Someone Like You 39/61: A waterfall - Beecher/Stabler

[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.


Author's note: Sooo... Back in post 1, I said this was fifty-ish chapters, because I hadn't figured out how the chapters would break up to the end. Now I've finally done that, and you may notice this has been reset to 61 chapters. (It's not that I've written more; it's just that I've figured out the breaks.) So 61 chapters it will be, unless I am hit with a sudden burst of enthusiasm to expand a sex scene by a couple of thousand words. (Not unheard of for me.)



Rated R for violence and explicit references to sexual violence.

Wordcount this post: 3045

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 39: A waterfall
by Dr Squidlove

Previously, in chapter 38, Smoke:
After the eyeful she got at Franco's, Olivia had some curiosity and concerns as to the current nature of Elliot's relationship with Toby. Elliot preferred to avoid.
Toby called to let Elliot know he was fixing himself up, and to give the audible equivalent of puppy-eyes. Elliot was grateful to avoid, again.
Elliot went maybe too far in an interrogation (depends who you ask), almost pushed too far with Cragen, and then failed to reassure his new snivelling parolee friend that he could help him.
Toby was doing well with Harry, not so well with Holly, who was marking the start of freshman year with a suspension for smoking. Toby's downward spiral into self-flagellation was halted by an invitation to lunch with Elliot.

For those of you who missed it, the lovely haru drew this stunning illustration for last chapter, which captures Toby and Holly perfectly. Wheee!!!




~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Elliot managed to sneak up, paused a couple of tables away to watch Toby fiddling nervously with his watch. Not just Elliot, then. Dressed like a man, thank god: a white shirt and pale blue tie for the office, and he'd got himself a crew cut since Saturday. It looked good on him. He looked neat and ironed and incredibly tired. They weren't here to get back together. Or to indulge the tightening in Elliot's gut, as he watched Toby's chest swell with a breath, eyes suddenly lifting to catch Elliot's.

"Hi," said Elliot.

"Hi," said Toby.

They weren't here to get back together. Elliot shuffled forward and slid into the seat opposite. The diner was a new spot, but it felt like all their dinner dates in the early days, when Elliot hadn't understood, hadn't even questioned his sudden interest in the unlikely stranger. "Thanks for seeing me."

Toby's eyebrows rose at the formality. "You know I-" He cut himself off, reconsidered. "Anytime."

Yeah, Elliot knew. A waitress stopped to offer drinks, and Elliot ordered a burger and fries to put off any more interruptions, rushing his way through the sauce and cheese and temperature and side salad and dressing choices, grateful when Toby just asked for the same. Toby only had his lunch hour, and Elliot never knew when he might get called back to work.

As soon as she was gone, Elliot asked, "How are you doing?"

"All right. Seeing my counsellor. Keeping my head down."

Elliot took a little breath. "Me too."

Toby's brow creased, confused.

"I'm looking for a counsellor. About my temper."

Toby's surprise could have been insulting. "That's good."

"I haven't found someone I'm comfortable with yet, but I'm looking."

"Maybe you need someone who doesn't make you comfortable."

Elliot snorted. "Maybe I do."

Toby reached out and caught Elliot's hand, seemed to realise too late he shouldn't, but though he looked wary, he didn't let go. "I miss you."

Elliot dipped his head.

After a moment, Toby said, "I'm sorry. I'm guessing you didn't ask me here to hear that."

Maybe part of him had, but he hated that part of him, hated the weakness. Toby didn't need to be getting any wrong ideas. Elliot slid his hand free. "I asked you to meet me because I was hoping to get your advice. I have a parolee, five months out. I'm pretty sure his PO's fucking him."

Toby's face hardened. "Raping him."

"Yeah. I don't know how to get him to talk."

"And now I'm your all-purpose guide to prison abuse."

"Toby..."

"It was stupid of me to hope it was something else."

"What did you expect?"

Toby huffed. "I don't know."

"You're never going to fix what you did."

"Then you shouldn't have kissed me."

Elliot's cheeks burned. Toby was right about that.

Of course there was more than Leskov dragging him into this diner, but Toby didn't have the right to make Elliot admit it. You didn't just stop caring that the man you loved had been closing his eyes and pretending you were someone else.

Toby picked up his silverware and rolled it out of the napkin, sorted it all onto the table. In Toby's fantasies, Elliot would just get over it. "If he was fucked all through prison, he probably doesn't put a lot of faith in the judicial system. He survived in there, so he knows better than to squeal."

Elliot wished he could tell Toby to forget about Leskov, and go back to talking about them. "No one else is going to help him."

"Sometimes, people have to help themselves." Toby shrugged, a damn good impression of the indifferent con, and it set Elliot's hackles.

"You think I should drop him some PCP? Let him get sky high and murder the dirty officer? It can be one of those heart-warming cases where I find myself locking up the victim for killing the perp I couldn't protect him from."

Too harsh, way too damned close, but Toby wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of a reaction. "You won't get shit out of him unless you can make him believe you can keep him safe from this PO, from the PO's friends, from the criminals this PO has in his pocket. That's a pretty hard sell."

"How do I make him believe it?"

Toby stared him down, eyes startlingly blue. "Fuck whether he believes it. Can you do it?"

Elliot squashed his automatic 'yes'. The PO would know who his accuser was. And Toby was right: he'd have friends on both sides of the law. Leskov would be in danger even if the officer was convicted. And if he wasn't... "Let me think about that."

"The kid's gonna be ass-fucked the rest of his life. Nothing you can do."

The waiter set out their plates, and Elliot was grateful for the break. This was the side of Toby he'd never wanted to know.

The burgers were average; the fries were damned good. Keeping Leskov safe would be a challenge. But they'd only just started their dinner, and they were done talking about him. Now the silence stretched out and Elliot dreaded that Toby was going to start apologising or begging another chance or even worse, chatting away like everything was fine.

Toby didn't say anything at all.

Elliot let the quiet go for as long as he could, made good headway through their meal before he asked, "Have you had any more trouble with Stalin?"

"No. He got what he wanted."

"Me." The lever Agent Taylor needed to get to Toby. Had it done him any good?

"Yeah." Toby took another bite of his burger, chewed slowly. "How's Maureen?"

Elliot snorted. They weren't going to exchange small talk about their families, like they were friends again. Even if he ached to know how Holly was doing, how much damage he'd done to her with his fit of temper, if Toby's escapades were making it worse.

Elliot knew the next thing he wanted to talk about. He wiped his hands on a napkin. "Tell me about him."

"About Stalin?"

"About Christopher Keller." Elliot had told himself not to do this, but he needed to know what piece of humanity Toby found underneath it all. That Toby had loved a person, not just a thing. Right now Elliot only knew that the mouth that had kissed his daughter's cheek had knowingly kissed a man who raped, tortured and murdered three young men.

Toby didn't seem eager to talk now.

"I want to know what you saw in him."

Toby ate a couple of fries. "I don't know, Elliot. How do we ever know what that connection is?"

"Bullshit. I can tell you exactly what I saw in you."

Toby met his gaze, obviously wanting to ask what it was, but Elliot just glared at him. Don't you dare.

Finally Toby looked away, stroking a hand down his tie and breathing hard as he considered. He chewed his lip. Did he really need to think about it? Or did he just need to figure out what he'd admit to Elliot? "Chris was the first person in that place who didn't write me off as a hopeless bitch or a crazy fuck. This prison-tough was watching my back, trusting me to watch his. Talking to me. He made me feel like a human." A quiet smile tugged the edge of his lip. "And he was charming. He seduced a nun." He caught Elliot's expression and back-pedalled. "He didn't sleep with her. He just... made her question her vocation."

As if that was better. Murphy had told him to talk to a nun if he wanted to know Toby. Sister Peter Marie. "Support, trust, charm. Was that the act you fell for, or was that really him?" Elliot honestly wanted to know. It sounded like pure con artist.

Toby pushed his plate aside and leaned forward on the table, his eyes bright. "Chris was hard, all stone and sharp edges, but he made himself weak for me. Vern and fuck-knows who else ripped out most of his soul when he was just a kid but he scraped up what was left and he gave it to me." Toby had cupped his hands, like he still held whatever good was left behind in Keller.

"Before or after he broke your arms?"

Toby slumped back. "You don't want to understand."

"Why the hell do you think I'm sitting here?" Elliot snapped. He wasn't going to get closure on this until he knew what Toby had been looking for in him.

Toby dropped his head, contrite. "That was after. He confessed, brought down the wrath of the Aryans, thought that would fix everything. I pushed him away but he kept on trying. Made himself look like the bitch in front of the rest of Oz. You know how hard it is for you to be vulnerable. Imagine how hard it was for him."

Elliot's power of empathy just didn't stretch that far. "So what was it? How did he get you back?"

"A friend made me realise I couldn't ask forgiveness while I withheld it from others." Toby shrugged, eyes unfocused as he drifted back in warm memories. "I already wanted to forgive him, and I hated myself for it. I thought it was weakness. I wanted to but I was afraid because I missed him so fucking much. The real Chris or the con artist, I almost didn't care."

Elliot's gut squeezed, and he had to fight to keep it off his face. "But you did. Forgive him."

"I told him I forgave him, and he put his arms around me, and it was the first full breath I'd taken in months."

The way he said it made Elliot think of their kiss the other night, all that longing and relief. The way Elliot had wanted to just forget all the shit, have Toby back again. Maybe he understood after all. "The day I found out about who Chris was, what he did... You wanted me to hit you. To be like him."

Toby shrank inwards. "I wanted you to hurt me, but that was nothing like him. Chris wasn't about rage."

Elliot felt his eyebrows crawling up.

"He never acted in rage," Toby insisted. "Everything Chris did was calculated, all for power. "

"Did you see those crime scene photos?"

That took a little wind out of him "That wasn't the man I knew. Chris's anger ran cold. I got contempt when I tried to make peace with Vern, a cold shoulder when I blamed him for Gary. Even when Chris mur- Even when Chris hurt men I'd, other men I'd..."

Murdered. Men Toby had... slept with? More bodies, piled up in prison? Elliot leaned in. "Don't stop now, Toby. Tell me about the men Keller murdered." Toby probably didn't realise how much he needed to talk. He'd never been able to tell anyone, and he'd been stewing in guilt. Put a skel like this in an interrogation room, prod him just right, and the confession spilled out like a waterfall.

Toby lifted his chin. "They weren't crimes of passion. They were messages, composed and edited, addressed to the warden with me left to read between the lines. Chris poured all his passion into me when we fucked; when he was angry, he took it away."

This was more than Elliot wanted. It wasn't helping him to understand why Toby had cared for Chris, but maybe it was making Chris more human.

Toby pushed a hand through his newly short hair, sat forward. "Have you ever been completely fucked? No way out, no hope, nothing to do but go out swinging?"

Elliot nodded. Too many times. Some times he hadn't cared as much as he should have.

"That's how I felt the day Vern decided he was done with me, that he was going to throw me out to the homeboys to be murdered. That's when I tried to kill him. I was going to die, and all I could do was grab everything and drag it all down with me, doing all the damage I could."

Elliot was holding tight to his chair.

"That's how Chris loved me. Both barrels blazing, nowhere to go but down in glory." Affection was creeping into his tone, and it turned Elliot's stomach. That's what Elliot had been competing with. "Do you know how many nights Chris and I had together as lovers? Twenty-six. We didn't even have a month in all. That's if you count the nights when my kids were missing."

"Toby. I have to ask." He shouldn't ask; he didn't want to know, didn't know what he'd do if Toby said yes, but he had to. He had to fight the words out. "Did you kill him?"

"Who?"

"Chris?"

Toby's mouth fell open. "No."

"You were a suspect."

Toby's eyes flashed: betrayal that Elliot had gone digging, even after all this. "I almost ended up on death row but I didn't kill him. I loved him."

Elliot desperately, desperately wanted to believe him - his innocence, not the love - but he didn't know if he did. "Everyone suspected he ruined your first parole."

"He did." Toby ran a finger along the edge of his plate. "I had three weeks with Holly and Harry, and then Chris set me up to get caught smuggling drugs. Cancer drugs, not... They were for his ex-wife." His voice was flat, like it was someone else's story. "Cops picked me up and sent me straight back in. We argued; he still thought I could... after he did that to me, to them, he thought I'd just forgive him again." He rubbed a hand through his hair. "I was afraid I might, eventually. I begged him to let me go and he-" His voice caught, but he ploughed on, staring in Elliot's eyes, begging him to understand. "He threw himself over that balcony. I can't even tell you how it felt to see him lying down there. And then someone pulled me away and I realised I might end up on death row and right then I didn't even care. I think I was relieved."

After all these years of wondering how spouses and parents pleaded ignorance, how they swore by the innocence of people they shared their lives and homes with, Elliot was the one suddenly dunked in a cold dose of reality. He'd known the smallest slice, a single face of god knew how many, and maybe Toby could murder a man with his bare hands. Right now, Elliot honestly didn't know.

"Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"I don't know." Maybe Toby killed him. Maybe he didn't. Elliot wasn't certain which he wanted to be true. Maybe Elliot would have killed someone who ripped him away from his kids.

"It was me I should have been angry with. I knew." Finally, Toby's face crumpled. "I fucking knew the moment he asked me a favour. I could see it in his eyes, and I knew he was capable, but I wanted to believe he wouldn't do that to me." Toby's voice was trembling. "I sacrificed my kids because I wanted to believe Chris loved me the same way I loved him. You know what finally broke us? I could have held on if I'd believed screwing my parole was spur of the moment, a moment of weakness: just... a moment." He shook his head. "It wasn't a moment. It was a plan. He looked me in the eye while he was setting me up. Chris was a schemer. Everything he did, even love, was calculated. The only thing Chris ever did on the spur of the moment was throw himself over that balcony. Sometimes I wonder if even that was planned."

Elliot barely caught the last few words. He wanted to take Toby's hand. He wished he hadn't chosen such a public place for Toby to peel himself open. Toby barely seemed to care that he was crying, but Elliot cringed at the waitress's curious look as she passed by.

After a few moments Toby got himself back under control. "I don't know what you want, Elliot. I'm not going to make you okay with who he was or what he did." He held Elliot's gaze. "He murdered those three boys. I know he did it. I saw the photos." He swallowed. "I don't think he was enraged. I think he was terrified."

"You think that makes it okay?"

"Of course I don't. But you know what I've learned over the years? No one's a comic book hero or villain. It's easy to paint the world in good guys and bad guys, but even Vern Schillinger loved his kids."

Elliot didn't give a fuck if Vern Schillinger loved his kids. He gave a fuck that Schillinger abused Toby so badly that Toby could cling to a monster like Chris Keller for comfort. He gave a fuck that Keller broke Toby's bones and family and self-worth.

"In Chris's defence, he never tried to kill me. I tried to kill him twice."

Elliot poked at his cold fries. Every defence Toby made made Elliot hate Keller more, and the more he hated Keller, the angrier he got with Toby, still pining for that fuck after all he'd done.

Toby didn't seem to get that at all. "I'm not asking you to understand. You can't understand what it's like in there, how it turns you inside out." Toby reached across, touched Elliot's plate but not quite his hand. "I am asking you to forgive me. Not now maybe, but eventually..."

Hot acid burned in Elliot's throat. "Do you know what I understand? That you'd rather be with someone who broke your arms and dragged you back to prison than be with me." Elliot recoiled at how childish and jealous that sounded, but he couldn't take it back. He was jealous of a dead serial killer. He pulled out his wallet and dropped enough cash to cover both their burgers, ignored Toby's plaintive look and used the last tatters of his self control to make his rush for the door look like a dignified stroll.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


end chapter 39


Feedback conspires to debauch and corrupt the morals of society. Concrit thoroughly welcome, warm fuzzies treasured. Here or at drsquidlove @@@ livejournal.com

The complete works of Dr Squidlove can be found at http://members.iinet.net.au/~tentacles/squidfic.html

S.

Comments

[drsquidlove.livejournal.com]

Thank you sahem!

Wheeee! Like I said to edub up there, while I do love stories where Chris is domesticated so I can enjoy the happy ever after, my favourite thing is when authors keep him at his worst, and try to make sense of it. If Chris's humanity is such a small, broken thing, that makes it so much more precious that Toby is able to find it.

I've never much liked Romeo and Juliet-style romance, where characters are just so perfect and in love with each other's perfection and only outside forces can ruin their perfect love. I'm much more impressed by the struggles of broken, grumpy people.

Reeeeeally? You don't think it's enough that Elliot has let go of his prejudices to love an ex-con, who's a man and slut and cross-dresser and emotional cripple? You won't allow him a leeeeetle bit of jealousy that said man is pining for a rapist? Just a little bit?

S.

[sahem62896.livejournal.com]

Just a bit, maybe.
I guess I'm way too absorbed in this story about Crazy Beecher that I am writing. It's such fun.

[mazephoenix.livejournal.com]

Ohh sounds like fun.