Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2008 19:06:19 GMT -5
Untamed Secrets That You Keep - Spoilers for 'Wildlife'
by Sue
Ten years going on eleven. That's how long, Elliot thought. Eli squirmed in his arms and his daddy flattened his shimmering curls by kissing the crown of his head. His son was a handful; more than even two full-time parents could handle. His poor boy only had one full-time parent, and he wasn't the one who could be awarded that honor. Elliot felt her eyes, Kathy's eyes, boring into him from where she sat on their bed. Even to his own ears, what he'd told her sounded like fishily fabricated concoction. Kathy had listened as she had done scores of times. Elliot had been stringent with his details. He'd gone undercover to thwart animal smugglers who used said animals to smuggle all sorts of bizarre things, aside from the hapless creatures themselves. That was the truth, as far out there as it sounded. The prime player, Bushido, had really bent the case all out of shape, all over the place.
As he continued to stare out the window, telling lyrics from an old song struck home. He heaved a sigh and his mind skipped and fast forwarded where it saw fit. 'Someone save my life tonight...didn't ya dear...you nearly had me roped and tied...almost hypnotized...sweet freedom whispered in my ears, you're a butterfly...and butterflies are free to fly, fly away...high away...'bye, 'bye.'
Elliot felt his eyes water. Facing the truth wasn't as hard as it used to be. Oh, how she cared. That's right, she and not her excuse that Kathy was going crazy needing to know where he was, what was going on. Her caring had driven her to show up at the dump of a house Bushido ordered he stay in. She had been worried sick out of her mind for his welfare. If the situation had been reversed, he would have done the same, going to her, seeing if she was all right, spitting in danger's face. True, her concern had nearly cost him his life, but he could never fault Olivia. She was his heart, and he'd meant what he'd said as his blood flowed from him upon the damp, dank sidewalk and his life ebbed. He nearly hadn't had breath enough to speak his heart as she crouched over him, willing him not to die. Two bullets had tried to stop him, but he wouldn't be stopped, not until he told her how he really felt. Then he could die.
"Liv, I love you," he wordlessly mouthed in their dark bedroom which was overrun by night shadows. That's what he'd said. If he had had to die, he'd go to his grave knowing that he'd told her. She had to know. Still not saying a word, he continued, "I keep doing this job, and like Tybor, who lost his family to the job, I could lose my family...but I'm not going to lose you, Liv. I won't let that happen. I'd sooner die than lose you, sweetheart."
No, his wounds hadn't killed him and what he could never tell Kathy was working him up and over all over again. His beautiful partner laying her life on the line for him. Olivia interposing her exquisite body to save his ass. Her worry for him driving her to take desperate measures, casting caution to the wind to make sure he was all right.
What was the big mystery about his loving her to death?
If there was one thing he would never forget as long as he lived it would have to be her provocative charade; what a freakin' mind bender. Beyond the Stabler's bedroom window, nothing stirred on the block that they had lived on longer than he'd known...
His partner's name somersaulted in his mind, and all he could think about was how hot Olivia looked in her flimsy, lacey bra. She in that bra...mercy, he recalled and his lips curved in a smile. Her 'girls' had almost verbally beckoned him with, 'Here we are, Elie, you've been wanting to play with us for ages. No time like the present...' His son cried out and daddy squirmed where he stood, having gotten a good ten degrees warmer, both back then when the weirdness had happened, and right now.
Whoa! Liv flashes some flesh and my resolve to keep on being faithful to Kathy turns to mush? Get a grip, Stabler, he sternly admonished himself. But, he caught himself. He relived lapping up the seductive, sensual, sexy look of arousal in Liv's indescribably raunchy eyes. He slipped then, and imagined diving into her, mouth first, the taste of her mouth sweeter than any honey on Earth. He mauled her lips with his.
He dragged his mind out of the gutter, but was only partly successful. What if she had pranced out of that bathroom, as she had, but minus her pants? Good Lord! She had given him a private parade, and what he wouldn't have given to join the marching band. If it hadn't been for Bushido intruding, whom he had wanted to yell at to clear out. He wasn't a cheat, not in all these years of married life...and yet with Olivia?
*"Are you ready for me, Daddy?"*
'Been ready for you, baby, that very first day you locked your big brown eyes with mine and I knew you'd be trouble,' Elliot silently said to himself. 'The kind of trouble any red-blooded man dreams about, and you're not a dream. You're real and I love you, and I don't think I'm going way out on a limb feeling that you love me just as much.'
The love they harbored for each other jumpstarted his heart and it bucked as though a thousand volts had just passed through it. His arms felt rubbery and his baby cried out in alarm, thinking that he was about to be dropped.
"Easy, little man," his father reassured. "I've got ya."
He should have told himself that when Olivia pressed in hard against him and he'd willed himself to freeze. The majority of his body members had complied. Except Mr.-Make-Me-Happy, that is. She hadn't stroked it...not exactly, though she'd come mighty close in his recollection. Just having her so close and scantily clothed had done its work. For all intents and purposes she had looked all prepared to dry hump him in front of their unwelcomed, surly audience. While having been fully cognizant of them making threats and warning his 'pro' to get out, he had nearly succumbed. That explained how embarrassed he'd been. How stumbly-fumbly and slow-witted he had behaved with her draped all over him. He'd snapped erect, with all systems go, but by sheer will of steel, he had quelled the orgasmic release. His stiffness had vanished in a flash when Bushido ordered Liv to get gone.
Like irregular pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, jagged wisps of that wack conversation filtered into his conscious mind, wrecking havoc with his determination to keep his mind from spinning out of control. But he was tired, it having been such a long and riveting day; he could have become yet another NYPD statistic. There was also the brutal truth that he liked thinking about Olivia just the way she had been...delicious for him to taste her and take her in all her sultry, stunning glory.
*"Oh, didn't know we were having a party...each."
"Guy's gotta eat, huh?"
"Why so tense?"
"Um...not tonight."
"Well, guess what? You still gotta pay."*
I'd pay you, Liv, just to hear you talk like that to me again, Elliot woolgathered, catching himself right before he groaned aloud.
Honest to God, he thought Bushido had a mind to kill her or even order them to have sex for his perverted satisfaction, but thankfully, he had ordered that she be thrown out without her shirt or any shred of decency.
She risks everything for me...her life...her happiness...her sanity for me on a dime, Elliot garnered, and I force her to stick it out while I flounder in this loveless marriage. If I ain't a piece of work, I wanna know who is?
"Elliot..."
"Yeah?"
"Are you going to stand there all night?"
When he turned his head to give Kathy a look, he saw her resettling herself beneath the blanket, piling the covers over her head. From beneath her covert she said, "He needs changing."
*Diaper duty* Elliot thought, grimacing. One minute undercover, the next making sure his son's bottom wasn't wet or soiled...all in a day's work. The diaper was dry, but the telltale odor was a dead giveaway that Eli needed a new one.
"Yeah. I got it."
The soiled diaper was off, and so was the bridle on Elliot's thoughts concerning what had transpired in that dingy, sleazy dive of a place to be holed-up in.
Tried as he willed he couldn't stop thinking about how black her bra was, how siren-like she had been with him as though she wasn't acting. Of course she'd been acting, hadn't she? He was having second thoughts when he thought about how wanton her gaze at him, as though really wanting him, had been. Olivia wanting him? That decked him like a sack of concrete laced with millstone bricks. Was that why she hadn't had a wit of trouble tangling her arms about his neck and freely feeling him up with her entire body?
She did dangerous things to him, things she wasn't aware of, but so good at doing.
As his baser instinct slowly began winning out, his mind tipped to the titillating and this time he let his randy thoughts take him where they wanted as absentmindedly he kept swabbing Eli's rosy pink bottom with a biodegradable baby wipe.
He let Olivia pour herself over and into him. His hands awoke to the fact that her curves implored for his hungry touch. He was starving for Liv, and with that thought, Elliot relished his digging his fingers into the sides of her hips. She groaned when he growled her name. He smiled when her eager lips nipped then sucked his neck.
Eli latched onto his father's left thumb and giggled, gurgling.
"Ah...tough guy," he said with a cooing lilt. His baby was beautiful, a father's pride and joy. He began diapering Eli wholly on auto-pilot.
Elliot swallowed hard, imagining the caresses he plied on Liv's flawless velvety skin with his clumsy hands. She nibbled on his ear and his hand glided down to her buttock, giving it a healthy squeeze. The fineness of this woman was criminal. No wonder looking at her day in, day out, craving the forbidden had taken its exacting toll on his eroding psyche. But in that electrically-charged, grubby room, the boundaries had been temporarily sloughed. They had been man and woman, as elemental as fire and ice, who would never be able to get enough of each other. Though it had all been playacting, he had felt Liv's sincerity. They'd been partners for too long. Just as his soul cried out for her, hers cried out for him too.
Elliot shook his head and realized that Eli, who stared at him with round innocent eyes, was still exposed. His infant mind was incapable of understanding why his old man was in a zone unto himself. Quickly, a bemused Elliot finished with the diapering.
"Sorry, sweetie, daddy's a.w.o.l. Blame your old man's hormones and my partner's total beauty 'cause she's the whole package." Muttering softly to himself, he wielded his self-evaluation like a switchblade. "I'm unbelievable. Hell, I'm no better than a smitten teen with his first crush, the size of Mount Everest, not wanting for a moment to help myself." He blinked at that piece of truth, tasting Liv's perfection and his being hopelessly in love with her, now more than ever. If wishes were being granted, his was being her husband so he could give her all the babies she wanted. "Liv's every man's fantasy. Most of all mine." He recalled the feral wantonness in Bushido's sick face when Olivia had held herself against Elliot. He grabbed his son's lively feet to kiss their souls. "No, your old man's not lusting after your godmother, baby. I'm loving her till the day I croak," he muttered under his breath, picking Eli up, giving him a heft or two. "She really doesn't need this crap from me, especially when I'm the dumbass basket case. She doesn't need it, but I can't help myself. Liv's incomparable. It doesn't take a near-death experience for me to finally wake up. I want her, now and forever."
He laid Eli down in his crib. For once, the cutie didn't make a fuss about being left to fall asleep on his own, as though he had understood his father's confession and was thinking it over. Elliot got into bed with Kathy, taking the liberty of imagining that Liv lay beside him. Oh, how he wished, but he was thankful that they'd be together tomorrow cracking jokes, getting each other coffee or whatever there was to eat, looking each other in the eyes having the power to read the other's mind.
'What is tomorrow going to be like with us? Now that we've seen each other a few stitches shy of naked, will it be awkward?' With his hands, their fingers interlocked, supporting his head, Elliot lay wide awake, staring blankly at the ceiling, for quite a while exploring the possibilities of all the implications he thought could surface. Finally, though, the one thought that slowed his mind's rapid firing evened out his breathing. They knew where to draw the line; they'd been doing it for years now. They were professionals and they had enough professionalism to keep any ill-at-ease feelings at bay.
Still...that brazen lacey bra, guarding her wealth, was still giving him trouble...
It was a stroke past three-twenty a.m. when Elliot began mumbling in his sleep, softly at first, but the more he said, the louder he got. In his dippy dream, Liv and he were being held captive in this bizarre zoo where the animals were the spectators. She and he were imprisoned in some sort of cage with an invisible fence. They wore what they had worn in front of Bushido. He was perched atop an elephant. The tusked pachyderm was black and white polka dotted. Bushido was yelling at them how great they were going to look mounted on his trophy wall. But, before that happened, he wanted them to get down and dirty to immortalize the moment.
Fitfully, Elliot thrashed from side to side, crying out.
"You sick bastard! You know what you can do with yourself!"
"What?" Having thought that she heard Eli's whimpers, Kathy fell out of sleep, momentarily dazed between being comatose and awake. Elliot was talking...in his sleep.
"S-stay with me, Liv. I need you. No one's ever going to hurt you--not while I'm around. No m-matter what, I'll always protect you. I need you here with me, s-saving and loving m-my sorry ass. Forget that dirtbag who means squat! What matters is I love you, Liv. Always have, always will!"
Immediately, she became more awake, more outraged hearing her husband's passionate declarations until holding it in was an impossibility. "Dirtbag!" Kathy raged, giving her unconscious husband a good swift one in the small of his back. "How dare you, you piece of spit!"
"What the hell!" Elliot blustered in lion-like furor, instinctively rubbing the hurt from his affected area. "Why the hell did you do--"
"So..." Kathy waspishly fumed, beside herself with anger, "you love Liv. Is that it, Elliot? How much longer did you think you'd fool me? You've always loved her? Always will love her? Like it's some out of the blue newsflash. There's always been this weird thing between you. Only now there's no denying it. I heard it from your own lying mouth! Why I even took you back...I should have my head examined. Get the hell out of my bed. Get the hell out of my house! Get the hell out of my life, you two-timing louse!"
Before he knew what hit him, Elliot was on the floor, having been shoved out of bed. Adeptly, Kathy had used a flurry of kicks and punches to show she meant business about where he belonged.
"Hey, yo, b-but what? Kath--"
"Shut up, you frickin' liar! You only tell the truth when you're fast asleep. And thank God! Love that two-faced b**** all you want, you, you! I want you out of this house!" she screamed. "You suck as a husband--you suck as a father! I hate you. You and your precious Olivia can take the fastest route to hell!"
Stunned into stupor, Elliot watched Kathy flee into their bathroom. With a mighty slam of its door, she sealed herself in. Eli had been jolted awake and was crying at the top of his lungs. His father sprang to his feet in comfort mode. Despite the soreness that gripped his body, he saw to his infant son's needs. In a tone riddled with recrimination, Elliot soothed, "Well, little man, your old man's busted and busted good. Point of no return, looks like, with limited or no visitation. She'll fight hard to win that either way 'cause she knows I'll lose my mind not being allowed to see you, Lizzy and Dickie...so much or at all."
Standing with his son, clutching him close to his chest, Elliot squeezed his eyes shut and whispered, "Love is a four-letter word in this house." He leaned his forehead against the crown of Eli's head to revel in the smell of babyhood and purity. A defiant smile worked Elliot's lips. "I will love you, Liv, and I'll have you. Try and stop me," he flung at the closed bathroom door. He kissed his son's warm scalp and his smile held intact. "I know how to fight too..."
As Olivia had told him, he had numerous battle scars to prove it.
End
by Sue
Ten years going on eleven. That's how long, Elliot thought. Eli squirmed in his arms and his daddy flattened his shimmering curls by kissing the crown of his head. His son was a handful; more than even two full-time parents could handle. His poor boy only had one full-time parent, and he wasn't the one who could be awarded that honor. Elliot felt her eyes, Kathy's eyes, boring into him from where she sat on their bed. Even to his own ears, what he'd told her sounded like fishily fabricated concoction. Kathy had listened as she had done scores of times. Elliot had been stringent with his details. He'd gone undercover to thwart animal smugglers who used said animals to smuggle all sorts of bizarre things, aside from the hapless creatures themselves. That was the truth, as far out there as it sounded. The prime player, Bushido, had really bent the case all out of shape, all over the place.
As he continued to stare out the window, telling lyrics from an old song struck home. He heaved a sigh and his mind skipped and fast forwarded where it saw fit. 'Someone save my life tonight...didn't ya dear...you nearly had me roped and tied...almost hypnotized...sweet freedom whispered in my ears, you're a butterfly...and butterflies are free to fly, fly away...high away...'bye, 'bye.'
Elliot felt his eyes water. Facing the truth wasn't as hard as it used to be. Oh, how she cared. That's right, she and not her excuse that Kathy was going crazy needing to know where he was, what was going on. Her caring had driven her to show up at the dump of a house Bushido ordered he stay in. She had been worried sick out of her mind for his welfare. If the situation had been reversed, he would have done the same, going to her, seeing if she was all right, spitting in danger's face. True, her concern had nearly cost him his life, but he could never fault Olivia. She was his heart, and he'd meant what he'd said as his blood flowed from him upon the damp, dank sidewalk and his life ebbed. He nearly hadn't had breath enough to speak his heart as she crouched over him, willing him not to die. Two bullets had tried to stop him, but he wouldn't be stopped, not until he told her how he really felt. Then he could die.
"Liv, I love you," he wordlessly mouthed in their dark bedroom which was overrun by night shadows. That's what he'd said. If he had had to die, he'd go to his grave knowing that he'd told her. She had to know. Still not saying a word, he continued, "I keep doing this job, and like Tybor, who lost his family to the job, I could lose my family...but I'm not going to lose you, Liv. I won't let that happen. I'd sooner die than lose you, sweetheart."
No, his wounds hadn't killed him and what he could never tell Kathy was working him up and over all over again. His beautiful partner laying her life on the line for him. Olivia interposing her exquisite body to save his ass. Her worry for him driving her to take desperate measures, casting caution to the wind to make sure he was all right.
What was the big mystery about his loving her to death?
If there was one thing he would never forget as long as he lived it would have to be her provocative charade; what a freakin' mind bender. Beyond the Stabler's bedroom window, nothing stirred on the block that they had lived on longer than he'd known...
His partner's name somersaulted in his mind, and all he could think about was how hot Olivia looked in her flimsy, lacey bra. She in that bra...mercy, he recalled and his lips curved in a smile. Her 'girls' had almost verbally beckoned him with, 'Here we are, Elie, you've been wanting to play with us for ages. No time like the present...' His son cried out and daddy squirmed where he stood, having gotten a good ten degrees warmer, both back then when the weirdness had happened, and right now.
Whoa! Liv flashes some flesh and my resolve to keep on being faithful to Kathy turns to mush? Get a grip, Stabler, he sternly admonished himself. But, he caught himself. He relived lapping up the seductive, sensual, sexy look of arousal in Liv's indescribably raunchy eyes. He slipped then, and imagined diving into her, mouth first, the taste of her mouth sweeter than any honey on Earth. He mauled her lips with his.
He dragged his mind out of the gutter, but was only partly successful. What if she had pranced out of that bathroom, as she had, but minus her pants? Good Lord! She had given him a private parade, and what he wouldn't have given to join the marching band. If it hadn't been for Bushido intruding, whom he had wanted to yell at to clear out. He wasn't a cheat, not in all these years of married life...and yet with Olivia?
*"Are you ready for me, Daddy?"*
'Been ready for you, baby, that very first day you locked your big brown eyes with mine and I knew you'd be trouble,' Elliot silently said to himself. 'The kind of trouble any red-blooded man dreams about, and you're not a dream. You're real and I love you, and I don't think I'm going way out on a limb feeling that you love me just as much.'
The love they harbored for each other jumpstarted his heart and it bucked as though a thousand volts had just passed through it. His arms felt rubbery and his baby cried out in alarm, thinking that he was about to be dropped.
"Easy, little man," his father reassured. "I've got ya."
He should have told himself that when Olivia pressed in hard against him and he'd willed himself to freeze. The majority of his body members had complied. Except Mr.-Make-Me-Happy, that is. She hadn't stroked it...not exactly, though she'd come mighty close in his recollection. Just having her so close and scantily clothed had done its work. For all intents and purposes she had looked all prepared to dry hump him in front of their unwelcomed, surly audience. While having been fully cognizant of them making threats and warning his 'pro' to get out, he had nearly succumbed. That explained how embarrassed he'd been. How stumbly-fumbly and slow-witted he had behaved with her draped all over him. He'd snapped erect, with all systems go, but by sheer will of steel, he had quelled the orgasmic release. His stiffness had vanished in a flash when Bushido ordered Liv to get gone.
Like irregular pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, jagged wisps of that wack conversation filtered into his conscious mind, wrecking havoc with his determination to keep his mind from spinning out of control. But he was tired, it having been such a long and riveting day; he could have become yet another NYPD statistic. There was also the brutal truth that he liked thinking about Olivia just the way she had been...delicious for him to taste her and take her in all her sultry, stunning glory.
*"Oh, didn't know we were having a party...each."
"Guy's gotta eat, huh?"
"Why so tense?"
"Um...not tonight."
"Well, guess what? You still gotta pay."*
I'd pay you, Liv, just to hear you talk like that to me again, Elliot woolgathered, catching himself right before he groaned aloud.
Honest to God, he thought Bushido had a mind to kill her or even order them to have sex for his perverted satisfaction, but thankfully, he had ordered that she be thrown out without her shirt or any shred of decency.
She risks everything for me...her life...her happiness...her sanity for me on a dime, Elliot garnered, and I force her to stick it out while I flounder in this loveless marriage. If I ain't a piece of work, I wanna know who is?
"Elliot..."
"Yeah?"
"Are you going to stand there all night?"
When he turned his head to give Kathy a look, he saw her resettling herself beneath the blanket, piling the covers over her head. From beneath her covert she said, "He needs changing."
*Diaper duty* Elliot thought, grimacing. One minute undercover, the next making sure his son's bottom wasn't wet or soiled...all in a day's work. The diaper was dry, but the telltale odor was a dead giveaway that Eli needed a new one.
"Yeah. I got it."
The soiled diaper was off, and so was the bridle on Elliot's thoughts concerning what had transpired in that dingy, sleazy dive of a place to be holed-up in.
Tried as he willed he couldn't stop thinking about how black her bra was, how siren-like she had been with him as though she wasn't acting. Of course she'd been acting, hadn't she? He was having second thoughts when he thought about how wanton her gaze at him, as though really wanting him, had been. Olivia wanting him? That decked him like a sack of concrete laced with millstone bricks. Was that why she hadn't had a wit of trouble tangling her arms about his neck and freely feeling him up with her entire body?
She did dangerous things to him, things she wasn't aware of, but so good at doing.
As his baser instinct slowly began winning out, his mind tipped to the titillating and this time he let his randy thoughts take him where they wanted as absentmindedly he kept swabbing Eli's rosy pink bottom with a biodegradable baby wipe.
He let Olivia pour herself over and into him. His hands awoke to the fact that her curves implored for his hungry touch. He was starving for Liv, and with that thought, Elliot relished his digging his fingers into the sides of her hips. She groaned when he growled her name. He smiled when her eager lips nipped then sucked his neck.
Eli latched onto his father's left thumb and giggled, gurgling.
"Ah...tough guy," he said with a cooing lilt. His baby was beautiful, a father's pride and joy. He began diapering Eli wholly on auto-pilot.
Elliot swallowed hard, imagining the caresses he plied on Liv's flawless velvety skin with his clumsy hands. She nibbled on his ear and his hand glided down to her buttock, giving it a healthy squeeze. The fineness of this woman was criminal. No wonder looking at her day in, day out, craving the forbidden had taken its exacting toll on his eroding psyche. But in that electrically-charged, grubby room, the boundaries had been temporarily sloughed. They had been man and woman, as elemental as fire and ice, who would never be able to get enough of each other. Though it had all been playacting, he had felt Liv's sincerity. They'd been partners for too long. Just as his soul cried out for her, hers cried out for him too.
Elliot shook his head and realized that Eli, who stared at him with round innocent eyes, was still exposed. His infant mind was incapable of understanding why his old man was in a zone unto himself. Quickly, a bemused Elliot finished with the diapering.
"Sorry, sweetie, daddy's a.w.o.l. Blame your old man's hormones and my partner's total beauty 'cause she's the whole package." Muttering softly to himself, he wielded his self-evaluation like a switchblade. "I'm unbelievable. Hell, I'm no better than a smitten teen with his first crush, the size of Mount Everest, not wanting for a moment to help myself." He blinked at that piece of truth, tasting Liv's perfection and his being hopelessly in love with her, now more than ever. If wishes were being granted, his was being her husband so he could give her all the babies she wanted. "Liv's every man's fantasy. Most of all mine." He recalled the feral wantonness in Bushido's sick face when Olivia had held herself against Elliot. He grabbed his son's lively feet to kiss their souls. "No, your old man's not lusting after your godmother, baby. I'm loving her till the day I croak," he muttered under his breath, picking Eli up, giving him a heft or two. "She really doesn't need this crap from me, especially when I'm the dumbass basket case. She doesn't need it, but I can't help myself. Liv's incomparable. It doesn't take a near-death experience for me to finally wake up. I want her, now and forever."
He laid Eli down in his crib. For once, the cutie didn't make a fuss about being left to fall asleep on his own, as though he had understood his father's confession and was thinking it over. Elliot got into bed with Kathy, taking the liberty of imagining that Liv lay beside him. Oh, how he wished, but he was thankful that they'd be together tomorrow cracking jokes, getting each other coffee or whatever there was to eat, looking each other in the eyes having the power to read the other's mind.
'What is tomorrow going to be like with us? Now that we've seen each other a few stitches shy of naked, will it be awkward?' With his hands, their fingers interlocked, supporting his head, Elliot lay wide awake, staring blankly at the ceiling, for quite a while exploring the possibilities of all the implications he thought could surface. Finally, though, the one thought that slowed his mind's rapid firing evened out his breathing. They knew where to draw the line; they'd been doing it for years now. They were professionals and they had enough professionalism to keep any ill-at-ease feelings at bay.
Still...that brazen lacey bra, guarding her wealth, was still giving him trouble...
It was a stroke past three-twenty a.m. when Elliot began mumbling in his sleep, softly at first, but the more he said, the louder he got. In his dippy dream, Liv and he were being held captive in this bizarre zoo where the animals were the spectators. She and he were imprisoned in some sort of cage with an invisible fence. They wore what they had worn in front of Bushido. He was perched atop an elephant. The tusked pachyderm was black and white polka dotted. Bushido was yelling at them how great they were going to look mounted on his trophy wall. But, before that happened, he wanted them to get down and dirty to immortalize the moment.
Fitfully, Elliot thrashed from side to side, crying out.
"You sick bastard! You know what you can do with yourself!"
"What?" Having thought that she heard Eli's whimpers, Kathy fell out of sleep, momentarily dazed between being comatose and awake. Elliot was talking...in his sleep.
"S-stay with me, Liv. I need you. No one's ever going to hurt you--not while I'm around. No m-matter what, I'll always protect you. I need you here with me, s-saving and loving m-my sorry ass. Forget that dirtbag who means squat! What matters is I love you, Liv. Always have, always will!"
Immediately, she became more awake, more outraged hearing her husband's passionate declarations until holding it in was an impossibility. "Dirtbag!" Kathy raged, giving her unconscious husband a good swift one in the small of his back. "How dare you, you piece of spit!"
"What the hell!" Elliot blustered in lion-like furor, instinctively rubbing the hurt from his affected area. "Why the hell did you do--"
"So..." Kathy waspishly fumed, beside herself with anger, "you love Liv. Is that it, Elliot? How much longer did you think you'd fool me? You've always loved her? Always will love her? Like it's some out of the blue newsflash. There's always been this weird thing between you. Only now there's no denying it. I heard it from your own lying mouth! Why I even took you back...I should have my head examined. Get the hell out of my bed. Get the hell out of my house! Get the hell out of my life, you two-timing louse!"
Before he knew what hit him, Elliot was on the floor, having been shoved out of bed. Adeptly, Kathy had used a flurry of kicks and punches to show she meant business about where he belonged.
"Hey, yo, b-but what? Kath--"
"Shut up, you frickin' liar! You only tell the truth when you're fast asleep. And thank God! Love that two-faced b**** all you want, you, you! I want you out of this house!" she screamed. "You suck as a husband--you suck as a father! I hate you. You and your precious Olivia can take the fastest route to hell!"
Stunned into stupor, Elliot watched Kathy flee into their bathroom. With a mighty slam of its door, she sealed herself in. Eli had been jolted awake and was crying at the top of his lungs. His father sprang to his feet in comfort mode. Despite the soreness that gripped his body, he saw to his infant son's needs. In a tone riddled with recrimination, Elliot soothed, "Well, little man, your old man's busted and busted good. Point of no return, looks like, with limited or no visitation. She'll fight hard to win that either way 'cause she knows I'll lose my mind not being allowed to see you, Lizzy and Dickie...so much or at all."
Standing with his son, clutching him close to his chest, Elliot squeezed his eyes shut and whispered, "Love is a four-letter word in this house." He leaned his forehead against the crown of Eli's head to revel in the smell of babyhood and purity. A defiant smile worked Elliot's lips. "I will love you, Liv, and I'll have you. Try and stop me," he flung at the closed bathroom door. He kissed his son's warm scalp and his smile held intact. "I know how to fight too..."
As Olivia had told him, he had numerous battle scars to prove it.
End