drsquidlove

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: 3082

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 24: Stitches
by Dr Squidlove

Previously, in chapter 23, Lions:
In the post-coital peace of Elliot's first night sleeping over, he finally dug a few details out of Toby about Chris: armed robbery, a store clerk murdered. Elliot didn't feel so good about that, but he felt great about sucking Toby's cock.
Toby made it through talking to Harry about his heroin days without disaster, but it was hardly a bonding experience. The whole vacation at Mother's went well enough until the zoo, when Holly took exception to a trip down memory lane and expressed her firm opinion on which brother ought to be dead.
Toby took Harry to Genevieve's grave and shared memories without Holly's interference. Elliot took time out of painting with Dickie to be a good listener.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"It's not so bad, Toby. A few stitches." He adjusted the phone. "Doc didn't even give me a lollipop." Elliot looked down and wrinkled his nose. He'd been lucky. The doctor cheerfully told him that if the knife had gone a little deeper into his hand, there would have been severed tendons, and he wouldn't have been holding a gun again. He was grateful it was only going to be a week typing reports one-handed.

"I can be there in twenty minutes."

"Seriously, don't bother. I'll be out of here in thirty." Elliot would have liked the company, but it was too late now. Olivia had to wrangle their perp back to the station. It never felt good, coming down from the charge of a fight alone, mind free to replay those two minutes of chaos for hours, how it could have gone better, how it could have gone worse. Toby would have gotten him out of his head.

"And then you'll come here?"

Elliot reached with his left hand for the pants hanging over the chair and wriggled his wallet out of the pocket. "How about I stop by work and get a change of clothes, then I come there?" He flipped it open and dug out the picture Holly had taken a couple of days ago with her new mini polaroid camera. Toby was looking at the camera, lip lifting as he tried not to laugh at the way Holly was bossing him around. It was a nice photo. Elliot carried Toby's picture around, now.

"I can live with that."

Elliot was smiling. He was starting to notice how much he smiled when he was on the phone with Toby. "I'll be at Olivia's whim for a lift, and maybe not a lot of fun, but I'll get there."

"I'll tell Holly to put the balloons away and pack up Twister."

Elliot snorted, and put a hand over his abdomen as the twinge beat out the lingering local anaesthetic. He couldn't bring Toby in, because he still had to go back to the station, and how would he explain Toby there?

Just after she took this, Holly had cheekily asked them to hug for the camera, and Toby had chased her and wrestled it out of her hands. He'd tossed it to Elliot and asked for a picture of him squeezing the life out of Holly. Elliot didn't know if he'd just been messing around, or trying to protect Elliot from having their photo taken together. Elliot wouldn't have minded. He liked how blase Holly seemed to be about it.

Elliot heard Kathy's voice a moment before she swept through the curtain. "Elliot! Elliot, are you all right?"

"I gotta go." He only half-heard Toby's goodbye as he clumsily stuffed the photo away one-handed. "What are you doing here?"

"Captain Cragen called me."

Of course he did. "He shouldn't have done that." Not even when Elliot was this happy to see her.

She put a hand on his wrist above the bandage. "We may be divorced but you're still the father of my children, and I don't need to find out you've been shot a week afterwards from them."

"I haven't been shot-"

"Not this time. Are we going to argue about this, or are you going to tell me what happened?"

She never had time for his shit when he was hurt. He missed that. "Woman came at Olivia with a knife."

"It was a woman?"

Elliot raised an eyebrow. "You like that?"

"Let's save the jokes for when you've stopped bleeding." She managed a weak smile, and then turned serious again. "How bad is it?"

Elliot lifted his flimsy hospital gown to show her the bandage across his abdomen. "Stitches. No major damage. A few days of desk duty."

"Good." The air finally let out of her, and she reached around for a gentle hug.

Elliot bit his lip as he patted her back. He was glad to know she still cared, but Kathy wasn't the one who belonged here anymore. It would have been nice to have Toby rush in and fuss over him, not worrying who might jump to conclusions about seeing them together.

Kathy pulled back, hands on his shoulders. "Do you need to stay with us?"

He would have welcomed that six months ago. Back home to let Kathy play nurse, and a quiet hope she might forget that they were over for a little while. "Nah. I'll be okay." Elliot wanted Toby to play nurse. "Thanks for coming, Kathy, but Olivia's going to get me home. You didn't need to drive all this way. Cragen shouldn't have called you."

"I stopped in to see him when I eventually found out you'd been shot last November. Trust me, he will call me every time you end up in hospital from now on."

"You read the riot act to Cragen?" Elliot wanted to be angry, but he would have cashed in his retirement fund to listen in on that conversation.

"We had words. There's no need for Olivia to drive you; I'm going that way."

Elliot didn't want to go all the way to Glen Oaks just because he couldn't wriggle out of Kathy's offer. "I need to take care of a few things at work, anyway. File an injury report, that sort of thing." Stow his gun, pick up a change of clothes, so Olivia could drive him to Brooklyn instead of Queens. "I'm sorry you came all this way for nothing."

"Not for nothing, Elliot." She squeezed his shoulder. "Coming here wasn't out of my way. I still worry about you."

"I know." On impulse he hugged her with his left arm, glad he had when her fingers curled into his back. The adrenaline from the attack lasted less than two minutes. Her drive in had taken a lot longer. He guided her up to sit beside him on the stretcher. "I could use some company while they do all their paperwork."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Kathy ended up driving him back to the station house. Elliot felt like evidence, being passed along the chain from Kathy to Olivia. The women were friendly and polite, but Elliot could see Kathy's curious look, knew she was wondering if that was where he was going to recuperate. If Elliot had slept with her since Kathy relinquished ownership.

He'd allowed himself a couple of fantasies after the paperwork was filed, before he got distracted pretending he didn't want to think about Toby. Falling into Olivia's arms for a night - if she'd even been willing - had never really been on the cards. It seemed like it would prove Kathy's fears right about there being something between them, sublimated all these years. Whereas breaking the news about Toby... no way would she be able to claim she saw that coming. Elliot kissed her cheek goodbye and promised to call tomorrow, told her to tell the kids he was fine.

He sat carefully at his desk. "How's our knife-wielding mother?"

"In lock-up. She can kiss her custody case goodbye."

Elliot patted the bandage over his mid-section. "Her wouldn't-hurt-a-fly routine has a crimp in it."

Cragen frowned when he saw him. "What are you doing back here, Elliot?"

"Tidying up my desk and then heading home." Elliot held up his envelope. "And delivering this. Off tomorrow and the weekend, desk duty until he checks me out next week."

Cragen plucked the doctor's note from his fingers. "Fat lot of good you'll be on desk duty. You don't type that fast with two hands."

"Happy to take the week off."

Cragen gave him a long look, and Elliot realised it was a long time since he'd suggested taking any time off. "You want it, you take it, but I'm sure we can get you a phone to answer or a stack of financial records to crawl through."

On cue, Olivia stood. "Let's go." She waited until they hit the elevator to ask, "Queens or Brooklyn?"

"Brooklyn."

They were quiet until the Manhattan Bridge, Elliot enjoying the soft buzz of the pain meds taking over. Usually he avoided popping pills, but the nurse had distracted him, and now he didn't know why he didn't usually take them. He didn't hurt at all.

"Thanks for jumping in, Elliot."

He rolled his head to face her and smiled. "Always. Got your back."

"I know."

"Always got your back."

She glanced over. "Are you stoned?"

"A little."

She smiled, looking far down the road. "I feel like this is a golden time to pry for details."

"Details?"

"About your boyfriend."

"No need. Everything's good. Toby's good."

"Is it still strange? A man?"

Elliot prodded around his slow brain. Was it? "Not when I'm with him. When it's the two of us. But sometimes when I'm with other people: at work, or at home, and I wonder what people would think... Sometimes."

"It shouldn't matter what people think."

"It does." Not everyone. But how could he not care what the kids would think? Or Kathy? Or what the guys at the station would say? The only people who didn't care what anybody thought were sociopaths.

"I dated a woman once."

Elliot's head just about twisted off his neck. "You what?"

"So help me, if you try to picture it I'll shoot you."

He wasn't going to, but now she'd put it in his head... "Same goes for you."

"Really?"

Elliot slouched back in his seat. "I know what women can be like. 'Velvet Goldmine' was the first DVD Kathy bought, and she almost wore it out." And Elliot always got lucky after she watched it. He could feel a smile stretching across his face at the memories, but that was off the major topic at hand. Olivia. Dated a woman. "When did you...?"

"A couple of years ago. It lasted a few weeks. It was good but... I like men."

Elliot wanted to ask who. And how. And if she'd found it all confusing and a little terrifying, but he wasn't sure how far she was inviting him in. "Did you ever think about telling people at work?" Telling me, he meant. It would have surprised a lot of people to know Olivia held tighter to her privacy than Elliot did. Olivia didn't tell anyone anything. Not even Elliot. Except today. He got stoned, and she got talkative.

"It never got that far. Have you?"

"No. No, that's not even..." Except when he was sitting on a stretcher in Emergency, and it was his ex-wife that came barrelling in instead of Toby. "I never thought about it before. What it's like for those people. I mean, the hate crimes, sure, all the shit we've seen where everything goes catastrophically wrong. But the quiet stuff, the sideways looks, the not knowing if your friends'll treat you just a little bit differently when they find out... I don't want that."

"Nobody does."

"I'm not ashamed of Toby."

"I know."

"I just don't want to deal with all that."

Olivia glanced over. He could see she was rolling through a whole list of questions. "Does Toby want you to come out at work?"

"He never said it." Wait... It had come up once, weeks ago, talking about Olivia. Elliot fumbled up the memory. "No... He says he doesn't want me to tell anyone at work. I think he thinks some bigot cop'll piss me off and I'll punch 'em."

She pretended she was concentrating on the traffic, but he knew she was stalling. Finally she said, "It's a reasonable concern."

"Yeah." It was. "He wants me to talk to you, though."

"Me?"

"Yeah. I always had to be careful with Kathy, make sure she didn't feel like you had too much of me. Never wanted to give her reason to worry, you know? Toby, he nags me to talk to you. It's nice."

Elliot was starting to feel like he was talking a lot, so he stopped, and enjoyed the quiet. They were almost there.

He climbed out of the sedan carefully, and raised an eyebrow when he found Olivia standing on the kerb waiting for him. "I'm pretty sure I can make it up the stairs on my own."

Olivia took his bag. "Don't want to take any chances."

"You mean you want to stick your nose in."

"Who me?" She gave him a saucy grin, and led the way to the door.

Toby answered as soon as he buzzed. "Do you need a hand up the stairs?"

"No." Elliot shot a pointed look at Olivia, and opened the door when it clicked. Actually, the stairs were swaying a little, but he managed on his own feet and a good grip on the rail.

When they reached the landing, Elliot pulled Olivia into a hug. "Sorry. I'm stoned." He wasn't sorry. He didn't hug her enough.

She patted his back, awkwardly. "Okay, El."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Toby opened his door to find Elliot with his arms around Olivia. He could feel his eyebrows rising. "Um. Come in."

Olivia extracted herself, patting her hair back in place. It was probably a rare thing, to see her this flustered. She offered over a gym bag. "Don't worry, I'm not staying."

"You're welcome if you-"

Elliot spread his arms. "Detective Benson, signing over Stabler to Mr Beecher."

They both looked at Elliot, then Toby looked at Olivia. "Pain meds?"

"Yup."

Elliot ambled in as Holly came out of her room. "Hey Olivia."

Olivia smiled. "Hi Holly. How are you doing?"

"Very well, thank you. How are you?"

"I'm good."

Holly looked Elliot over. "You don't look so bad."

Apart from the bandaged hand and the vacant smile she was right, to Toby's relief.

Elliot mock-whispered, "That's what I keep telling everyone."

Toby rolled his eyes. "He looks bad enough. Olivia, are you sure you don't want to stay?"

"No, I think Elliot needs some rest. Maybe some other time."

"We should." He reached out a hand and she shook it. If she had a problem with Elliot being with him, she hid it well.

"He can have another couple of pills in two hours."

"Thanks, Olivia."

"Bye Holly.

"Bye!"

Toby closed the door, and darted over to catch Elliot before he could drop on the couch. "Trust me, you're going to be incredibly grateful later if I make you piss and change into comfortable clothes now, before you melt into the couch."

He rustled Elliot into the bedroom, uncomfortably conscious of Holly watching them go. Toby supposed tonight was going to be the night she got used to the idea of her father sharing his bed. It seemed too soon, but since she was the one who outed them, she could handle it. Not much danger of sex tonight, anyway.

He could tell by the stiff way Elliot moved as he worked off his shirt and changed into the pair of shorts Toby gave him that the meds were softening off. Toby helped him to stand again, and put a hand on the bandage across his abdomen. "How bad is it really?"

"Not so bad. A few stitches."

"How many?"

Elliot laid his good hand over Toby's. "Eight here. Fourteen in my hand." That hand pressed against the small of Toby's back and pulled him closer. He nuzzled his nose in Toby's neck, worked his way up into a slow kiss. "Missed you."

Toby held him gently. He hadn't believed it was just a couple of scratches, like Elliot had claimed over the phone, and he hadn't supposed it was life-threatening if Elliot called himself, but the bandages still made him feel tender. "This sort of thing happen a lot?"

A light touch up and down Toby's back as Elliot nuzzled along his shoulder. "I've been building my frequent Emergency department miles." His hands drifted up Toby's arms.

Toby nudged him back and touched a scar higher on Elliot's chest. "You've got a pretty big collection." He turned Elliot's arm, brushed his fingers over the bullet wound. "Any serious damage to your hand?"

"Nah. I'll be back at work next week. It was close." He glanced up to meet Toby's eyes and swallowed. "I don't ever want to get stuck behind a desk."

"Is there any point in reminding you to be careful?"

"She was going for Liv."

Of course Elliot thundered in. No point telling him to be careful when someone he cared about was in danger. Toby supposed he counted in that category now.

"Liv dated a woman." His eyes went wide. "I think that was a secret."

"I can keep a secret."

Elliot kissed Toby again, arms wrapping him tight, and Toby rubbed his back.

"C'mon. Before Holly starts jumping to conclusions and making me blush." He had to wiggle out of Elliot's grip, placating him with kisses. He took back the t-shirt he'd left on the bed and found a loose tank top in the gym bag that would be easier for Elliot to pull over his head. The meds hadn't faded right off, judging by the docile way Elliot let Toby guide him into the bathroom, hovering as he pissed and washed and then leading him out to settle on the couch.

Elliot waved off food, so Toby suggested Holly pick out a few movies to choose from while he heated up some leftovers. Over the hum of the microwave, he heard Elliot asking if Holly had any buddy cop movies.

Toby and Holly ate reheated Chinese to a quiet commentary of "Inadmissible," and "Reckless endangerment of civilians, they'd have his badge," and "Fruit of the poison tree."

When the cop dangled a suspect off the side of a building, Holly pointed at the screen. "How about that?"

"I'd be in pretty big trouble with the captain if I did that."

The muttering faded off, and ten minutes later Elliot was slumped back, eyes closed, breath slowing.

Toby patted his arm. "Do you want me to help you to bed?" He prayed Elliot wasn't stoned enough to make a dirty joke about it in front of Holly.

Elliot just shifted so his head was on Toby's shoulder. "Nah, I'll stay."

Toby looked to his other side, but Holly wasn't bothering to smother her smile. She curled in against him, sandwiching Toby between them. Toby relaxed, and turned his attention back to the movie. This wasn't so bad. Though maybe he should have pissed before the movie started.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

end chapter 24

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S.