A/N: Someone asked for an early update as an Easter present, and I am all about happy little surprises like that. Also, this chapter is a continuation of the previous one, so I wanted to post them fairly close together. And I finished the seventh and final cover art for part six last night, so there's that too (As always, the art is viewable over on AO3). Mild trigger warning here for the aftermath of violence and sexual assault. I hope everyone is having a nice Easter, if you celebrate it, and that the Easter Bunny brought lots of goodies your way!
Chapter 51.
Solace
. . .
Daphne exited the bathroom humming the tune to "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," which had been featured twice in Ocean's 8, once as a snappier remix of the original, then as a cover by an artist she didn't recognize. It was a catchy tune whichever way you cut it, but that wasn't the reason she kept replaying it in her head (and throat) while she washed her hands, and now, as she shuffled back to the living room, trying not to rush. At least not where her friends would see.
She'd been snooping in Dana Lewis's medicine cabinet when it hit her. She knew very little about the woman, except that she was an FBI agent and someone Olivia and Amanda had been acquainted with for a while. Not on great terms, though, judging by Olivia's unhappy expression whenever Dana's name came up. So Daphne had done the only logical thing and gotten to know Dana by going through her stuff. Just the linen closet, under the sink, and finally, the cabinet behind the mirror. Her hand had been turning a pill bottle around to read the label (nothing juicy, just an allergy medication) when she suddenly experienced déjà vu. But unlike the typically untraceable flash associated with the phenomenon, she knew exactly where the sensation came from.
That night at the lodge in the Catskills, she had been doing the exact same thing. Snooping in the bathroom cabinet while her girlfriend was downstairs being murdered. Then she had come across Meredith's mutilated body in the dark kitchen—everything was so dark—and life had changed in an instant. Three of the same people who had gone into the woods that night were in this house on the Connecticut shoreline, and here was Daphne, back in the same place the nightmare had started: the bathroom. She got the eerie feeling Meredith's eyeless corpse would be reflected in the mirror, staring over her shoulder from bloody black eye sockets, when she closed it.
She had pushed the door shut without looking, forgot rinsing her hands the first time and did it again, then hurried from the bathroom. Thankfully, the lights were on in the hallway because she never went to pee in the dark anymore, and she didn't have to go through the kitchen to reach the living room. The opposite was true in this house, and it was also about ten times smaller than the lodge had been. That was sort of comforting.
Before rounding the corner to the room where her friends waited, which was illuminated only by the light from the Ocean's 8 menu screen, she took a preparatory breath. And blew it right back out again when she stepped around the corner to see the aforementioned friends locked in an intimate embrace, an intense game of tonsil hockey being waged between them. Her creepy bathroom déjà fuck-that-shit instantly forgotten, she very nearly squealed with delight at the scene, as if her OTP had finally hooked up on her favorite series (currently, she was living for Jen and Judy of Dead to Me and anticipating the third season like a fiend).
The only reason she held back was to avoid interrupting them and spoiling the moment. Amanda hadn't said much, but Daphne got the impression there hadn't been any bedroom action between the couple since May. That was understandable, after what they had gone through—were clearly still going through; she had to leave work early when she found out they'd sent the kids away, so great was her shock—and she was trying her best to stay out of their private affairs. Nevertheless, she'd held out hope that they could put the trauma behind them and mend their fractured sex life soon. Maybe tonight was the first step.
Growing up with four older brothers had taught Daphne a thing or two about sneaking around a couple necking on the couch. But unlike her brothers' dates, this was not a forbidden tryst to be spied on and used as ammunition with her parents (there was a chance that young Daphne had been slightly jealous of her brothers, who got to kiss girls all the time). Carefully she slipped from the room on tiptoe, alerting neither woman to her presence as far as she could tell. Hard to be sure with their faces hidden by each other's sensual head movements, evidence of the give and take occurring between their locked lips, but she didn't see an eye cracked open to glare at her, or a hand waving for her to get the hell out.
Heck, as preoccupied as they were, she probably could have grabbed a bowl of popcorn, propped her feet up on the coffee table, and settled in for the show. At least that's the joke she would have told later, recounting the tale for her mortified friends, if things were normal. She couldn't make jokes like that anymore, about living vicariously through their intimacy; not after what had happened to Olivia. And try though she might not to let those images into her head, she had caught herself on multiple occasions imagining what it must have been like for the captain in that shipping container. Amanda had said it was like walking into Hell.
Shuddering at the thought, Daphne flipped the kitchen light on and went to the fridge
(not a dead body in sight)
intending to grab the ingredients for fresh margaritas, then realized she'd have to use the blender. Nothing killed a romantic mood like the melodious sounds of ice being ground into slush. She decided that would be her last resort, if the hanky-panky in the living room lasted too long. For now, she would sip one of the Seagram's—a pink thing with a title that made her giggle: Jamaican Me Happy—and hope the alcohol content wasn't such that she crossed over to intoxicated and forgot herself.
Then again, it was her birthday and she didn't have many years of being young and stupid left. None, actually. But she was just buzzed enough not to care.
. . .
An hour into The Proposal, Daphne was passed out in the wide armchair adjacent to the couch, and Amanda was glaring daggers at her tiny, sleeping form. No one that small and that cute should be able to snore that loudly. She hadn't even made it to the part with Sandra Bullock spitting "Get Low," while she and Betty White dropped it like it was hot, her all-time favorite scene from anything ever, well, after the midnight margaritas scene in Practical Magic, obvi.
The snoring was almost as bad as the blender. "Oh my God, I'm gonna kill her," Amanda had grumbled when the appliance whirred to obnoxious, nerve-rattling life just as her palm was gliding from the waist of Olivia's paperbag shorts to the bare skin under her chambray top. She'd held her breath the entire time she inched the shirt out of the waistband it was tucked into—okay, not the entire time; she would have suffocated with all the pausing to be sure she wasn't moving too fast for her wife—and the very second she touched Olivia's side . . . Ggggggrrrrrrrreeeeee!
They had both flinched at the sound, but only Amanda was inspired to murder. Jokingly, of course, but once the words were out of her mouth, she wondered if she could ever say them again without needing to make the distinction. That's the price you paid when you killed a handful of people in cold blood, she supposed. She still felt surprisingly little guilt for her actions: an occasional niggling about the boy, but he would have ended up rotting in jail eventually anyway, and that would have been worse than an untimely death; a melancholy sort of heaviness when she thought of Kat, as if the girl's body was slung around her shoulders like wild game (and yet, she would still sacrifice the girl a hundred times over to bring Olivia home); and none at all for the men.
None at all for whatever Dana had in store for Vaughn and Declan Murphy.
(Were they dead yet? Things like that took time, especially if you wanted them to appear random and unrelated to another string of murders. But she was getting antsy waiting for the call from Dana to say "It's finished.")
Suffice it to say, Amanda hadn't actually killed Daphne for blending more margaritas while she was trying to get to third base with her wife; they had, in fact, straightened up their disheveled clothes and gone to help, no one mentioning the elephant in the room—that Daphne had to have seen them getting frisky on the couch on her way to the kitchen. Olivia was buzzed enough that she didn't seem to mind, though she hit that second margarita pretty hard. Amanda had no right to talk, her glass had been emptying just as fast all evening. She knew alcohol and trauma were a bad combination, and she'd discouraged the drinking after that incident on Tilly's birthday, but she had made an exception for Daphne's party. The kids weren't around, and she would be there to make sure Olivia didn't overdo it.
Problem was, who was making sure she didn't overdo it herself?
She wasn't drunk or anything, just sick and tired of being the level-headed one who kept everything and everyone from falling apart at the seams. It was exhausting. She hadn't really been able to cut loose and have a good time since the Springsteen concert back in April. Granted, she hadn't felt much like cutting loose in the months since, but that's what this break from the City was supposed to be about. Getting back to themselves and finding some normalcy, some happiness.
They had been halfway to it when The Snoring Wonder over there threw the switch on the blender. It's not Jamaican me happy, she'd said of the partially full Seagram's that was open on the counter, so I'm Jamaican more margaritas. Belly up to the bar, girls.
"Whaddaya think, babycakes? You wanna watch the rest?" Amanda aimed an imaginary remote control at the television in place of the real one that was probably crammed into the chair cushions somewhere under the lightweight asleep on them. She let her hand fall lightly back onto Olivia's hip, where it had been cinched since her wife snuggled in beside her, wedging between the couch and Amanda's side, head pillowed on Amanda's shoulder. She had scarcely dared to breathe after that, let alone move. And she hated to disturb their cozy, recumbent position now, but her arm felt dead from the prolonged pressure.
Should the night's previous activities resume, she didn't want her dexterity to be compromised. It would also put a damper on the romance if she was, you know, asleep.
"Nah, I've seen it before," Olivia said through a yawn. That was a tad discouraging, especially when her face turned up, as if for kissing, but revealed two drowsy, bloodshot eyes. Some of her most adorable moments were born of such sleepiness—Amanda's favorites were when she dozed off while sitting up, glasses still in place, then tried to cover by going straight into captain mode when you roused her—though it usually wasn't conducive to sex, either.
Amanda hadn't had her heart set on sex for that evening, or for any evening recently, but there had been a glimmer of hope during the make-out session. An old, familiar warmth unfurling deep in her belly. She'd thought her sex drive might be dead, having bled out right alongside the sick bastards who killed it in that rancid shipping container, on that rancid live feed. When Olivia kissed her with the same sweet mouth as before (even in spite of the liquor, she tasted the same; even in spite of the weight loss, felt the same), it all came flooding back. All the sensual, love-drenched memories.
It surprised her to find she could let it all go. The old Amanda would have pressed and cajoled; not exactly coerced, but awful damn close. The Amanda she was now—forty-something mother of four kids, two of whom she pushed out of her own body, and wife to the amazing but deeply wounded woman in her arms—didn't need sex to feel fulfilled, or to feel like she served a purpose, after all. Somewhere along the line, she had grown up without even noticing.
"I thought we might pick up where we left off before Hurricane Daph made landfall," said Olivia, her upturned eyes and face giving her that doe-eyed street urchin look Amanda was a sucker for. She traced a fingertip along the ridge of Amanda's jaw, then pressed the pad into her dimple like she was pushing an elevator button. Not hard, but not with the tentative touch she had developed after recent events, either. It was entirely possible Captain Benson was a little bit trashed. "Maybe someplace private, to avoid her path of destruction."
Grown up? Who said anything about growing up? Amanda's arousal suddenly cranked to eleven and she would have whipped off her running shorts right there, if Olivia requested it. She was forgetting something, though; something that nagged at the back of her brain (she did know she would prefer it to stay there), until it popped out of her mouth, unbidden: "I dunno, babe, we both had a lot to drink . . . I don't want to take advantage."
Olivia's eyes weren't nearly as doe-like when she rolled them. "If you're insinuating I'm drunk, Detective, you're wrong. For one thing, I just said insinuating without slurring. And if you had a breathalyzer on you right now—which I know you don't, because nothing else could possibly fit into those ridiculously tiny shorts—I'd take it and prove I'm under the limit. As it is . . . " Propping up on her elbows, she army-crawled backward off of Amanda and rose to her knees. "This will have to do," she said, and stretched out her arms at shoulder height. Head tipped back slightly, eyes closed, she touched the index finger of both hands to her nose three times each.
Nailed 'em all.
"Shall I walk a straight line?" she asked, dropping her chin, opening her eyes, and folding her hands primly in her lap.
"That won't be necessary, ma'am." Amanda couldn't hide a grin. It was by no means an accurate or reliable test of sobriety, but she would accept it because she'd drunk roughly the same amount as Olivia, and she felt fine. Buzzed, sure, but not too inebriated to know exactly what she wanted.
"I'm sorry, officer, I only meant to touch Sandy's Oscar," Daphne mumbled between saws.
"Oh, Lord. Let's get out of here before she touches anything else." Amanda swung her feet onto the floor, pushed up from the couch, and held out a hand to Olivia as if they were about to make a run for it, the law hot on their trail. In the background, Sandy was rapping about windows, walls, and sweaty balls. Probably not the role that won her the Oscar from Daphne's dream.
Olivia regarded the offered hand mildly, but didn't take it. "What about you?" She raised an expectant eyebrow at Amanda, tipping a nod to her messy ponytail, disheveled clothes, and shoeless feet (where had she put her shoes?) when, at first, she didn't comprehend.
Oh. Feigning exasperation, Amanda sighed and dropped her head back like a dramatic teenager, eyes closed, to repeat the finger-to-nose test Olivia had just passed. With that out of the way, she showed off her unaffected balance by walking heel-toe in a perfectly straight line in front of the couch. Maybe she wavered for half a second on the reverse turn, but that was just a natural hiccup any non-tightrope-walker or woman over the age of forty who had given birth only six months ago might experience.
Or someone who was slightly drunk.
"Tada," she announced, arms raised like a gymnast sticking the landing, when she made it back to Olivia.
"Okay, Nadia Comăneci."
Together, they tucked Daphne in on the couch, which mainly involved draping her with a blanket and switching off the TV. It reminded Amanda of putting the kids to bed in a similar, practiced rhythm, co-parenting in harmony to the very same beat, and she felt a wash of sadness at the memories it stirred. A tiny foot poking out of the covers, a tiny hand curled against one cheek, that final pause in the backlit doorway for another over-the-shoulder glimpse of perfect contentment, perfect happiness.
"We should put her on her side," Olivia said, breaking into Amanda's reverie. They weren't standing over one of their little ones, after all. Well, she was little, but none of their kids had the lung capacity to snore like that. "Bacchus maneuver."
"Huh?"
Instead of explaining, Olivia demonstrated, rolling Daphne gently onto her left side and plumping the pillow under her cheek. She nudged Daphne's right knee up to prevent her from rolling any farther, tucked her hand under her chin so it didn't dangle over the side of the couch. "Just in case," she said quietly as she stood back to observe her work.
In case of what, Amanda didn't need to ask, nor did she question where Olivia had picked up the move. She supposed you learned a lot of tricks for keeping drunks from aspirating on their own vomit when you grew up with an alcoholic parent. You probably learned how to hold your liquor pretty early on, too.
Like the rest of her troubling thoughts from that evening, she let the observation fade to the back of her mind, where it was drowned out by Daphne the human freight train and some underlying sound she couldn't put her finger on.
(Ocean?)
"Good thinkin'." Lightly she reached for Olivia's hand, to lead her away from the couch and its occupant. They could worry if the snoring abruptly stopped or gave way to gagging, but Amanda doubted that would happen anytime soon. It wasn't like they had tapped a keg. "C'mon, babe, she's fine. The dogs'll let us know if something's off." She wagged a thumb at the dogs in question—Gigi, Frannie, and Hamilton—each of whom raised their heads to watch her spirit Olivia off to the bedroom. With any luck, they would all stay put in their cozy corner and not come whining and scratching on the door at an inopportune moment.
Once the bedroom door was closed behind them, Daphne and the dogs were forgotten, at least on Amanda's end. Some of it was excitement, but it surprised her just how nervous she felt to be alone with her wife, free of the distractions of children and friends who were a little too invested in your love life. You'd think it was her first time with Olivia, as shy and antsy as she felt; looking back now, she wasn't sure how she had ever worked up the courage to put the moves on her boss in the first place. (If memory served, there had been substances present on that occasion as well.) For a moment she just stood there, hands on her butt cheeks because her shorts didn't have back pockets, and gazed around as if she were on a street corner, waiting for the bus.
The pretty stranger in the rearmost seat was giving her the eye, and when she patted the empty spot beside her and murmured, "Come here, love," Amanda went. It wasn't every day a woman that beautiful invited you to sit with her. And she certainly didn't start stroking your hair and your body when you settled in, although anything was possible in New York City. But this was a bed in Bridgeport, Connecticut, not public transportation in NYC, and in spite of the recent strain on their relationship, her wife was no stranger.
"Still feeling okay about this?" she asked, doing her best to keep a neutral tone. She didn't want to sway Olivia one way or the other, or put any undue pressure on her to continue their earlier explorations. That's what this was: new and frightening territory they were exploring. The sexual landscape after a great pillaging and a months-long drought. Restoration took time, you couldn't expect a brief rain shower to fix the problem, no matter how good it felt. How needed. "We can just . . . talk if you wanna?"
"That's sweet of you to offer," said Olivia, head tilted to the side, baring her neck in a pose both vulnerable and sensual. The scar from Calvin Arliss' straight razor caught the light, winking in and out of visibility like the ghost of a scar rather than a living, breathing one. She was covered in both kinds, and Amanda longed to breathe warmth over each one, to press her lips to them not in kisses, but in prayer. Not to God, but to Olivia's soul, which needed healing most of all. "But I don't want to talk. I have to try this, I want to. Otherwise it'll just get bigger and bigger inside my head."
Not her most articulate reasoning, but Amanda understood what she meant. She had felt it too, the little goblin of fear that kept growing the longer you ignored it. Until one day you turned around and it engulfed you. At present, she estimated hers to be about the size of a barn cat. Big enough to slink through the shadows and get fat off the smaller critters that lived there, but not large enough to take down a grown woman. Yet.
"Yeah, I getcha." Amanda coiled a question mark of brown hair behind Olivia's ear with her index finger. She probably shouldn't have been as pleased as she was by the tiny shiver that it elicited, making Olivia bunch her shoulders, arch her back. But getting her wife's body to react had always been a major turn-on for Amanda; there was no shame in that. At least there shouldn't be. "We'll just . . . we'll take it real slow, okay? And if you decide you need to stop—"
"I'll tell you. I promise." Olivia was so solemn, it seemed as if she might not be able to segue back into a sexy mood—which was fine. She had acknowledged that lack of communication was a problem for them in the past, and if nothing else came of tonight, at least there was the promise not to let things go too far again like that. But when Amanda leaned in for a pardoning kiss, Olivia deepened it, her hands at either side of Amanda's head, cradling it in her palms.
The heat returned full-force, overwhelming Amanda while her guard was down. Olivia was a fantastic kisser, that hadn't changed at all, though there was a new element, a ferocity that took Amanda by surprise, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. It also knocked out the apprehension and troubling thoughts in a way nothing else had in almost three months. Certain drugs had a similar effect, but she'd never much liked the false sense of wellbeing that narcotics provided. It wore off too soon and always left you searching for the next high (gambling was a whole other story, and one she preferred not to get into). But the drug that was in her system now—the one administered by Olivia's warm hands and warmer mouth—she could easily become addicted to. Her body was already crying out for more.
For a while she let Olivia do most of the work, deciding whose hands went where, how long each kiss lasted, how much skin was bared, until she realized Olivia was waiting for her to take over. Amanda had often been the slightly more dominant one in the bedroom, a role she'd accepted with swaggering confidence and pride. Now she wasn't so sure of herself, and she kept glancing up at Olivia to gauge her response with every touch. When it finally came time to start undoing the chambray top, which had never gotten tucked back in after Amanda's last go at it, her hands fumbled with the small white buttons. "Damn things are slippy," she said with a nervous laugh that only made it halfway out. Actually, it was their thickness compared to the size of the buttonholes that made them harder to maneuver, but she swiped her palms on her shorts anyway, and tried again.
"Maybe it's just you who's slippy," Olivia teased. Her touch was extra tender, though, when she moved Amanda's hands aside and took over the task on her own. She thumbed each button loose with a slow, practiced hand, revealing a flash of white bra, a sliver of skin several shades lighter than the face, arms, and legs that had browned prettily in the New England sun. There was no convincing her to bring along a bathing suit for the summer getaway, let alone a bikini, and her tan lines were much shallower—much more abrupt—than in years past.
Not that it mattered. She was still the most beautiful woman Amanda had ever laid eyes on. And as she nudged the shirt back on her shoulders, baring them, so that the collar sagged behind her, the rest wrapped low around her arms like a stole, she took Amanda's breath away all over again. They had seen each other unclothed since the assault, but this would be the first time it was for sexual purposes and that made it feel momentous. It also made the scars that much more vivid.
Most were burns from the cattle prod (and the old ones from Lewis's cigarette, of course), healed into puckers of whitish skin with ridges patterned vaguely like snowflakes. They fell in pairs, a light dusting that reminded Amanda of the rare occasions she had seen snow as a kid, usually during a drive through northern Georgia, up by the Blue Ridge Mountains. She had been fascinated by those icy flakes and watched them dissolve on the window of her daddy's truck, wishing they wouldn't disappear, they were so pretty and delicate. She wished the opposite of these. The thing about snow was, it accumulated; scars too.
"They're not so bad anymore," Olivia said, following Amanda's gaze to the marks. She sounded hopeful, doubtful, and very young all at once, a combination that tugged at Amanda's heart and made her want to pull Olivia close, hold her until they went away. But scars didn't melt like snowflakes. "Are they?"
"Huh-uh." Amanda's bottom lip jutted over the top one and she shook her head, forcing herself to stop staring. Right now she was supposed to be concentrating on her wife's beauty, which was considerable and on display for her (and no one else) with such openness and trust, she wondered at the strength it must require.
A horrible thought occurred to her—what if Olivia was just so used to violation at this point, she had become desensitized and learned to function like everything was normal (and what if Amanda was taking advantage of that?)—but she quickly dismissed it. Neither of them had functioned normally in the last three months. They were hiding out in fucking Connecticut because of their inability to handle normal life, for Chrissake. And this was just the damn barn cat pawing at her brain again, batting it around like a frantic mouse. Both of them were here because they wanted to be, and no one was forcing or coercing anyone. Whatever transpired tonight would be about love and love only.
She conveyed it first with her hands, trailing them by the fingers up and down Olivia's arms, smoothing them over her shoulders, her chest where it was exposed by a plain white bra. No lace or designs, none of what Amanda would call "that fancy shit," but appealing in its simplicity and oddly feminine. She supposed what filled it out helped with the last part, and she instinctively wanted to go there next, to lavish the soft, lovely bosom with all the attention she would have in the past. But something told her not yet, not while Olivia was still so fragile. They could work up to that, and maybe someday when the kids were back home, when Olivia was at home enough in her body to try breastfeeding Sammie again—then they could move on to more intimate contact. For now: touch.
Like the bra, touch was simple, unadorned and sweet beyond belief. Olivia had always taken to it as if she were half starved for a kind, loving hand—and hell, why wouldn't she be, after experiencing the opposite end of the spectrum for so long, so often?—and this time was no different. Amanda could almost see the protective walls she had built up since the rape sinking, and felt doubly encouraged by the realization that the walls were built on sand. Some of the older ones, the long-standing ones (Olivia's father, Serena, Daniel the statutory rapist), were built on bedrock and impossible to bring down entirely. They might never go away, but these Amanda could work with and prevent from becoming a full-blown barricade.
"Beautiful," she murmured with each caress. "So beautiful." And though Olivia didn't look totally convinced, she at least didn't discourage the praise as it was bestowed. Amanda's fingers played gently over her ribs (still tentative, and probably always would be) like piano keys, running scales without the resultant notes; they skimmed her sides, as light as dragonflies grazing the surface of a pond; they smoothed her soft belly, flattened by the loss of weight, but not quite scant enough to cause concern . . . yet.
Olivia helped remove her shorts, shifting side to side as Amanda pulled, until they rounded her knees and wafted to the floor. She cast a self-conscious glance at her panties, as plain as the bra, except for a pink tint so faint they looked off-white in certain light. Like a drop of blood in milk, Amanda observed in passing, without fully forming the conscious thought. Macabre things had a tendency to pop into her head when she least expected or wanted them; if it were a new development, she would think her conscience was weighing on her for the killings. But her brain had always done that.
(Foreshadowing what was to come?)
"Not my sexiest pair," Olivia said as if agreeing with a criticism Amanda had given out loud. A dark cloud passed over her face, belying the nonchalant scrunch of her shoulders. "If I'd known how things would turn out tonight, I would've dressed for the occasion." She smiled, but it was a tad too wide to be sincere. She was trying so hard to keep the mood light and normal for a situation that was anything but. They both knew the other was thinking about the star print underwear that had been ripped off of her during the assault.
"Nah, I like these." Amanda took a chance, skating her fingertip along the mid-rise waistband of the underwear. The whispery touch raised gooseflesh on Olivia's skin, and Amanda instantly wanted to apologize, remembering the way she had found her, naked and unbearably cold. She leaned in and kissed the knob of Olivia's shoulder. "You don't have to get all gussied up just to impress me. You're what makes the underwear sexy, not vice versa."
She dotted a few more kisses to Olivia's collarbone and shoulder blades, too exquisite to resist, and would have continued on that track except for the patch of rough skin she came across. The impression was too faded to tell, and she didn't want to be obvious by stopping to look, but she had seen it fresh, on camera and in the shower, anyway: teeth marks. A surge of anger went through her at the discovery, but without a proper outlet she could only bury it—she would have loved to wrap her hands around Angelov's throat (he was the biter, the tattooed freak), or Vaughn's, if she was still alive, to squeeze, squeeze—and move on.
Catching herself grasping Olivia's biceps a little too firmly, she relaxed her grip and plastered on her own counterfeit smile. It must have been obvious she was struggling to stay in the moment because Olivia gazed down at her partially clad body, back up at Amanda, and asked fretfully, "Is it me?" She looked like she wanted to disappear into a dark hole, possibly never to return, especially if the answer was yes.
"No," Amanda said too quickly. Now it would sound like she was covering up a lie, even though she spoke the God's honest truth. She wasn't faltering because of Olivia, but because of her own shortcomings, her own spectacular failure at protecting the woman she loved. "Nothing like that. It's just the tequila sneaking up on me again. I'm good."
"You sure?"
"Yup. Gimme another one of them kisses of yours, and I'll be ready and raring to go, you'll see." Amanda stroked the outsides of Olivia's thighs, slowly working her way inward, praying the distraction worked, praying that she could deliver, and praying that she didn't happen upon any other bites or rough spots in the velvety smooth flesh. She had stopped herself from cataloging the injuries below Olivia's waist for the mental file she kept on the case; there were plenty of pictures in the physical copy at the precinct if she ever needed reminding. (She never would.)
For a time, the kissing did seem to transport them elsewhere, driving out all the negative thoughts and images that waited just below the surface. Amanda's hands began to wander with a bit of freedom as well, coasting over some of the more intimate spots she'd avoided while gazing into Olivia's wide brown eyes—they were called doe eyes for a reason; when you looked into them like that, you felt like the hunter staring down the barrel of his shotgun at a deer. Please don't hurt me, the eyes asked. Mercy, they whispered.
She had successfully blocked the voice out, and was concentrating on Olivia's lower back, her smaller but still undeniably feminine hips, the spade of warm pelvis in the front, when she noticed that Olivia wasn't reciprocating. Her hands moved from place to place, according to Amanda's position—now, for instance, they were looped behind her neck, wrists propped near her shoulders—perhaps giving her room to maneuver. But she didn't think so. They were usually so in sync with each other's rhythms, they could form the most intricate patterns without getting tangled. What brilliant tapestries they had once weaved.
"I don't think I can do this," Olivia whispered, a second before Amanda opened her mouth to say more or less the same thing. I'm not sure we're up for this, darlin'. Something feels off. Let's give it some more time.
None of it played right in her head, and she breathed a sigh of relief that she'd been let off the hook. Unfortunately, her timing was bad, the sigh a little too heavy for the weight that lifted from her shoulders, and it sounded as if she were frustrated or annoyed. And yeah, okay, maybe she was a bit irked, but it was directed mainly at herself for going along with what she had known was a bad idea. She'd wanted to believe Olivia was ready; that they both were.
They just weren't. And for Amanda, who had dived headfirst back into sex after her own sexual assault, there was no reference point for how much time was enough. Plus, you had to factor in the sustained brutality of Olivia's attack, average out how long she waited to have sex after previous assaults (it bothered Amanda to realize she had no answers for that one), and divide by the amount of secondary trauma that came with watching your wife being tortured.
Fuck rape math, man.
"I'm sorry. Please don't be upset with me. I just . . . " Olivia made a helpless gesture with the hands she unclasped from behind Amanda's neck. She stuffed them into her lap, which was starkly empty without the touch Amanda had unconsciously withdrawn the moment consent wavered. The almost-pink panties had a flesh tone when you didn't look straight at them, and they blended in so well with her pale abdomen, she appeared nude from the chest down. "I can't. I thought I could. I'm sorry, Manda. I shouldn't have led you on like this."
The tears began to fall then, trickling onto Olivia's cheeks with so little warning, Amanda took a sharp breath, as if she had swerved into traffic. Preventing Olivia from having a total mental breakdown was the main objective of their summer getaway, and it had put Amanda more on edge than she realized. Of course she couldn't relax enough for sex when she was waiting for the dam to break. And now it had done just that. No sobbing or anything dramatic, but the tears were heavy and abundant. They wetted Amanda's palms when she cupped them to Olivia's cheeks, urging her to look up.
"You didn't lead me on. Hey, you didn't." Amanda ducked down, making sure Olivia saw the truth in her eyes, despite a weak attempt at avoiding eye contact. "We were both curious to see where it went, and we both found out we're not ready. Look at me. Please, darlin', look at me. I'm not upset. Actually, I'm kinda relieved and I'm real glad you spoke up before it went too far."
"You mean like at the hotel," Olivia said. She was hellbent on self-loathing, it seemed, her expression one of disgust as she gazed past Amanda's shoulder, remembering. She squeezed her thighs tight around her hands, as if physically restraining herself. "When I made you feel like a rapist. Made you tie me up, just so I could prove how adventurous I was. God, I'm so pathetic. How can you even stand to touch me? I don't blame you for not wanting—"
Amanda turned Olivia's face gently toward her. "Whoa, hey. That ain't even close to being what I'm saying. You didn't make me do any of that stuff, for one thing. I'm a grown-ass woman and I went into that—and this—knowing full well what could happen. I shouldn't have said that about feeling like a rapist. Mighta meant it at the time, but that's just because I was scared and I hate seeing you hurt. That's not how you make me feel, okay? Ever. Before I met you . . . "
It was her turn to gaze into the distance for a moment, searching for an example. She went with the first one that came to mind—inelegant, perhaps, but effective. She hoped. "You know how Frannie scarfs her food down without even tasting it? We're always yelling at her to slow the hell down? That was me with sex. Before. You taught me to take my time and really enjoy it. Savor it, you know? That's why I want it to be right when we are finally ready again." She thumbed the moisture from Olivia's cheeks. "And, baby, you are not pathetic. You are the least pathetic person in this whole fucked up world. And certainly in this Airbnb."
"Yeah, Daphne is kind of a sad sack," Olivia said, sniffling the throwaway line. Her smile was watery and wan, but it did soften her crumpled features into something like amusement for half a second. Then it was gone. The doe returned, only now it appeared mournful, as if standing over the lifeless body of one of its young. "I hear what you're saying, I do. And it means everything to me. Truly. But what if . . . Amanda, what if I'm never ready again? What if I can't get past this? It feels so . . . " She made an expansive gesture in front of her chest, fingers hooked like claws.
In other words, all-consuming. Monstrous and overpowering. Too big to be named.
"I'm afraid I can't have sex anymore. And if that's the case, it's so unfair to you, love." A sad smile wobbled on Olivia's lips, fresh tears swimming in her eyes. Whatever she was building up to sounded an awful lot like a goodbye, and that nostalgic cant of her head did nothing to abate Amanda's mounting fear.
"What're trying to tell me, Liv? That if we can't have sex anymore, you want a divorce? 'Cause, from where I'm sitting, that's what it's starting to sound like."
Olivia's eyelashes fluttered rapidly. Moisture pearled there like dew. "What? Oh my God, no. Amanda. No. That's not— if I lost you now or, hell, ever, I wouldn't survive it. I was not talking divorce."
"Good." Amanda gave a nod of finality; that's the end of that. But it wasn't the end, she could see that much written all over Olivia's face, and based on what she read so far, the rest would not be to her liking, either. "What are you talking, then, couples' therapy? With someone legit this time? 'Cause I could probably work with that. Maybe even hypnotherapy or something, as long as one of us is there to supervise the other's sessions. Oh, and remember that article I showed you a while back, about MDMA treatment for PTSD? I know you said there's no way in hell you're ever using ecstasy to—"
"I think you should go to someone," Olivia said, raising her voice to be heard above the spiel. She cut it short at the end, looking almost contrite.
It turned out the confused blinks were contagious. "You think I should go to sex therapy by myself?" Amanda asked, unable to hide her incredulity. Not that she thought Olivia was the only one who would benefit from professional help—Amanda had actually taken to the idea right away, the both of them seeing a psychologist together; that way she would be able to watch over her vulnerable wife—but she also wasn't in this alone. Both their psyches were pretty screwed up, so how did it come down to one or the other of them needing to be fixed?
"I don't mean therapy. At least not in the sense that you mean it." Olivia spoke slowly, giving her words time to sink in. She did the same thing when she talked to victims and their families. Staying levelheaded and nonreactive while you delivered upsetting news was an important part of the job, but having it turned around on you led to heart palpitations rather than a state of calm.
That's what it did to Amanda, anyway. "What other sense is there?" she asked guardedly. "You think I should see someone who's not a therapist for our sex issues? I don't get— Oh good Lord." She clambered up suddenly from the edge of the bed, needing to be on her feet in case she was right about what Olivia meant. It wasn't the kind of thing you sat down for. "Are you telling me I should go to a hooker?"
The echo of her shrill question seemed to linger in the air, the silence, for a very long time. Olivia wasn't hiding from her anymore, but neither did she answer, and her steady, dispassionate stare was unnerving. Amanda fought the urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her—not hard, just enough to snap her out of it and, hopefully, out of the fool notion she hadn't denied proposing. Finally, she came back on her own, after watching Amanda pace out her frustration three or four times on the thick bedroom carpet.
"I'm not saying you should go pick someone up on the street corner tonight," she said, so gentle it was impossible to reconcile her tone with the suggestion she was making. "But there are other ways. Safer ways. And if the time comes when you want sex, and I . . . can't give it to you, then I want you to know that you have that option."
"Excuse me for disagreeing with you, Captain, but no, I fucking don't." Amanda struggled to keep her anger—and the subsequent sarcasm—in check, but she shook with it as she paced.
All these years together, and Olivia still didn't get Amanda's disdain for prostitutes and the people (men, mostly) who utilized their services? She didn't comprehend that Amanda had waited in the car outside countless fleabag motels, trying to entertain Kimmie with coloring books and a total of three cassette tapes (Twitty, Jones, and Kristofferson), while their daddy was inside, entertaining the town floozies? That, until she blew out of Loganville like a bat out of hell, days after high school graduation, everyone had expected her to end up just like her old man—or the floozies he frequented? Just another Rollins waste case.
Of course Olivia didn't get it, because Amanda had only told her bits and pieces of those stories, never revealing the full picture. Still, you didn't encourage someone to find themselves a whore to sleep with, unless you believed it was the kind of thing they would do. Unless you believed they were whorish themselves.
It was insulting, is what it was. Amanda could swallow a lot of crap—and she had swallowed quite a bit in the past few weeks, afraid of upsetting the delicate balance they had struck for this so-called vacation—but she couldn't choke down her wife thinking she had so little integrity. Some of it was probably the booze talking, in her case and Olivia's, and neither of them were in a healthy place regarding sex at the moment, but Jesus.
"It worked for Cassidy." Olivia looked and sounded crestfallen that her solution was being poorly received. Even that was frustrating, the desire to go to her and offer comfort, the guilt she felt for not going, twisting Amanda up in knots. If they stopped having conversations because of fear of conflict, they were doomed. If Amanda cracked every time Olivia expressed sadness, they would never confront and overcome the hard stuff. Together.
"I am not Brian fucking Cassidy." Heated, but not loud and (by some miracle) not mean. Part of her hoped that Olivia would respond in kind and they could hash it all out right then. Maybe a good, strong disagreement was what they needed to get back on track and put an end to all the pussyfooting; not a fight, just an airing out of the emotional junk they'd both recently been accumulating. Maybe it would have solved everything.
But they would never know, because instead of taking the Cassidy bait, Olivia turned her gaze inward and didn't appear to have heard the critical remark about the ex SVU cop and her ex lover at all. "For a long time after Lewis, I couldn't really . . . perform. Brian gave me my space, didn't push, but I could tell he was getting restless. Kept catching him watching porn. You know how bad guys are at hiding it." She laughed, though nothing was funny. She hated porn with a passion. "He'd jump and cover himself, get red in the face. Somehow always forgot to lock the door, though."
"Dumbass," Amanda sneered. Man, she hated that dude. Just the thought of his perpetually spitty lips getting anywhere near her wife made her want to hurl.
"He was a lost puppy. Something you rescue from the shelter. And I was . . . " Olivia folded her hands to her chest in a way that resembled crumpling, like an empty soda can under too much pressure. "I was too fucked up to rescue anyone. Or even to care. I let him touch me, but he could tell I wasn't really there. So, when we did that UC bust and I had to sit there with Nick, listening to my boyfriend getting head from a prostitute, I figured . . . why the hell not? He got off, and I didn't have to have another dick in my mouth that night." Her bra strap drooped off the shoulder that lifted in a halfhearted shrug. "Win-win."
Such were the shame and self-loathing in Olivia's tone, her wilted-flower body language, Amanda felt her own knees threaten to give under the weight of it. "Baby," she said urgently, breaking every rule she had just laid down for herself and going to Olivia, to crouch in front of her once more. If anger wasn't the answer, then she would beg. She would beg until she was blue in the face. Until Olivia saw the search beam thrown out on the dark ocean waters, piercing the storm. "Baby, you gotta know I would never do that to you. I ain't some sex-starved man-baby who's gonna start beating off 'cause I can't get at you whenever I want. I know I been impatient a couple times in the past, but . . . things are different now. I'm different. Ain't I? Ain't I better than I used to be?"
Olivia touched Amanda's cheek like she was touching a delicate work of art, daring to graze the surface with her fingertips, as if it were the hand of God in the Sistine Chapel. She wore the rapt expression, too, of someone crossing a forbidden barrier, waiting to be struck down for it. "You're everything I ever could have hoped for, my love," she whispered. Her thumb traced the arcs of Amanda's eyebrows, the bridge of her nose, the bow of her upper lip. "My darling. Everything."
A shiver went through Amanda that she attributed to the featherlike caresses. Strange, she wasn't normally ticklish. But then, nothing about this situation was normal. She caught Olivia's hand and pressed her lips to the network of lines in the palm. "And that's how I feel about you. It was before, and it still is today. Liv, you're the only woman I want. In whatever form that takes. Don't ever talk to me again about going to someone else for . . . anything. Please."
When Olivia looked up, her nod was as slow and drowsy as her eyelids. Exhaustion had hit her head-on, it seemed, and she looked barely able to sit upright, let alone remain awake for serious discussion. The poor thing was swaying at the edge of the bed, fighting to stay alert. "I won't. I'm sorry." She breathed the apology rather than speaking it aloud, and took a long, juddering inhalation immediately after. "M'sorry," she repeated.
"You don't have to be sorry, darlin'. Come on now, no more crying tonight." There would be time for that in the days to come; they had the rest of their lives to cry. To confront their demons too.
For now, they needed sleep. It was creeping into Amanda's bones, overwarm and heavy-handed as the tequila, liquid as the waves in the Sound, with each drawn out blink of Olivia's thick lashes. Rising to her feet, she coaxed Olivia from the end of the bed to the pillows at the headboard, guiding her by the shoulders like she was walking one of their groggy children to the bathroom in the middle of the night. "What are you doing?" she asked when Amanda got her tucked beneath the top sheet and began stripping off her own shorts and t-shirt.
"Is this okay?" Amanda glanced down at her wireless bra in nude and striped hipsters. In between, the constellation of scars on her abdomen was visible, bunched together like a cluster of real stars. The scars from her first bullet and Jesse's C-section were partially hidden by her underclothes, but she was hyperaware of their presence and held her breath, hoping she had done the right thing bearing old wounds. It was supposed to signify her willingness to be vulnerable with Olivia, not trigger past traumas and new. "I thought we could just . . . be close."
After a moment's consideration, Olivia scooted to the far pillow and lifted the bedsheet for Amanda to slide under. Her skin was warm, as if she'd been out in the sun, and the places where her scars pressed against Amanda were like ruched silk. They slept with their heads together, deep thinkers, wrapped in the solace of each other's arms.
. . .