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“What the fuck.”
Elliot’s stomach drops when she opens the door. He’d been expecting, at most, the sniffles and the words come tumbling out at the sight of her face. Olivia's beautiful face bruised and swollen. Olivia stamped cruel, the purple-blue marbleized and swirling tender around her right eye.
But he’s already gone and pissed her off in three words. She guards the doorway with one hand on the frame, the other on her hip. “Nice to see you too, Elliot.”
Not feeling well had been her exact excuse when bailing on their dinner. She didn't even bother to call, instead opting to shoot the vague text just last night. It didn't sit right with him. The timing of it, the lack of detail, the last minute skirting of the plans he had been so desperately trying to get her to say yes to. It was almost brazenly bullshit.
It turns out he was right about the bullshit but wrong about the why. The chicken noodle soup he’d picked up from B&H as an excuse to come over now feels embarrassing
“What — who did this?”
Olivia rolls her eyes and the gesture may have been effective if it didn't punctuate the wound. “Calm down.”
"I am Liv, I just — “
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah yeah, sure y'are.” Breathing through his nose, he gnaws on his lip before lowering his voice. “What — would you tell me what happened?”
But when he steps forward to inspect the bruising she spins on her heel and retreats into her apartment. Elliot is left standing with his empty hand in the air, reaching out for nothing. Olivia gets busy focusing on finding a corkscrew and avoiding his eyes.
Now this he'd been expecting.
It’s been almost two weeks since they slept together for the first and only time. Fucked, actually, is the more accurate description. She’d stopped over to help him decide on paint colors — one of their neutral friends-for-now activities — and he’d cracked open some beers. They’d been arguing between Rainstorm and Twilight when it dawned on him they were pretty much the same and more importantly he didn’t give a shit and suddenly he was pressing her up against the wall. The swatches fell to the floor and they barreled through friendship into — well, something else entirely. With Olivia laying back on the kitchen island, he slipped inside of her and everything finally changed.
Afterwards, he’d scooped her up. Carried her to the couch. Laid her right on top of him and curled his arms around her body like she might vanish from his hold until the two of them drifted off in the waning afternoon light.
But only couple of hours later he woke to her buttoning her jeans, muttering about having to relieve the babysitter. In the post-sex fog it made sense. She's a single mom, she has shit going on. It wasn’t until she waved him goodbye and left him standing alone in his empty loft that reality came slamming down.
In spite of her running, right now Elliot decides to take her not slamming the door in his face as an invitation and steps inside. Wandering towards the kitchen, he stuffs his hands in his pockets.
She sighs, giving in to the silence fishing for a bottle of wine. “This jackass suspect...socked me during a chase. It looks worse than it is. Really.“
“Concussion?”
The twists the corkscrew. “Nope.” Pop.
“You nail the guy?”
“Actually, he was innocent. Turned out to be his brother we were looking for.”
“Innocent? He punched you.”
“Because he was a scared kid being chased by cops. Not gonna put a needle in his arm over it.”
Elliot feels his fury rise again and rolls his jaw. “Where was your team — “
She slams the bottle back down just a little too hard, shaking her head and rejecting where he’s taking this. “Nope. Try again.”
Even though it’s a fair fucking question, her words are dangerous and twisted like a knife and he knows he’s already pushing it. And right on cue she becomes exasperated by him, by his very presence, and she groans as if he’s placed his fist on her bruise and pushed. “Why are you even here, Elliot? I told you — ”
His laugh is empty. “Yeah, Liv, you told me. You told me you were sick — ”
“No I told you I wasn’t feeling well.”
“Right, right — shoulda assumed that meant you were nursing a shiner.”
The two of them face-off, four arms crossed and legs planted.
“Elliot. It's not a big deal. It's a bruise.”
"It's a black eye! You were assaulted!"
With a scoff she covers her face with both hands before pulling right back with a soft wince. “Assaulted…” She mutters, “Gimmie me a break.”
“Yeah? Then what would you call it?”
“I’d call it none of your goddamn business! I don’t need you swooping in here and playing the fucking hero — “
"Hero?! I'm not…Jesus Liv, this isn’t like that.” This accusation, for some reason, deflates his anger. That she could think his concern is all for show, all for some misplaced glory, and not for her leaves him feeling small. “You really think that’s what this is? That I wouldn’t just wanna…make sure you're okay?"
The room goes cold. Olivia freezes. Something delicate and incredulous flits across her features before her entire essence falls dark and quiet like the dead of night. For the first time since she opened the door she is showing him herself and when she speaks, he barely recognizes it.
“Do you even hear yourself?”
The question is a blow. Elliot opens his mouth, snaps it back shut. Only now he can see his own careless words now in the screaming color of their duplicity but it’s too late, and Olivia grits her teeth as if bracing herself.
“I have done this job without you for a long time now — I have lived without you for a long time — “ She closes her eyes to inhale through her nose, like stoking flames. “So you’re gonna have to forgive me if you’re not the first person I rush to call when something happens.”
This is what she doesn’t say: Because the worst has already happened to me and you were no where to be found.
But it’s there.
It’s there right next to the collection of scars scattered across her body — the ones they still haven't spoken about but that his calloused hands have touched and traced and counted. Olivia even let his tongue circle one at her hipbone, lazy and intentional. When he'd stripped off her shirt he saw the evidence — but he also saw everything else. He saw her golden skin and the swell of her tits and the seam of freckles down her waistline. So when she pulled him back in for a messy kiss their matched desperation for each other set that story aside. For now.
Later, with her body curled against his own, Elliot fell asleep with his thumb against that small scar on her hip.
But now — standing in her kitchen with the wrong things to say and the forgotten bag of soup still dangling against his leg — all that feels like someone else’s memory.
“You’re right,” he says quietly, bobbing his head.
“I know.”
She looks up at him through her lashes, swollen lid squinted shut. Setting the soup on the coffee table, he slips off his jacket and toes off his shoes. Closes the space between them. “Y’gotta ice that.”
“Very helpful, Doc, but I’m already on it.”
She’s still mad — possibly getting more mad by the minute — but he now feels steeled against it. He has no choice but to be steeled against it. He can see past his initial panic and he sees her. Sees her bruised and barefooted, in leggings and a too-big sweater, and he is such an idiot because he’s doing it again. He’s missing the point.
“I thought you were standing me up,” he admits. Her head shoots up, caught off guard by how quickly he’s dropped his sword and the plainness of his confession, and she wraps her arms around herself. “Hadn’t heard much from you after that night and — I wasn’t sure if you — “ He rubs the back of his neck, knowing the list is too long and too tangled. “I just wasn’t sure.”
Her face softens. It’s so vulnerable, so open, and Elliot finds himself reaching back out to hold the untouched side of her face. The bruises are mottled hot and angry. When his fingers first slip into her hair Olivia flinches, but her eyes close and she relaxes into him.
With some fragile balance found he murmurs, “Would you please sit, Liv? For a minute while I get you some more ice? If you wanna kick me out after I promise I’ll leave.”
She opens her good eye, peering at him as if considering the offer, and he’s convinced she’s about to toss him out on his ass.
But she doesn’t. Instead, she takes both wine glasses and collapses into the couch with a huff. He fusses in the kitchen, opening drawers and searching for a fresh dishtowel.
“Top drawer above the sink,” she orders with her back to him from the couch.
Elliot lays one out, cracking the ice tray and dumping the cubes in the center. Ties it together. Refills the tray. Reheats the soup and pours it into a bowl, just in case. Olivia sits on the couch, both feet curled under her butt and her head back, and doesn’t stir as he sits down. Doesn’t jump as he slowly places the pack over her eye.
After a few minutes she breaks the quiet. “Wasn’t blowing you off, y’know.”
“Sure. But…y’probably were a little relieved to have an excuse come up.”
She smiles, a little sad and a little fond. “Yeah. Probably, yeah.” She whispers it resigned, like she can’t help it and he can’t blame her and it is what it is. “Still. Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to see you.”
He hates that he understands exactly what she means. That whatever they are is so immense and consuming it sometimes feels like all you can do is run in the other direction, even though it is inevitable. Even though it lives inside your skin. How she goes everywhere with him. How something that makes him feel brave can also make him so afraid.
He hates that they take turns doing this to each other. Hates that they don’t seem to know how to stop.
Since they slept together, and even before if he’s honest, it had been Olivia’s turn. She hadn’t been flat-out ignoring him but carefully dodging him. He’d called and texted every day and gotten a handful of vague responses, at best. It wasn’t until he dropped by her office unannounced with two cups of coffee that he got her to agree for dinner. It felt too good to be true.
Which, of course, it was.
“Yeah?”
“‘Course. That afternoon was…good. Really good.” It’s not flirtatious, it’s shy and sweet in a way that makes him believe her. “But you have to understand, Elliot, that doesn’t suddenly make the idea of Date Night with you feel…real. Or normal.”
He reminds himself not to be offended. “Well, it could be.”
She quirks a brow, the splotch of cold colors bent in suspicion.
“Booked a 7 o’clock reservation at a nice Italian place. What’s more normal than that?”
“You know that’s not — “
“They got white table cloths and those little candles —“
She smirks, “El.“
“Had a shirt picked out and pressed. Blue. Very normal.”
“Alright alright, cool it.”
“No tie. You'd have liked it, I think.”
At this she turns to him, gaze flicking between his eyes and lips with a look so tender he can feel himself grinning back dumb. “Well. Leave it to us to go from a night on the town to…this.”
Bruise aside, he could care less. With a hum he lifts the pack to check on her face. The swelling is down but the web of vessels has turned electric, bright with the rush of blood, and he brushes away the stray hair matted to her forehead. Olivia locks her hand around his wrist to keep him in place.
Carefully, he leans in to ghost a kiss against the raised lid. When her lashes flutter he hesitates until she gives his wrist a small squeeze. Trailing down, he drags his lips to the apple of her cheek and along her jawline down to the column of her throat. Sucking the soft skin there, he moves across her collarbone before nipping the dip of her neck. And then he stays. Breathes her in, all citrus and home and Olivia, until she wraps her arms around his back.
“I know I’m an ass,” he whispers in the cavern of her neck, “I just want you safe. That’s all.”
Under him Olivia’s heart thrums against his chest. It’s her only response.
“I think about it, about you...all the time.” He’s speaking it into her skin, almost silent and just for her. The stroke of her palms along his back falls still. “All the time I thought about it."
It changes nothing. It fixes nothing. There is no apology big enough and he doesn’t bother trying but he needs her to know, needs her to hold onto this part of him until she’s ready to share more.
Olivia doesn’t say anything. Minutes pass. Eventually feels her pulse even and the movement of her hands resume.
“Well, right now I am. Safe.” She says, picking up where he left off. “So...now what?”
Elliot pulls away, bracing himself above her frame. Her brown eyes are misted over and sparkling and there’s a knowing grin across her face. She’s so fucking pretty, so divine, and he wants to promise her everything. Wants to kneel at her feet and surrender and make vows.
Tracing the bruise one last time, he smiles before leaning in to catch her lips as an answer.