He couldn't seem to stop touching her.
The jut of bone at her hip compelled him; the curve of her rib beneath his palm fascinated him. The rise and fall of her chest in time to her steady breaths, the smattering of freckles across the tender skin of her breasts, the smell of sweat and come and citrus from her soap; the truth of her, the living breathing pulse of her beside him, not a dream or a figment but real, fallible and soft and tired as dawn broke slowly over them, made it impossible for him to lift his hands from her skin, to tear himself away even for a moment.
Tired, they were both tired, after the kitchen. Weeks of sleeping on her couch had wrecked his back and the sudden fury of their passions left him aching, and maybe she wasn't faring much better because the second her legs stopped shaking she took him by the hand, and led him to her bed.
Her bed, where they fell in together, naked and exhausted, their proximity enough to keep them warm, the blankets thrown haphazardly over their legs and not much else. It didn't escape his notice the way she wiggled her toes until her feet were uncovered; she was never one to be held down, confined, even at rest, and it charmed him even as it made him sad, the sight of her bare feet sticking out beneath the covers of her bed. Her bed, one of those things he'd never been allowed to think about, before, one of those things that haunted him, the idea of lying naked in Olivia's bed, with Olivia beside him, naked. Something he wasn't supposed to want, something he'd spent years yearning for, real now, and him with no idea what to do now that this gift had finally been delivered into his hands.
The only thing he did was the only thing he could; he touched her, lying on his side with his head on her pillow, smoothed his hand along the dips and curves of her, learning the shape of her, memorizing her by touch so that he would know her always, know her in the dark, know her with his eyes closed, know her by hands alone when all his other senses failed him.
There was something here, he thought. The beginning of something; he'd felt the first stirrings of it in the kitchen and the gentle drumbeat thump of its approach only grew louder as he lay in her bed listening to the beat of her heart. The last few weeks he had settled comfortably into something that felt like a life here. No one knew how to get him home and he hadn't devoted that much time to trying to find the way himself; it was a riddle without answer, even Munch said so, and the thought of home did not entice him the way he thought maybe it should, not now when Liv was dead and his children didn't seem to have much use for him and he was afraid to look her son in the eye, not now when he was lying in bed with Olivia breathing beside him. What home was left for him, with Liv gone?
This could be a home, that was what he thought as he lay there, trailing his fingertips over the rise of her shoulder. Work at the bar, sleep in her bed. Live in the apartment, love her. What else did a man need, to build a life? It could be done, he thought; they could take the rubble from the ruins of their shattered hearts and the ashes of their loneliness and turn it into bricks and craft a home where sorrow once dwelled, where they could live in peace together.
There could be love here. Maybe, eventually. The way she'd demanded he fuck her had very little to do with love but there was trust, still; asking for him required a vulnerability of her he knew she wouldn't have given to just anyone. A vulnerability she gave to him, and that had to mean something, he thought. It had to mean something that he trusted her with the fragile pieces of himself, too.
Maybe it was wrong, though. To lie there thinking thoughts of love when the woman beside him was not the same one who'd marched through the streets of Manhattan by his side for thirteen long years, was not the woman who'd sat with her knee brushing against his on the stoop of his building while the sun rose over skyscrapers in the distance and he asked her quietly, carefully, not to leave him. Olivia was not Liv; he'd never stood beside her in an elevator hearing the echo of her voice telling him she'd been turned down for adoption and ached, deep down in his soul, at the thought that he would give her a child if he could, the thought that she would never ask it of him. New Jersey and Ohio and that apartment with the blue backsplash behind the sink; he'd been to all those places with Liv, and it was not Olivia his heart remembered, and was not Olivia his soul cried out for.
But one day, he thought. They could make new memories together; he cared for this Olivia, wanted to protect her, to look after her, to feed her and keep her safe and see her smile, and maybe one day, many years from now, he'd look back and remember her. Maybe they just had to start somewhere, and maybe this was the start of them. Not a crime scene in the rain, her eyes hidden beneath the brim of a ball cap, but here, in her bed, with her warm beneath his hands. He did not love her yet, but maybe he could, one day. Maybe the possibility was all that mattered; maybe thinking he could love her was the same as loving her already. It felt different, with her, than it had ever felt with Liv, but maybe that didn't mean this wasn't love.
It was giving up and starting over, both at the same time. It happened right there, in her bed; he gave up any pretense of impermanence, and resolved himself instead to begin again in this place that was no longer foreign, but quickly becoming his home. He would not fight to get back to his own world because he could not fight. There was nothing for him to do, no where he could go, no enemy before him. There was only the world he had been given, and a choice. A choice to withdraw from this reality and wither into nothing, faded into smoke by dreams of something that could never be, or a choice to embrace his new home, and live. It was no choice, really. He would live; he would love her, if she'd let him.
Beside him she turned her head, regarded him in a thoughtful silence, dark eyes watching his face. There was no way to know what she was thinking; she was not Liv, whose thoughts always seemed to echo in his own mind. She was Olivia, and her mind was closed to him, but she was alive, and he could love her.
Slowly he slid himself over her, let his hips sink into the valley of her thighs and looked down on her, quiet as she was quiet, thoughtful as she was thoughtful. She was so beautiful and it felt like grace, this chance to look at her, unguarded and unafraid. As he held himself up over her his eyes were drawn to the soft weight of her breasts, and he looked at her scars, then, looked at them head on, not a fleeting glance full of shame but a lingering examination, forcing himself to face the truth of them, making room in his mind for the reality of it, the pain that she had faced, the pain she had survived. Even as he looked his mind betrayed him, his thoughts going back, as they always seemed to do, to Liv. Liv as she was that morning in her car in front of Noah's school when Elliot first came back to the city, her eyes soft and her mouth full of worry for him; in those days she had given him so much, tried so hard to be a comfort to him, and never once told him of her own pain. Had she been, even then, thinking of the man who hurt her; did she blame Elliot for that hurt, as he blamed himself, did she think it wouldn't have happened if only he'd been there? Would he have been strong enough to stop it? Would she ever have forgiven him, or had she forgiven him already, before she died?
There was no one to ask; Liv was gone, but there was another woman in front of him, and he tried to focus his attentions on her.
Tentatively he raised his hand, began to ghost his fingertips across those marks one at a time, learning the shape and location of them as if he were studying a map. She didn't seem to like that too much; after a moment she reached for him, caught hold of his wrist and stilled his progress.
"Don't," she said, very softly.
"I'm sorry," he apologized at once, contrite and doubtful. "I didn't mean-"
"They don't bother me any more," she said, though he wasn't sure he believed her. "But you and I both know you're just wondering if she had scars that looked like mine."
There was nowhere for him to look but in her eyes, no way for him to hide his shame. She was right; he had been wondering. Wondering if Liv had faced Lewis, too, wondering if she had been raped, wondering what secrets she'd kept from him, and why, why she hadn't trusted him, wondering what he could have done to make her bare her soul to him. But what would he have done, if she told him that she had been attacked, if she'd ever trusted him enough to tell him the truth? What would he have said, what comfort could he have offered her, how would it break him? The not knowing was nearly enough to drive him mad; Liv was dead, and he was never going to have the chance to make things right between them, and he was never going back but still he could not banish the thought of her from his mind. And Olivia knew it.
"I'm sorry," he said again. It was all he could say; he would not lie to her.
"You love her," Olivia said simply. "I know that. Just…just be here with me, please. Can you do that?"
Could he do that? Could he ever look at her, and not see Liv? Maybe, he thought. Maybe in time his memories of Liv would fade like old photographs, relics of another time and place, like the photo of Kathy on his desk at OCCB, a shrine to what once had been. Maybe one day Olivia would be everything to him, as Liv had been once. Only time would tell, and all that time stretched out before him, dark as the sea at night, untold dangers lurking in its depths, but full of beauty still, swelling with potential for good fortune as well as disaster.
"I'm here," he said. "I'm with you. Just you, Olivia."
And then he bowed his head and kissed her, long and slow and deep. Kissed her with soft lips and a searching tongue while she wound her arms around him, soft thighs cradling his hips. There was no going back, no back to go to; there was only here, and now. There was only her, and he would love her, if he could.