Chapter Text
He sleeps on her sofa.
After she stands there in her kitchen, backed all the way up to her refrigerator, her skin vibrating everywhere his body had pressed up against hers and struggling to breathe through a chest that feels too tight and a chasm of years and hurt feelings that seems impassable.
After he stands there three feet from her, breathing, breathing, the pain of her rejection on his face yet again.
After he nods, finally, says, “Alright,” and then, “Come here,” and reaches out a hand for her to hold.
She takes it.
Because it’s him, and it’s them, and because she is aching for how much she wants this—him, and them—but the part of her brain that has always worked overtime to protect her from pain is screaming DANGER! DANGER! Telling her that what they have now is good, or on the way to good, anyway, and that moving too fast, going too far, too soon, could send them careening right off the cliff again. Right over the edge and into ruin, and where would she be, then?
She’d spent a decade without him, and it had pained her, quietly, for every one of those years. What if they leap and don’t take flight? What if they crash and burn, and it’s the end of them, for good? The idea makes her stomach do oily somersaults, and her heart beat too hard, so she can’t. Not yet, not now, she just can’t.
But she can hold his hand. She can reach out and weave her fingers with his and squeeze, and she can let him draw her in, closer, closer, until they’re pressed right up against each other again, her arms slung around his neck. Until he has one hand on her waist and the other pressed between her shoulder blades, his voice soft and warm as he assures her, “I’ll be here when you are, okay? Take as long as you need; I’m not going anywhere. Never again.”
That’s when the dam breaks. She sags against him, relief and sorrow at war in her chest, quiet sobs breaking past the knot in her throat.
She hasn’t cried in seventeen days. Not since she walked up her block with Noah and felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck, not since she caught the glint of metal from a machete in a child’s hand and felt the blooming pain of boots against her face, her back.
She’s been vacillating between anger and numbness and a kind of low-grade panic she hasn’t felt—not like this—since the weeks after Lewis. A constant hum in her chest, an unpleasant whirr of energy that she’s been able to work through but not dismiss entirely. She’d let it drive her, fuel her, the constant turning cogs of it working to put one of her feet in front of the other, again, again, over, and over, until the work was done.
But now it is—it’s done—if Oscar Papa is to be believed (and she thinks he is, this time, and she doesn’t want to think about what that means, about how her love for Noah had been enough to save him from the wrath of a broken, evil man, or about how it had come at the cost of true justice for so many women). There’s blood on everyone’s hands, and a collection of bodies in morgues across the city, but it is done.
It is done, and Elliot’s arms are around her, steady and strong, and he has told her that he will wait for her. That it’s okay that she’s not ready for this—for them—that he will stand here beside her for as long as it takes. That pushing him away again hasn’t pushed him away forever, and he’s once again the steady pillar by her side. She’d said no, and he hadn’t left, had asked her the question her own heart has been asking again and again for weeks, months, years: What if things work out?
She’s not there yet, but she is here, and here is safe, in her home, with her sleeping child, and Elliot’s protection wrapped around her like a cloak. Finally, she could call him. Finally, she can let him stand between her and the world, for just a little while. Finally, she can rest here and lay all her burdens on him, and trust that he will hold them both up until she’s ready to stand on her own again.
So she cries. She cries for herself, for the fear and the anger and the anxiety she’s been mired in for days. She cries for Noah, and the trauma of watching his mother get the shit kicked out of her in the streets. She cries for all those women whose pain hung like ominous ornaments on a tree in the Bronx for over a year without anyone even trying to bring them justice, and she cries for every little boy who was dragged in front of it as a threat. She cries for Duarte, for the vicious way he was snuffed out, his blood spattered and pooled on some bodega floor on the other side of town.
And she cries for them. For her and Elliot, and all the years she’s wanted him, and all the years she’d missed him, and for every day that he’s been back and they haven't been able to find their footing. She cries for that scared, scarred corner of her heart that makes her stumble backward every time he tries to move them a step forward, and she cries for every word she has not told him, and she cries for his beautiful open heart and the way he’s been holding it in his hands for her for over a year now. Asking her, wanting her, trying to nudge her toward the parallel universe where things work out.
She cries until her throat hurts, and her cheeks itch, and his shoulder is damp with her tears and her snot and her grief. She cries until her feet ache from standing still and her arms ache from hanging on.
And Elliot… Elliot just stands there. Holding her. He shifts, a little—his hands move, a few times: rubbing her back, looping her waist, cradling the back of her head, cupping her neck in his wide, warm palm. But he never lets her go; he is always touching her somewhere, and the broad wall of his chest is pressed to hers. His voice comes to her low and soothing at first, soft words meant to comfort and encourage, telling her to let it out, promising her that he’s right here, it’s alright, but eventually her pain is so vast, so deep, that it swallows him too. She hears him sniffle, hears the tremor in his voice, and then he stops talking altogether and just soothes her with the slow rock of their bodies and a series of quiet shushes.
When she finally cries herself out, she has no idea what time it is. How long they’ve been standing there. Her eyes feel like sandpaper and her limbs feel like lead and her throat feels like she swallowed a baseball. She should move, pull back, say something, anything—apologize—but she feels like she’s grown roots. Right down into the floor, and wrapping around her legs, twining them together with his.
She should move, but Elliot is still holding her, and for the first time in she doesn’t know how long, she feels quiet. Hollow, in a way, but not in the way that wakes her in the middle of the night. Not in the way that echoes the aching chasms of her own loneliness. She’s here, and he’s here, and it’s quiet, and she feels… still.
Elliot has his hand wrapped around the back of her neck, his thumb and forefinger spreading up along the base of her skull. His other arm is wrapped around her, banding from her ribs down to the opposite hip, holding her close. She can feel his chest expand and contract with every slow breath he takes, and she times hers to match them. In… and out… In… and out… His breath is warm against her hair, and his lips—her heart skips a beat—his lips are resting against her hairline. They press against her once, twice, again, and she realizes he’s been doing this for a while now—dropping soft kisses over her crown, and then resting against her for a minute only to do it all over again.
It’s intimate, loving—more than they’ve ever been. She thinks maybe she should feel some type of way about it, considering she’d told him she isn’t ready for this, but he’s not pushing, he’s not asking for anything. He’s just trying to bring her comfort, and all she feels is cared for.
I care for you, he’d said, while she was studiously hunting for sugar in every cabinet but the one she keeps it in, and she’d wanted to hide from it then, but she doesn’t now. Now, she is so tired, and all she wants is for someone—him—to care for her.
His nose brushes against her hair, his chin rasping across her forehead, a nuzzle so tender it might make her weep again if she had any tears left to cry. As it is, she just tightens her arms around him and takes a single deep, shuddering breath.
“You should drink some water,” he says to her, finally breaking the silence, although his voice is still pitched low and gentle.
It does not escape her notice that the first thing he says to her after she sobs out a liter of tears into his collar is caring. He wants her to hydrate.
God, she could kiss him. She wants to kiss him, almost as much as she had earlier, when they’d been cheek to cheek, when the moment had been just there and she could feel his breath washing against her lips and her stomach had been jumping with nervous excitement.
So she takes a step back, retreating from him again.
When she sees his shoulder she grimaces, lifting a hand to wipe at a shiny smear of snot on the fabric and murmuring, “Oh, God.”
“‘S fine,” he dismisses, reaching for her wrist and drawing it away. Olivia pulls her hand back, swipes it underneath her nose and Jesus, she’s a wreck. She turns her back on him, heads for the paper towel roll under the cabinet by the sink and rips off two squares, blowing her nose in the first one and drying her cheeks with the second.
She can feel Elliot behind her, too close, and then he’s reaching past, tearing off a sheet for himself. To clean her snot off his shoulder, oh God, this is… this is just embarrassing. Her cheeks feel hot again, and her belly is flip-flopping again, and she wants him to go, but she wants him to stay.
She keeps her back to him for another minute, pulls a glass from her dish drainer and twists the tap on as cold as it goes, letting it run for a second and then filling her cup, gulping it down. The cold water soothes her throat, and the few feet of distance between them eases her mortification. When she can breathe again, she turns to face him. He’s leaning against the island, elbows on the countertop, watching her, crumpling the paper towel in his fist over and over.
He asks her, “Liv, What can I do?”
She’s not sure if he means for her or for them, and she’s too tired now for them, so she doesn’t ask for clarification.
She just looks at him with puffy eyes and stumbles through a confession: “I haven’t—while all of this has been going on, and I’ve been here alone, it’s felt… vulnerable. Sleep has been… hard, and… I haven’t—” Jesus, maybe this was a bad idea.
There was an answer to his question—immediate, and selfish—she’d known exactly what she wanted him to do right now, if she could have him do anything other than the thing they both want most. But now she’s thinking she should have picked something else, because she’s trying to make a request that requires discussing her naked body and it’s making her heart hammer again.
She sucks in a breath and squeezes her eyes shut so she can’t see the way he’s looking at her, his head tilted, his gaze steady and searching, attempting to figure out what she’s trying to tell him.
“Showering has been—anxious? Being naked felt—exposed—vulnerable—and I’ve done it, but—fast—as quickly as I could. I’ve dry shampooed my hair for the last three days, and I just want to feel clean.”
She’s been making do with clean enough, been making sure she doesn’t stink and that her hair looks passable in a ponytail and telling herself the rest can be forgiven. But God, she just wants to feel fresh. Wants to smell like body butter and conditioner, not dry shampoo and Lume deodorant wipes and an extra spritz of perfume.
His hands land on her elbows, his fingers wrapping behind them and her eyes spring open at his proximity.
“Go,” he urges softly. “I’ll be here.”
She nods, her chest sagging in relief, a breath rushing out of her. “Thank you,” she breathes, stepping back, away from him. He lets her go, his hands falling back toward his sides, but she reaches out and catches one, squeezing her fingers tightly around his. “And thank you,” she tells him. “For everything.”
Elliot shakes his head, tells her, “You don’t have to thank me for that, Liv. For any of it.”
“But I’m grateful,” she tells him, her voice still scratchy and thick. “So I want to.”
Elliot’s fingers tighten around hers, their gazes locked and holding, saying all the things they don’t dare to, just like they always have. After a moment, he lets her go, or she lets him go, she’s not really certain. All she knows is the warmth of his hand slips from her own, and she leaves him there in her kitchen and heads for the refuge of her bathroom.