Thanks to Lori and to Sara. Those girls are amazing. And quick
song recc, go find 'Fighting For My Love,' by Nil Lara. Tis amazing.
Maybe there's some
little fraction of space between the gray and blackness that she can
find, in which she can define herself. Because she, well... she is
bright red. Not the color of blood, she isn't that, but something
much more vibrant.
It's not a hue born of anger or passion, it's just a color that paints her totally and completely alive.
Olivia is hidden somewhere amongst the pomegranate and brick, nestled down amongst fire engine and cherry; waiting to burst with autumn and vestiges of sunset that it's hard to place.
But she's standing the gray right now, watching him pull his pen across a piece of paper, his wrist flicking as he moves down a line, his tongue peeking out at the side of his mouth. She doesn't wonder about his tongue, does not think about how pliant it might be over her own tongue. She thinks about how his hand grips the pen and wonders if he can feel the pull of the slope of a cursive z or the curve of a lower case g.
That's what she thinks about when she's in the gray, when she's in the in between. Olivia has perfected her voyeuristic technique, feigns submission in a pile of paper. But she watches him, categorizes the slight tan of his skin against the white of the Bic, and wonders what they would look like if she could mix them on a palette. She tries often, but the color is never right in her mind.
Elliot, well, he's very much a blue and not just because of his eyes. He's a screaming, screeching, almost-turquoise.
The color is something that never quits, the type of hue that you can look at and immediately call to mind when you close your eyes.
Elliot's color is what the sky looks like in dreams, what the ocean appears to be in commercials, but never really seems to be in actuality. It's something that's an almost-color, but it's always a shade off, either too dark or too light. There's no hexadecimal code to spread him across the internet, and no middle ground like there is for her.
She can shift into maroon or scarlet, but he's that unrelenting thing, that unrelenting picture of the ideal blue that no one can seem to capture. Olivia often wonders what he would taste like if he were flavored ice. She would be raspberry, but he... he surpassed the passion fruit and the melon, the blueberry and blue raspberry. He's the mystery flavor that accompanies the mystery color.
Her taste buds have been dead for years, so really, he's just blue. He'll always be that, lingering between green and purple, pushing the envelope at both ends.
Elliot tightens his jaw and licks his lips, blinks, and drops the pen onto the paper. It rolls a few times and she swears she gets a flash of his blue mixed with that white, but as soon as it comes, it's gone. Looking up at her, he quirks a brow and looks back down.
They haven't spoken in days.
There's no need really, not really.
She's with Munch and he's with Fin most of the time and the only interaction they ever really have is "Can I have the sugar?" when they bump into each other, literally, at the coffee maker.
No, no need to talk. Because his bright blue did all the talking for him back in the warehouse. And her red screamed at him in retaliation. And they stood at opposite ends of the spectrum, both wanting so badly to meet amongst the green and yellow, but finding it immutable.
It was funny, how much she thought about the white and the black, and never thought of that space in the middle, that space that was brighter than either end.
Adversaries. That is how they sit now. Cragen had seen no need for them to move their desks, shift their belongings. So they sat astride one another still, staring down the other end of the color wheel, waiting for it to shift and right them back into their stable hues. Olivia could make up a hundred metaphors, Blue Jays versus the Red Sox and more... but she stops herself and just stares at him, needing him to speak, to do something...
Paint her a fucking picture...
She remembered how the blue looked when obstructed with fright and tears. She remembered how her red felt, burning, yet warning and then dying. It felt as if she had dipped her entire being into a scorching hot orange and had come out a shade deeper, something brighter, hotter. She remembers how dull black the gun against his head had seemed, and yet how it seemed to hum, how it seemed to screech along with is blue.
Elliot's eyes flicker back to her and she toys with a smile, but his face remains straight, remains devoid of emotion.
"What?" he asks, fingers finding the pen once more, snatching it up harshly. Maybe all he's ever wanted to do is find her real color, match it somehow or mix with it to create something brighter, better.
Olivia blinks and tilts her head, reminds herself why she's not an artist and never will be: she can never get it right. He's too bright and she's just too, too many things...
She realizes after a while that if their colors mixed, they would look like a giant bruise, something blooming that maybe shouldn't. "Nothing," comes her reply, and there she is in the gray again, trying not to drown.
That's when she reminds herself that love hurts, that love is purple and lies down at the end of a spectrum she doesn't know she can paint.