She's shaking her head again and griping the counter for dear life. "He'll know."

And he really doesn't need to ask because he can see how shaken she is just thinking about it and he understands that's why Fin gave him nothing and he can see how whatever it was is in the way here because she blames him for it and she's not over it and very obviously has emotional scars from it. "That bad?"

"Worse." There are tears in her eyes and he hates that he's somehow responsible for this thing that happened to her which has rattled her so badly and he hates himself for leaving even more and he really hates Hogan for telling him to go. He can't let himself think about what it might be that's worse than what he already thinks, and yet he knows it was because of course she knows what he's thinking and she wouldn't have said worse if she didn't mean worse. It already hurts too much and he reaches out, meaning to grab her hand, but he's reminded as soon as he tries that he can't use his right arm for shit and he's grunting in pain from the attempt and rather than any sort of concern or mercy, Olivia is seizing her opportunity to get away and she's already in the living room and telling Noah they're leaving.

He can't drop it though because he's sure this is his last chance. "I asked him, Liv, he told me to talk to you."

She's dragging Noah along by the arm because the boy is confused and curious and can't keep up with his mom when she's in flight mode and Elliot knows he doesn't stand a chance either, not drunk and injured as he is.

He can't help himself, even knowing he's not going to win, because shit his boxes are already being packed and she is the only thing holding him here and she is obviously letting him go. "Olivia, please!"

"I'll tell him to talk to you." And then she's gone, the door slamming closed behind her and he knows whatever he's responsible for is absolutely unforgivable.