T Minus 6 Days, cont'd

If he got any rest at all, he wasn't aware of it. There was a period of unconsciousness, which he would begrudgingly admit, only because at one point that he couldn't recall, the sky outside his window had gone from dark to bright.

For a moment, he lay there, one of the mismatched throw pillows over his face, regretting that he'd taken the realtor's advice and leased an east-facing place. The giddy woman who'd convinced him to buy it had sold him on the idea of saving the planet by reducing his electricity bills since the eastern exposure would keep half of his apartment bright as could be most of the day and even into the evening in the summer months. It hadn't made a bit of difference to him, not really, since he rarely saw home during day light hours anyway, day light savings time be damned. He'd listened to her only because she'd sort of reminded him of Olivia, provided Olivia was on crack and an extremely gregarious blonde, but still, the thought of Olivia had sold the apartment.

Of course east-facing windows also meant that on those few and far between days where Elliot was trying to sleep, the sun would have him up at, quite literally, the crack of dawn. He thought about getting up and going to the bedroom, his body instinctively wanting more rest, except that his living room and his bedroom shared the same side of the apartment and he knew there would be no reprieve in the bedroom.

And it only took another second for him to remember that he had no business sleeping, not when his partner was missing. He jerked fully awake, throwing aside the blanket he'd pulled over himself during the night. He hated himself for stretching out on his couch, seeking comfort and warmth and rest while his partner was god-knows-where having god-knows-what done to her.

Energized at the thought of finding her, he headed for his bathroom, peeling off his clothes and turning on the shower controls. It wasn't six yet; Cragen wouldn't let him in the building. But as he climbed in the shower, he found himself paralyzed, unable to put his body under the stream. Because he'd be washing off Olivia. Although there had barely been skin contact between them, there was one part of him, uncomfortably crusted with their combined juices that had touched her, that had been inside of her. It was all he had to prove to himself that it had happened. With the way he'd positioned her, she hadn't had a chance to mark him.

As the steam from the shower humidified the air, it breathed life into the clothing he'd been wearing, into the crust on his body, filling the air with her scent, the one he knew so well, and the one he'd only discovered the day before, the physical proof of her body's reaction to him. It seemed thick enough to choke him and he thrust himself under the spray, scalding his skin, stripping away her essence from his body.

The thick, steamy air made him sick, taunting him that he was trying to hold onto something that she might not have even wanted. He gagged suddenly, thinking he was fondly attached to the physical evidence that he'd raped his partner so brutally.

He sank to his knees, adjusting the temperature of the water until it was unbearably hot, burning his skin mercilessly. He deserved no mercy; he hadn't shown her any. But even as he scrubbed his skin roughly, ripping open the slices her sharp nails had left on his arms, her scent didn't fade.

He reached out of the enclosure, grabbing his clothes and throwing them in the bottom of the shower. He held them under the hot water, soaking each piece one at a time, scrubbing them against the tiles, making sure all memory of her was gone. He didn't want to remember. He didn't want to know he'd hurt her, to know he'd found pleasure in her pain.

His energy was spent, his arms were bleeding, his skin was burning, his heart was breaking for what he'd done to her. And still, still he knew that the discomfort he felt was nothing compared to how she had suffered at his hands, how she was suffering at the hands of whoever had taken her. His shoulders slumped forward, his hands pressing into his eyes, his elbows coming to rest on his thighs.

He cried. He sobbed and howled and screamed at the injustice of it all, hating himself and the world. He cried long after the burning heat of the water turned to stinging cold. He cried as his body shivered under the spray, refusing to allow himself the comfort of turning it off.

His eyes fell on the clothes, the ones he'd so viciously cleaned as though it might clean the sin from his soul, and he hated himself a little more, for removing any traces he had of her. Pulling the sopping mess against his face, he tried to pick out her scent. Not finding it, he curled up further, wishing he could die, knowing Olivia deserved the right to kill him.

It was the sound of his phone ringing continuously that woke him from his hysteria. He heard it, recognized the importance of picking up any calls while Olivia was missing. He knew it could be Cragen, calling with an update. Hell, it could be Olivia calling to say that she'd escaped and needed a ride home. Still, even though he was with it enough to turn off the shower and wrap himself in a towel, he couldn't find the strength to answer the phone. The devil on his shoulder whispered that it might well be Cragen, calling to say they'd found her, that she'd been raped, that she'd been killed, that she'd left a note saying he'd raped her and that they'd found his fucking DNA inside her.

He collapsed on his bed, still shivering from the shower, watching as his arms bled into the white of the towel. He couldn't find the strength to move any further, despite his desire to find her, despite his promise to report to work so he could be grilled by IAB. Like always, his strength had run off with Olivia, following her like a lovesick puppy and abandoning him without an afterthought.

The pounding on the door, on the other hand, well, that was harder to ignore. It didn't even start as regular knocking. It began as a hideously loud, harsh pounding and only increased in intensity. Because it was making his headache worse, he managed to collect himself off the bed and opened the door. Expecting it was IAB coming to haul his miserable ass off to prison, he didn't bother to check before he opened the door.

He wished he had checked when his eyes fell on Lake and Fin, if for no other reason than because he was dressed only in a towel, which just so happened to have streaks of blood on it.

"Damn, we thought you were in the wind." Lake seemed truly disappointed that he hadn't been able to put out an APB on his coworker.

Fin glared at Lake. "I knew you weren't going anywhere until we know where Liv is."

Lake grinned, thinking his jokes would be appreciated. "Unless they're planning to run off together."

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Elliot fought back the urge to strike Lake only because he honestly didn't have the energy to punch anyone. "Who sent you? Cragen or IAB?"

Fin winced, knowing his words weren't welcome. "Cragen, but we passed IAB on our way out."

"I'll go get dressed." He was exhausted, having blown all the energy he had left on his fit in the shower. But he rationalized that he needed to go to the precinct so he would know the minute anyone found anything out. He didn't want to have to sit around waiting for the phone call. Mindful of the condition of his arms, he pulled a long sleeve shirt on under his dress shirt. He figured he already looked crazy enough, he didn't need to add bloody stains on his shirt to the mix.

When he returned to the living room, he saw Fin displaying utter annoyance and quite possibly hatred for his partner. Lake was uninterested in Fin's attitude as he had found something far more interesting. Once again seething with anger and infused with the energy it brought, Elliot lunged across the room, snatching the brown envelope from the younger man's nosy fingers.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Lake grinned like an asshole, thinking he'd found something amusing and fun. "So you guys really are, huh?"

Fin knocked his partner in the shoulder. "I told you not to touch shit that wasn't yours."

Elliot was angry as hell, refusing to focus on the images in the photographs. They were the cause of it all, really. The reason he'd been so fucking pissed off at Olivia, even though it really hadn't been her fault. "It's none of your fucking business, Lake. You got that?"

Reading something in his eyes, Lake nodded mutely. "I won't tell anybody about you two living together."

Elliot's rage boiled over, his hands reaching out angrily to grab Lake by the collar, lifting Lake's feet off the ground as he shoved him into the wall. "You stay the hell out of it! You don't have a god damned clue what's going on, so don't think you do."

Fin's hands fell on Elliot's forearms, pushing him away. "He's an asshole, Elliot. It's not worth it. Nobody's going to say nothing cause nobody saw nothing." Fin insinuated himself between them. "Besides, you've already got a meeting with IAB over kidnapping one of your coworkers. Another one turns up dead and it's going to look real bad."

He wasn't exactly satisfied, but he knew Fin was right. Stepping back, he growled. "He deserves it."

"Yeah, he does, but like I said, nothing is leaving here. What you do on your own time isn't any of my business." Fin picked the envelope up off the floor, pushing the pictures the rest of the way inside without looking at them, and set it back on the coffee table.

Elliot's eyes followed the packet, knowing it had looked as damning to them as it had to Kathy and the lawyers. Looking down, he shook his head. "It's not what it looks like."

Lake raised his hands in surrender. "We're supposed to bring you to the precinct. Touch me like that again and we'll be making a stop at the hospital."

Elliot stepped forward, more than willing to fight it out with Lake to prove his superiority. Fin was standing off to the side, not about to get a black eye for getting between them again. But as he went to reach for the other man, his mind drew up an imaginary Olivia, who like the real one, would chance the black eye to keep her partner out of trouble. He hung his head, every bit as embarrassed as he would have been had she really been there to stop him.

Eventually he glared up at Lake, seeing some relief in avoiding a fight. "You say whatever you want about me, ok? I don't give a shit. But you leave Olivia out of it."

Lake didn't want to accept defeat, but he nodded, probably deciding it was best option available. "Whatever." He looked at Fin, his lack of understanding of the dynamic in the department had never been more clear. "Are we done here?"

Fin looked to Elliot, who nodded and followed them to the door with one last glance at that damn brown envelope. It still struck him by how cruel its contents were. And in the interest of protecting Olivia, he realized he had to explain his behavior, rather than leave it the way it was – sure, he'd scared off anymore questions, but in doing so, he'd answered quite a few inaccurately.

He slid into the backseat of the sedan, catching Fin's eye in the rearview mirror. "Those were taken a couple hours after Olivia's boyfriend abandoned her in New Haven after he'd decked her."

Fin's eyes met his for a moment, but he shook his head. "You don't have to explain anything to me." He shrugged as he glanced at Lake's interested face. "Hell, it's probably better if you don't."

"I know." And he did. He didn't have to say anything. But like all instances of taking the fifth, not saying anything implied there was something he wasn't telling. "But it's really not what anyone thinks." He gazed out the window, feeling like the whole world was foggy. "I drove up there to get her in the middle of the night. I was supposed to have a custody hearing first thing the next morning, so she let me sleep on the couch with Eli." He swallowed hard, his mind drawing up those pictures of them leaving her building that morning, him heading off to fight for Eli, her heading off for a run, while it looked very much to the PI watching that they'd spent the night together in a very different way. "Kathy's son of a bitch lawyer put a PI on my tail to catch me being irresponsible. Blew me out of the fucking water yesterday morning when they pulled out those fucking pictures to show how I wasn't taking good care of my son and how I'd been cheating on my wife for ten god damn years."

It had been the sneakiest damn thing he'd ever seen, having listened to Kathy's "I have to work" crap for skipping the first meeting when she'd really been meeting up with the PI to get those incriminating pictures. And, in keeping with his complete inability to ever get mad at the right person, he'd taken his anger out on Olivia. He could have lost it when Kathy's lawyer pushed the photos across the table toward him. He could have had a tantrum right there and tried to beat the snot out of the twenty-something upshot Kathy'd hired. He could have even waited until the meeting was over and found Kathy at work, even followed her home and let her have what she deserved for casting doubt on his partner. Of course, he hadn't. Because any of those would have meant losing custody of his son, watching Eli grow up every other weekend and one month out of the summer. He hadn't been able to do that.

So he'd taken it to work, let it out on Olivia and then gotten mad when she fought back. Having already been suffering for a relationship he wasn't having, Olivia's taunts regarding him and all the other women she thought he was seeing pushed him over the edge. There was only one woman he wanted anything to do with in a personal relationship and she'd been quite obviously able to make it without him. And he'd wound up ruining everything because he needed her so damn bad, because he wanted whatever everyone already assumed he had.

He closed his eyes and leaned against the glass, wishing he could have all the time back to do it right. He was such a fuckhead.

"That's a shitty time to find out your ex is a royal bitch, huh? How long were you two married anyway?" Lake was in front of him, therefore missing Elliot's body language.

He was too tired to lift his head, knowing that his answer made him look even dumber. "Twenty-four years." Because most men would have figured it out faster.

Lake actually laughed, ignoring Fin's grimace. "Shit, dude, that's just sad."

Had Elliot's eyes been open, he might have appreciated the way Fin hit the other man up the back of his head. Fin peeked back at Elliot. "At least you're out of it now, right?"

Elliot bothered to look that time, but only to make sure Fin caught the shrug. "I might be so far out of it that I lose my son."

Lake made some sympathetic noise, leaving it to Fin to voice the obvious. "Even if Kathy's a bitch, you still shouldn't have taken it out on Liv."

Everyone had seen them fighting. And even if Elliot hadn't just spilled the reason for his bad mood that day, they still would have known the fight was his fault. The fights were always his fault. Because he was a fuckhead. Maybe Eli would be better off without him. Maybe Olivia would too.

He'd have to ask her for her opinion as soon as they found her.