SVU: After Every Storm (Elliot/Olivia) PG
Fic. I struggled for this. Here, have some blood.
after every storm
by surreallis
pairing: elliot/olivia. PRE-HET! (hahaha, stargazer!)
rating: PG
category: angst, ep-tag
spoilers: Wrath (season 3)
summary: A month after Wrath, Olivia is drifting. She and Elliot try to find their way with each other during the biggest blizzard in eight years.
For those who don't watch: Wrath brings an innocent man mistakenly imprisoned. Upon his release, he sets out to ruin Olivia. Elliot orders a protective FBI detail on her against her knowledge. This does not go well for him. In the end, the man commits suicide by cop, drawing Olivia into his game.
+
The body lies in the deep snow, in the middle of a huge clearing in the park.
Olivia hunches her shoulders against the frigid wind; the heavy snow is nearly blowing horizontally through the night. The storm still manages to curl around her and against her and coat her skin with melting ice.
The techs are laying a tarp over the victim, trying to preserve the scene, but it's going to be difficult. She wonders, oddly, what brought a rapist and a murderer out in this, the biggest blizzard they've had in eight years in New York. Was the need just that great, or was it more of a novelty? Rape and murder in the middle of an open field, in a park surrounded by condos with a view, yet the city streets have never been so empty. Even after midnight, the city is strangely silent in that way that only winter can bring. The muting blanket of snow. The spooky lack of people and traffic. Even the streetlights only shine dimly in the haze of thick snowfall.
In the isolated depth of her parka's hood, she feels like an island in an ocean. She can hear her own breathing, her own crunching footsteps in the foot-deep snow, and everyone else seems far away. Distant. Fading.
She can pick out Elliot's form in the dark haze across the tarp even with his back to her. His hands are stuffed in his parka's pockets, his hood pulled up tight around the hat she knows he wears underneath. The snow and his boots stilt his swagger, but she knows his shape, his size, the wide, almost belligerent stance.
She has been an island for longer than tonight.
The ice between them has softened, mostly, and he is friendly in his warm way again. But it’s still far too quiet, and she knows she is the one still holding a grudge. They work together, still well, as if nothing has happened, but there are moments that she feels his gaze lingering on her in a painful way and she can feel his frustration. There are moments that she loses him as he talks to her, and all she can see are his cold blue eyes when he sat on the steps of his house, facing her anger. His expression had been so carefully schooled, so patiently restrained, and it was only the tightness of his jaw that revealed his discomfort. But he was a man confident in his actions, and he did not falter under her gaze.
It's his job to protect her, like it's hers to protect him. They've said the words again and again, to each other, and to the rest of the world. But this was different. So different. He won't come out and say it was right, but he'll never, ever admit he was wrong. He doesn't believe he was, and he'll never apologize for doing what he thought he needed to do to keep her safe. She knows this. That when it comes down to it, he'd rather she hate him than have to mourn her death. She can't say that she’d have done anything different, had their roles been reversed. She can't say...
And now they're frozen.
She stares down at the blue tarp, watching the snow drift sinuously over it. It looks delicate and gray, like ashes from the sky, and she's suddenly aware of the low howl of the wind through the bare branches of the big trees.
There's a shadow, even in the darkness, and when she glances up the sharp, driving snow whips against her face. She narrows her eyes against the onslaught, and Elliot is there, shifting in front of her, his gloved hand reaching for her elbow as he turns them both until his back is to the storm. He looms over her, stepping close. The wind and snow break against his back and he shelters her. Her frigid, exposed skin starts to warm and thaw.
"Jesus..." she exclaims, quietly, wiping the snowflakes from her eyelashes.
"How the hell did this guy even get it up out here in this?" he mutters, darkly, and she can see the blue of his eyes in the crime scene lights set up around the body.
"It's sharp, like ice," she says, absently, glancing above them at the white storm. "I'm surprised it didn't tear him up."
"Serve him right," Elliot growls, and he glances at the ground, toward the barely-visible footprints of the murderer, and the softened marks of struggle. Their evidence has long since been buried.
Olivia follows his gaze. Beneath the blue tarp, the dead woman made a perfect snow angel in her struggle to survive, her blood smeared in beautiful lines through the wings. It might be purposeful. Might not. She hopes the winter doesn't bring a chorus of perfect angels, all of them painted with red wings and dying, alone, in a wide field of white. Freezing into a crystal sculpture of pain and loneliness. Freed from their miserable existence...
But she'd had nothing to do with them.
Sometimes it's strange, the things she thinks about at a crime scene.
Elliot still holds her elbow, keeping her close, as if he expects her to jerk backwards and walk away.
Between them the space is intimate, warm, silent.
"I don't think we're going to get much here," he says, quietly. "They'll have to melt the scene when it stops snowing."
She lets a long, slow breath out from between parted lips, and the white mist is swept away by the snow. "It must have felt like they were the only two people left on the planet. If she screamed, her voice would have echoed..."
"Liv..." His voice is low, soft, protesting.
She knows if she looks at him he'll be wearing that worried expression. The one that makes her feel as if she's twisting some figurative knife in his gut. She doesn't want to see it. Doesn't want to soften for him. Didn't want to kill a man holding an unloaded gun. But she did...
She pauses, staring down at the tarp and then, "The few footprints we were able to follow end up there at the road and then disappear. The plows took out the rest."
He's silent for a moment, but his fingers tighten on her elbow. "This weather is going to fuck up our time of death."
She makes a sardonic snort, almost before she can think of what she's doing. "What does it matter? This is a very visible area. She wasn't here ten hours ago, before the storm started, now she is. I think we can narrow it down." It's thin ice, she knows. Time of death has everything to do with making or breaking an alibi. Ten hours is a big window in this city. Her annoyance with him flares up in unexpected ways.
He says nothing though, and that's something else unexpected. He's always been willing to call her on her shit.
Things are changing between them. It's her first real inkling. Her first real gaze at this thing between them, and it's confusing and cloudy and a little intimidating. All relationships change, often for the better, so she's not sure why the idea of change between them leaves her with a hollow feeling inside. Something akin to dread.
She finds herself again and glances up. "Warner will find it. She never lets us down."
"Yeah," he replies. He looks away.
She moves away from him, into the storm again, and his fingers slip reluctantly from her arm.
++
She uses her sleeve to brush away the snow on the squad. It's a newer Ford Explorer with 4-wheel drive. They're at a premium on nights like this, and she's thankful they're high on the priority list when emergencies come up.
Elliot drives them back to the precinct and she listens idly to the low, grinding sound of the 4-wheel drive. The snow covers the windshield again as soon as the wipers push it away, and in the headlights the storm is still heavy and hypnotic. It'll be a long, tough day tomorrow, trying to run down information on the victim when the city is paralyzed by the weather. She realizes, glancing at her watch, that 'tomorrow' is already here. Their shift starts in 6 hours and they haven't even filed any reports yet. She'll be sleeping in the crib again.
"Gonna be a long day," Elliot says suddenly, and he's always been able to find that wavelength.
She furrows her brow, thinking, and the image of the woman spread out on the snow comes to her like a vivid canvas, the red blood running like paint in thick swathes. "Yeah," she answers, absently. "No snow day for us."
He snorts. "Kids'll be happy."
She doesn't answer.
There aren’t any bullets in my gun," Eric Plummer says, and he knows. He knows this will pull at her when she kills him, and that's exactly what he wants. It's a communion between them, and she has to take it upon her tongue. He'll only accept his suicide from her, and she can't disappoint him when a life is on the line. She wonders if he's free now...
To their right a car suddenly appears and slides through a stop sign on a side street in front of them. Elliot swears, and she hears his foot punch the brakes, sending them into an anti-lock whine. The Explorer jerks and slides, only for a moment, and then it finds its legs again, but it was enough to send Elliot's arm reaching toward her, preparing to brace her. As if he could hold her back from the windshield with one hand. It's a reflex, she knows, and he catches himself halfway there, his hand only settling on her arm again. The sliding car manages to correct itself and crawl away, and Elliot's hand slips to the shifter between them.
He hits the throttle again, and the SUV digs into the snow and grinds it up. He drives easily around the car, a fine arc of bitten snow spraying up from their tires past the windows.
"Shit," he mutters, but he glances at her with a wry, faint smile on his face, and she knows he found that a little fun. This is out of the ordinary and they need to make the best of it. Usually she'd be right there with him. Usually, but not now.
She rolls her eyes and tilts her head back against the seat. "Stop fooling around."
He sighs.
She watches him out of the corner of her eye and his jaw is tight. His profile is almost achingly familiar in the dashboard lights, and she doesn't know what to do about this. He put an FBI protective detail on her, despite her adamant refusal. He went behind her back.
She sighs too.
She doesn't know why this weight has settled down around them over the past year. It's new and it's occasionally uncomfortable, but when she looks back she can’t quite see when it appeared. It drags at both of them like an anchor line, and when they aren't pulling against it, pulling against each other, they're standing too close, too aware of how they orbit each other. She's trying not to think about what it all means. She really, really doesn't want to see it.
"How long?" he demands quietly.
She looks at him. "How long for what?"
He glances at her, expression carefully neutral. "How long do I have to pay for this?"
She watches him for a moment and then her gaze slides away. "You're not paying for anything, Elliot. Everything's fine."
Except it's not, and he knows it's not.
"I get that we're not going to agree on this, but damn it, you need to either let this go or..." He trails away, and when she glances at him again, he looks a little nervous. Like maybe he bit off a little more than he can chew.
The unfinished sentence hangs between them. If you can’t trust your partner, Elliot, it’s time to get a new one. Her words, not his. Her first hint that he heard her that night. That he listened.
“You think I’m not watching your back now, is that it?” she asks, because she’s never been good at going right at it. And he scares her sometimes.
He pulls into the parking garage at the precinct and parks, shutting the engine off, but he doesn’t move. He turns to gaze at her. “No, of course not. I know you’ve got me, Liv. I just…” He shakes his head. He’s not angry. He’s exhausted. Frustrated. She can see it.
It hurts, she realizes. It hurts to think about just letting the whole issue go, as if she’s sacrificing something. But it hurts just as much to hang onto it, and maybe she’s softening now, because it makes no sense for both of them to hurt like this. And does it matter anyway? Sitting in the dark feels like home to her as much as anything else.
“I don’t want another partner,” she tells him, honestly, and then she climbs out of the SUV and walks into the precinct.
He follows.
+
They can hear the wind gusting, even from the squad room, and the building creaks. She taps her pen against her desktop and glances at the snow streaming across the window outside. The small, icy flakes tap against the glass and sound like fine gravel. The streetlight just outside bends in the storm and seems to vibrate from the force.
The squad room is empty and silent and will be for a few more hours. Elliot is messing with the coffee maker, and she hears him swear quietly. She can feel the weariness pressing forward behind her eyes, settling there with an insistence that she knows will be with her for days. When she glances down at her report, the words waver a bit in the light of the dim desk lamp.
She sighs and presses her fingertips against her forehead, rubbing tiredly. Her hands are still cold. She gets up and walks to the window, folding her arms over her chest for warmth. The room is drafty when there aren’t any warm bodies there generating heat.
She watches the snow pile up.
“I’m not going to apologize,” Elliot says suddenly into the silence. “I’m not, Liv. I just… I’m not.”
She pulls her sleeves down over her cold hands and tucks them under her chin and she doesn’t look away from the window. “It wouldn’t have made any difference in the end. They couldn’t have stopped what happened any more than I did. It was a waste of their time and yours.”
“I didn’t know that then. I just knew you were in danger and you were being too damn stupid about it.”
She slides him a brief glare for the ‘stupid’ remark.
“I just mean,” he amends. “That I’m going to do what I feel I need to do, and I’d rather have you hate me than have to go to your funeral knowing I could have done something about it.”
“You didn’t listen to me,” she says. “Do you have any idea how hard I’ve had to work-still have to work-to be heard sometimes? In this job?”
He looks conflicted, and exasperated, and in the end he just meets her gaze and shrugs helplessly.
They’re stalemated, again.
“At least tell me it had nothing to do with me being a woman,” she says, softly.
“What? No!” He sounds pissed now, but she doesn’t look at him. “Jesus, Olivia, you can probably kick the ass of eighty percent of the guys I know. And they’re mostly cops.”
She just nods with a sigh. Her fingers, beneath the cuffs of her sweatshirt and the heat of her chin, are finally thawing and warming. She wants to find her usual cot in the crib and crawl under the blankets in her clothes. She wants to curl up and sleep, hard, for the few hours she has left. Until it’s time to get up and go out into the snow and find another murderer. One who uses snow as his canvas, blood as his paint, rape as his inspiration.
“Liv.” Elliot’s voice is soft and right next to her.
She glances at him and he’s holding two cups of steaming coffee. He has his own by the cup handle, and he has hers by the rim, fingertips holding the hot ceramic and turning red. He has the handle turned toward her.
She stares at it for a moment, watching the way the steam curls up around his palm and between his fingers, and he waits patiently, never flinching. Then she reaches out and grasps the handle, watching as he shakes the burn from his skin and wipes his hand against his pants.
Has he always done that? Her unburned fingers would seem to indicate that he has. She slides her gaze to his face as he leans next to her on the desk and stares out into the snowy night. He takes a careful sip of his coffee and licks his lips.
She takes her own sip.
He protects. He's a protector. That's what he does, what he is, and she's always allowed him that latitude, even at times she'd have slapped down any other man. There's a give and take between them that hasn't been there with her other partners. She can run roughshod, she knows. She has. But she and Elliot, they bend for each other. When she pushes, he pushes back, until she moves to accommodate him, until they settle around each other in comfort and familiarity. She thinks maybe they're both a little better with each other than without.
The coffee pushes a surge of warmth through her bones, and she feels a little languid. Next to her, Elliot’s heat steals over her, even though they aren’t touching. She feels something break away inside of her. Something that sends the breath rushing back into her lungs and the warmth back into her blood.
“You know,” she says, slowly, tilting her head to gaze up at him from under her bangs. “I could probably kick your ass too.”
He stares at her. She’d been sure he’d know she was teasing, because there’s no way she’d win a physical fight between them, and he knows it. But… Maybe he’s been stewing over this more than she knows.
He looks so serious that she feels the corner of her mouth tugging upward. He sees it and he huffs out a sharp, short laugh. His smile is surprised, enthralled, relieved and maybe a little grateful.
“I wouldn’t want to ever find out,” he says, and there’s only a little teasing in his voice.
She smiles then and bumps his shoulder with hers. It’s not perfect, and it’s not over, but she’s tired of holding it. Sometimes it’s just going to end with a stalemate, she realizes. And this time she’ll move past it.
You can't blame a man for breathing.
++
I like to write winter fic in the summer. Especially because I have no air-conditioning at work. ;)
after every storm
by surreallis
pairing: elliot/olivia. PRE-HET! (hahaha, stargazer!)
rating: PG
category: angst, ep-tag
spoilers: Wrath (season 3)
summary: A month after Wrath, Olivia is drifting. She and Elliot try to find their way with each other during the biggest blizzard in eight years.
For those who don't watch: Wrath brings an innocent man mistakenly imprisoned. Upon his release, he sets out to ruin Olivia. Elliot orders a protective FBI detail on her against her knowledge. This does not go well for him. In the end, the man commits suicide by cop, drawing Olivia into his game.
+
The body lies in the deep snow, in the middle of a huge clearing in the park.
Olivia hunches her shoulders against the frigid wind; the heavy snow is nearly blowing horizontally through the night. The storm still manages to curl around her and against her and coat her skin with melting ice.
The techs are laying a tarp over the victim, trying to preserve the scene, but it's going to be difficult. She wonders, oddly, what brought a rapist and a murderer out in this, the biggest blizzard they've had in eight years in New York. Was the need just that great, or was it more of a novelty? Rape and murder in the middle of an open field, in a park surrounded by condos with a view, yet the city streets have never been so empty. Even after midnight, the city is strangely silent in that way that only winter can bring. The muting blanket of snow. The spooky lack of people and traffic. Even the streetlights only shine dimly in the haze of thick snowfall.
In the isolated depth of her parka's hood, she feels like an island in an ocean. She can hear her own breathing, her own crunching footsteps in the foot-deep snow, and everyone else seems far away. Distant. Fading.
She can pick out Elliot's form in the dark haze across the tarp even with his back to her. His hands are stuffed in his parka's pockets, his hood pulled up tight around the hat she knows he wears underneath. The snow and his boots stilt his swagger, but she knows his shape, his size, the wide, almost belligerent stance.
She has been an island for longer than tonight.
The ice between them has softened, mostly, and he is friendly in his warm way again. But it’s still far too quiet, and she knows she is the one still holding a grudge. They work together, still well, as if nothing has happened, but there are moments that she feels his gaze lingering on her in a painful way and she can feel his frustration. There are moments that she loses him as he talks to her, and all she can see are his cold blue eyes when he sat on the steps of his house, facing her anger. His expression had been so carefully schooled, so patiently restrained, and it was only the tightness of his jaw that revealed his discomfort. But he was a man confident in his actions, and he did not falter under her gaze.
It's his job to protect her, like it's hers to protect him. They've said the words again and again, to each other, and to the rest of the world. But this was different. So different. He won't come out and say it was right, but he'll never, ever admit he was wrong. He doesn't believe he was, and he'll never apologize for doing what he thought he needed to do to keep her safe. She knows this. That when it comes down to it, he'd rather she hate him than have to mourn her death. She can't say that she’d have done anything different, had their roles been reversed. She can't say...
And now they're frozen.
She stares down at the blue tarp, watching the snow drift sinuously over it. It looks delicate and gray, like ashes from the sky, and she's suddenly aware of the low howl of the wind through the bare branches of the big trees.
There's a shadow, even in the darkness, and when she glances up the sharp, driving snow whips against her face. She narrows her eyes against the onslaught, and Elliot is there, shifting in front of her, his gloved hand reaching for her elbow as he turns them both until his back is to the storm. He looms over her, stepping close. The wind and snow break against his back and he shelters her. Her frigid, exposed skin starts to warm and thaw.
"Jesus..." she exclaims, quietly, wiping the snowflakes from her eyelashes.
"How the hell did this guy even get it up out here in this?" he mutters, darkly, and she can see the blue of his eyes in the crime scene lights set up around the body.
"It's sharp, like ice," she says, absently, glancing above them at the white storm. "I'm surprised it didn't tear him up."
"Serve him right," Elliot growls, and he glances at the ground, toward the barely-visible footprints of the murderer, and the softened marks of struggle. Their evidence has long since been buried.
Olivia follows his gaze. Beneath the blue tarp, the dead woman made a perfect snow angel in her struggle to survive, her blood smeared in beautiful lines through the wings. It might be purposeful. Might not. She hopes the winter doesn't bring a chorus of perfect angels, all of them painted with red wings and dying, alone, in a wide field of white. Freezing into a crystal sculpture of pain and loneliness. Freed from their miserable existence...
But she'd had nothing to do with them.
Sometimes it's strange, the things she thinks about at a crime scene.
Elliot still holds her elbow, keeping her close, as if he expects her to jerk backwards and walk away.
Between them the space is intimate, warm, silent.
"I don't think we're going to get much here," he says, quietly. "They'll have to melt the scene when it stops snowing."
She lets a long, slow breath out from between parted lips, and the white mist is swept away by the snow. "It must have felt like they were the only two people left on the planet. If she screamed, her voice would have echoed..."
"Liv..." His voice is low, soft, protesting.
She knows if she looks at him he'll be wearing that worried expression. The one that makes her feel as if she's twisting some figurative knife in his gut. She doesn't want to see it. Doesn't want to soften for him. Didn't want to kill a man holding an unloaded gun. But she did...
She pauses, staring down at the tarp and then, "The few footprints we were able to follow end up there at the road and then disappear. The plows took out the rest."
He's silent for a moment, but his fingers tighten on her elbow. "This weather is going to fuck up our time of death."
She makes a sardonic snort, almost before she can think of what she's doing. "What does it matter? This is a very visible area. She wasn't here ten hours ago, before the storm started, now she is. I think we can narrow it down." It's thin ice, she knows. Time of death has everything to do with making or breaking an alibi. Ten hours is a big window in this city. Her annoyance with him flares up in unexpected ways.
He says nothing though, and that's something else unexpected. He's always been willing to call her on her shit.
Things are changing between them. It's her first real inkling. Her first real gaze at this thing between them, and it's confusing and cloudy and a little intimidating. All relationships change, often for the better, so she's not sure why the idea of change between them leaves her with a hollow feeling inside. Something akin to dread.
She finds herself again and glances up. "Warner will find it. She never lets us down."
"Yeah," he replies. He looks away.
She moves away from him, into the storm again, and his fingers slip reluctantly from her arm.
++
She uses her sleeve to brush away the snow on the squad. It's a newer Ford Explorer with 4-wheel drive. They're at a premium on nights like this, and she's thankful they're high on the priority list when emergencies come up.
Elliot drives them back to the precinct and she listens idly to the low, grinding sound of the 4-wheel drive. The snow covers the windshield again as soon as the wipers push it away, and in the headlights the storm is still heavy and hypnotic. It'll be a long, tough day tomorrow, trying to run down information on the victim when the city is paralyzed by the weather. She realizes, glancing at her watch, that 'tomorrow' is already here. Their shift starts in 6 hours and they haven't even filed any reports yet. She'll be sleeping in the crib again.
"Gonna be a long day," Elliot says suddenly, and he's always been able to find that wavelength.
She furrows her brow, thinking, and the image of the woman spread out on the snow comes to her like a vivid canvas, the red blood running like paint in thick swathes. "Yeah," she answers, absently. "No snow day for us."
He snorts. "Kids'll be happy."
She doesn't answer.
There aren’t any bullets in my gun," Eric Plummer says, and he knows. He knows this will pull at her when she kills him, and that's exactly what he wants. It's a communion between them, and she has to take it upon her tongue. He'll only accept his suicide from her, and she can't disappoint him when a life is on the line. She wonders if he's free now...
To their right a car suddenly appears and slides through a stop sign on a side street in front of them. Elliot swears, and she hears his foot punch the brakes, sending them into an anti-lock whine. The Explorer jerks and slides, only for a moment, and then it finds its legs again, but it was enough to send Elliot's arm reaching toward her, preparing to brace her. As if he could hold her back from the windshield with one hand. It's a reflex, she knows, and he catches himself halfway there, his hand only settling on her arm again. The sliding car manages to correct itself and crawl away, and Elliot's hand slips to the shifter between them.
He hits the throttle again, and the SUV digs into the snow and grinds it up. He drives easily around the car, a fine arc of bitten snow spraying up from their tires past the windows.
"Shit," he mutters, but he glances at her with a wry, faint smile on his face, and she knows he found that a little fun. This is out of the ordinary and they need to make the best of it. Usually she'd be right there with him. Usually, but not now.
She rolls her eyes and tilts her head back against the seat. "Stop fooling around."
He sighs.
She watches him out of the corner of her eye and his jaw is tight. His profile is almost achingly familiar in the dashboard lights, and she doesn't know what to do about this. He put an FBI protective detail on her, despite her adamant refusal. He went behind her back.
She sighs too.
She doesn't know why this weight has settled down around them over the past year. It's new and it's occasionally uncomfortable, but when she looks back she can’t quite see when it appeared. It drags at both of them like an anchor line, and when they aren't pulling against it, pulling against each other, they're standing too close, too aware of how they orbit each other. She's trying not to think about what it all means. She really, really doesn't want to see it.
"How long?" he demands quietly.
She looks at him. "How long for what?"
He glances at her, expression carefully neutral. "How long do I have to pay for this?"
She watches him for a moment and then her gaze slides away. "You're not paying for anything, Elliot. Everything's fine."
Except it's not, and he knows it's not.
"I get that we're not going to agree on this, but damn it, you need to either let this go or..." He trails away, and when she glances at him again, he looks a little nervous. Like maybe he bit off a little more than he can chew.
The unfinished sentence hangs between them. If you can’t trust your partner, Elliot, it’s time to get a new one. Her words, not his. Her first hint that he heard her that night. That he listened.
“You think I’m not watching your back now, is that it?” she asks, because she’s never been good at going right at it. And he scares her sometimes.
He pulls into the parking garage at the precinct and parks, shutting the engine off, but he doesn’t move. He turns to gaze at her. “No, of course not. I know you’ve got me, Liv. I just…” He shakes his head. He’s not angry. He’s exhausted. Frustrated. She can see it.
It hurts, she realizes. It hurts to think about just letting the whole issue go, as if she’s sacrificing something. But it hurts just as much to hang onto it, and maybe she’s softening now, because it makes no sense for both of them to hurt like this. And does it matter anyway? Sitting in the dark feels like home to her as much as anything else.
“I don’t want another partner,” she tells him, honestly, and then she climbs out of the SUV and walks into the precinct.
He follows.
+
They can hear the wind gusting, even from the squad room, and the building creaks. She taps her pen against her desktop and glances at the snow streaming across the window outside. The small, icy flakes tap against the glass and sound like fine gravel. The streetlight just outside bends in the storm and seems to vibrate from the force.
The squad room is empty and silent and will be for a few more hours. Elliot is messing with the coffee maker, and she hears him swear quietly. She can feel the weariness pressing forward behind her eyes, settling there with an insistence that she knows will be with her for days. When she glances down at her report, the words waver a bit in the light of the dim desk lamp.
She sighs and presses her fingertips against her forehead, rubbing tiredly. Her hands are still cold. She gets up and walks to the window, folding her arms over her chest for warmth. The room is drafty when there aren’t any warm bodies there generating heat.
She watches the snow pile up.
“I’m not going to apologize,” Elliot says suddenly into the silence. “I’m not, Liv. I just… I’m not.”
She pulls her sleeves down over her cold hands and tucks them under her chin and she doesn’t look away from the window. “It wouldn’t have made any difference in the end. They couldn’t have stopped what happened any more than I did. It was a waste of their time and yours.”
“I didn’t know that then. I just knew you were in danger and you were being too damn stupid about it.”
She slides him a brief glare for the ‘stupid’ remark.
“I just mean,” he amends. “That I’m going to do what I feel I need to do, and I’d rather have you hate me than have to go to your funeral knowing I could have done something about it.”
“You didn’t listen to me,” she says. “Do you have any idea how hard I’ve had to work-still have to work-to be heard sometimes? In this job?”
He looks conflicted, and exasperated, and in the end he just meets her gaze and shrugs helplessly.
They’re stalemated, again.
“At least tell me it had nothing to do with me being a woman,” she says, softly.
“What? No!” He sounds pissed now, but she doesn’t look at him. “Jesus, Olivia, you can probably kick the ass of eighty percent of the guys I know. And they’re mostly cops.”
She just nods with a sigh. Her fingers, beneath the cuffs of her sweatshirt and the heat of her chin, are finally thawing and warming. She wants to find her usual cot in the crib and crawl under the blankets in her clothes. She wants to curl up and sleep, hard, for the few hours she has left. Until it’s time to get up and go out into the snow and find another murderer. One who uses snow as his canvas, blood as his paint, rape as his inspiration.
“Liv.” Elliot’s voice is soft and right next to her.
She glances at him and he’s holding two cups of steaming coffee. He has his own by the cup handle, and he has hers by the rim, fingertips holding the hot ceramic and turning red. He has the handle turned toward her.
She stares at it for a moment, watching the way the steam curls up around his palm and between his fingers, and he waits patiently, never flinching. Then she reaches out and grasps the handle, watching as he shakes the burn from his skin and wipes his hand against his pants.
Has he always done that? Her unburned fingers would seem to indicate that he has. She slides her gaze to his face as he leans next to her on the desk and stares out into the snowy night. He takes a careful sip of his coffee and licks his lips.
She takes her own sip.
He protects. He's a protector. That's what he does, what he is, and she's always allowed him that latitude, even at times she'd have slapped down any other man. There's a give and take between them that hasn't been there with her other partners. She can run roughshod, she knows. She has. But she and Elliot, they bend for each other. When she pushes, he pushes back, until she moves to accommodate him, until they settle around each other in comfort and familiarity. She thinks maybe they're both a little better with each other than without.
The coffee pushes a surge of warmth through her bones, and she feels a little languid. Next to her, Elliot’s heat steals over her, even though they aren’t touching. She feels something break away inside of her. Something that sends the breath rushing back into her lungs and the warmth back into her blood.
“You know,” she says, slowly, tilting her head to gaze up at him from under her bangs. “I could probably kick your ass too.”
He stares at her. She’d been sure he’d know she was teasing, because there’s no way she’d win a physical fight between them, and he knows it. But… Maybe he’s been stewing over this more than she knows.
He looks so serious that she feels the corner of her mouth tugging upward. He sees it and he huffs out a sharp, short laugh. His smile is surprised, enthralled, relieved and maybe a little grateful.
“I wouldn’t want to ever find out,” he says, and there’s only a little teasing in his voice.
She smiles then and bumps his shoulder with hers. It’s not perfect, and it’s not over, but she’s tired of holding it. Sometimes it’s just going to end with a stalemate, she realizes. And this time she’ll move past it.
You can't blame a man for breathing.
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I like to write winter fic in the summer. Especially because I have no air-conditioning at work. ;)