Chapter Text
Dublin, Ohio
Particles of dust in the dingy motel air float along the rays of light that filter through the curtains. Olivia realizes to her disappointment that they aren’t even proper blackout curtains. If they were, she’d still be asleep. At least that’s what she tells herself. After all, it’s not the dull, throbbing, ache radiating out from her left hip that woke her up.
The motel curtains are thick, with some kind of tropical pattern featuring Birds of Paradise and toucans hidden amongst large palm fronds. They’re so old that the colors are now washed out pastels, and she’s certain if she stood close enough to them she could smell the decades-old cigarette smoke. The carpet in the room is a dark seafoam green, and there’s only one picture on the walls. It features two palapa roofs on a beach, with a big hibiscus plant in the foreground.
Tropical vibes in the middle of Ohio, go figure.
The events have been anything but leisurely. No pineapple and papaya for breakfast or grilled seafood for lunch. No sex on the beach—alcoholic or otherwise.
Instead of sand and sun and the smell of saltwater, it was tear gas stinging her eyes and filling her lungs, followed by shotgun fire.
And she's lucky that she made it out of that diner with only pellets buried in her hip.
Others on their task force weren’t so lucky in the standoff that occurred in the woods.
As far as she knows, Jamie is stable, but she knows he was explicit in his wish not to be kept on life support.
She peels off the warm ice pack which stopped being helpful hours ago, and winces as she pushes up onto an elbow. Thanks to 800 milligrams of ibuprofen and said ice packs that Elliot had purchased at the Walgreens near their motel, she was at least able to get in a few hours of sleep.
It’s a few hours in between imaging how differently everything could’ve played out in that diner: both of them being temporarily blinded by the gas and unable to aim the gun. The gunman getting the chance to approach closer and hit her again, this time in the chest or face. Elliot being hit instead and her being unable to pick him up like he did for her.
He’d carried her out of there like a rag doll. Even with the sting of fresh entry wounds lighting up her nervous system, she could feel his hands gripping her tight, burning right through the layers of clothes as he brought her to safety.
The pain was acute, but so was Elliot’s touch. It was firm and protective, not releasing her from the safety of his grip until the paramedics showed up and he had no choice but to step back.
Overnight, he’d even entered her room to swap the ice pack for a new one, just like he said he was going to. She didn’t doubt his honesty or intentions, but she thought he’d be exhausted after the trying day they had, and would maybe pass out. But true to his word, he knocked twice like they discussed, before using the extra key card, and still entered her room cautiously, not wanting to startle her.
He whispered something about giving a statement regarding their attack at the diner and not being able to sleep as he gingerly swapped out the old gel pack for a new one, and handed her a water bottle for her to take a few deep swigs from.
She was thankful, and recalls mumbling something to him through the dark, words still thick with sleep. She doesn’t remember what she said though, and she hopes it wasn’t anything more compromising than ‘thanks.’
It shouldn’t be surprising how thoroughly this injury puts her out of commission, but it is.
After the adrenaline had worn off, she was floored by the tendrils of pain that seemed to disregard the confines of one location. The ache spread its fingers out to her thigh, into the back of her glute, and down to her knee. When she tried to sit, the pain lit up her left side all the way around from her groin to her tailbone.
And maybe it’s because she’s getting older but she wonders if it would cause her this much strife if she was still in her twenties, or thirties… or even forties.
It makes her feel old. In her head, she can still do all the things that she could when she was young and green and just starting out in the NYPD. She should be able to bounce back from this faster.
She wants to bounce back faster.
Now as she hobbles to get dressed, peeling off the same soft outfit from her go-bag that she’d put on at the hospital, and swapping it out for clean clothes, she wonders if Elliot got any sleep last night.
She brushes her teeth and scrubs her face, grunting in discomfort when she bumps into the edge of the sink. The counter sticks out too far into the bathroom, and the space isn’t deep enough. It’s cramped—the toilet is practically in the shower. The whole damn thing is too tight.
Of course it isn’t the room’s fault that she has an injury she needs to be conscious of. But nonetheless she suddenly feels suffocated by the sickly yellow walls of the bathroom and the dark brown paneling of the bedroom. She needs to get outside for a few minutes.
She assumes that Elliot was too upset and buzzing from adrenaline to eat anything last night, and he’ll be hungry when he wakes up.
There’s a diner across the motel parking lot, the same kind of old-fashioned place as the one that they were eating at when she got shot.
She can conjure the vision easily. Vinyl booths, laminate tabletops, the smell of fried potatoes clinging to the air. They’d barely had a chance to really dig into their meals, just a few hurried bites as they discussed the case and next steps.
Mac n’ Cheese. Good too, damnit. Really good.
She’s grown fond of Mac n’ Cheese over the last decade, no doubt thanks to raising a young child and it’s become a staple in her pantry. She tried to make it from scratch, but Noah always told her it ‘wasn’t gooey enough,’ or, ‘not the right color,’ and so she gave up and just relented to giving him the crap from the box that made her somewhat guilty every time she made it.
But that Mac n’ Cheese from the diner had been the kind where they melt down three kinds of cheese with butter and milk and a little flour to thicken it, then they pour it over the noodles and bake it with bread crumbs and—shit, she’s really hungry.
So she decides to just suck it up and walk the fifty yards across the parking lot. It’s not the same diner, it’s a different one. The chances of another deranged, desperate individual coming for her there, now that the site has been shut down, are slim to none.
Even so, there is a small voice in her head telling her maybe it would be best to just wait for Elliot and get something on the way to the airport. The way her heart flutters, the way her palms grow damp and her stomach drops at the sight of the diner screams PTSD. But logically in her mind she’s not afraid, it’s just her body reacting. She doesn’t have time for another psych eval, even though she knows one is coming as soon as she gets back to New York.
She pushes aside the heavy door and limps outside, letting it shut behind her with a click. All of the motel rooms face the parking lot, and the morning air is cooler than she expected. Her nipples contract in protest as she folds her arms over her chest to keep in some of her body heat. The cotton of her t-shirt seems way too thin as she realizes the bra she put on has no foam cups and was not built for masking an early morning chill.
The room is right there, she could go back and change again, but the effort involved in doing that hardly seems worth it. The diner is just on the other side of a few rows of cars, and she isn’t going to stay there, she’s getting the food to go. So she pushes onward, keeping her arms folded and stepping carefully off the curb.
By the time she gets halfway across the parking lot her hip and ass are screaming, and she pauses to lean against the side of a van which she’s fairly certain belongs to their team, and if not, she just hopes no one is trying to sleep inside.
She takes some steadying breaths and coaches herself to march the last few yards when she hears the hinges of a door creak open from the other side of the parking lot.
“What the hell are you doing?” Comes the gravelly bark from over her shoulder.
She cranes her neck around, one hand still pressed flat to the cold metal of the van, and looks back at Elliot who is standing at the edge of the sidewalk in sweatpants and nothing else. She swallows, mouth dry like sandpaper as she takes in his exposed upper body that is far too ripped for a man approaching sixty. She shrugs weakly, distracted by his defined pecs and abs, but also in so much pain that she realizes suddenly what a dumb idea this was.
As she turns to start walking back to the motel, she sees him step off the curb – barefoot in addition to shirtless – and he begins jogging across the parking lot towards her.
Her eyes are fixed on him as he cuts across the asphalt in record time.
“Liv, what are you doing?” He breathes out as he reaches her.
She sees his eyes first, the same color blue as the sky right now. Not a single cloud anywhere in sight. She notices his chest next, and the strip of coarse hair that runs down his sternum and over his stomach, disappearing underneath the gathered waistband of his sweats.
He’s grown a bit more body hair later in life. As the hair left the top of his head, it seemingly traveled to other places.
And it’s dusted silver now.
She likes it. He looks more distinguished at this time in his life, more defined too. More hard edges and snaking veins. Sometimes she flat out wants to ask what he thinks of her, and how she’s changed in the last decade. Would he answer truthfully? What would he say?
Where he’s gotten tighter, she’s gotten softer; fuller breasts, rounder hips, more meat around her tummy.
The way her body has adjusted to aging doesn’t bother her, except when she gets injured, and then she’s reminded of how the years really have taken their toll.
She waves a hand toward the diner, “I was trying to get some breakfast, and I thought you’d still be asleep. Did you even sleep at all?”
“A couple hours,” he replies.
He offers her his arm, and usually she’d laugh and brush it off, but the throbbing in her side is more intense than she thought it would be, and she is eager to sit – no lay – back down.
“Thanks,” she rasps, curling her fingers around his bicep, close to the crook of his elbow. His skin is impossibly warm, and she wonders absently if he’s always that warm, and if he wears clothes in bed or if he just sleeps naked. Someone with an internal body temperature that high would boil underneath a duvet.
Was he naked when she started her ill-fated trek across the parking lot?
No, he wouldn’t sleep naked in a motel while working a case. Would he? But she decides that because the main threat was removed yesterday, he might.
Was he laying in his bed on the other side of that hideous vinyl paneling, naked with just a scratchy sheet covering his lower half. Her pulse quickens at the vision.
They move in tandem back towards her room, and with every step she can feel the coiled bulk of him underneath her palm, flexing to support her.
“I can grab something, what do you want?” he asks, as she tries to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, and not the push and pull of tendons and muscles in his arm as he walks alongside her.
“Mac n’ Cheese,” she mutters dryly.
She can sense his smile, “I don’t think that’s on the breakfast menu.”
“Okay, fine. Scrambled eggs and wheat toast. And a side of turkey bacon or sausage if they have it,” she grunts just as a lightning bolt of white-hot pain shoots up her leg and into her lower back.
What the fuck?
Elliot halts, hearing the sharp intake of breath, and she has no choice but to stop with him. They are barely ten feet from the door to the room now, so close to being able to collapse onto the bed until it’s time for their flight.
Oh, the flight.
How will she possibly sit for over an hour? Every time she bears weight it’s like someone is driving a knife into the joint where her hip meets her pelvis, and then pushing it further back into the thick muscle of her glute. The visceral stabs erupting in parts of her body that are not the site of the injury make her think nerve damage, but she can’t think about that now.
Intrusive thoughts are a bitch.
She reminds herself that referred pain can be normal, and that this will pass as she continues to heal.
“Take it easy, okay?” Elliot says, as he surveys her expression and her eyes like he can read her mind. “We are flying back to New York in a few hours, and it’s going to be a long day.”
She grunts in response, still stubbornly holding onto her pride because she’s a Captain in the NYPD and not just his friend, Olivia. She can tell that he wants to scold her more, point out all the reasons it was a bad idea for her to wander off injured and alone, especially before the case has wrapped up, but thankfully he bites his tongue.
They reach her door and he uses the spare key card that she gave him to swipe the room open and hold the door for her.
“Scrambled eggs, wheat toast, and some form of turkey-based protein. Any coffee?” He asks, eyeing the in-room instant packets like they verbally assaulted him at some point.
“Yes, please. Coffee with a splash—“
“I know,” he murmurs, leading her to the unmade bed where she sinks back down with a shaky exhale.
“I’ll be back in a few,” he tells her as she settles onto her side.
She flicks her gaze up as he’s walking away, backlit by the rising sun. He’s far too broad and tall and big for this tiny room. His shoulders practically fill the doorway from edge to edge, the ridges of his spine like a ladder she wants to climb with her tongue.
“Don’t forget to put a shirt on,” she fires off, just fast enough for the words to catch him as the door is swinging shut. He stops it with his foot, and opens his mouth in a half moon shape, the smile tugging playfully at the corners of his lips. He looks like he’s going to offer her a smart-ass remark, and she waits for it. Even from her reclined position on the lumpy motel bed, with the haze of early morning disrupting her clear view, she can see the sparkle in his eyes.
But he doesn’t give her a retort. Instead he just huffs out a brittle laugh, and as he moves to let the door shut the rest of the way, she swears she can see a crimson flush creeping up his chest and into his neck.
—
There’s two quick knocks on her door not much later, then a beep as Elliot swipes the key card.
“You decent?” He calls out.
This time he doesn’t ask ‘how’s your ass feeling?’ but she wouldn’t mind if he did.
She’d be lying to herself if she said having him ask about her ass didn’t make her stomach flip end over end, especially paired with the smirk on his face as he stepped through the door. It was the kind of smirk that conveyed immense relief at her being alive, and a fondness they hadn’t quite put a label on yet.
She chuckles because she’s barely moved an inch since he left her there, but also because part of her – a big part – wishes he would catch her in a partial state of undress. Maybe it would be embarrassing at first, but it would also be like ripping off a Band-Aid. They’ve danced around their sexual tension for so long that she’s beginning to think the only way either of them will take the plunge is if something drastic happens.
“Yes,” she says loudly.
He pushes the door open and steps over the threshold with a bursting plastic bag and two to-go coffee cups in his hands.
She’s laying on her good side, propped up on an elbow, legs stretched out towards the end of the bed.
The shirt she put on that morning has a neckline that’s maybe a little too low for how the pillows are balled up and supporting her rib cage, and she realizes how ridiculous she must look. Dressed for the office but no socks or shoes on (she kicked them off), hair pulled up in a messy ponytail, face scrubbed clean of makeup.
She’s suddenly very aware of the way the pillows push her chest out, and how gravity is pressing her breasts together. She knows there are soft creases forming her cleavage.
Elliot’s eyes drift over her quickly before flitting away to focus on the logistics of their meal.
He doesn’t bother asking if she wants to eat the food in bed – laying down – he just knows. He sets the food containers on the mattress in front of her, resting the coffee on the side table within reach.
She awkwardly adjusts her position, thrusting a second pillow underneath her armpit as Elliot drags a chair over to join her.
The way she’s lounging now is fairly ‘come hither,’ but she refuses to sit up and be uncomfortable, knowing the entire flight home will be only that. She’s going to be confined to an airplane seat with far too little padding, not to mention the long car ride home over asphalt that’s riddled with pot holes.
And as usual, Elliot is a gentleman.
He proceeds as if eating breakfast with her reclined in bed, indentations from the wrinkled sheets still visible on her cheek, a fresh ice pack pressed to her ass, is just another normal routine for them; and Jesus, she wishes it was.
She wishes they could share these kinds of private moments all the time.
“Thanks,” she pops the lid open and tears the plastic bag containing cutlery, stabbing a piece of scrambled egg and bringing it to her mouth.
She chews thoughtfully. “Not terrible,” she smiles.
“Great,” he takes a bite of sausage, “‘Not terrible’ is what I was going for. But, just in case…” he retrieves a blueberry muffin wrapped in cellophane, “...I got this too. Also probably ‘not terrible,’ but you can save it for the flight or something.”
“That’s perfect, thank you,” she murmurs.
The warmth she’s become accustomed to feeling when he’s around spreads through her chest. He used to get her a blueberry muffin from the breakfast carts in New York City when they’d grab the super-heated coffee before heading to or from the precinct. Those muffins were also not terrible, but everything tasted a little bit better when she could eat it in his company.
This meal is no exception.
The eggs are still warm and fluffy, they actually did have turkey bacon and it isn’t burnt to a crisp. The wheat toast is a tiny bit soggy, but she’s not complaining. She’s had much, much worse.
As she eats, she listens to Elliot talk about Jamie with the regretful tone of someone who has realized they are losing another ally. Olivia didn’t spend a lot of time with Jamie, but she knows Elliot better than anyone, and she knows how he views his team. It’s his family, and the impending loss of one of them is a blow that shakes him to his core, every single time.
“He was so eager when he started at OC,” Elliot takes a bite of his food and chews, meeting her gaze with wet eyes that make her want to toss aside her container of food and go to him.
Elliot swallows, “He kind of—he followed me around a bit like a puppy the first few weeks. I shoulda been nicer. But I was kind of… a dick.”
She shakes her head, “That’s just how you remember it now. I’m sure you weren’t that bad.”
He shrugs as he finishes the sausage link.
“I wasn’t good either though,” he mutters.
“You’re always good,” she quips, the words tumbling out before she can lock them away with the rest of her genuine feelings.
He raises his eyebrows and continues to chew, a subtle smile identifiable only by the quirk of his mouth and fine crinkles by his eyes. Neither of them speak for several minutes after that, finishing their food with the weight of her compliment hanging between them, as they think about the people they’ve lost to the job.
“We’ll need to leave for the airport in an hour,” he finally says, clearing his throat and glancing around the interior of her room, which isn't exactly messy, but if she’d known the battered state she was going to end up in, she would’ve made more of an effort to clean up. Maybe she would have packed her two pairs of shoes away yesterday morning, and not dropped her dirty clothes in a pile on the floor. She hopes that her underwear aren’t on top of the pile.
Elliot flicks his eyes skeptically around the room again, landing back on her. “Do you think that you’ll be able to…”
She hums in response as she finishes her last bite of food. “Sure, what time do we need to leave again?”
“9:00.” He studies her as she begins to sit up, and then he’s there, hands extended for her to grasp onto as she grits her teeth and pulls herself to a standing position. There’s a moment where everything stills around them, with the exception of her upper body as it sways gently towards him, in the same way it did in the hospital. He clutches her tighter, eyes boring into hers as their breaths mingle for a beat before she shifts her weight on her feet and an electric shock of pain wraps around her hip.
“Ugh,” she hangs her head in the space between them and inhales shakily.
“Do you have the stronger pain meds that the doctor prescribed?” he asks, knowing full well how she feels about that shit.
“Yeah, but I’m not—”
With a wave of his hand, he drops her arm, and she feels his absence immediately. “I know, I know. But if you need it, just to get through the day—”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” she mutters, as she turns toward the dresser and begins to slowly move across the room, headed in the direction of her clothes.
“What can I do to help?”
“Pack your room up, El. I’m fine. Really,” she laughs softly as he bends down to pick up her shoes and sets them on top of the dresser.
“Why are you so stubborn?” he murmurs, drifting towards the bathroom.
“I could ask you the same thing,” she says.
He shrugs, “Well, I already packed.”
“Of course you did,” she whispers under her breath.
“Want me to get your toiletry bag?” he says, jerking a thumb towards the bathroom.
“Sure.” If this is what he wants to be doing, she isn’t going to stop him. And she knows that deep down he likes it; taking care of her, not the getting shot part of it. He likes taking care of her and he always has. When they were partners he would remind her to take cold medicine when she was sick, hand her tissues before she even needed to ask, and occasionally show up unannounced to check on her if she stayed home.
“What about the other stuff,” his voice calls out from the echoey bathroom. “You’ve got… some clothes in here.”
Clothes?
She groans quietly, unable to recall what she left in the bathroom the day before. It’s certainly something embarrassing, otherwise he wouldn’t ask.
“Just… bring it all,” she tells him, trying to sound nonchalant about it.
He returns with her leather zip toiletry bag, and a small stack of clothes on top of it. Her eyes catch the black satin cup of a bra, and the lace trim of a pair of underwear - that’s where she left them - and she silently rebukes herself.
So now, they still haven’t kissed, which is her fault, but Elliot has seen her bra and underwear. Not just seen them, but held them. Touched them.
She wanted to kiss him a few months ago, that night in her kitchen, but she did what her therapist would call maladaptive coping, and buckled under the stress of the day. And now they are floating around like bubbles in a lava lamp, with every collision they just bounce gently off each other and drift the opposite way before anything can stick.
Back in the day when they were partners, he walked in on her changing in the lockers a few times, but he always averted his gaze and pretended not to see her.
This feels different. Him handling her undergarments and folding them into a pile, it feels domestic and intimate in a way she didn’t know she missed.
Her finger grazes his as he hands her the stack.
I want to, but I can’t.
She’s wanted to kiss Elliot Stabler for longer than she’s been coloring her hair, and that’s a pretty long time—she started going grey way earlier than she would have expected, a genetic gift from the father she never knew.
It’s just underwear, she tells herself.
Sometimes she can’t believe that they’ve made it this long without having sex, especially now that there’s no legal, ethical, or religious trappings holding them back. There’s no reason she shouldn’t just get naked right now and tell him she’s finally come to her senses and she is ready for this.
Ready for them.
Her hip gives a sharp twinge as she reaches for a blazer hanging in the closet.
“Shit,” she hisses. Then she remembers there is a reason. As usual, the timing isn’t right.
The timing is never right.
“Let me get those,” he’s behind her now, rock-hard chest bumping into her shoulder as he flicks the button downs and blazers off the rack with one hand, returning to her suitcase to methodically fold and stash them away.
“Do you need a few minutes to shower or anything?” He spots one last article of clothing, a pair of dirty socks she shucked off, and bends to pick them up without a second thought.
She can’t help but cringe at the sight of Elliot handling more of her, no doubt, stress-ridden laundry. He doesn’t seem to notice or care about any of it.
“The doctor told me to wait twenty-four hours before getting the entry wounds wet, and… I really don’t want to slip and fall in this motel shower.”
He zips her bag closed and picks it up, “Can’t blame you there.”
“I’ll get my carry-on sorted and meet you outside in a bit,” she tells him.
Before leaving her room, Elliot gathers up all the trash from their breakfast and throws it out, then coils up her phone charger and places it next to her laptop which is already waiting to be slotted away in her shoulder bag.
“Thanks, El,” she smiles softly as he pulls her suitcase to the door and out into the daylight.
“Anytime,” he says over his shoulder, turning briefly to catch her gaze. She can see in the softness of his eyes that he means it. He carried her out of the diner in his arms, he lifted her in an embrace off the exam table, and he will haul her bruised body through Columbus International Airport if she lets him. Which she won’t.
He’ll probably insist she use a wheelchair, and does she really have a choice?
God, this is going to be a long day. But at least she’s alive, and she will get to see Noah soon. And maybe, if she can overcome her fear of finally crossing the invisible line they drew between them decades ago, she will be honest with Elliot and tell him what she spent the last few years denying: that she wants him.
She wants him in every sense of the word. She wants him by her side, and in her bed. She wants him as a friend and as a lover. She wants him so bad it terrifies her, because she’s never felt this way about anyone, and this isn’t just anyone.
This is Elliot. And things with them are never simple. They are messy and complicated and overwrought.
Now she’s injured and he’s going to fuss over her, and usually that kind of behavior would make her roll her eyes, but when he does it there’s something deeper under his skin that starts peeking through. Something that makes her insides shake and her lungs burn like she just ran a mile at high altitude.
His devotion to her is a beautiful and tragic thing. Beautiful because of how unflinching and certain it’s always been. Tragic because it’s old now, just like they are becoming, a fact she is reminded of every time her ankle twinges.
And what is she going to do with the next thirty-odd years of her life? If nothing progresses between them, what will she have—who will she have? Even if she were to meet someone else, how will she stop herself from comparing them to Elliot? That was always the issue with her previous relationships; why no one ever lasted.
They didn’t measure up. They always fell short on key characteristics like brooding intensity, intelligence, and passion.
But right now she knows what she’s not going to do, and that’s stay a minute longer than necessary in this godforsaken motel room.
The few files she has make it into her work bag with her laptop and other belongings that she wants to have accessible on the flight, and by the time she’s ready and waiting for Elliot at the curb, she’s broken into a light sweat.
“I was going to come in and get that,” he says as he stoops to pick up her carry-on from where it’s resting at her feet.
“It isn’t that heavy, and I have to be able to do some stuff for myself.”
He grumbles under his breath and opens the door to the SUV which is idling at the curb.
The car is empty. “Where’s the rest of the team? No one else is travelling back today?”
“Nope, they still have more to wrap up.”
She furrows her brow, “and you don’t?”
“Not really. Nothing I can’t handle over a video call,” he says, while standing by as she begins to clumsily pull herself up into the seat.
She smells his lie a mile away. He should be staying behind and helping the task force, but he’s not, because Captain Benson needs an escort back to New York. He must have made it clear he was going to be that escort.
She doesn’t call him out on it. For one, she likes the idea that he wants to be that person for her, and secondly, because bending and flexing of her leg takes her breath away.
“Oh…” she bites her lip at the sudden explosion of pain that has her seeing stars.
Elliot’s hand finds her elbow and he holds her steady as she inches the rest of her weight onto the seat, letting out a heavy sigh as her other foot lands safely in the footwell.
“Shit,” she laughs, but it’s not a laugh of amusement.
“Did you take anything?”
She counts back the hours, but after 7:00 things get blurry.
“I think so,” she glances at her bag. “I’ll take some ibuprofen when we are at the airport.”
Elliot purses his lips like he’s holding something in, and she nods toward the road.
“It’s okay. Let’s get going,” she thinks about all the extra time it’s going to take them to get through the airport and she’s already feeling self-conscious.
He relents and closes her door, walking around the front of the car to slip into the driver’s seat. Olivia leans onto her right side as much as she can, so that her left glute is a couple inches up in the air. It’s incredibly awkward, and she can already tell her lower back is unhappy with the overcompensation of the strange angle.
She tries to distract herself with the radio and clicks through the stations until familiar instrumentals ring out from the speakers. It takes a few moments to figure it out, but when she hears David Bowie’s voice, she lets her hand drop and sinks further back into the seat.
“I still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste
was not so sweet”
She recalls that in college she had a boyfriend who would get wasted and try to play the cords on his guitar. She kind of avoided the song since then, and it’s a shame.
“I saw this live when I was a kid.” Elliot is staring straight ahead at the road, but his gaze is distant.
“What? Really?” She struggles to imagine that version of him.
“Yeah, I snuck out of the house and my older brother took me all the way into Manhattan.”
Olivia scoffs, she finds it even harder to imagine an Elliot who cares about rock n’ roll and breaks the rules—well actually, the latter part tracks.
“Shit, Bernie must have been pissed.”
He nods, “She was. But not as pissed as my dad.”
“Mm,” she hums a quiet understanding and watches as he turns the volume up louder before resting his elbow on the console between them. Her eyes drift to his hand, fingers tapping the knob of the gear shift along to the beat. She tries to picture a young teenage Elliot, returning home after a thrilling night out with his big brother, only to be confronted by rage incarnate.
From what she’s heard, the older brothers took the brunt of that rage, and it makes her eyes sting to imagine them trying to navigate a childhood living in fear. It’s no wonder Elliot’s older brothers moved out as soon as they could, but that left Elliot and his siblings to fend for themselves…
Even with the ache in her left side, she eases onto it so she can reach for his hand and interlace her fingers with his. She squeezes tight until her knuckles turn white.
Elliot so rarely talks about his childhood, and when he does, she feels like she’s getting let in on a secret.
Her eyelids feel heavy and so she lets them drift closed. Her hip won’t allow her to sleep in this position, but she can at least rest. She knows at some point Elliot will need to withdraw his hand to drive, but for now he continues to hold onto her like he doesn’t plan on letting go anytime soon.