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She closes her front door behind her with a firm click; leaning back against it, her head hits the wood as she sighs deeply.
It’s been another one of those days; another one of those weeks, if she’s honest. A messy case that Carisi’s going to have a hell of a time proving in court, one long day after another after another. Fin told her to go home; have a break, get some sleep, spend some time with Noah.
Noah, who is currently out with three friends and their parents to see a movie, then pizza after. Honestly, she has to keep a separate list of Noah’s social engagements just to keep track of them all, he has so many. Kid’s busier than me, she thinks. We make a pair, neither of us home early for weeks now. But, he’s doing his homework, doing well in school so I can’t tell him no.
Shaking her head, she pushes off the door, heading further into her apartment. Her coat is hung on the stand, her bag gets dropped into the brown armchair, her iPhone on her kitchen counter. Making her way to her bedroom, she secures her gun in the safe near her bed, and groans with relief as she releases her feet from her boots.
Oh, that’s better, she thinks as her bare feet sit flat on her bedroom carpet. If she could get away with it, she’d wear flat shoes at work right now - surgery or not, cleared for duty or not, her ankle and heels are not best friends anymore - but that would get noticed and given everything that’s happened lately; McGrath, Burton… she can’t take any chances, anything that might make her look incapable has to be carefully considered.
So, high heels and limping around her apartment every night it is. A man in my position wouldn’t get this much scrutiny. That she knows for sure.
Rolling her eyes at her own thoughts - I worked damn hard, I deserve where I got to and I need to stop thinking this way - she decides to have a shower, taking advantage of Noah not being home to strip on her way there, throwing her clothes on the floor as she limps, deciding that she’ll tidy up after.
***
Showered, hair dried and dressed in dark leggings and and a loose knitted sweater, she wanders back into her living room, the ache in her still bare feet slowly dissipating the longer she has the heels off. Stuffing her discarded clothes into her laundry basket, she checks her phone, relieved to see that no-one has tried to get hold of her in the last hour. I really hope Fin can hold down the fort for tonight, she thinks, overcome with a sudden feeling of complete and utter exhaustion. He wasn’t wrong; I really need tonight off.
Collapsing into her couch cushions, she reaches for the TV remote. Normally she’d sit and listen to music for a little while, especially having the place to herself but it hasn’t had the same affect, the same calming influence over her since a few weeks ago.
Since Burton fucking Lowe.
She pulls a face, raising the remote and pointing it at the TV, only to be interrupted before she can press the power button by a knock on her apartment door. Groaning heavily, she lets the remote hit the couch with a soft thump, getting to her feet and heading for the door. “If this is you again Elliot, please don’t be high on drugs this time.” She mutters to herself.
Later, she’ll say that she doesn’t know why she opened the damn door at all. As she looks through the peephole, she wishes it was actually Elliot, drugged out of his mind and rambling, confessing things that she wanted so badly to believe but couldn’t, before collapsing in her arms.
It’s not.
“Burton, how did you find out where I live?” She asks, voice low, harsh as she opens her apartment door, just enough to look through and glare at the man.
He looks up at her, swaying ever so slightly, looking at her through bloodshot eyes, a wonky grin on his face. “You’re drunk,” she realises. “I’m not doing this,” she adds. “I said everything I needed to say two weeks ago, now please leave.”
Shaking her head, she goes to shut the door but he’s faster, throwing his whole weight against it, sending the door flying back open, straight into her face.
Briefly stunned, she staggers back, her hand going to her temple, coming away sticky and red as Burton comes into her apartment, closing the door behind him and putting the chain on. “I have lost… everything,” he tells her, slightly slurred. “My podcast… my publishers don’t want anything to do with me…” He raises one hand, the other clutching the neck of a half-empty vodka bottle. “All you had to do was back me up,” he continues. “But you wouldn’t.”
Suddenly very conscious of the fact her gun is locked up in her bedroom, she backs up another step, taking slow, measured breaths. “Burton… you need to leave, right now.” She tells him. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Every step she takes backwards, he counters with another one forwards, until she feels the shelves that line the wall of her living room at her back. “Burton…” She tries, slowly moving her hand towards the switch on her wall. “We talked about this,” she reminds him, pressing the button firmly. “Remember?”
You slept with me… when I was sixteen, Burton. You were twenty-one, and technically that is… that is sexual assault.
His eyes darken, much like they had that night. “I remember,” he says, suddenly much more sober than he had seemed at her front door. “I remember you saying that you wouldn’t help me, you deciding that you’re a victim too, just like those other girls, those liars.”
With that, he lifts the vodka bottle high, throws it against the wall and it misses her by inches, shattering, covering her with glass, vodka splattering into her hair, the feeling sending her spiralling, time-travelling back eight years in one second.
“All you had to do Olivia, was defend me!”
***
Fin rubs his hand down his face, pressing hard into the bridge of his nose. This case is giving him a migraine. Two migraines, if that’s even possible. I’m beginning to regret telling Liv that I could hold down the fort so she could have a night off.
Looking across the table, he watches Rollins and Carisi, heads bend low over the case files, reading the same one at the same time. Shaking his head minutely, he wonders how long it’s going to be before the pair of them disclose.
Cause the two of you sure as hell ain’t subtle, he muses.
He knows that Liv is well aware of the shift in the relationship too, but, like him, she’s biding her time, wondering how long it’s going to take them to just come out and say it.
His phone buzzing repeatedly in his pocket diverts his attention, and he pulls it out, glad of the distraction. Glancing at the screen, he wishes more than ever he hadn’t sent Liv home.
Swearing out loud, he’s on his feet in less than a second, the rolling chair he was sitting in at the conference table hitting the wall behind him, the racket causing both Amanda and Carisi to look up at him in alarm. “It’s Liv,” he tells them, halfway to the door already. “She’s hit her panic button.”
He’s dialling Liv’s cell as he runs towards the elevator, hearing Amanda and Carisi’s feet as they chase after him. “Come on Liv,” he’s almost begging as it rings out. “She’s not answering,” he says, jabbing the button for the elevator.
Dialling again as the doors open, he closes his eyes, blocking out the view of Amanda and Carisi staring at him, watching, waiting for him to tell them something, anything that makes this not what it sounds like.
As the phone rings out again, he knows he can’t do that.
***
Her phone buzzes insistently on the counter, slowly moving as it vibrates. “Who’s that?” Burton asks, demands, right up in her face.
“I don’t know,” she lies. Please let that be Fin, she silently begs. On his way here. Please… “I get calls all the time Burton, I’m the Captain, it’s part of my job. I spend a lot of time on the phone, it could be anyone.” A pause. “I should probably answer it,” she tries. “If I don’t, they’ll just keep calling.”
“Nah, you’re not answering,” he tells her. “Whatever it is, they’ll just have to deal with it themselves. You can’t help them tonight, just like you couldn’t help me, couldn’t defend me. Whatever it is, it’ll just have to fall apart, like my life did, all… because… of YOU!”
The last word is screamed in her face, his alcohol stained breath dragging up yet more memories that she really, really needs to keep buried right now. She needs him to step back, both to stop the flashbacks that threaten, and to give her half a chance of getting past him, of getting to her bedroom.
Of getting to her gun.
Swallowing thickly, she takes a tiny step to the right, one step closer to where she needs to get to.
***
Sirens wailing, lights reflecting on the windows of each building the SUV screams past, Fin guides the car with expert precision through the late evening New York traffic. “Anything?” He glances briefly to Amanda, in the passenger seat with her cell to her ear.
“Still no answer,” she tells him. “Noah,” she blurts a moment later. “Is he home tonight, does anyone know?”
A new spike of fear courses through Fin’s heart as he realises that no, he doesn’t know where Noah is.
Luckily though, Carisi does. Piping up from the back seat, he relieves them all. “Liv said something about movies with some of his friends when I was in her office earlier,” he tells them. “She was calling one of the kids’ mom, make sure she was picking Noah up from school like they’d arranged.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Fin turns the steering wheel, tyres screeching as they round a corner. “That’s something,” he mutters, reaching for his own phone, in the cradle on the dashboard. Tapping the screen a few times, he waits for the call to connect, hopes the recipient can and will answer.
“Stabler.” Elliot’s voice sounds through the car speakers a moment later, after just one ring.
“Elliot, it’s Fin,” he says quickly. “Are you anywhere near Liv’s apartment?”
“A couple of blocks away… why?” His tone shifts towards the end, the ‘why’ a lot deeper, as if he knows - can probably tell from the sound of the sirens he can surely hear - that something is very wrong.
“Get your ass over there now,” he tells him. His tone indicates an order, but he knows no matter how he’d phrased it, even if he’d told Elliot to specifically stay away, there’s not a snowballs chance in hell that the man actually would. “Liv’s in trouble.”
Sirens echo down the line as Elliot, clearly in a police vehicle, flips them on at his end. “I’m two minutes out.” He says, then the line goes dead.
Fin turns another corner, seeing Liv’s building up ahead.
***
She takes another small step to the right, inching along her bookshelves as Burton picks up the lamp from the end table by her couch, looking at it for a moment before promptly smashing it on the floor. Even without drinking any more of the vodka, he’s still getting angrier and angrier, a side she’d never seen on him ever, not until that brief glimpse after she confronted him in his hotel room two weeks ago.
I’m definitely seeing it now, she thinks.
She’s seen rage before; both on the job and off. Elliot has a temper, one that explodes and usually ends with a dented locker, or a hole in a wall but despite it all, she’s never ever felt afraid of him. She knows in her heart that he would never, never lay a finger on her.
Her sixteen year old self, desperate for love and stability, blinded by the love - the grooming - that Burton had showered on her… had never seen him in a rage, never seen him angry.
Because he hid it from you, she realises. He only let you see what he wanted you to, so he could keep you where he wanted you. In his bed.
Elliot, for all his faults… he’d never hidden a part of himself from her, not like this. His rage is a part of him, and he’d let her see it, let her bear witness as he blew up, showed her a silent promise that if anyone laid a hand on her… it wouldn’t end well for them.
Elliot… I could really use you right now, she thinks. At least he’s in the city, she adds. Might show up… this time.
The sticky vodka in her hair reminding her of another time she’d hoped, pleaded, prayed that he’d show up, she takes two more steps closer to her bedroom.
***
As luck would have it, both Fin’s and Elliot’s SUV’s pull up in front of Liv’s building at the same time, from different directions, soon followed by the first marked car, responding to Amanda’s 10-13 that she’d called in on their way.
“What’s happened?” Elliot shouts, his sergeant running after him as he runs to meet Fin.
“Don’t know,” Fin tells him as he opens the glass doors to Liv’s building, Elliot at his side, Ayanna and Amanda just behind them with Carisi and the two unis from the squad car bringing up the rear. “She has a panic button, she hit that and she’s not answering her phone, that’s all we know.”
Elliot rubs his hand down his face as Fin hits the elevator call button, wishing that Liv lived on a lower floor than the fifth. Too many stairs to run up and then have to potentially fight a perp.
Luck is, once again, on their side as the elevator doors open immediately, and the seven of them step inside, Fin hitting the 5 button.
***
“You know… this could all have been avoided,” Burton tells her, sitting down on the back of her couch, watching her. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that she’s made it from one end of her bookshelves to the other, a full ten feet from where she’d started out, and she’s glad. “All you had to do was defend me Olivia, all you had to do was stick up for me and everything would have been fine, we would have been fine.” He locks his gaze on hers. “You would have, if you’d ever loved me.”
Her mouth gapes open. Are you kidding me? Asking herself, not for the first time, how she’d never realised until now what had happened to her all those years ago, she takes another, larger, step to the right, past the end of the bookshelves.
It’s too much.
“Where are you going?” He asks, standing up.
Now or never. She bolts, the dull pain in her ankle ignored as she runs for her bedroom, for her gun.
She doesn’t get far.
He’s faster than she expected him to be; one hand grabbing her by the shoulder, the other in her hair, spinning her around, throwing her down to the floor. Her scream of panic cuts off as she hits the wood, the breath knocked out of her as she slides on her side, the force he threw her with so strong.
Before she knows it, before she can react, she’s on her back, him on his hands and knees over her, her wrists held in his grip, flat to the floor.
The fear in her heart reaches a crescendo as she stares up into his rage-filled eyes.
***
They get off on Liv’s floor, just in time to hear a scream, cut off suddenly, and a loud thud. Exchanging glances, guns are drawn in unison as the six cops and one ADA make their way to Liv’s apartment.
Elliot pushes the door experimentally when they reach it, but it’s locked. Changing stance, he raises his leg, kicking the door in easily.
The sight they’re met with is one of the most terrifying he’s ever seen, and that’s saying something.
Liv; pinned to the floor with a grey haired, bearded man crouched over her, her wrists held in his hands. Elliot raises his gun, watching almost in slow motion as Liv brings her legs up, her knees almost to her chest as she plants her feet somewhere low on her attackers abdomen, kicking out hard and knocking him away from her.
“NYPD!” Elliot yells, echoed by Fin, Ayanna and the blonde detective he’s seen around Liv’s squadroom but has never been formally introduced to. “Get your hands up!” He shouts, as the nameless man topples to the side with a groan, Liv rolling onto her hands and knees on the wooden flooring by her dining table.
Instinct from almost thirteen years by her side kicks in, and he takes long strides towards her, keeping his gun trained on the grey haired bastard that had been attacking her while he gets between them, a living shield as he reaches down with his left hand, helping her to her feet then carefully keeping her behind him.
Fin is less than two steps behind him, grabbing the guy and cuffing him. Tucking his gun back into it’s holster, Elliot turns his attention fully to Liv, his eyes widening when he turns and sees the state of her face. “We need a bus!” He calls out to anyone who’s listening. “Hey Liv, sit down for me?” He says, gently guiding her back to perch on the edge of her dining table while he peers at the bloody cut on her forehead. She seems a little dazed; definitely in shock as he runs his thumb over an old, faint scar on her left temple, less than an inch away from the new, still bleeding cut. He hears Ayanna taking the grey haired guy from Fin so the other man can join him at Liv’s side, and the blonde detective - Rollins, he thinks she might be called - radioing for an ambulance, but his focus, his whole world-view is now Liv, Liv and only Liv.
“It’s all her own fault!” He can hear the guy yelling. “All she had to do was defend me, but she wouldn’t! No loyalty, nothing!”
He has no idea who this guy is, but if he doesn’t shut up in the next five seconds he’s going to get Elliot’s fist in his teeth.
Liv, silent to this point, looks over at the guy with a mixture of panic and resignation, confusing the hell out of Elliot.
“Then she has the audacity to show up at my hotel room, wanting some sort of apology for something that happened forty years ago!” He continues. “I had her spreading her legs for me two nights before that, and then she goes and decides she’s a victim!” Liv flinches under Elliot’s hands, and the rage within him rises ever higher. “You might have been sixteen Olivia, but you didn’t put up much of a fight that first time.”
Elliot’s blood boils, but it’s Liv who reacts first.
Standing, she steps into the grey guys line of sight. “Would it have mattered… if I had?” She says, very very quietly. “Would it have made a difference?”
The guy’s expression hardens, and Elliot knows the answer to Liv’s question is no.
“Had to do her with the lights off that night,” the guy continues, apparently on a roll now he’s got Liv’s attention. “The state of it… and I’m not talking about her age either.”
The flinch comes again, more pronounced this time and Elliot finds himself gently pushing Liv to sit back down as Ayanna drags the guy away with the help of the two unis. Four sets of footsteps leave the apartment and one set returns; the ADA Carisi that he’s met a few times, who had been relegated to the hallway while the armed portion of the responding party entered Liv’s apartment.
“Is she okay?” Carisi says quickly, almost breathless.
“We’re waiting on a bus,” Rollins - he’s almost certain that’s her name - replies. Turning to Liv, she leans down so she’s in her Captain’s line of sight. “Liv… what he just said…”
“Which part?” Liv asks quietly.
“You were sixteen… you didn’t put up much of a fight…?”
Elliot watches as Liv looks at her detective briefly before looking away again, a look of defeat on her face. “It… it was my first time,” she says very quietly. “I was nervous, and he… persuaded me.” She sighs. “And yeah, I know exactly how that sounds, and you’re probably right but please… please don’t say it.”
Rollins opens her mouth, closes it again and stays quiet, holding back whatever comment she was about to make. “I’m gonna get you some shoes,” she says instead. “There’s glass everywhere, you can’t walk out of here in bare feet.”
She disappears off in the direction of what Elliot assumes is Liv’s bedroom, and as she disappears from his line of sight he realises that Liv is shivering slightly. Slipping his jacket from his shoulders, he drapes it over hers, watching as her hands come up, fisting in the lapels as she draws the material around herself. “I need my phone,” she says quietly. “It’s on the counter.”
Carisi gets it for her, pressing it into her hand. “Here you go Liv.”
“Thank you,” she murmurs, a tiny smile crossing her face before it’s gone again.
“Bus will be here in a minute,” Fin says as Rollins comes back with a pair of white sneakers. “You wanna walk to the hallway Liv, or you wanna wait here?” He asks her.
“Hallway,” she says firmly, pushing herself to her feet. She sways alarmingly, the adrenaline wearing off as shock starts to set in, and Elliot catches her easily.
“I’ll go with her,” he announces, leaving no room for argument.
“You good with that Liv?” Fin asks, peering into her eyes.
She nods. “Stay here, she says, pushing her feet into the sneakers. “You need to…” She waves her hand at the room at large, almost causing her borrowed jacket to slip from her shoulders. “Sort this place out. Evidence, that stuff.” She looks up at Elliot. “I’ll be okay,” she says. “I’m with El.”
***
Four hours, one CT scan and three butterfly stitches to her temple later, she’s sitting in a private room just off the ER at Mercy. They don’t want to keep her in for the rest of the night, but they do want her double checked by a doctor before they’ll let her leave, just to be on the safe side, they’d said.
“Fin just texted me,” Elliot says from the doorway. “Says they’ve got the prick in holding, they need your statement in the morning so that Carisi knows what he’s charging the guy with.”
She nods quietly.
“You knew him,” Elliot says, stating the obvious as if he hadn’t heard every word that Burton had said to her in the apartment after she’d kicked him off her. “That guy… the one you mentioned to me that time… that’s him?”
“You remember that conversation?” She asks, incredulous.
“‘Course I do,” he replies. “I remember every important discussion I’ve ever had with you, from that right down to the fact you paint your toenails in as bright a colour as you can, since on the job you can’t do it with your hands.”
She snorts; can’t help herself as he enters the room, asking for silent permission before sitting on the bed right next to her, their thighs millimetres from touching. “I told you that in 2002,” she points out.
“And you told me about the prick who just attacked you three years before that,” he counters. “Your point?”
“Mmm,” she acquiesces. “They’re gonna let me go home soon,” she says. “Not that I’ve got anywhere to go since my apartment is a crime scene… again.” A pause, while she grimaces. “I guess I’ll have to find a hotel.”
“You can always stay with me,” Elliot offers. “You and Noah. You can have my bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“I…” She starts to decline out of habit, before thinking no. “That… that would be lovely, thank you.” She accepts, a warm feeling in her belly at the way he looks at her after she does.
A feeling that sobers with his next sentence. “Liv…” he starts. “I gotta ask… that guy… what he said about your body… you have a panic button… did… did something happen while I was… while I was gone?”
And there it is, she thinks. “It’s a really long story,” she tells him. Usually that would be enough to shut anyone down, but this is Elliot; impervious to her glares and her deflections since 1998. “I’ll tell you the whole sorry mess some other time, but to cut a long story short… there was a perp,” she begins. It’s not that she’s been hiding this from Elliot, she always meant to say something to him about what happened with Lewis, just… not in these circumstances.
“He was a real bastard, sick, psychotic…we had him, then the lab screwed up and we lost him on a technicality. Then he uh…” She pauses, swallows. “Then he came after me,” she tells him. “Broke into my apartment, waited until I got home…” She takes a deep breath. “He didn’t rape me, Elliot,” she tells him before he can even ask. “But he did… hurt me, badly. I have scars from that, which is what Burton meant.”
“So you have a few scars, and he says that to you?” Elliot blurts, incredulous.
“It’s more than a few,” she tells him. “My breasts, my abdomen, my thighs… it’s not pretty. I’m not surprised he wasn’t keen.” Her years old insecurities bubble up, her still sticky hair not helping to reduce the flashes of painfearterror that eke into her brain.
“Hey,” Elliot reaches out, his fingers light on her chin, turning her head to face him. “You are beautiful, Olivia,” he tells her. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” A beat. “I didn’t know Liv,” he says. “About what happened. I swear to you I didn’t know. If I had, I’d have been on the first plane back here, I swear to you.”
“I know,” she replies, voice thick, tearful. “I know that.”
“Then believe when I say that anyone worth it, wouldn’t give a damn that you have scars.”
“It’s hard,” she admits. “It took me such a long time to move past it… the panic button in my apartment is because of it… it’s just there, in my head and sometimes, sometimes I just can’t think about anything else.” She whimpers, hand flying up to her mouth. “I… I slept with the man who groomed me, Elliot,” she says quietly. “I’m an SVU Captain, and I slept with the man who abused my trust, and that of so many other women… what the hell does that make me?”
“Human,” he tells her. “You’ve seen it before, we both have. I bet he knew just what to say, just what to do to get you where he wanted you, didn’t he?”
She nods slowly. “For a little while, it was like I was sixteen again,” she admits. “That young girl whose only concern was how I was going to get away from my mother.” She sniffs. “She made me write a letter,” she confides. “To break it off with Burton.”
“Sounds familiar,” Elliot muses.
She chuckles despite herself. “Well at least I didn’t add on a secret final sentence when my mom wasn’t looking,” she says pointedly.
“Mmm,” Elliot responds. “Funny.” A beat. “I had sex with Flutura,” he says. “And she turned out to be a sex trafficker, so if you think what you did was bad, then look no further.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she replies. At his questioning glance, she elaborates. “I knew you slept with her weeks ago El,” she says. “You’re not as subtle as you think you are. Not to me, in any case.”
“A right pair, we are,” Elliot says with a chuckle.
She hums in agreement, her head tipping to the side and coming to rest on Elliot’s shoulder. “My head hurts too much for this conversation,” she tells him.
“To be continued?” He asks as his left arm comes up around her shoulders, securing her against his side.
“Definitely,” she murmurs, the gentle circles his thumb is making against her shoulder lulling her into a light doze.
Before she falls asleep properly, a question comes to her mind and she has to ask. “El?”
“Mmm?”
“My… my scars. Would they bother you?” She’s both eager and terrified for his answer. It’s the closest she’s ever come to admitting out loud that there’s something between them, that… at some point Elliot might see her scars, might see her naked.
“Not in a million years,” he replies, without hesitation. “You’re beautiful Olivia, and you’re you. Scars… no matter what they are, where they are, how bad they are… they don’t change the way I feel about you, and they never will. That I can promise.”
She lets out the breath she’s been holding. “Thank you,” she whispers on the exhale. He doesn’t respond verbally, but she feels his lips press against the top of her head. “Did you just kiss me on the head?” She asks, raising an eyebrow.
“You gonna write me up if I say yes?” His voice is light, teasing.
“Shut up Elliot,” she tells him, shifting closer to him.
“Copy that, Captain.” He replies, bringing his other arm up and around her in an embrace.