Day Ten, cont'd
His feet were suddenly cemented to the floor and through their joined hands, he jerked her to a stop. "No, Liv, I wasn't there."
Her eyebrows knitted together with a look of concern. "Yes, you were." Her eyes moved over him before meeting his. "How'd you get out of the exam anyway?"
"I wasn't there, Olivia." He let go of her hand, reaching to cup her face. "You don't really think I was there, do you?"
She shook her head, a grin crossing her face. "I'm really tired and I want to go home."
Panic started to flood through him at the idea that she was not ok and he was going to be responsible for whatever happened to her since he was taking her home. Not that she'd listen if he insisted she stay in the hospital. He tried to force a smile, knowing the tension would be obvious on his face anyway. "Can you wait a minute? I need to talk to Huang before we go."
"You're hanging out with him now?" Olivia's eyebrow raised in question. "It's like pulling teeth trying to get you to talk to me."
"Just give me a minute." He didn't think he should mention that he'd spilled his guts when she was calling him on never talking to her. Instead he showed her toward the room where he'd talk with Huang earlier. "I'll be right back."
He stepped away, loosening his grip on her hand, expecting that she'd pull free when she realized they were actually holding hands, figuring it had slipped her notice in her desperation to leave. But rather than pulling back, she followed him. She stepped toward him, keeping her hand tight around his. He liked the idea that she wasn't afraid to be in contact with him and he smiled.
"Give me two minutes and then I'll take you home, ok?"
Her eyes widened the slightest bit, her hands squeezing tighter around his. "Don't leave."
He squeezed her hand back, offering her a real smile to comfort her. "I won't leave you here. I'm not going to make you stay here." He tried to pull his hand back again.
But she held tight, reaching out with her other hand to grasp his hand tight. "No, please." There was panic in her voice, raising it to a screech.
He lifted his left hand, meaning to touch her face to reassure her, only remembering about his splint when he realized he couldn't do what he'd intended. Undeterred, he reached around her instead, pulling her body back against his, cradling her in a hug even as one of his hands remained caged between hers.
She finally let go, only to wrap her arms around his waist. Her face tucked into his shirt, her trembling frame causing his to shake. Her tears were hot, seeping through his shirt, the moisture as painful to him as if he'd been bleeding. She was mumbling against his chest, her sounds not quite forming words as she clung to him.
With his right hand free, he reached up, smoothing his palm across her hair. "Shhh, baby, it's ok. I'm right here. I'll stay with you."
Even though she nodded in response, her arms stayed tight around him. He reached behind him, gently loosening her arms. She looked stricken as he stepped back, even as he squeezed her hand. "I won't leave, ok?"
She nodded, her face ducking down, her cheeks staining red. "I didn't like being there alone."
"I know, honey." He wanted to drape his arm around her shoulders because it was as close to a hug as he could get without actually hugging her again, which would be convenient if he was going to keep his word about taking her home. But he thought about her sore shoulder and instead kept his grip tight on her hand.
Her eyes darted back up to him. For the first time, she seemed little and scared. "Will you take me home now?"
He nodded, unable to deny the tiny request she was making. In her shoes, he knew he would have been dying to get home, take a long, hot shower, put on his own clean clothes, and fall into bed. He couldn't deny her the same thing; he'd already promised himself that he wasn't ever going to deny her anything ever again. And while she was in the shower, he could call Huang and see if the good doctor would be available for a house call.
Nodding in response to her question, he led the way to the door. "Yeah, I'll take you home now."
When they walked up to her door, she cleared her throat to speak for the first time since they'd left the hospital. "El, I don't know where my keys are."
He opened his hand, needing to let go of her long enough to reach into his pocket. But her hand remained curled around his and he had to smile. "Liv?"
She looked up at him, her face open and unguarded. "Yeah?"
"I need my hand back." He pulled his hand up, showing her how her hand was attached.
"Oh, sorry." There was no embarrassment or blush in her face as she released him. "But what about the keys?"
Reaching into his pocket, he produced her set. "I have them." He didn't think he should go into why or how he had them, not when she seemed to think they'd been kidnapped together.
"Where'd you get a key?" She didn't sound angry, but he looked at her just to make sure. She was worrying her lip, as though trying to remember when she'd given him one.
Having no such luck in keeping it from her, he motioned vaguely at in the direction of the alley. "I found your jacket outside. The keys were in your pocket." He focused on the lock, half afraid to see her become upset at something that disproved her idea.
"Good thing you found it, right?"
He nodded, swinging her door open and ushering her through it with a hand on her back. "Yeah, it was."
"My badge should have been in there too."
He looked over at her, trying to figure out how she could keep the two ideas separate – completely accurate recollection of what was in her pockets the night she was taken and completely fabricated memories of them being held captive together. He wasn't sure what to say. That was certainly something he thought he might have to defer to Huang's assessment on. "Yeah, it's still in there. But Cragen has your gun."
She nodded. "Yeah, I figured. That was clipped to my pants, not in my jacket."
Shaking his head at her odd behavior, he turned away to lock the door securely behind her. He realized, as he was turning the deadbolt, that it was the first time he'd accompanied Olivia home with every intention of staying the night. He also realized that he wasn't spending the night in any sort of capacity that he would have wanted or expected in the last week. After what he still wasn't sure to call a breakthrough or a crime, he figured any invitation to stay with her would involve more intimacy and less fear.
"Um, El?" Olivia was standing in the living room, looking at her couch. "Is there something about the state of our relationship that I forgot?"
His heart had stopped. He was sure of it. He idly wondered how long he would continue to live without a beating heart. When death didn't rear its head, he looked at her and worked to swallow a giant lump that had formed in his throat. "Uh-" His gaze lowered as his words failed him entirely. He didn't have the faintest idea of how to answer that loaded question.
She rolled her eyes when he finally dared to meet her eyes again, his panic evidently causing her no end of amusement. "Besides that, El. Something besides that."
Her words did nothing to settle his nerves. He had no way of knowing what she was referring to and if, for whatever reason that seemed to connect back to being trauma related from him attacking her and therefore wasn't something he wanted to think about, she'd forgotten that he'd fucked her so cruelly, then she could have been referring to just about anything. So he simply stared at her, waiting for divine inspiration to strike him.
Luckily her candor spared him further confusion. "After the crib. I remember that." She shrugged.
He swallowed hard, trying to make himself as comfortable with the topic as she seemed. It didn't work and he had to force himself to speak around a lump in his throat. "Well, uh, no, I, um, no."
She frowned, the pouty look fairly begging him to make it up to her. "So when did we move in together?"
By the time he took one step closer to her, he remembered how he'd left his bag there, laying open, contents spread. His talisman to encourage her safe and rapid return. He smiled, faking a level of confidence that he didn't feel. "I missed you."
Lifting her arm to look at a watch that wasn't there, she mirrored his smile. "It's been what, a couple hours?"
"A couple hours? Are you kidding?" The words were out before he could stop them, before he could think better of them. He hadn't meant to sound argumentative or exasperated; he wasn't. He just couldn't understand ow she could think only a couple of hours had gone by while he'd suffered through a hellish week. Closing his eyes, he shook his head. "Shit, Liv, you've been gone for a week. The longest fucking week of my life."
"No more gone that you were." She looked around, possibly looking for evidence that she'd been gone so long. "Ok, so you didn't move in with me, right?"
"No, but if you're thinking of extending an invitation-" He caught her eyes for a moment, winking at her in a totally foreign display of flirtation. She certainly wasn't acting like she thought she'd been raped, freeing him from the worry. She was standing there discussing them moving in together like it was a legitimate option. He was hoping he'd gotten all bent out of shape over nothing.
She shrugged, her words responding to his statement while seeming entirely distracted. "You're going to have to prove it wasn't a one-time effect before I give you a key." Her tone was flat and the way she wrapped her arms around her middle revealed a discomfort she was otherwise trying to hide.
Maybe he wasn't as off the hook as he thought. Despite the oddly well-adjusted way she'd been behaving, a sure sign she was exactly not all right, he wondered if she was trying to somehow rationalize what had been as one-sided as he'd feared. He decided there was no time like the present and cleared his throat. "Liv, we really need to talk about what happened."
Her eyes met his, showing no emotion, no fear, no apprehension, no uncertainty, at what he said. "I'm filthy. I'm going to take a shower. You're not going to leave, are you?"
He held her eyes, trying to read her, milling over his options. She was obviously dodging the conversation. But he didn't know if that was because she didn't want to talk about how he'd raped her or because she didn't like to talk about her feelings or because she didn't want to have what was bound to be a conversation filled with uncomfortable moments. In the end, he realized he didn't have any idea.
He shook his head, choosing instead to give her some leeway from having only just walked in the door from being held prisoner for a week. "I'll be here."
She disappeared down the hallway toward the bedroom, turning into the bathroom on the way. "Jesus, Elliot, what happened in here?"
With wide, worried, paranoid eyes and a pounding heart akin to something Poe would write about, he followed her path. "What?"
The sight answered his question in case her appalled glare hadn't. The towel he'd used after his last shower there was tossed in a ball on the floor where he'd left it, a habit Kathy'd tried for almost thirty years to break. The floor was wet as well, giving ample evidence that he evidently hadn't closed the shower curtain all the way. The wad of dried, hardened shaving cream on the edge of her sink stood out as well.
"I – uh" He cleared his throat and turned away. "I meant to clean up before you came home."
"You should have just told me you'd moved in, then I might have expected this." She moved past him, starting the shower.
Figuring he was being dismissed, he nodded toward the hall. "Are you hungry? I can see what I can scrounge up."
"Wait, I need your help."
"In the shower?" He hadn't intended, or expected, his voice to come out as a squeak. Perhaps after the unconventional approach they'd taken to love making he should have been expecting such a proposition, but he was still convinced that he'd had a lot more say and all the control in that encounter and hadn't imagined Olivia would be the sort to suggest such a thing, at least not while the state of their relationship was still very much up in the air.
He caught a hint of a smile in her mirrored reflection, but it was gone by the time she turned to face him. She was trying to wiggle her right, uninjured arm free of her shirt, but not having a lot of luck.
Feeling like an idiot, as well as a prude, he laughed at himself. "Oh, right, with the clothes."
"You put them on me, you take them off." She stepped closer to him, probably so he could easily free her of the scrubs.
Between the proximity and her teasing, he felt justified in gently brushing his hands down her arms. "If that's the way it works, I'll dress you every day."
She let him see her grin that time, unashamed in front of him even without a shirt. Her eyebrows lifted as she laughed. "I'll take that under advisement, but I suspect we might get distracted."
It felt almost unnatural to smile after so long, but he couldn't help it. His hands released the top, allowing it to drop to the floor, reaching instead for her waist. "I'm not sure I mind being distracted." His face dipped lower, his lips grazing her temple as his face slid next to hers. Although he could count on one hand the number of times he'd held her in his arms, his arms, his body, seemed to know her. His body recognized her, craved what he'd been missing for so long, so much longer than the week she was missing.
His right hand rubbed against her skin; his splinted left keeping her waist firmly pressed into him. He'd thought it would be enough, he thought having her back would be enough. Any other time in their relationship, a hug, more than one even, would have been the most he could possibly dream of. But things had changed in the crib that day, things that she wouldn't talk about, things that he couldn't explain. He'd simply reached the end of his ability to survive without her; his body needed her to keep going.
As his shoulders hunched forward to curl around her as best he could, his right hand reached up, feeling her skin for the first time, branding her body with his feather-light touch, marking her as his while he mapped the territory. He wished he hadn't been wearing a shirt as well, so that her soft breasts might push into his chest. He followed the gentle curve of her back, along her neck, into her hair. He smoothed the messy strands as he went. He wanted to say something, anything, everything. All those things that had occurred to him to tell her while she was gone. But like always, when it really mattered, words failed him. He only hoped his loving hold and soft caress was telling her what he couldn't say.
Her back shook lightly with laughter, her eyes lit with amusement when she pulled back. "I guess you really did miss me."
Because her face seemed so welcoming, because her smile was friendly, because her eyes were dancing, he couldn't resist. Not one more second. He leaned forward, closing the distance between their faces, covering her mouth with his. It had been a terribly long week for him, suffering through every moment without her and he tried to put all of his emotions into the kiss. His mouth remembered the way hers fit against his, in a way he'd remembered before he'd ever touched her, in a way that reassured him it was just meant to be. His lips parted, his tongue tracing along her lower lip, begging her the way he should have before he claimed her body. And like he'd hoped, her mouth granted him entrance, her tongue eagerly searching the overheated air for his.
Heaven. He was in heaven.
He was so damn happy that he couldn't stop smiling, not even when she pulled back and reminded him about her shower. He was so damn happy that he had no trouble appearing completely calm when he shut the door, even though he knew he had a very limited time to fix up all the things he'd messed up while he was staying there.
Figuring he could do that while he was calling Huang for advice on Olivia's mental state, he grabbed his phone and headed for the washer where he'd left her sheets days earlier.
But a terrified shriek coming from the bathroom stopped him in his tracks.
