October 19, 2021

I'm right here, you know.

With his feet up on the desk and his hands in his lap Elliot sat very still, staring at the message on the screen of his phone. The last message he'd sent to her, five days ago. The last message he'd sent to her, unanswered.

I wish you'd just tell me he started to type, thought better of it, deleted it.

Whatever's going on, we can figure it out that, too, he deleted it.

For fuck's sake, Liv

"Hey, Stabler!" Bell called out, and in response he promptly locked his phone and tucked it back in his pocket, his final message unsent. There was no point; it wasn't like she was gonna answer it, anyway, and in the meantime he had a job to do, trapped behind a desk or not, and his boss was calling for him.

"Right here, Sarge," he called back, and watched Ayanna striding into view, smiling. Whatever Elliot's personal woes, Bell was in a good mood, and he'd like to keep her that way. She didn't need to know his life had gone to shit.

"Why didn't you tell me Benson was back at work?" she asked him, though there was no real sting in the accusation. She settled herself down easily, casually, on the edge of the desk, and nudged his feet off it with her elbow.

I didn't know, Elliot thought miserably.

Things had been good, in the beginning. The first few days, when they were both stuck at home convalescing, she'd actually answered his messages with more than one word. She'd talked to him, about her, about the kids, about Cassidy driving her crazy. But something had changed, back around week two; her answers got shorter and shorter, vaguer and vaguer, until they stopped coming altogether, and now it was eight weeks since she'd been shot and Elliot and Mia had gone under the knife, and he didn't know she was back at work already. Didn't know what she was thinking, or how she was feeling, or why the fuck she'd stopped talking to him, and Bell wanted to know why he hadn't shared Liv's good news, and he couldn't give an honest answer, because Bell had seen Olivia kiss him in Brooklyn and probably she thought they'd have it all figured out by now and he didn't want to admit to being so fucking stupid.

Probably he should've just called Liv, but she'd ignored his calls before. Probably he should've just gone to her; that had worked out pretty good for him the last time he did it, but the last time she'd been hobbling around on crutches with a bad ankle, not laid up from a bullet to the belly, not having to worry about her child's recovery in addition to her own. The last time she hadn't told him that she loved him yet. The last time, he hadn't donated one of his fucking organs to her kid. Things had been easier, the last time. It had felt necessary, going to her, talking to her, but it hadn't felt like a risk. It did, now. It did feel like a risk because she wasn't answering his messages and he didn't know why and he was starting to feel like maybe it was because she didn't want to. Didn't want him.

"Figured you'd work it out on your own," he said with a shrug. A lie, but not a terribly big one. God forgive him. "How did you find out, by the way?"

"Ran into her at COMSTAT," Bell told him. "She looks good. Skinny, but good."

Wonder if Cassidy's feeding her like he's supposed to, Elliot thought, and then frowned. Fucking Cassidy. He was a good guy, but a complicated guy; Elliot would trust Cassidy with his life on the job and he wouldn't trust him with a fucking carton of eggs outside it and Cassidy was the one Liv let take care of her. Cassidy was father to her babies; she was probably answering Cassidy's fucking messages.

"Bullet did a number on her," he grumbled. "Probably hard to eat, just now."

"Probably?" Ayanna asked, raising an eyebrow at him, the insinuation plain. Are you guessing, or do you know? Are you not talking to her?

"She's tough, though," he said. "She'll be all right."

Christ, I hope she's all right.

Probably she was; she was back at work, back at COMPSTAT. Back to her life, like nothing had ever happened. Back to work, back to ignoring him, back to radio silence after a shattering moment of vulnerability. That should've been the turning point, right? If anything was gonna happen to change their circumstances, to bring them out of their unsteady alliance and into the kinda honesty, the kinda trust, that he was craving, surely their confessions, her kiss, her brush with death, his desperate gamble to save Mia's life, surely that would've been the thing that did it. But here they were, stalemated.

And he was fucking pissed about it.

Why wouldn't she just talk to him? What the fuck was she punishing him for now? Hadn't he done everything right? Hadn't he been honest, hadn't he been steadfast, couldn't she see how devoted to her he was? Didn't she know she held his heart clenched in her fist?

Fuck it, he thought.

"Hey, Sarge?" he said; Ayanna had stood up again, was starting to meander towards her office, but she turned back around when she heard him call.

"You need me for anything this afternoon?"

"Why, you got somewhere to be?"

"Yeah," he said.

She shot him an appraising look, and then nodded. There was no point in pretending; she knew where he was going. One mention of Liv's name and he was suddenly eager to get out the door, and Ayanna knew what it meant.

"Go on," she said.

So he did.


I'm right here, you know.

With her elbows resting on the edge of the desk Olivia stared down at the message on the screen of her phone. Five days, since she'd gotten that message, and she still didn't know how to answer it, and she'd been so busy, getting back to work, that she hadn't really been thinking about it too much until today, until she saw Ayanna and realized she had no idea how Elliot was doing. If he was recovering well, if he regretted the sacrifice he'd made for Mia, for her. Probably he didn't; Elliot was a father, and a good man, and he'd never regret saving a child's life. He might be regretting her, though, might be regretting Olivia, might be regretting letting himself get tangled up with a woman who couldn't even tell him how she was feeling.

She didn't really know herself, though. That was the problem; she didn't know what this was. A few weeks ago they'd been talking, and Elliot asked after Mia and offered advice and her brain had skipped six steps ahead; Elliot had always been an all or nothing kind of guy and Elliot had always been a father and Elliot had always been so sure that he knew best, had always been ready with a lecture for her about what it meant to be a parent. But he wasn't Mia's father, wasn't Noah's; those were her children, hers and Brian's - mostly hers, since most of the time Brian was more like a third child than a fellow parent - and it was her job to raise them as she saw fit, and there was something gunshy and possessive in her heart that recoiled when Elliot talked about them. What did he know about her kids, anyway, when he'd been gone for a fucking decade and hadn't seen them born and didn't have any idea what kind of mother she was?

And what would it look like, six months, a year down the road; if she let Elliot kiss her, if she let him touch her, if she let him fuck her - Jesus, she wanted him to fuck her, had woken up sweaty and aching from a dream about him between her thighs only that morning - if they did this, what happened next? Elliot muscling in on her time with the kids, Elliot telling her how to raise them, Elliot getting moody about how often Brian came around?

That's not fair, she told herself, for possibly the thousandth time. She was angry at him for transgressions not yet committed, and that wasn't fair, but she couldn't seem to stop it. Couldn't seem to stop feeling angry, angry about the way he'd left her, angry about the way he'd come back, angry about how good he'd been to her, how kind he'd been, how he seemed so determined to be the man she needed him to be. She was angry with him for being here now, when for so long she'd had no idea where he was at all. If he'd always had it in him, this love for her, this faithfulness to her, where the fuck had he been when she needed him?

Anger and fear are two sides of the same coin, Lindstrom had told her once, and he was goddamn right about that; she was only angry because she was so scared. It was easier to be angry. Easier to latch on to old hurts and imagine new ones than to admit how desperately she wanted him. Easier to push him away than to open her arms to him, and risk him shattering her in the process. Easier to be alone; she knew how to be alone. There was safety in the familiar.

Elliot had given Mia his fucking liver, and Olivia loved him for it, but she couldn't help feeling like she owed him now. Was beholden to him now; he was the reason her child was still breathing, and surely that meant she owed him a response, even if she didn't want to give it, and she felt backed into a corner, felt petulant and childish and mean, felt obstinate, the way she always did when circumstances forced her hand.

Just send the fucking text, she told herself, grumpy with her own vacillation. She wanted him, wanted his time and his smile and his blue eyes and his strong hands. She wanted him, her partner, her friend. She wanted him to love her, the way he said he did, she wanted him to be with her, the way he said he wanted to be, but.

But.

There was always a fucking but.

But she didn't know how they were gonna do this, how she was gonna date - Christ, that sounded juvenile; how she was gonna sleep with - Elliot, and keep Brian happy, and make sure her kids had everything they needed, and not lose her mind. She didn't know how she was ever gonna trust him with her heart; with her life, yes, but she had guarded her heart so closely for so long now that it was unbearable, really, to think about passing it into the hands of another. The last person who'd touched her was Burton fucking Lowe and she'd spent damn near forty years believing he loved her and that love had turned to spite and grief and pain so quickly, and she wouldn't survive it, she thought, if all her memories of Elliot were one day tainted by sorrow the way her memories of Burton were now. She'd had so little love in her life, and so much of it had turned bitter and broken; she couldn't lose Elliot's love, too. Maybe it was better preserved as a memory, safe and whole, than to embrace it, and find it colder than she'd ever imagined.

Everybody always leaves, her mother used to say, and Serena had been right about that, because everyone had left her, even Elliot himself, and she'd spent her whole life trying to keep people at a distance in an attempt to mitigate the damage they caused when they went. The first go around she'd let Elliot into her heart and he'd wrecked her; surely she should've learned her lesson by now.

I'm right here, you know.

Part of her wanted to keep him there. Loving her, not hurting her. Standing on the precipice was easier than taking the jump.

She sighed, tucked her phone into her pocket, ran her hand across her face, and in the single second her eyes were closed the door to her office banged suddenly open, and she looked up to find Elliot Stabler in the flesh, standing in her doorway, breathing like he'd just run a marathon, with fire in his eyes.

Oh, shit, she thought. Here we go.

So much for playing it safe.