Chapter Text

The apartment is quiet. Too quiet, Elliot thinks. Randall had taken their mother to stay with him when Elliot had decided to hare off to Long Island to play rogue cop while still on suspension – no badge, no gun, just his loyal squad (even the new guy whose name he constantly forgets or pretends to struggle to remember even when he does remember it) breaking rules and disobeying direct orders to support him in his harebrained scheme - only to end up getting his ass nearly crucified for his troubles. Eli is still in Colorado, studying hard, Elliot hopes, finishing up his second semester of Sophomore year. And this place is empty. Feels empty. Elliot has never done well with quiet, empty places. He is more accustomed to his home being peopled with family, filled with noise, activity and life and he loves it that way, the walls nearly bursting at the seams with all the loves of his life occupying the rooms.

Coming home to no one, to an empty place, just feels wrong, makes his soul ache nearly as much as the wounds on his abdomen and wrists were beginning to.

He opens his fridge door and scowls unhappily at the scant offerings – old Chinese leftovers, dry, probably stale pizza, packets of condiments, beer…. His fridge reminds him of Olivia’s in the old days and Elliot grins at the memory. He should call her, he thinks. It’s been a week since their last voicemail and text exchanges. It’s been forever since they’ve actually connected or talked. He wonders briefly if she would answer his call this time or send it to voice mail again.

He’ll have to go grocery shopping… sometime soon, but probably not today he concludes with a little grimace. He feels bone tired, and his wound sites are really beginning to ache in earnest, and he still has a couple of hours to go before he can take his next dose of pain meds. He rubs one hand gently over the wound dressings covering the fresh stitches on his chest, one right below his nipple on the right, where Eric Bonner had slashed at him, leaving him with a gash wide enough to require nine stitches, and another right below where he’d stabbed him later during their struggle. The fucking lunatic!

But Eric Bonner was dead, and he was alive, and Elliot was more than okay with the way that altercation had ended. He can live with a few more stitches sewn into his skin, more topography for the roadmap of his life as a cop. He’s good as long as he ends his days breathing and above ground.

Elliot closes the fridge door, walks slowly over to his couch and lowers his exhausted - bruised, beaten, slashed and stitched – body down carefully, making sure not to pull at his stitches. He leans back into the cushions with a sigh and was just beginning to contemplate whether or not he is hungry enough to order take-out right now or wait to just before he has to take his meds, when the phone rings.

Christ! He’s just sat down! Well, the machine can pick up because he sure as hell isn’t gonna try and hurry over to where the phone sat ringing, too far away, on the console table in the foyer. The last thing he needs right now is to end up bleeding just for the chance to tell some telemarketer he doesn’t fuckin’ need an extended warranty for anything or solar panels for a roof he doesn’t have, nor does he owe the IRS any money! These fuckin’ people!

Very few people he actually knows call him on his landline anymore, anyway. Just telemarketers, Bernie’s friends sometimes and, oddly enough, Olivia.  His kids - and Jet - think he’s showing his age by insisting on keeping his landline, but he’s told them that he’d lived through 9/11 and he’s acutely aware that cell towers can become quickly overwhelmed in an emergency. They can cut his landline when he’s dead and cold in the ground, he’d told them only to be assailed by their collective derision. Jet’s had been especially cutting, delivered in her customary flat tone while she eyed him pityingly: “You realize, of course, Stabler, that in the event of an emergency where all cell towers are down, you’ll probably not be at home with your landline.” Then she had widened her big black eyes at him in that way she had of ridiculing without words and had turned her back on him to face her wall of monitors and continued clacking away on her keyboard.

What if it’s Olivia?

His heart skips a beat in hopeful anticipation at the unbidden thought - like a fucking adolescent,  he thinks with a wry little twist to his mouth - as he waits for the beep after his voicemail kicks on.

“El, it’s me…”

Olivia’s sultry voice cuts through the unnatural silence in his home and Elliot feels a quickening in his blood and the now almost reflexive apprehension. Even her voice does things to him, has always done things to him.

Elliot is moving quickly, pushing up off the couch and shuffling to where the phone sits as quickly and as carefully as he can manage, thinking ruefully that he should have grabbed the cordless receiver off its cradle before sitting down. Hindsight is a useless bitch.

“I heard about what happened. Ayana said you were hurt?”

He is moving faster than he should be, his left hand pressing gently against the bandages on his chest, but he really doesn’t want to miss her call, doesn’t want to have to end up calling her right back only for her to maybe not answer. She had a habit of sending his calls to voicemail. She’d probably called his landline betting he wouldn’t be home yet, but what could he say? He had only himself to blame for the current state of affairs between them.

“I just wanted to check in, see if you’re okay. See if you need…”

“Liv. Hey.”

“Oh, you’re home. I didn’t real…” She cuts herself off. “When did you get back?”

Elliot can’t tell if she’s disappointed that he’d picked up or annoyed. Neither option makes him feel especially good.

They have been playing phone-tag for weeks since his return from his months-long undercover stint that had started in early Spring and had only wound down near the end of Summer. The operation was supposed to have lasted no longer than three months, but things had gone sideways, and the op had gone long as a result. Elliot, never one to quit in the middle of anything, had stayed to see it through to the bitter end. Thinking of Olivia, seeing the twin pools of her luminous dark eyes when he closed his, recalling her faint, intoxicating scent of spice and something floral is what had kept him sane and resolute. He’d wanted to be done and be home so that he could finally see her again, be with her in whatever capacity he could, in whatever way she would allow.

Then he had accidentally hurt the kid who’d shot Ayana and IAB had suspended him for doing his job. Again. Sometimes, he wonders what keeps him hanging on to the job. He’d exchanged missed calls and text messages with Olivia about that, too, but she was busy, too busy to meet him for coffee when he was available, too busy to grab a meal somewhere. And when they’d finally managed to make actual plans, he’d had to cancel because Rita Lasku had come up missing and he had to go chase leads to try and find her before it was too late.

He’d ended up being too late anyway, had gotten slashed and gashed for his efforts. Sometimes, the pain in this world was too much, even for him. Sometimes, all he wanted to do was find Olivia, take her by the hand and run away somewhere sunny near the ocean, where he can spend the rest of his days chasing golden sunsets and happiness with the love of his life.

Before he had left for his undercover operation back in May, he had given her the compass necklace, told her it was supposed to guide her to happiness, secretly praying she would seek that happiness with him. He remembers now the open melancholy in her eyes when she’d told him that she was going to try - after being shot in the hip, after Jamie’s funeral, after the compass - and something in her expression had troubled him. To be frank, he had no idea if trying meant to her what it meant to him. He hopes it does. He prays that their feelings are in sync in that regard. He was hanging his whole heart on it.

But her tone of voice now sounded…what? Matter of fact? Dispassionate? Annoyed…?

For a while now, Elliot’s been wanting to ask her why she rarely called his cell phone, choosing to mostly text him on that number, but he’d thought better of it because he knew his question may have come across as pathetically needy or, even worse, as an accusation, which, truth be told, it probably would have been. He had long suspected that she didn’t call him on his cell because she really didn’t want to actually talk to him. She’d only been interested in letting him know that he was on her mind or that she was concerned or that she had his back, but she had never really wanted to connect and actually talk. For her, the random text exchanges were enough apparently, but he craved more. He always wanted more where she was concerned. He has always done.

He wonders from time to time if she would ever be ready to give him what he needs from her. What he longs and hungers for - which was, when he allowed himself to consider it, everything. He wants her laughter and her tears. Her anger, her rage, her grief and her joy, her serenity and her peace. He wants whispered pillow talks at night in the dark after having ravished each other for a good long hour. And he wants quick breakfasts and coffee during the weekdays and lazy Sunday brunches, alone or with their children or just her son…. He wants to hold her hand as they stroll through her favorite farmer’s market on Saturdays. He wants her every day of the week, whatever her mood, and every night. He wants, has been wanting, no needing her, for twenty-five goddamn years and he was wanting her still, even though he was free now, and she was free and there is no longer anything standing in their way - except for his great big ten-year fuck-up, hulking between them like an emotional albatross.

“You okay?”

She sounds so soft, so concerned for him now. He has no idea how much she knows of what has happened to him. If she knows that he had damn near been crucified. Would she see the almost ironic humor in him, a devout Catholic, being nearly crucified by a lunatic. He thinks she would. They share the same, sometimes dark, sense of humor.

“I’m good. Maybe a little loopy on the meds. So, maybe I’m feeling a little too good,” he jokes. She doesn’t laugh, but he can tell from her quiet snort that she is smiling.

“Need anything?”

You.

“What are you offering?” He hadn’t intended to make that sound like such a come-on, but the timber and tone of his voice had other ideas, apparently.

“I – uh…I was just- ”

“Relax, Liv. I was just…just being stupid. Blame the drugs.” He was gratified to hear her chuckle. He holds his breath, then: “I could use some company if you’re up for it.”

It’s supposed to be a casual invitation. He wonders if he sounds as nervous or as desperate as he feels. It has been such a long time since he has been in her company, since he has been able to lay his eyes on her in person, feel her near him, catch a whiff of her scent, her presence intoxicating his senses. If anyone were capable of helping him feel better, helping him forget the ordeal he’s just been through, it surely would be Olivia by just her mere existence in his close proximity.

“I wish I could,” Olivia says with a sigh that sounds like real regret. Elliot feels the dull edge of disappointment cut through him. “I have to head up to Woodstock this evening. Gotta pick up Noah at the McCanns’ and I have some things I should get done before heading up.”

“I can come with,” he offers before the thought has even fully formed in his brain. “I mean…I could keep you company on the way there and back. If you like.”

He doesn’t like the idea of her driving alone all that way. Ever since Wheatley had her car run off the road, Elliot finds he worries about her being anywhere out there alone, but he can’t say that to her because Olivia Margaret Benson is a fucking NYPD Captain, a twenty-eight year veteran on the force, and she damn well knows how to take care of herself. He'd only end up annoying her with his paternalistic, overprotective bullshit.

But she sees through him anyway, even over the phone.

“I can take care of myself, Elliot.”

He can hear the, I’ve always taken care of myself, implied in the tone of her voice.

“I know,” he tells her, letting her hear the grin in his voice. “Maybe I just want an excuse to see my…friend.” That hesitation before he says friend is sometimes deliberate, sometimes unintended, but always comes out sounding like a caress, like a euphemism for something more. “It’s been a while.” He tries very hard not to let the hunger in him seep into the rumble of his voice.

There is a brief silence on her end, then another sigh, and he knows he’s in.

“I’ll be there in a couple of hours to pick you up. Can you be ready to leave by five?”

“Sure. But I can meet you at your place, save you some time….” Long Island City would take her about thirty minutes out of her way roundtrip.

“No, it’s okay. I don’t mind. I’ll see you at five, okay?”

Elliot had walked back to the couch while he was talking to her, and he was sitting there trying to find a comfortable position by the time they hung up. He has precious little time to relax now if he was going to eat and cop a quick nap before Olivia arrives. He switches phones to his mobile and pulls up his favorite delivery spot to order something quick and easy - pastrami on rye with a dill pickle on the side, a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and a coke.

By the time Olivia is knocking on his front door, Elliot has managed to shower while he waited for his food to arrive, eaten his meal and fit in a forty-five-minute nap. He is feeling rested if not altogether well, when he opens his door to reveal her standing there, casually leaning against the wall by his front door, and for a moment, the image of her at his threshold throws Elliot’s mind back twenty five years to when he used to use the slightest of excuses to show up to her apartment, back when they used to be partners, younger and stronger, running the city streets side by side, shoulder to shoulder, exchanging quick-witted repartee and longing glances ill-disguised behind smiles.

She is dressed casually in a loose ruby-red cotton shirt buttoned only halfway up, flaring open at the enticing swell of her breasts (so much fuller now than he remembers them ever being) over a thin white V-neck top tucked into a pair of black jeans that hugs her every luscious curve. She is wearing her usual high-heeled black boots which bring her almost to his height. The compass pendant he gave her months ago rests prominently on her chest drawing his eyes and a smile. Red always suited her, he thinks, and it’s making her tan skin glow radiant even underneath unforgiving lighting in the building hallway.

He wants to pull her into his body and wrap his arms around her for a deep, long hug. He imagines burying his face in her neck and inhaling her scent while he lets his hand climb up her back into her long, thick hair.

He does none of that.

The fact is, they have never hugged in greeting. He’s always had to have some persuasive pretext to haul her body into his, to hold onto her and bury his face in her neck. Each time is etched into his memory, scored like grooves in the LP of his life, the feel of her softness against his body, the smell of her perfume and shampoo mixed into a heady scent, her strong arms wrapping around his body to hold him close, her soft voice murmuring comforting words or refusing his under the guise of strength.

By his count, in their entire twenty-five-year history (minus the decade of emotional blackhole), they have hugged properly a total of four times.

The first time (unbelievably enough!) was eight years into their partnership when overcome by gratitude that she hadn’t just saved his wife and newborn son, but had survived unharmed herself, he had given in to the quivering urge within him and had suddenly hauled her bodily into his arms and held her wordlessly against his trembling body, hoping that she understood what he was trying convey - that he owed her, that he loved her, for so, so many reasons. That he was grateful she was unharmed. That he was grateful for her.

The second time was three years later when she had walked into his arms, wrapped her trembling arms around him, distraught and stained once again with someone else’s blood, and told him fervently that she was glad he was back, and he had dug his fingers into her back, thanking God that she was unharmed, holding onto her and letting his body be her safe harbor, the anchor in her emotional maelstrom, telling her he wished he’d come back sooner. He remembers still the way she had flung her arms around him, the quick, soft brush of her cheek against his when she’d pulled back, desperate for his reassurances. And then her inevitable, I’m fine.

The third time didn’t occur for another ten years and once again, it was him pulling her into his arms, against his body for comfort, but this time, it was because he had suffered an unimaginable loss, instead of the monumental gain that had precipitated their first hug. His grief driven by deep guilt was renting him in two and he had clung to her and felt her clinging back, holding him together even as he wanted to shatter and run away from the memory of the empty hospital bed where his wife of nearly forty years had lain while she was dying. Olivia was his tether to life, his brown-eyed lighthouse guiding him through the tsunami of emotions crashing about inside him, her soothing voice murmuring comfortingly, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Elliot. And he’d buried his face in the crook of her neck and wept softly, his tears soaking into her coat and her gossamer skin that still smelled like her from over a decade ago.

The last hug they had shared was an unsatisfying, brief, anemic clutch, after she had taken buckshot in her hip to save him from a would-be assassin. They had both survived that day due to her quick thinking and fast action and he, quite frankly, probably owed her for saving his life. He remembers carrying her out of the diner, blinded by the gas the hired killer had sprayed into the air. He remembers the solid weight of her in his arms, her voice guiding him unerringly. He remembers thinking that he is an absolute idiot for having the mental wherewithal to appreciate having her in his arms like that, imagining, even as he listened to her voice guiding him, that the reason she was in his arms was because he was carrying her across the threshold into their new life together, and not to safety out of a diner in Ohio.

That was over a year ago.

What does it say about him, he thinks, that he recalls each incident with such perfect clarity, that he has held on to each memory over the years with the desperation of a man clinging to life, stranded out in the open sea without a life jacket, waiting for her because she was his safe harbor. 

In the end, he doesn't reach for her like he longs to. He settles for a softly spoken, “Hey, partner,” instead and feels his heart swell when she offers him a smile. 

“Hey.” 

Her greeting comes out a little hoarse and she clears her throat, and Elliot thinks that maybe he’s not the only one affected by the sight of an old partner.

“Wanna come in or shall we hit the road?”

“We should get going.” She pushes off the wall and steps back. “Told the McCanns that I planned to get there before eight and you know how traffic can get, plus the weather is iffy as it is, and I need to get back before eleven tonight. Noah has try-outs tomorrow for his year-end dance recital, and I want him to be well rested.”

“Sure.” He reaches up with his good arm to grab his dark brown leather jacket from the coat hook by the front door, and Olivia watches him with keen eyes as he shrugs into it with much less finesse than is normal for him.

“You still in pain?” Her eyes scan his body quickly, the tiny furrow of her brow betraying her unspoken worry.

“Just took my meds,” he tells her with a slight grimace. “It’ll be a while before they kick in fully.”

Olivia isn’t the only one who is dressed to impress. Elliot, too, had put some thought into choosing his outfit, selecting a long-sleeved, sky-blue Henley that intensified the blue of his eyes, the soft cotton  molding to his sculpted muscles like a second skin (he didn’t sweat and strain his muscles at the gym three times a week for his health alone, he had reasoned) tucked into a pair of black jeans that he knows shows off his…assets remarkably well. The long sleeves also hide the gauze wrapped and taped around both of his wrists so he knew she couldn’t see his wounds, but she had noticed his injured movements anyway.

He lets her lead the way down the hall to the exit door of his building and enjoys his uninterrupted view of her backside as she strides in her usual confident manner, shoulders wide, back straight, hips swinging with the unconscious sensuality that was her signature walk.

God, he’s missed this!

Swinging his aching body into her SUV from his left side was much less painful for Elliot and he’s glad he’s not driving, though he’d offered and she’d declined with a gentle smile.

Once seated in her black sedan, Olivia indicates the blue travel mug in the cupholder next to a silver one in the other cupholder.

“That’s coffee for you if you want it,” she tells him.  “Should still be hot.”

“Thank you. Good call.” He’s moving gingerly, clicking his seatbelt into place, careful not to have the strap lay too tightly against the wound on his abdomen and chest, then adjusting the seat back a little to give himself more legroom and reclining the backrest into a comfortable position. “Wouldn’t wanna fall asleep on you when the meds kick in. Would defeat the purpose.”

“Not at all. Feel free,” she says, sending him a sideways glance. “It’s gonna be a long round-trip. I can turn on some music or a podcast. Don’t fight to stay awake on my account.”

He rolls his head on the headrest to look at her. She is beautiful. Stunning, really, with her hair loose and tumbling in soft, thick waves over her shoulders, framing her pretty face with the high cheekbones and the strong, square slightly jutting jawline. She is wearing barely any make-up, but her skin is glowing, and he wonders if it’s as soft to the touch as he remembers from the rare occasions he’d allowed himself to touch her face. His fingers curl into his palm against the urge to reach over and find out.

“I’m not gonna fall asleep on ya,” he says and his voice is a low growl and makes it sound like he’s trying to say something suggestive. Fucking meds!

“I’m just sayin’,” she counters shrugging and shoots him a look that tells him she wasn’t gonna bet any money on him staying awake for the whole ride.

Elliot’s mind is restless, a riot of thoughts that he’s futilely trying to marshal into some semblance of order so that he doesn’t sound like a lunatic when he tries again to make conversation. They were going to have at least two-and-a-half hours of uninterrupted time together and he wants to make the most of it, but he doesn’t know how to start or where to begin.

He wants to take this unique opportunity to allow them to fill in the gaps for each other, to start building a pathway back to who they used to be to and for each other, if such a thing is even possible anymore. He wants them to find their way back to each other. They’ve had so many unfinished conversations, so many unanswered questions, blurted out confessions, and so many things they don’t know about each other anymore.

He wants to have a real conversation with her, not just talk shop as they've become accustomed to doing of late. Shop talk is a conversational crutch he didn't think they needed anymore. The job is the job, and the last thing he wants to do is trade war stories with her. 

Olivia has no such compunction.

“Ayana said something about you and a crucifix or a crucifixion…? Did you find a vic?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Olivia gives him another contemplative look.

“Are you gonna say more?”

“I was nearly one of the vics.”

“You… What?”

“Turns out the serial killer was a religious nutjob and he thought he could purify me by crucifying me. Oh, and he was a Bonner. The Chief’s little brother.”

“Oh, wow! Was she covering for him?”

“No. But the Honorable Judge Bonner was.”

“Their father?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did he hurt you?”

As expected, the city traffic is stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper, and they are traveling at a crawl on the main drag out of his neighborhood, so Olivia turns her incredulous eyes on him, her mouth working soundlessly. She has such a petty mouth, he thinks.

“What are you not telling me right now, Elliot?” She demands.

And Elliot tells her exactly what happened to him in Westbrook on Long Island. How he and his team had finally figured out it was Eric Bonner and how he had followed him and pulled him over when he saw him pick up a woman.

“I identified myself and asked him to step out of his vehicle. He refused, so I opened the car door, reached in and that asshole actually tased me. Twice!” Elliot rubs at the still tender spot on his chest, right below his collar bone. “When the girl he had with him bolted, he chloroformed me and it was lights out. Woke up in a church he was refurbishing, my wrists bound with wire to some scaffolding. He was blathering on about pain and suffering and absolution then he slashed me right here with a knife.” Elliot moves his left hand to right below his ribs on his right side, flinching as though he could still feel the initial stab of pain.

“Stiches?”

“Yeah. I lost count. But just for the stab and the cut on my torso. The wires cut into my wrists pretty badly, but the ER doc used surgical glue there.” The young doctor had joked about trying not to leave him looking like Frankenstein’s monster with stitches around his wrists. Elliot pulls back his sleeves a little to show her and shakes his head ruefully. “I’m getting too old for this shit!”

Olivia looks over at him. There’s sympathy in her eyes, but her next words belie it.

“Or maybe, don’t go after homicidal suspects without back-up, while unarmed because you are on suspension. Better yet, maybe don’t walk out on your psych eval just to go pull some bullshit like this.”

“Ah. You heard about that.”

“Yeah.” She’s shaking her head at him again, but there’s empathy and affection in her eyes. “You ought to know better by now, Elliot. Curb that impulse to run headlong into trouble.”

“You know trouble comes for us on its own schedule, Liv,” he says ruefully. “Remember Stuckey?”

“Wish I didn’t.” Olivia’s lips draw into a thin line at the memory. She still thinks about O’Halloran, sometimes.

“All I did was go to check on the results of the blood from the mosquito, but I still ended up bludgeoned, gagged and tied to a chair with that moron slashing away at my skin like I was a canvas he wanted to paint with blood.”

“Oh, I remember,” Olivia says with a shudder.  She remembers having to kiss Stuckey to distract him while she maneuvered him close enough so that Elliot could kick him in the nuts and she could grab his gun, disarm him and knock him out.

“I don’t know what was worse – getting slapped around by you or watching you tongue-kiss that asshole,” Elliot intones with a twist to his lips.

Watching her as she let Stuckey slobber all over her while Elliot had never even been able to give her so much as a chaste kiss on the cheek was by far the worst of it for him, he knows, but he doesn’t want to say that and make things awkward.

“Hitting you was….” Olivia gives a tiny shake of her head. “I’d never hit you before that.”

“But I’m sure you wished you had on occasion?”

Olivia is smiling, shaking her head for an entirely different reason now.

“Not even during our worst verbal brawls,” she tells him.

Elliot hums, gazing at her profile in quiet contemplation.

“So, how did you escape your latest dance with near-death?

“That was thanks to Chief Bonner. She found us just in the nick of time. I managed to break free and tackle him to the floor, which is when he stabbed me right below where he’d slashed me. Then he went after his sister with the knife and the Chief ended up having to shoot her own brother dead. He fell right on top of her.”

“That’s terrible,” Olivia murmurs feelingly.

“The whole thing was. I’m just sorry he wasn’t caught before he took so many lives.”

“I’m sorry about your girl, Rita,” Olivia tells him, her husky voice softened by empathy. “I know how much it hurts. We save lives and we walk away thinking that the job’s done, that these people are going to go on and live their lives, maybe even live better lives, because of us, but then sometimes, it doesn’t just matter what we do, does it?”

She shakes her head again and her mind is far away remembering Ellie Porter, Noah’s birth mother, how she’d thought she’d rescued her only to find her dead a few weeks later, burned alive by some monster.

“It’s never enough though, is it?”

It doesn’t surprise Olivia that Elliot understands. He had walked beside her through some harrowing cases for twelve years.

“No. But one day, it will be someone else’s fight,” Olivia says, glancing at him. “You ever think about retiring…again?”

Elliot chuckles.

“Sometimes. When my knee is screaming at me to stop running about like I still have the body of a thirty-year-old. Or some lunatic tries to crucify me.” He chuckles.  “You?”

Olivia shrugs. “Not really. A vague notion of it is…there,” she acknowledges softly waving her hand in the air, “somewhere in the periphery of everything else I feel like I need to do first, ready to swing into focus when it’s time. But I’m not ready yet.”

“What made you ask?”

“Well, mandatory retirement isn’t too far off for either of us, I suppose. We’re not getting any younger.”

“Don’t I know it?” He says and the shift in the timber of his voice makes Olivia sit up straighter.

Of course, she understands the subtext perfectly. Elliot knows this and smiles to himself.

He wants to guide their conversation away from shoptalk to the personal. Again, he’s keen not to waste this opportunity, this chance, with both of them trapped in a car together for two-and-a-half hours with no real chance of interruption. He’s greedy for every minute he has to talk to her. Really talk to her.

His pain meds seem to have also dulled the reflexive inhibition and reserve he’s developed around her since he’s been back. He figures that if he ends up saying something regrettable, he could always blame it on the pharmaceutical chemicals coursing through his system when he begs for forgiveness. It’s now or never, he thinks, considering he’s been back four years and they’ve managed to kind of talk only once and then barely at that. This could be their one chance to hash it out, to talk about all the things they should have talked about the first year he’d been back, try to clear the air between them while they have complete privacy with no risk of either of them being called away by the demands of the job or family obligations.

Lost in his thoughts, trying to muster up the courage to begin, Elliot is still unable able to take his eyes off her for more than a few seconds at a time. He keeps his head leaned back on the headrest, his face turned towards her, his expression relaxed. He allows his hooded gaze to roam freely over her face in profile, taking in her still strong jawline now softened with age, her long hair looking beautiful with the golden highlights, and he can’t stop his imagination from having him bury his face in her neck, behind the curtain of her hair, and inhaling her scent. She always smells so good to him. Intoxicating.

God, she’s gorgeous.

“Elliot?”

They are stopped at a red light, and she is looking at him expectantly, her molten chocolate eyes looking a little worried. She’s looking at him as though she were expecting an answer, some sort of response to whatever she’d just said, he could tell, but he had no idea what that was. His mind had wandered away from him and taken him down the all too familiar alleyways of his regular loop of thoughts. All about her. Always about her.

“Sorry. I didn’t catch that. I must have zoned out. What’d you just say?”

Olivia raises her eyebrow at him. There is no judgement there, just the soft patina of concern.

“You tired?”

He is tired, he thinks. So tired. But not the way she meant it, he’d wager. He is tired of treading water with her. Exhausted by twenty-five years of hiding his love for her. Worn out by the struggle to resist the suffocating urge to reach out to her and touch her as he has longed to do for an age. Absolutely drained by the fact that he hasn’t been able to draw air into his lungs properly since he’s been back in New York where the other half of his soul is living and wandering about oblivious to the fact that he is dying by degrees without her touch.

He wonders sometimes if there is a world in which he doesn’t love this woman? A parallel universe where he doesn’t ache and regret? Another dimension where his heart doesn’t shatter and reconstitute almost daily? A place anywhere on Earth where he’s not destined to move about his life like a zombie with half of him missing all the time? If so, would he be better off living in that world? Would he want to live in a world where she doesn’t exist, or where he doesn’t love her?

No.

The answer, he knows right down to the marrow in his bones, will always be a resounding no.

He is right where he belongs - at last back on the same plane where she exists, breathing the same air, walking the same streets. He’ll just have to find some way to help her heal enough from the ten-year-old wound he had inflicted. Figure out some alchemy of the soul that will allow her to trust him again in the way he needs her to. Decipher the code to the cage in which she keeps the fragile parts of her heart so he could finally slip the lock and reach in and pacify the chambers and the valves where her love for him dwells, because he’s fairly certain love him still she does, even if she’s unable to let him know just yet – even if she’s unwilling to admit it even to herself - maybe even enough to let him back in where he longs to be. Where he has always longed to be, inside the embrace of her heart.

Elliot is looking at her intently as he shrugs and replies with, “I’m good, Liv. I’m good.” Because just sitting there by her side is enough for now.

Olivia’s lips angle up on one end deepening the long dimple in her right cheek. She doesn’t believe him, but she chooses not to challenge him. She glances down at his wrists where the white bandages peek out a little at the end of the sleeve of his Henley, graphic evidence of his last misadventure with a killer. A serial killer, at that! And her heart contracts at the thought of the danger he had narrowly escaped.

“Maybe it was too soon to drag you out on such a long drive….”

“I’m good,” he insists again. “And you didn’t drag me out, Liv. I offered, remember? In fact, I may have even begged. I wanted to come with you.”

To be with you. To take whatever time you have to give me. To be near you. It’s been too long.

The light turns green, and she starts driving again, focused and quiet as she negotiates the evening rush-hour traffic to the highway on-ramp to I-495 just before the Mid-Town Tunnel. Her GPS is showing that they are not going to make it to Woodstock in under three hours so Elliot is now aware that they have at least three hours before they arrive at the McCanns’ and he is fiercely glad for this time with her where a phone call interruption can’t drag either one of them away.

“Well, I’m glad for the company,” she tells him.

Her voice is soft, gentle, caring. He watches her mouth turn up into a quick smile and smiles back reflexively, even though she keeps her eyes on the traffic.

She glances over at him just in time to catch some expression flit across his features, but it is gone too quickly for her to be able to decipher it. Gone are the days, she mourns silently, when she could read him like an open book. These days, she’s left guessing too often for her liking.

“Me, too,” he says, sounding indolent.

His voice sounds gruff, like a low growl. She likes what the years have done to it, loves how it rumbles straight out of his chest. Makes her shiver like a teenage girl with her first crush. This thought makes her smile, and he catches it. Of course he does. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her for more than a few seconds at a time and Olivia is keenly aware of this. She can feel his gaze burning into her skin.

“Penny for your thoughts?” He rumbles at her.

“I was thinking about your kids. Your grandkids.” She reverts back to what she had started saying earlier when he was so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t heard her. Even while he was drinking her in with his eyes. She wonders what he’d been thinking about looking at her with such longing in his expressive eyes.

She wasn’t about to tell him what she had just actually been thinking and confess to him the truth. What would he do with her truth? What if she were to suddenly blurt out something as egregiously over-emotive as I love you, like he had done at that disastrous intervention, and then leave him hanging? The thought makes her smile widen.

Love has never been the thing at issue between them, though, has it? They’ve always had love in spades, she admits to herself. The love between two best friends. The trust – which was really just an outgrowth of their love for one another – between two partners on the job. Requited if unspoken love between a man bound to another and a woman unable to truly love any other in the same way she loves him.

And now that he is free, as unattached as she is, love is still not the issue that stands between them. The issue now is trust. The trust that had been his gratis because her soul had recognized his at first meeting. The same trust he had shattered when he had left her without a word, discarding everything they had built over twelve years like it couldn’t have mattered less to him. Yeah, that had hurt. Still does.

She won’t speak of love with him. Or the loss of trust. But family, that’s a safe topic.

“Sometimes, I find it hard to believe that you’re a grandpa.”

She’s still smiling when she says this, and there’s gentle teasing in the tone of her voice, but he can also hear the longing in her voice. She must wonder, he thinks, if she would ever have the pleasure and the privilege of being a grandmother one day. If she would live long enough to see the day. She’s only just a couple of years younger than him, but she is still raising a preadolescent. A boy. Lord only knows when, or even if, Noah would get around to giving her grandchildren. It hurts Elliot to imagine Olivia yearning for something she may never be able to have, something he has taken so for granted that he barely appreciates the grandkids he’s already blessed with.

“Hah!” It’s a half-growl, half-laugh. “Sometimes, I can’t believe it myself.”

“Time has a funny way of granting and stealing things, doesn’t it?” She sounds wistful.

“Indeed.”

It was a simple answer and so full of understanding, so full of a multitude of their what ifs that the ache between them grows a hundredfold in just seconds.

Nearly half an hour into the drive, Elliot is still fumbling with the thoughts in his head, trying to figure out the best way to initiate the conversation he wishes they’d had three years ago.

You wanna talk about it now?

He recalls that day, in the tiny hospital lounge, her large, dark eyes filled with incredulity at first, then pain and recrimination. What had he been thinking, trying to apologize to her just then! He should have waited until neither of their lives was wrapped around the axle of the catastrophe he had brought to her doorstep. She’d deserved better from him after ten years of radio silence - more consideration, fewer demands. She’d deserved a proper apology, not some ill-timed and half-assed, Liv, I’m sorry, when she could have hardly given him the proper verbal thrashing he’d deserved, what with his wife of nearly forty years blown-up and battered and lying in the ICU bed fighting for her very life just a few feet down the hallway. Olivia had been gentle with him in her reproach – gentler than she could have been, than she should have been - considerate in the conveyance of her pain.

You were the most…the single most important person in my life, and you just…disappeared.

Were.

She has a son now, who is the center of her world. That confident boy with the thick, beautiful curls and the big blue eyes, eyes so eerily like his own. Stabler eyes, Eli had told him once, looking at his father with an unspoken question shining in his own dark brown eyes, after the intervention and the non-sequitur I love you everyone knew was directed at only one person in that room.

Funny how Eli had Olivia’s eyes, Elliot had mused waiting for his youngest son to ask the question Elliot thought too many people must have wondered and whispered about over the years, including his wife and his own children.

Did you ever sleep with your partner, Detective?  

But he had been long gone by the time Noah was born, not that Eli would have known that.

But Eli had never asked, leaving the unspoken question hanging in the air between them like a silent accusation. And Elliot had not rushed to disabuse his son of his erroneous assumptions about the nature of his relationship with Olivia because the truth was that Elliot loved being mistaken for Noah’s biological father, just like it did something to him when strangers assumed Olivia was his wife, or when they mistook Eli for her son.

Sometimes (God forgive him!) Elliot used to allow himself to imagine that she was the one to whom he had run that terrible night, after the slain Royce kids, that she was the one in whose arms he had sought solace, the one in whose womb he had planted his seed, that Eli was theirs, his and Olivia’s, that he belonged to them, her and him, their ever-abiding love and obsession made flesh and bone. A sort of forensic evidence of their nine-year (at the time) unrealized lust, never expressed love and unending blind devotion.

Except they had never made love. They’d never even kissed, not even chastely on the cheek like two good friends without secret emotional baggage would have been able to. But the burning desire had always been there in his lusting heart. The craven want ever present in tandem with the crushing guilt, even when he had been separated from Kathy and it would have been possible for him to finally let loose his pining heart and allow himself a glimpse of the heaven he’d always imagined he would find in the embrace of Olivia’s arms, in the hot heat of her sex between her thick thighs.

And even fifteen years later, when Elliot had first seen Noah, seen those huge blue eyes, those dimples, that strong chin, that smile, his brain had immediately resurrected his old fantasy about having a kid with Olivia, except this time he was dreaming it was Noah who was theirs.

Elliot feels the familiar pain of regret and loss creep in. His self-imposed exile from her life has left him bereft of so much. He can’t shake the feeling that he has missed out on everything that matters. Still, it is a point of pride and pain for him that she has thrived so well in his absence, climbing the ranks, making Captain, all the while raising a child by herself.

By herself.

His brain always skids to a halt right there. Why? Why was she raising Noah by herself? Where was the father? This nameless, faceless man who’d had the absolute privilege of taking Olivia to his bed, of planting his seed where Elliot’s should have been, a man who’d had the temerity to impregnate then abandon the woman of Elliot’s dreams.

This same man who had fathered Noah’s half-brother. But Connor McCann was adopted, Elliot now knows. He remembers Liv mentioning that to him nearly a year ago when they were sharing lunch, their traditional takeout from Woo Hop, and he was having fun teasing her about her unopened Christmas present in the middle of May. She had mentioned that Connor was adopted, but had said nothing about his father, the man who must have also fathered Noah. The man who had fucked Olivia. The man she had allowed inside her body without any protection. The man who had planted his seed in her belly.

Elliot forces his spiraling thoughts to veer off like a car skidding out of a tailspin, avoiding the endless landmine of images that would torture him if he let them. He cannot abide the idea of any man with her. Never has. Never will. He realizes, of course, that he’s being an absolute asshole about it. She is a stunningly beautiful woman. Age has done nothing to diminish her beauty, to dim her shine. Tall. Striking. Commanding. Powerful. Her angular, gorgeous face framed by that long, thick head of hair….

She’s on her knees before him. Naked. Her ample bottom teasing his aching erection. He reaches out with one hand, to bury his fingers in the rich, soft tresses of her glorious mane of hair - which he just knows smells like the tropics and sex and wanton need - and wraps his other hand around his thick erection. He fists her hair and pulls gently but insistently as he penetrates her and revels in the sensation when she responds to him with a guttural little moan….

Elliot shakes his head. These images! These unremitting, intrusive thoughts. They come out of absolutely nowhere to occupy his thoughts, flashes of images that attack his brain, constrict the air in his lungs, push all his blood to his other head and render him stupid. It’s always been like this. Twenty-five goddamn years of this! The wanting. The lusting. The craving. The suffocating need. And the never having. The hot, inexorable yearning he harbors for and hides from her will be the death of him one day. Sometimes he wonders if she’s the reason he keeps running into danger given half a chance - anything to escape the agonizing need slicing through his aching body with the relentless speed and power of a freight train.

He watches her now, waiting. He doesn’t want to force her to talk, but he knows they both need to say some things, and he wants to let her know that he is ready and willing. Finally ready and willing to take the pain, to suffer whatever punishment she wants to dole out to him if it means a chance at earning her forgiveness, if it means he could beg back her trust.

The moments tick by in silence as Elliot sits still, watching her face in profile, and waiting for the perfect opening so they could at last begin.