A/N: Hey everyone!
Here is some angst for Monday. This one comes with a trigger warning- mention of violence and William Lewis.
I hope you enjoy this one, and of course I would love to hear from you here or on twitter (oliviastablerz)
Thank you so much for reading and all of the support!
Their best conversations happen in the afterglow.
As they are both spent and satisfied, heavy limbs and heavy eyelids, full hearts and hands still roaming, soft this time, less urgent, less eager, lulling them both to sleep, trying to find comfort instead of pleasure, it seems easier to open up to each other, somehow.
Their days are hectic.
Paperwork and meetings, her son and his grandchildren, they all seem to consume every waking moment they each have. They find a few small chances to meet during their busy days- lunch at her office or a briefing at organize crime squadroom, yet it's only past midnight when they can be together, without someone knocking on her door, making her leave her office halfway through the meal they managed to squeeze in, the last bite barely chewed as she kisses his cheek goodbye.
Their nights are busy as well.
Desire and want leading them, the search of pleasure in each other's naked bodies, the trail of clothes he leaves behind in her bedroom, marking his way from the door to her bed.
Olivia can't explain it, the need she feels whenever he walks into her bedroom late at night. She can't put it into words, but it is there, low in her belly and spreading down to her thighs, making her head spin whenever he crushes his lips into hers.
So they talk in the afterglow, where it is safe and quiet, where only the two of them exist, together against the world.
He tells her about his life in Italy, about his favorite little coffee shop in Rome and about the time he found out Maureen was going to be a mother. She tells him about Noah, about the ten years he missed, about Carrisi and Rollins, hoping that one day he will be able to get to know them, too.
And then there are nights she knows he is not going to talk about the mundane little things, won't stick to the conversations that are soft and easy and make them both smile as they are reminiscing themselves to sleep.
Those nights are few and far between, yet some nights he picks up at old scars, painful wounds she would rather stay buried, places them out in the open air for the both of them to see.
Those nights are rare, and they haven't had one of those conversations for a long while now, but as Olivia dismounts his body, still feeling lightheaded from the waves of pleasure that washed over her just a few minutes ago, she can see the way he looks at her, his blue eyes seeming huge in the near darkness.
Tonight is going to be one of those nights, she knows.
"Liv?" Elliot whispers her name into the dark, silent bedroom. His hands never let go of her, his fingers starting to wander curiously along her skin. From the spot where he held her at her hip when she was on top of him, up her ribcage, under her arm, his fingers paint a road, mapping her body.
They are both still catching their breaths, and she can see the sweat glistening on his skin in the moonlight, as she turns her head to him, hearing her name past his lips, the tiny drops making his nakedness appear to be glowing, somehow.
Elliot's hands are searching for answers to questions he promised he won't ask, and Olivia's eyes close, a sigh passes her lips, a silent prayer, even though she isn't sure what she is praying for.
He knows her body by heart now, doesn't need the light to find the burn marks, as he follows the pattern on her breasts, down her belly and all the way down to her thighs. Her breath hitches in her throat, her heart suddenly beating fast, faster than it had even as she was riding him into oblivion.
"Tell me." His mouth finds her scars, kissing them one by one, those two words whispered into her skin over and over and over again as he maps the marks on her body with his lips. "Tell me."
"I…" She starts, trying to find the words, but there is not enough air in the room, the lack of oxygen makes her dizzy, and suddenly the man she sees behind her closed eyelids is not the man she loved for twenty four years, the man whose arms she has been sleeping in for the better part of six months now.
She can smell burned flesh, can hear screams, can taste the liquor being poured down her dry throat, mixing with the metallic taste of her own blood. She can feel the tears burning the skin of her face, blazing a hot trail down her cheeks.
"Liv… Liv, look at me." And it's Elliot's voice calling her, pulling her out of the darkness. It's Elliot's hands wrapping her frame, it's his body that adjusts her into sitting, it is his chest she is pulled against, his lips kissing her forehead, his sweet nothings mumbled into her ear.
When she opens her eyes, everything is gone except her tears, still warm and salty, making their way from her lashes down her face.
"His name was William Lewis." Olivia breaths, her voice breaking as she utters out the two simple words that make the name of a monster.
"I don't want to cause you pain." Elliot confesses, his arms tighten against her middle, and it seems like he is adamant to hold her closer and closer, hoping that maybe, one day, the two of them will finally become one.
"I waited for you, you know." Olivia confesses, ignoring his words.
Because she is already hurt, because she is already bleeding.
"I told him… I told him that my old partner would know what to do. That you wouldn't question, after everything he put me through. I told him that I would call you, I described all the heinous things you were going to do to him, things I couldn't see through myself."
Elliot is quiet behind her, his lips leaving kisses on her hairline, his arms holding her impossibly closer.
"And even though I never picked up the phone, I waited for you. When Nick pulled me out of that house, the first person my eyes searched for, in the chaos of uniforms and police cars, was you. And a part of me thought you would actually show up, even though it has been two whole years since you left me without saying a word. A part of me sat in that hospital bed, waiting to see a set of familiar blue eyes looking through the glass door." Olivia chuckles, not an ounce of her amusement in her voice. "And I waited for you, but you never came."
"I am here now." Elliot reassures her, his hands are everywhere, grounding the both of them to each other, to reality, to the here and now.
And he won't apologize, won't seek her forgiveness for a decade of being absent and radio silent. He won't say he is sorry for not being there when she needed him the most.
Because his words cannot change the facts of what happened to her. They can't change the fact that he left her without as much as a goodbye. They can't change the fact that he wasn't there when she needed him the most. That he didn't even know what she has been through, until this very moment.
He can't change the past, can't undo his mistakes, but maybe the fact that he is there at the moment, maybe his promise to never let her go, maybe all of these little gestures of love will someday make up for the lost decade that keeps looming over their heads, no matter how much they try to see through it.
"And maybe if you were there, you would have finished the job I couldn't. You would spare me the pain that followed for years. His trial. His escape from prison. You would spare me the nightmares, and the loneliness, and the pain. Maybe if you were here, not every man on the street would wear his face even long after he has been gone."
When Olivia stops to think, to organize the mayhem that is going on in her head, Elliot fills the void her voice left with sweet nothings whispered into her ear once more.
"And you know, the funny thing is, that I could swear that the men who didn't carry his face, carried yours."
Olivia moves out of his hold, placing her back against the headboard, their legs a tangled mess, their eyes finally meeting.
And he is crying silently, too.
Elliot's hand is immediately searching, as if he is the one who needs to be comforted at the moment.
She had ten years and countless therapy sessions to process what she went through.
He only has this moment.
"Do you want me to stop?" Olivia asks, the turns changing, somehow. Her free hand, the one not squeezed in his death grip, reaches up to his face, collecting the tears he shed with the pad of her thumb.
Maybe it would have been easier for the both of them if Elliot just said yes, if he let it go, place this horror story in some drawer deep in his mind and never think about it again.
But Elliot shakes his head, stretching his free arm until he finds the water bottle he keeps on the nightstand on his side of the bed, opens the cap using one hand and moves it between them, both of them taking small sips until the plastic container is completely empty.
And as he does this small, almost insignificant thing, only then it dawns on Olivia that in the past six months this man became part of her bed, part of her home. Two toothbrushes near her sink, two pairs of reading glasses scattered in her living room, two guns in her safe.
He is in her, a part of her in a way that no man has been before him.
"I don't know where to start."
"Maybe from the beginning?" Elliot suggests, pulling his shoulders.
"It was one of those rare days off when nobody called as soon as I arrived home. Maybe that should have been my sign that something bad was going to happen." Olivia manages to tip the corners of mouth up in something that resembles a smirk, a small gesture that Elliot doesn't seem to be able to return.
Maybe he doesn't even try.
"He was a serial rapist, who got caught when he fleshed himself in front of two young tourists. He got away with it, and when Cragen sent me home he was there, waiting for me. For years I tortured myself, reliving that exact moment over and over again. I was a detective for almost fifteen years, and I didn't hear him coming. I didn't pull out my gun, and then it was too late. I was staring down his barrel."
"I don't remember much of the four days he held me captive." Olivia continues, and maybe it's not the whole truth, yet she decided to give them both this small grace of skipping some of the horrible details. "The scars are mostly cigarette burns."
She omits the part where Lewis placed a set of keys on her stove top, the part where she tried to scream when the scorching hot metal met her skin, yet not much sound came through the duct tape that covered her mouth.
"And these?" He asks, places the palm of his hand on her heart, spreading his fingers so he can feel more of her skin.
"These…" Olivia sighs, places her hand on top of his, the both of them feeling her heart beating in her chest, pumping blood, keeping her alive.
"I think these were formed after. The entire time in the trunk of that car, the entire time in that beach house, my only thought was to survive. My only thought was to see another day, to give everyone a chance to find me. To give myself a chance to save myself. It was the only thing I could think about through the pain. It was only when the physical pain was almost gone when I started to feel these wounds. And in some ways, they hurt far worse than the ones everyone could see on my body."
There are some things she chooses to leave out.
She leaves out the rape he forced her to watch. She leaves out the game of Russian roulette he made her play. She leaves out the many times this man almost cost her her career.
She leaves out the times that death was so real that she could almost touch it.
Maybe one day she will be brave enough to face the details she chose to omit while he is standing by her side.
Or maybe she is going to take those to her grave with her.
At the moment, all she can feel is sleep taking over her.
When Elliot takes her into his arms, she doesn't object. He slides out of the king-sized bed, one that seems too big now, putting an ocean between them even as their bodies are pressed to one another.
She needs to be impossibly closer to him, needs him to wrap her in his body and take some of the pain she carried alone for so many years away.
She never let anyone share that burden with her, and though her heart feels heavy, for the first time in a decade she doesn't feel like she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders alone.
Elliot carries her as if she weighs nothing, as if she is a feather in the wind, her fingers trailing the flexed muscles on his arm and his shoulder, until he finally finds the lounge chair in the corner of the bedroom, lowering himself slowly and adjusting her body on top of his.
Her head is on his shoulder, her limbs a tangled mess in his lap.
"Thank you." He whispers, because "I am sorry" means nothing and "I love you" means way too much, and neither of them is ready for those three words to be said again. Not yet.
Cocooned in his arms, she is finally sleepy, her eyelids as heavy as lead, and behind her closed eyes she doesn't see blood and ashes anymore.
She is going to wake up sore, her muscle aching and her bones cracking in pain, but as Elliot reassures her that he got her, that she can drift off, the cares of tomorrow seem insignificant, somehow.
Elliot holds her body until he is sure she is asleep in his arms, until her breaths are even and her body is limp in his lap. And then he sits there, and watches her some more.
The love of his life. His soulmate.
There is nothing he can do to heal the scars that William Lewis formed on her body a decade ago.
But maybe, maybe his presence will be enough to be the remedy to the scars on her heart.