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How is it that he had spent ten years in Italy and yet the most beautiful olive skin he’d ever seen glistened before him in an apartment in Manhattan.
The irony was not lost on him as his gaze cast downward from her espresso colored eyes and over the plains of her body which gleamed for him as the shower pelted against it. He never knew he could be jealous of a water droplet; yet his jaw clenched as he watched it travel from the notch between her collarbones and then down the valley between her breasts.
Her breasts, heavy and bountiful, puckered before him as her skin adjusted from the cool air in her bathroom to the hot stream they both stood under. A constellation of scars littered her skin and yet, she was no less beautiful than he’d dreamt of. And dreamt of her he had. Both during their partnership and his absence. He looked for her in every pair of brown eyes across the Mediterranean, hoping to catch a glimpse of her spirit, her kindness, her empathy. He put an ocean between them, yet she lived on his mind, his thoughts, his dreams, and sometimes his nightmares. He would wake, sweat drenching his brow, and startle upright in bed. Kathy never had to ask him, she always knew. “You’re dreaming about Olivia,” she would say. “You should call her.” He never did.
Yet, somehow she stands before him in all of her glory. Vulnerable and open to his wandering hands and gaze. He thinks back to moments ago when he saw her flesh for the first time. “I have scars,” she had uttered so quietly, nearly imperceptibly, as he freed her from the confines of her bra, careful not to hurt her ribs. Ribs smattered with splotches of indigo and maroon. Reminders of the beating she had endured. Reminders that made his jaw twitch and his hands curl into fists at his sides.
He’d heard it from Fin. When ‘Tutuola’ flashed across his phone screen earlier today, his heart began to race. His hands became clammy as he struggled to unlock his phone to answer the call. “It’s Olivia,” was all he had a chance to say before Elliot found himself flying down the stair case, the concerned voices of Ayanna and Jet following in his wake. He never stopped to explain. All that mattered was getting to her.
He wanted to rage at Fin, at the world, at Olivia, at himself. Why hadn’t anyone called him the night of the attack? As she lay on the concrete, begging to a God he wasn’t even sure she believed in, to spare her son from witnessing what could have been her demise. He should’ve been there. But he was wise enough not to utter those words to Fin because he had disappeared for ten years and Fin had been there when he hadn’t. A simple, “Where is she now?” was all he asked. “Home,” Fin said simply before adding, “I’m taking Noah. It has to be you.” The call ended there.
He anticipated that she would throw him out. He never imagined they would be here, belly to belly in her shower. Never in a million years, in any of his universes, was he this lucky. It had started when she left him to shower. “I just want to feel clean,” she sighed, dragging her weary limbs into the bathroom. He paced her new apartment, never out of earshot. When he heard her call out, “Elliot,” he was sure he had imagined it. That was until a pained, “I need you to come in here,” followed.
He had opened the door to find her ensconced in a fluffy white robe. He stood, speechless, in the door frame, sure his cheeks were as red as the tomatoes in his mother’s garden. “I can’t reach the clasp on my bra,” she groaned in defeat. “It hurts too much.” He knew his Olivia; she hated asking for help, always had. He swore time stood still as she untied the robe and let it fall to the ground. She stood before him in grey cotton underwear and a bra. Wordlessly, she turned her back to him and pushed her hair to the side. He felt like a pubescent boy as his hands quite literally shook as he reached for the offending garment. Goosebumps spread across her skin like wildfire as his fingertips graced her back. Despite his fumbling, the material yielded and fell away. “Thank you,” she had sighed in relief.
“I’ll leave you to it—“
“I want you to see me—“
Words spoken at the same time, his and hers. She turned to face him, chest bare and exposed. Nipples pebbled and pink-brown like Sicilian terra-cotta. “Liv,” he stammered, hands shaking at his sides.
“I want you to really see me.”
And now he could see nothing else. He barely remembered stripping down to his briefs and climbing into the shower behind her. She was a fever dream, a miracle, an angel appearing to him in the flesh like the ones purported to have materialized before sinners in churches throughout Rome. He had prayed to Padre Pio for her every night, and now she stood before him, an answer to his prayers in the flesh.
He took inventory of her injuries. Past and present. Violet bruises bloomed across her abdomen, matching the ones surrounding her left eye. Among the shades of purple and blue, older injuries could still be seen, refusing to disappear beneath the newer ones.
“You said you wanted to know about my life,” she began. “About what happened to me when you left… this is what happened.”
Fury bubbled beneath his veins like the lava boiling beneath the volcanoes of Sicily, threatening to erupt at any moment and destroy every ounce of history in its wake. He steeled himself, for her. Only for her. Because when she looked up at him with doe eyes, raw and vulnerable and red-rimmed, he knew what she needed was his tenderness, his protection, his love. His anger would have to wait.
He traced a finger beneath her jaw line before leaning in to press a chaste kiss to the bruising on her left cheek bone. Her eyes fluttered closed, lashes tickling his face.
“Nothing’s gonna hurt you, baby,” he whispered. “Not anymore.” He pressed his forehead to hers, salty tears joining shower water to form rivulets traveling down their skin.
“I told him you would break his arms… break his back…” her voice cracked, “Break his face.”
Elliot nodded against her skin, keeping his anger at bay by wrapping his arms around her and tucking her into his frame, beneath his chin. Against his heart, in the place where she had lived on during his absence.
“I wanted to hate you. For leaving me. For not coming back. For just the idea that the next time we would be together would be when you carried the casket at my funeral,” she sobbed into his chest as tears streamed down his face.
“Olivia,” he wrenched out, his voice hoarse and laced with tears. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. So sorry,” he cried into her hair, holding her tight against him. Skin to skin.
“Be here for me now, Elliot.”
He could feel her moving in his grasp so he loosened his embrace. She stared up him, eyes full of forgiveness and mercy that he did not deserve.
“I need you to kiss me.” The request was simple. Honest.
He didn’t deserve to kiss her. Not now. Not ever. What he deserved was to rot in a lake of fire for ever leaving her. For ever denying the love that blossomed in his heart for her. A love that was pure and good. A love he was ashamed of, deeming it sinful and dirty when all along it was innocent and beautiful. No amount of Hail Mary’s would ease his suffering.
“Show me that the scars don’t matter,” her voice sounded small in her admission.
“Olivia,” he groaned, his control slipping. “Olivia Margaret Benson, I want nothing more than to kiss you.”
“So, do it. I just want to feel something that’s not pain or fear. I want to feel love. You said you loved me.”
Unable to deny her a moment longer, cradled her face in his hands, drawing her mouth to his as he kissed her with his whole being, his whole chest.
—
“Please, Elliot - I need, I need,” she whined beneath him in her bed. “I can’t take it anymore!”
He was spooned up behind her, driving himself inside from behind. Channeling his anger and regret into purposeful thrusts. He had tried to tell himself this wouldn’t happen tonight-not with her injuries. Kissing, just kissing, is what he had told himself in the shower. That is, until she reached between them and grasped him through his soaking briefs. He was painful and swollen by that point, his body reacting to her nearness. Her nakedness. He twitched beneath her fingers as she pumped him slowly. He had to physically move her hand off of him so he didn’t cum in his underpants like a teenager.
He wasn’t faring much better now, thrusting up into her from behind, his hands on her breasts. A careful distance from her aching ribs. She was impossibly tight, her walls fluttering around his cock, threatening to milk him for all his worth.
“You’re so close, baby,” he spurred her on with his words. “I can feel it,” he whispered hotly in her ear. Letting go of a breast, his hand traveled past her soft belly to the furry apex between her thighs.
“This what you need, huh?” His calloused fingers massaged circles against the pearl between her lips.
“Oh God!” Olivia cried out, unable to focus on anything but chasing her release.
“You’re so wet, so soft… I don’t know how I lived without this,” he confessed, punctuating his words with deep thrusts of his hips.
“I’m cumming,” she cried, “oh God, I’m cumming. I’m cumming,” she repeated over and over as she found her release. And with her release, she took his as well; his hips jerking out of rhythm as he filled her.
They were silent. Panting out of sync as their bodies calmed. Still intimately connected. Still pulsing and leaking.
“That was…” Elliot began, unable to find the words.
“Yeah,” Olivia nodded, equally speechless.
“It’s never been like that before,” Elliot confessed tenderly as he twirled one of her locks around his finger. He should probably feel guilt for that, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Not now. Not with Olivia Benson naked in his arms.
“For me either,” she whispered as she repositioned, allowing him to slip out of her so she could turn and face him in his arms.
“I don’t want to be just friends with you Olivia Benson,” he confessed as he gathered her in his arms. Face to face. Nose to nose. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she kissed the words into his skin. “Let’s sleep.”