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There is no reticence in the way she leans into him. Despite months and miles between them, it’s the most natural thing in the world to pull him closer, to rest against the curve of his body for a still moment.
He is here. Somehow, they are here together, on the other side of all the past years miseries. A smile tugs up her cheeks despite herself, an instinctual uptick from his shape in her field of vision. She breathes in his cologne and out a long-held sigh, residual tension unknitting deep in her lungs.
Soft brown gaze drifts unharried over the marks of time upon his cheeks - new lines pressed into his smile, revived hope in the sparking green looking back at her. Where before there was speckled greys now there’s swaths; and it fills her with a seeping affection, warm and comforting as if a mug of tea held in frigid palms.
His hands on her waist are firm and soft and calming, familiar despite the uncommon placement. And she wants to tell him. That she’s missed him. That there’s a hole in their lives she hadn’t expected to still smart so keenly after all this time. That the half quirk of his lips, the steady glint of his expression, inspires fireworks in her psyche - bright and vibrant and deafening.
When he had called, the old offer of a drink back upon his lips, she thought perhaps there was a future before them restarted, a door pushed closed now cracked open. And she waited there, one hand ready to push it further, to step through the frame.
But there’s something in the drop of his voice on “Olivia”, the added two syllables abject on his tongue.
And she watches in slow motion as each carefully crafted phrase between them pushes that shameful hope further abroad.
Richard Wheatley. Defence. Rafael Barba and Elliot Stabler together in a court room. Opposing counsel.
These two disparate tracks of her life about to collide in spectacular fashion.
She loses him to the argument, to the messy grey area of their lives where matching stubbornness butts thornily. But despite it all, when they finally slip from the stools - disappointment tight in their brows - his hand is as steady as ever at the small of her back.
No doubt the next time they see each other will be a courtroom. She won’t be sat just behind his shoulder. He won’t be panicking and pacing as she placates with reassurance.
But eventually they’ll wind up back here - side by side somewhere, ineffably linked, refusing to truly sever this tie that binds them.
After all, they’ve got through worse cases; and he’s never stayed gone for long.