Someone Like You 53/61: Headaches - Beecher/Stabler
Someone Like You
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove @@@ livejournal.com
Oz/Law & Order: SVU crossover
Tobias Beecher's trying to rebuild his family in the shadow of the man he was in prison. Elliot Stabler's struggling to continue in the wake of divorce while his job eats away at his soul. It makes for an odd friendship, but it works.
Rated R for violence and explicit references to sexual violence.
Wordcount this post: 3478
Full headers are on chapter 1.
Oz is the property of Tom Fontana and HBO. Law & Order: SVU is the property of Dick Wolf and NBC. The characters are used without permission, but with much appreciation.
Someone Like You
chapter 53: Headaches
by Dr Squidlove
Previously, in chapter 52, Zombie:
Olivia woke up, and seemed okay. Mostly okay.
Elliot was glad to be kicked out of the hospital to spend a night in Toby's tender care. Toby was glad to do some, uh, caring.
Toby managed to keep Elliot around for breakfast, and though he didn't manage to wrangle an invitation to lunch with Kathleen or an explanation of Elliot's work troubles, he did leave Elliot at least considering a family trip to Vermont. Maybe not the skiing.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Elliot settled at a back table with a couple of subs and a couple of sodas. The place was a dive, but it was close to the hospital, and Olivia's day nurse had told him it wasn't known for food poisoning.
Toby wanted him to come skiing. It was the first time Olivia had laughed since she woke up.
Elliot thought ploughing in on Toby's rare time with Harry was a bad idea. He thought Harry seeing Elliot climb into Toby's bed five minutes after meeting him was a terrible idea. And he didn't understand why Toby was pressing for all this when he couldn't even say he loved Elliot. Why would you drag a stranger into your kid's life if it didn't mean something? Elliot wanted to remind Toby that he was smoothing things over with his own kids before Toby had to face them, suggest maybe he should do the same with Harry, but it sounded cowardly to say it out loud.
On the other hand, the idea of a weekend away with Toby, far from the city - far from the rapists and paedophiles - had its appeal.
Elliot still wanted to talk to Toby. He wanted to tell him why Cragen was pushing him out, why Vermont didn't sound like a terrible idea. He needed to make Toby understand that finding out about Chris Keller had been like putting a name to the worst parts of him, and it was eating him up.
But not right now. Right now, work felt far away, and Olivia was enough to be dealing with. Olivia and lunch with Kathleen and figuring out how he was going to reach Dickie and Elizabeth.
"Hey Dad. Brought your clothes." Kathleen dropped the gym bag by his feet and kissed his cheek and gave him a hug before she took her seat. It meant more than she knew.
"Hey, Kathleen." She pushed off her furry cap and shook out her long, honey-blonde hair and took a long drink from her water glass. Her cheeks were rosy from the wind outside, but she was pale, and her eyes were bloodshot. "How are you?"
"Fine. How's Olivia?"
Kathleen was hung over. Elliot bit his tongue before he could say so. "Doing better." Olivia was starting to get sick of Elliot. "The Doc says she might be allowed to go home in a few days." If there was someone around to stay with her - he hadn't broken that news to Olivia or Toby yet.
"Has she got her memory back?"
"The doctor said she probably won't ever remember the fall, but she's following conversations better. She sounds more like herself." She wasn't the Olivia he knew, but her confidence was creeping back. Warner and her doctor were starting to sound more confident too, when they talked about a full recovery. "It's going to be weeks before they even consider letting her back on light duties. She's going to go stir crazy."
"I'll bet. I'm trying to imagine you with a month on your hands."
"It wouldn't be pretty."
Were they really going to sit here and pretend they didn't both know Kathleen had been out getting drunk again? He didn't get anything out of yelling at her; he couldn't ground her when he didn't live with her and it wasn't like it had worked so far. He wanted to storm home and tell Kathy to do something about it but it wouldn't get him anything but a fight. He wanted to drag Kathleen out to meet Lisa, show her the dangers girls faced from scumbags in bars but he didn't want his world in her head. He was helpless. And he was scared to start a fight with Kathleen when he was desperate for her to give Toby a chance.
It was chickenshit to talk about everything but the two biggest issues, but he prodded her until she talked about her friends, and a little about what was going on at school. Elliot was happy to grasp for the reassurance that his relationship with Toby wasn't going to be the only thing she cared about, but it was on his mind as they talked their way through everything but the elephants in the room, and as their sandwiches disappeared and the conversation trickled off, he finally had to ask.
"Do you want to talk about why you got drunk last night, or do you want to talk about Toby?"
Her eyes widened. "Your new boyfriend? I've been told to keep my opinion to myself."
Toby, then. Elliot wondered if it was Maureen or Kathy who'd talked her down. "Not by me. You say what you need to."
She considered for a moment. "The Church says homosexuality's a sin."
"Are you going to tell me your personal life is in line with Vatican policy?"
He could have bitten his tongue off for taking such a cheap shot at his seventeen year-old daughter, but Kathleen thought it was funny.
"Do you really have a problem with gay people?" It was still an effort to say the word.
"Of course not!"
"Maureen said you might."
"Did she? Is that why you kept it a secret?"
"No. I told you-"
"Maybe I thought that when I was twelve. What I have a problem with is you keeping secrets with Maureen. Since August."
"Kathleen..." He understood why it upset her, but he wished she'd get over it. He couldn't fix it now. "I told her because she asked me straight out. I was going to tell the rest of you, but things came up and I didn't. Now I've told you."
She picked up one of the spare straws off the table and slowly tore off the wrapper. "And I have a problem with you lying to Mom all these years."
Pow. Like a punch straight to the gut. "You really believe that? I wasn't... I loved your mother, Kathleen."
She pushed her hair back off her face, looking guilty. "I'm sorry. We shouldn't be talking about this while Olivia's in hospital. Can we talk about something else?"
"Do you really think the four of you and how you're all taking this isn't keeping me awake at night? I'd rather get it out there." He had Maureen; if he could get Kathleen onside, the twins would follow. "Just say whatever it is you want to say. Ask whatever's on your mind."
That was an invitation Kathleen could never turn down. She put her elbows on the table and looked him straight in the eye. "I don't believe you. You don't just like women one day and men the next."
Elliot still didn't know if it was 'men' or just Toby. The things he did with Toby, he didn't want to do with anyone else. The idea of being with another guy felt almost as alien as it had before his feelings stirred for Toby. Another item on the list of things he was never going to discuss with his daughter. "You don't think you'll ever change?"
"Not into a lesbian."
Elliot swallowed. "If you ever do, I'll still love you just as much as I do now."
She cut him a look. He wasn't going to get anywhere playing the good dad. He didn't know if she'd like Toby, but he was sure Toby would like her.
"It wasn't your mother one day and Toby the next. It wasn't... easy."
"Is being gay new for him, too?"
Elliot could have done without the sarcasm, but he wasn't fighting that battle here. "No. But it was a mid-life thing. He was married once, like me."
"Until he left his wife for a man?"
"She died."
"Oh." A flash of shame. "I'm sorry."
"He had a lot of bad years. He buried his wife, his son. And his father." He was going to make sure all his kids knew that much, before they met him. It wouldn't hurt if it earned Toby a little sympathy.
"Maureen said you've met his daughter."
"Holly."
She folded her arms. "How does she feel about her dad turning gay?"
"She's happy he has someone." Still not so happy about who it was, but she was getting over it.
"Isn't that nice for her."
"Yes, it is nice for her. And it's nice for Toby, to have her support." He winced. He'd promised he wouldn't snap at her. "Look, Kathleen... I know we fight about a lot of things, but I need you to cut me some slack on this. I don't know what I would have done without him this week. He means a lot to me, and you all have to fit together somehow."
Kathleen's eyes narrowed. "So like it or not, I just have to get over it?"
"That's not what I-"
She rubbed her head, looking exhausted. "You want to know why no one's turning cartwheels for you? You made Mom cry. And now you're just dancing off with someone new, and she's still alone. It's not fair on her."
There was no one in the world to match Kathleen for making Elliot feel like a scumbag. He couldn't pretend his kids hadn't heard the fights and tiptoed through the frosty silences. "I'm not the one who ended the marriage."
"Yes, you are. You checked out. She's just the one who filed the papers. We live in that house, remember? We're not deaf and I'm not stupid. You made Mom cry."
He did. He was never going to excuse it, and he was never going to win any points telling Kathleen how much Kathy hurt him as well, and especially not when Kathleen looked on the verge of tears herself. "I didn't go looking for this. When your mother left I didn't..." He shook his head. He didn't want Kathleen to know what a fucking mess he'd been. "I buried myself in work. I wasn't painting the town red. It was a big deal to even make a friend." A year ago Elliot hadn't seen a future at all, and now he was getting excited by the idea of a long weekend with Toby and his kids in Vermont.
Kathleen sipped her drink, played with her straw, getting her composure back.
"You're probably right. I don't deserve this. I didn't earn it. It just is. I fell into it and I'm lucky as hell." He was going to do it. As soon as he sorted Thanksgiving custody arrangements with Kathy, he was booked.
"I didn't say you didn't deserve it," she said quietly.
They fell quiet, and Elliot wished he knew how to bridge the gap. He'd been through all the usual stuff with Maureen, but in the end Maureen had always known he was on her side. With Kathleen, it was like a switch flipped when she was fifteen, and she hadn't trusted him since.
She let her hair fall forward to hide her face, and suddenly Elliot was looking at Weber's last victim, huddled on a bed and too ashamed to tell her father. It felt like someone put a vice around his ribs.
"Kathleen... I just want to make sure... If something ever goes wrong, I need to know you'll call me."
"Sure."
"I mean it. When you got that DUI last year I should have been your first call. If you ever get pulled up by the police again, or if someone ever... If you ever get hurt, you..."
"Dad..."
"If you ever find yourself in a crack den in Bolivia or you just need a ride home from Montauk at two in the morning, even if I'm mad about something else, you call me and I'll be there. I want to be there. You know that, right?"
"I know."
"Even if I'm angry about you being in Bolivia."
She rolled her eyes.
"I mean it. Tell me you understand."
She finally looked at him properly, and said, "I understand."
"I love you."
She heaved a little sigh, embarrassed. "Love you too, Dad."
Elliot sat back, satisfied he'd made his point as well as he could. He wouldn't know if she trusted him until the next time.
"So when are we going to meet this guy?"
"Soon." He ignored her look. He'd introduce them when she could ask that without it sounding like a threat. Toby had been through enough shit in his life without facing Kathleen's wrath.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Elliot put Olivia's bag down in her bedroom and stood to see her staring in the mirror with big, sad eyes. "I look like hell."
The shadows under her eyes and the shaved half of her head had all blended in with the white gown and the hospital decor of the past few days, but here in her own space, in jeans and a blouse, without make up, it looked ridiculous. "I wouldn't have guessed punk rock could be your thing, but I think if you get a couple of piercings, you could carry it off."
He won a wry look. It wasn't a smile, but it was a good start. "Thank god it's winter, and I can wear hats."
"You could shave it all, start over."
"Maybe." She frowned at her reflection, looking like she was actually considering the idea, and then she hissed and lifted her hand just short of her surgery scar, fisting and flexing her fingers.
"Don't scratch."
"It itches."
"Yeah, but at least you're not barfing anymore."
"Elliot..."
"I'm going."
Elliot left her to it.
Olivia came out in sweats and a baggy flannel shirt. "What are you doing?"
Elliot dropped the blanket on the arm of the couch. "I'm sleeping here."
"The hell you are."
"You're outranked."
She gave him a look that made his skin prickle and his balls creep up. "You're pulling that shit on me?"
"Not my rank." Elliot realised he had his hands up like me might have to ward off blows. "The doctor's. She said you could go home as long as there was someone with you." He spread his arms. "Ergo, me."
"One of us is going to kill the other."
"That's a chance we'll have to take." He kept one eye on her as he dropped the spare pillow into a pillowcase. "You own flannel?"
"Shut up."
He threw the pillow on the blanket and backed off towards the phone and the stash of menus. "What's your mood?"
Olivia sat stiffly and rubbed her forehead, defeated way too easily. "Just get a pizza."
"Do you have a headache?"
"I can't remember what it's like not to have a headache. But right now I'm giddy at the idea of eating something that isn't hospital food, so don't bother to tell me to go to bed."
Elliot wasn't feeling that courageous. He went and ordered a vegetarian, came back to the couch. She was sitting back with her eyes closed, breathing evening out.
"I'm awake." Barely.
When her eyes opened he sat beside her. "I'm staying here for the next few days. I'm going to count out your pills and make you follow doctor's orders. I'm going to keep an eye on your dressing. I'm going to do your laundry. Get used to it."
She looked the least impressed at the idea of Elliot going through her laundry. "Don't you have a family to worry about? Isn't Toby wondering where you've gone?"
"My kids are doing fine, and Toby understands. He saw you in the hospital." When Olivia was back on her own feet he'd make it up to Toby - if Olivia hadn't killed him. This much time together was a lot, even for them, and Elliot talking as much as he had was off the charts. But the doctor had said no TV, no reading, no exercise, and that meant Elliot was all that was left to distract her from wondering whether she still had a career.
Olivia reached to scratch her head, growled and twitched and picked up her pile of mail instead, flipped through the first few and tossed it all back on the coffee table. "I was in there for... How many days?"
"Four."
"Four days. How did the insurance paperwork and bills beat me home?"
"Do you want me to take care of it?"
She slouched back and closed her eyes and waved it off. Later. She looked ready to sleep already. She'd slept all morning, and she was wiped out by the effort of packing her things and coming home. Elliot was about to get up when she opened her eyes again. "Did you say..." Elliot was getting familiar with the way her nose wrinkled when she was searching through fractured memories. "Did Toby meet Captain Cragen?"
"Yeah. The first night." When she was still hooked up to all the machines, and Elliot didn't know if she was going to wake up. "Toby's been... great through all this."
"How was that? Him and the captain?"
He'd told her the story a couple of times already, but he was getting used to repeating himself. "Awkward." Mostly awkward in Elliot's own head. "Nah, it was fine. Cragen tried to pull Toby into bullying me to go on vacation."
She looked at him for a long time. "Have you talked to Toby? About why Cragen's pushing you?"
Elliot didn't answer. He was going to; he just hadn't had a chance yet.
"Elliot... You're divorced because you wouldn't let Kathy in. Do you really want to make the same mistake with Toby?"
He wasn't going to make the same mistake with Toby. He just hadn't got there, yet. He'd been kind of distracted this week.
She heaved a sigh. "You haven't stopped talking in days. Why stop now?"
"I can't talk about this with you."
She went to push her hair back behind her ear, cringing when she hit gauze instead. "I just spent days sitting on bedpans, and now you're threatening to wash my underwear. You're really going to play the privacy card?"
Fair point. There was a fifty percent chance she was going to forget half this conversation anyway. Elliot braced himself. "It's different with Toby."
"How?"
"With Kathy it was about keeping all the horror we deal with away from... I didn't want her tainted with all the dirt we wade through. Lying awake picturing the shit we see every day."
She nodded. She knew all that. She took up the thread. "But Toby's already lived through it. You see him in the victims, the parents of victims. You can't distance yourself the way you used to."
"It's not that. Not just that." That part Elliot had learned to deal with. He stared at the carpet, but he could feel Olivia's eyes on him. She would choose now to stay awake and follow a conversation. "Toby's last... This guy he was with was... bad. A really bad guy."
She pulled her feet up to curl under her. "Is that who abused him in prison?" It wasn't often Liv used that voice on him, the one she used for victims.
"No. Yes. It wasn't that simple."
"Hardly ever is."
Sometimes it was. Elliot liked when it was simple. "I mean the guy wasn't serving time for jay walking."
There was a long quiet. Elliot didn't want to betray any confidences, but holding all of this in was half the problem.
He heard her inhale, the moment she figured it out. "Those photos. That's who Toby was protecting. He had a relationship with the man who murdered those men." Another minute to follow the thought. "That's why you're having trouble in interrogations. It's not the victims you're identifying with. It's the perps."
It felt like the first full breath Elliot had taken in a long time. Olivia got it. Olivia got him. He looked at her. "Haven't I always? Isn't that why I'm so good at the job?"
"Elliot..."
"Yeah." She knew it was true. He slumped back against the couch.
"You're good at the job for a lot of reasons. Because you're smart and when you get your teeth into a problem you don't let go. Because you care about the victims, because you use your anger to fight for justice."
"Because no one in SVU can befriend a rapist or scare the shit out of a suspect like I can."
"You're not like them, El."
He stood. He hadn't been fishing for reassurances. He didn't know what he wanted from her, but he felt like an asshole whining about his life when Olivia had just had her head stapled up. "Do you need anything? I'm gonna take a shower before you hog all the hot water."
The worry was still in her eyes, but she reached for his pillow and curled up ready to nap. "You'd better be quick. Don't expect me to answer the door for the delivery kid."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 53
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The complete works of Dr Squidlove can be found at http://members.iinet.net.au/~tentacles/squidfic.html
S.
by Dr Squidlove
drsquidlove @@@ livejournal.com
Oz/Law & Order: SVU crossover
Tobias Beecher's trying to rebuild his family in the shadow of the man he was in prison. Elliot Stabler's struggling to continue in the wake of divorce while his job eats away at his soul. It makes for an odd friendship, but it works.
Rated R for violence and explicit references to sexual violence.
Wordcount this post: 3478
Full headers are on chapter 1.
Oz is the property of Tom Fontana and HBO. Law & Order: SVU is the property of Dick Wolf and NBC. The characters are used without permission, but with much appreciation.
Someone Like You
chapter 53: Headaches
by Dr Squidlove
Previously, in chapter 52, Zombie:
Olivia woke up, and seemed okay. Mostly okay.
Elliot was glad to be kicked out of the hospital to spend a night in Toby's tender care. Toby was glad to do some, uh, caring.
Toby managed to keep Elliot around for breakfast, and though he didn't manage to wrangle an invitation to lunch with Kathleen or an explanation of Elliot's work troubles, he did leave Elliot at least considering a family trip to Vermont. Maybe not the skiing.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Elliot settled at a back table with a couple of subs and a couple of sodas. The place was a dive, but it was close to the hospital, and Olivia's day nurse had told him it wasn't known for food poisoning.
Toby wanted him to come skiing. It was the first time Olivia had laughed since she woke up.
Elliot thought ploughing in on Toby's rare time with Harry was a bad idea. He thought Harry seeing Elliot climb into Toby's bed five minutes after meeting him was a terrible idea. And he didn't understand why Toby was pressing for all this when he couldn't even say he loved Elliot. Why would you drag a stranger into your kid's life if it didn't mean something? Elliot wanted to remind Toby that he was smoothing things over with his own kids before Toby had to face them, suggest maybe he should do the same with Harry, but it sounded cowardly to say it out loud.
On the other hand, the idea of a weekend away with Toby, far from the city - far from the rapists and paedophiles - had its appeal.
Elliot still wanted to talk to Toby. He wanted to tell him why Cragen was pushing him out, why Vermont didn't sound like a terrible idea. He needed to make Toby understand that finding out about Chris Keller had been like putting a name to the worst parts of him, and it was eating him up.
But not right now. Right now, work felt far away, and Olivia was enough to be dealing with. Olivia and lunch with Kathleen and figuring out how he was going to reach Dickie and Elizabeth.
"Hey Dad. Brought your clothes." Kathleen dropped the gym bag by his feet and kissed his cheek and gave him a hug before she took her seat. It meant more than she knew.
"Hey, Kathleen." She pushed off her furry cap and shook out her long, honey-blonde hair and took a long drink from her water glass. Her cheeks were rosy from the wind outside, but she was pale, and her eyes were bloodshot. "How are you?"
"Fine. How's Olivia?"
Kathleen was hung over. Elliot bit his tongue before he could say so. "Doing better." Olivia was starting to get sick of Elliot. "The Doc says she might be allowed to go home in a few days." If there was someone around to stay with her - he hadn't broken that news to Olivia or Toby yet.
"Has she got her memory back?"
"The doctor said she probably won't ever remember the fall, but she's following conversations better. She sounds more like herself." She wasn't the Olivia he knew, but her confidence was creeping back. Warner and her doctor were starting to sound more confident too, when they talked about a full recovery. "It's going to be weeks before they even consider letting her back on light duties. She's going to go stir crazy."
"I'll bet. I'm trying to imagine you with a month on your hands."
"It wouldn't be pretty."
Were they really going to sit here and pretend they didn't both know Kathleen had been out getting drunk again? He didn't get anything out of yelling at her; he couldn't ground her when he didn't live with her and it wasn't like it had worked so far. He wanted to storm home and tell Kathy to do something about it but it wouldn't get him anything but a fight. He wanted to drag Kathleen out to meet Lisa, show her the dangers girls faced from scumbags in bars but he didn't want his world in her head. He was helpless. And he was scared to start a fight with Kathleen when he was desperate for her to give Toby a chance.
It was chickenshit to talk about everything but the two biggest issues, but he prodded her until she talked about her friends, and a little about what was going on at school. Elliot was happy to grasp for the reassurance that his relationship with Toby wasn't going to be the only thing she cared about, but it was on his mind as they talked their way through everything but the elephants in the room, and as their sandwiches disappeared and the conversation trickled off, he finally had to ask.
"Do you want to talk about why you got drunk last night, or do you want to talk about Toby?"
Her eyes widened. "Your new boyfriend? I've been told to keep my opinion to myself."
Toby, then. Elliot wondered if it was Maureen or Kathy who'd talked her down. "Not by me. You say what you need to."
She considered for a moment. "The Church says homosexuality's a sin."
"Are you going to tell me your personal life is in line with Vatican policy?"
He could have bitten his tongue off for taking such a cheap shot at his seventeen year-old daughter, but Kathleen thought it was funny.
"Do you really have a problem with gay people?" It was still an effort to say the word.
"Of course not!"
"Maureen said you might."
"Did she? Is that why you kept it a secret?"
"No. I told you-"
"Maybe I thought that when I was twelve. What I have a problem with is you keeping secrets with Maureen. Since August."
"Kathleen..." He understood why it upset her, but he wished she'd get over it. He couldn't fix it now. "I told her because she asked me straight out. I was going to tell the rest of you, but things came up and I didn't. Now I've told you."
She picked up one of the spare straws off the table and slowly tore off the wrapper. "And I have a problem with you lying to Mom all these years."
Pow. Like a punch straight to the gut. "You really believe that? I wasn't... I loved your mother, Kathleen."
She pushed her hair back off her face, looking guilty. "I'm sorry. We shouldn't be talking about this while Olivia's in hospital. Can we talk about something else?"
"Do you really think the four of you and how you're all taking this isn't keeping me awake at night? I'd rather get it out there." He had Maureen; if he could get Kathleen onside, the twins would follow. "Just say whatever it is you want to say. Ask whatever's on your mind."
That was an invitation Kathleen could never turn down. She put her elbows on the table and looked him straight in the eye. "I don't believe you. You don't just like women one day and men the next."
Elliot still didn't know if it was 'men' or just Toby. The things he did with Toby, he didn't want to do with anyone else. The idea of being with another guy felt almost as alien as it had before his feelings stirred for Toby. Another item on the list of things he was never going to discuss with his daughter. "You don't think you'll ever change?"
"Not into a lesbian."
Elliot swallowed. "If you ever do, I'll still love you just as much as I do now."
She cut him a look. He wasn't going to get anywhere playing the good dad. He didn't know if she'd like Toby, but he was sure Toby would like her.
"It wasn't your mother one day and Toby the next. It wasn't... easy."
"Is being gay new for him, too?"
Elliot could have done without the sarcasm, but he wasn't fighting that battle here. "No. But it was a mid-life thing. He was married once, like me."
"Until he left his wife for a man?"
"She died."
"Oh." A flash of shame. "I'm sorry."
"He had a lot of bad years. He buried his wife, his son. And his father." He was going to make sure all his kids knew that much, before they met him. It wouldn't hurt if it earned Toby a little sympathy.
"Maureen said you've met his daughter."
"Holly."
She folded her arms. "How does she feel about her dad turning gay?"
"She's happy he has someone." Still not so happy about who it was, but she was getting over it.
"Isn't that nice for her."
"Yes, it is nice for her. And it's nice for Toby, to have her support." He winced. He'd promised he wouldn't snap at her. "Look, Kathleen... I know we fight about a lot of things, but I need you to cut me some slack on this. I don't know what I would have done without him this week. He means a lot to me, and you all have to fit together somehow."
Kathleen's eyes narrowed. "So like it or not, I just have to get over it?"
"That's not what I-"
She rubbed her head, looking exhausted. "You want to know why no one's turning cartwheels for you? You made Mom cry. And now you're just dancing off with someone new, and she's still alone. It's not fair on her."
There was no one in the world to match Kathleen for making Elliot feel like a scumbag. He couldn't pretend his kids hadn't heard the fights and tiptoed through the frosty silences. "I'm not the one who ended the marriage."
"Yes, you are. You checked out. She's just the one who filed the papers. We live in that house, remember? We're not deaf and I'm not stupid. You made Mom cry."
He did. He was never going to excuse it, and he was never going to win any points telling Kathleen how much Kathy hurt him as well, and especially not when Kathleen looked on the verge of tears herself. "I didn't go looking for this. When your mother left I didn't..." He shook his head. He didn't want Kathleen to know what a fucking mess he'd been. "I buried myself in work. I wasn't painting the town red. It was a big deal to even make a friend." A year ago Elliot hadn't seen a future at all, and now he was getting excited by the idea of a long weekend with Toby and his kids in Vermont.
Kathleen sipped her drink, played with her straw, getting her composure back.
"You're probably right. I don't deserve this. I didn't earn it. It just is. I fell into it and I'm lucky as hell." He was going to do it. As soon as he sorted Thanksgiving custody arrangements with Kathy, he was booked.
"I didn't say you didn't deserve it," she said quietly.
They fell quiet, and Elliot wished he knew how to bridge the gap. He'd been through all the usual stuff with Maureen, but in the end Maureen had always known he was on her side. With Kathleen, it was like a switch flipped when she was fifteen, and she hadn't trusted him since.
She let her hair fall forward to hide her face, and suddenly Elliot was looking at Weber's last victim, huddled on a bed and too ashamed to tell her father. It felt like someone put a vice around his ribs.
"Kathleen... I just want to make sure... If something ever goes wrong, I need to know you'll call me."
"Sure."
"I mean it. When you got that DUI last year I should have been your first call. If you ever get pulled up by the police again, or if someone ever... If you ever get hurt, you..."
"Dad..."
"If you ever find yourself in a crack den in Bolivia or you just need a ride home from Montauk at two in the morning, even if I'm mad about something else, you call me and I'll be there. I want to be there. You know that, right?"
"I know."
"Even if I'm angry about you being in Bolivia."
She rolled her eyes.
"I mean it. Tell me you understand."
She finally looked at him properly, and said, "I understand."
"I love you."
She heaved a little sigh, embarrassed. "Love you too, Dad."
Elliot sat back, satisfied he'd made his point as well as he could. He wouldn't know if she trusted him until the next time.
"So when are we going to meet this guy?"
"Soon." He ignored her look. He'd introduce them when she could ask that without it sounding like a threat. Toby had been through enough shit in his life without facing Kathleen's wrath.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Elliot put Olivia's bag down in her bedroom and stood to see her staring in the mirror with big, sad eyes. "I look like hell."
The shadows under her eyes and the shaved half of her head had all blended in with the white gown and the hospital decor of the past few days, but here in her own space, in jeans and a blouse, without make up, it looked ridiculous. "I wouldn't have guessed punk rock could be your thing, but I think if you get a couple of piercings, you could carry it off."
He won a wry look. It wasn't a smile, but it was a good start. "Thank god it's winter, and I can wear hats."
"You could shave it all, start over."
"Maybe." She frowned at her reflection, looking like she was actually considering the idea, and then she hissed and lifted her hand just short of her surgery scar, fisting and flexing her fingers.
"Don't scratch."
"It itches."
"Yeah, but at least you're not barfing anymore."
"Elliot..."
"I'm going."
Elliot left her to it.
Olivia came out in sweats and a baggy flannel shirt. "What are you doing?"
Elliot dropped the blanket on the arm of the couch. "I'm sleeping here."
"The hell you are."
"You're outranked."
She gave him a look that made his skin prickle and his balls creep up. "You're pulling that shit on me?"
"Not my rank." Elliot realised he had his hands up like me might have to ward off blows. "The doctor's. She said you could go home as long as there was someone with you." He spread his arms. "Ergo, me."
"One of us is going to kill the other."
"That's a chance we'll have to take." He kept one eye on her as he dropped the spare pillow into a pillowcase. "You own flannel?"
"Shut up."
He threw the pillow on the blanket and backed off towards the phone and the stash of menus. "What's your mood?"
Olivia sat stiffly and rubbed her forehead, defeated way too easily. "Just get a pizza."
"Do you have a headache?"
"I can't remember what it's like not to have a headache. But right now I'm giddy at the idea of eating something that isn't hospital food, so don't bother to tell me to go to bed."
Elliot wasn't feeling that courageous. He went and ordered a vegetarian, came back to the couch. She was sitting back with her eyes closed, breathing evening out.
"I'm awake." Barely.
When her eyes opened he sat beside her. "I'm staying here for the next few days. I'm going to count out your pills and make you follow doctor's orders. I'm going to keep an eye on your dressing. I'm going to do your laundry. Get used to it."
She looked the least impressed at the idea of Elliot going through her laundry. "Don't you have a family to worry about? Isn't Toby wondering where you've gone?"
"My kids are doing fine, and Toby understands. He saw you in the hospital." When Olivia was back on her own feet he'd make it up to Toby - if Olivia hadn't killed him. This much time together was a lot, even for them, and Elliot talking as much as he had was off the charts. But the doctor had said no TV, no reading, no exercise, and that meant Elliot was all that was left to distract her from wondering whether she still had a career.
Olivia reached to scratch her head, growled and twitched and picked up her pile of mail instead, flipped through the first few and tossed it all back on the coffee table. "I was in there for... How many days?"
"Four."
"Four days. How did the insurance paperwork and bills beat me home?"
"Do you want me to take care of it?"
She slouched back and closed her eyes and waved it off. Later. She looked ready to sleep already. She'd slept all morning, and she was wiped out by the effort of packing her things and coming home. Elliot was about to get up when she opened her eyes again. "Did you say..." Elliot was getting familiar with the way her nose wrinkled when she was searching through fractured memories. "Did Toby meet Captain Cragen?"
"Yeah. The first night." When she was still hooked up to all the machines, and Elliot didn't know if she was going to wake up. "Toby's been... great through all this."
"How was that? Him and the captain?"
He'd told her the story a couple of times already, but he was getting used to repeating himself. "Awkward." Mostly awkward in Elliot's own head. "Nah, it was fine. Cragen tried to pull Toby into bullying me to go on vacation."
She looked at him for a long time. "Have you talked to Toby? About why Cragen's pushing you?"
Elliot didn't answer. He was going to; he just hadn't had a chance yet.
"Elliot... You're divorced because you wouldn't let Kathy in. Do you really want to make the same mistake with Toby?"
He wasn't going to make the same mistake with Toby. He just hadn't got there, yet. He'd been kind of distracted this week.
She heaved a sigh. "You haven't stopped talking in days. Why stop now?"
"I can't talk about this with you."
She went to push her hair back behind her ear, cringing when she hit gauze instead. "I just spent days sitting on bedpans, and now you're threatening to wash my underwear. You're really going to play the privacy card?"
Fair point. There was a fifty percent chance she was going to forget half this conversation anyway. Elliot braced himself. "It's different with Toby."
"How?"
"With Kathy it was about keeping all the horror we deal with away from... I didn't want her tainted with all the dirt we wade through. Lying awake picturing the shit we see every day."
She nodded. She knew all that. She took up the thread. "But Toby's already lived through it. You see him in the victims, the parents of victims. You can't distance yourself the way you used to."
"It's not that. Not just that." That part Elliot had learned to deal with. He stared at the carpet, but he could feel Olivia's eyes on him. She would choose now to stay awake and follow a conversation. "Toby's last... This guy he was with was... bad. A really bad guy."
She pulled her feet up to curl under her. "Is that who abused him in prison?" It wasn't often Liv used that voice on him, the one she used for victims.
"No. Yes. It wasn't that simple."
"Hardly ever is."
Sometimes it was. Elliot liked when it was simple. "I mean the guy wasn't serving time for jay walking."
There was a long quiet. Elliot didn't want to betray any confidences, but holding all of this in was half the problem.
He heard her inhale, the moment she figured it out. "Those photos. That's who Toby was protecting. He had a relationship with the man who murdered those men." Another minute to follow the thought. "That's why you're having trouble in interrogations. It's not the victims you're identifying with. It's the perps."
It felt like the first full breath Elliot had taken in a long time. Olivia got it. Olivia got him. He looked at her. "Haven't I always? Isn't that why I'm so good at the job?"
"Elliot..."
"Yeah." She knew it was true. He slumped back against the couch.
"You're good at the job for a lot of reasons. Because you're smart and when you get your teeth into a problem you don't let go. Because you care about the victims, because you use your anger to fight for justice."
"Because no one in SVU can befriend a rapist or scare the shit out of a suspect like I can."
"You're not like them, El."
He stood. He hadn't been fishing for reassurances. He didn't know what he wanted from her, but he felt like an asshole whining about his life when Olivia had just had her head stapled up. "Do you need anything? I'm gonna take a shower before you hog all the hot water."
The worry was still in her eyes, but she reached for his pillow and curled up ready to nap. "You'd better be quick. Don't expect me to answer the door for the delivery kid."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 53
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