It's raining for the third night in a row.
Inconvenienced New Yorkers scurry down the wet sidewalks, umbrellas clutched in their fists. Deep puddles are forming along the perimeters of street curbs. Cabs are scarce. She can hear the insentient pattering as she peers from her office window to the world beneath.
Olivia lets a heavy sigh leave her lips. The last few weeks have been hell. She caught a case, a big one – the kind that finds her and the squad working long nights, sleeping in shifts on the stiff mattress that inhabit the crib. There had been several cups of shitty gas station coffee, and stiff backs and necks from the hours spent tailing their suspect in their company-issued sedans.
She only removed her holster from her hip twice in four days. Both times to take a quick unsatisfying shower in the locker room.
At first the distraction had been welcomed, even when it kept her from her son's bedtime. But here she is at the end of a 96-hour stint and she doesn't want to go home. She desperately wants to see her son, but she doesn't want to deal with the unwelcomed thoughts that come soon after she's tucked him in for the night.
She used to be good at night.
The same isolation she is avoiding made her a stellar detective once. Before, she used the deep cover of night to pour over impossible cases. She looked-over victim statements, reworked alibis and motives. She would use the dark concealment to reanalyze crime scene photos, often taking their violent images with her to bed. She owes her career to the night.
Now the thought of returning to that life makes her body ache.
She misses him, and that makes her body ache, too.
She had made the decision to end their relationship because she didn't know what else to do. She couldn't offer a solution to their mounting issues, so she did what she always does, she let him go before his waiting around turned into resentment. Before he realized she wasn't the one who could give him all the things he desired.
She had let him in, and she regrets it a little – feels guilty about it.
If she had been more careful this wouldn't have happened to them. It took months to iron out the expanse of their relationship. It had been complicated from the start – but there was reassurance in the way that he held her, looked at her, cared for her son. If she hadn't said yes so willingly to his affections, to his words of a future together she wouldn't have hurt him.
She shouldn't have told him she loved him.
She finally let the words leave her lips, on a night much like this. It was raining and she was curled into him. Their sweaty bare limbs were tangled in one another. Her eyes were heavy with exhaustion, she felt warm, slated, and could tell he was close to sleep.
She felt so safe when she was this close to him. So she gave the internal guard she normally kept working overtime the night off.
She whispered the words softly against his skin and she felt him clutch her tighter. He rolled her over then, his face burying itself in her neck, her hair. He pressed his lips to hers and spoke his worlds of love for her directly against her mouth.
In the morning they woke tangled in her crumpled sheets, they showered together, and afterwards took Noah to the park.
She lets an out a soft frustrating groan.
Here she is again. How did she let herself get here?
Breaking-up with Brian had been different, and when he moved the last few items from their apartment she felt a weight being lifted off her shoulders, she released a breath she didn't realize she had been holding. They didn't want the same things. That made it an easy choice, a rational decision. Their relationship was built on convenience and rational, never on real emotions. She cared deeply for him, but not the way a woman should care for her lover. She actually slept soundly alone, on a mattress she had only months prior purchased for two.
