Olivia pushed her chair back from her desk, but instead of the stretch and deep yawn that often came at the end of a day's work, her hands gripped the edge of the metal as if she might break it. Every muscle in her body was twisted with dread. She forced a deep breath, consciously eased her shoulders and dragged her eyes up and across the room.
Elliot was standing on the far side with a couple of detectives. She watched him laugh his way through the story he was telling. She didn't need to see it to know that his eyes would be alive as he spoke, his whole body pushing forward into the joke.
It was the end of the day. It was the end of Elliot's last day.
Laughter burst again across the room and Olivia finally let go of her desk. She put an easy expression on her face, smiled at her colleagues' good humor and turned away toward the locker room. It was a good performance.
Her fingers only shook a little as she worked the padlock. She heard him calling back to someone across the squad room as she yanked it open. He was closer than she'd thought. She turned to see the laughter finishing on his face as he walked into the room.
"They go easy on you? Take pity on the old man on his last day?" She smiled as she asked, needing him to know the ground rules. Casual humor. That's how they were going to do this.
His grin returned as he replied. "No, but I can take it. Bresnan's verbal abuse is even more weak-ass than his right hook."
She watched his eyes drift to the floor. She always saw the little boy in him when he did that – his sometimes tortured expression giving way to one of openness, potential and mischief. It never lasted, though. Inevitably the boy was gone when he looked back up.
She inhaled sharply, smiled and turned back to her locker. "So, McManus' tonight? Is that the plan?"
"Yeah … yeah I guess so." He spoke slowly, seemingly reluctant to continue along this forced casual vein. "Those guys are a bunch of sore losers … complaining there's no way I should have lived long enough for them to be stuck buying the beer when I retired." He grinned again and stepped forward.
She pulled her jacket and bag into her arms, gripping them tightly in front of her. "They got that right," she replied. "I think the odds were 3:1 at one point, funeral over fired. Retirement didn't even make the spread."
She had all her things now. Nothing more to busy herself with. "They way I see it you owe me big. I staked a chunk of my pension on your ass getting fired."
"And you call yourself my partner?!" He smiled and closed the last of the distance. "I forgive you though. You were hedging your bets. Probably a good move seeing how you would've needed the money from your winnings."
She looked at him and waited for the punch line. "Come on, Benson," he continued. "There's no way if I went down in flames, you wouldn't have been right there beside me telling 1 PP to go fuck itself." His grin hung on far too briefly, his eyes turning serious.
She looked at him, her face starting to fall. She tried to take a breath and shake it off. But this time it wasn't enough.
"Dammit," he said, moving back just a fraction, "I'm sorry. I promised myself I wouldn't do that."
"No, no it's fine. I'm fine. I just … it just ..."
"Yeah," he said, "I know." He reached out his hand, but stopped it before it touched her arm.
"I'm sorry, Elliot. I don't think I'm up for the whole McManus' thing. I thought I … I guess I just … " She exhaled, her expression grim and her eyes locked on his as she finished, "I don't feel much like celebrating tonight."
"No, I understand. Honestly I'd like to skip the whole thing myself. Everyone clapping me on the back telling me what a great guy I am. It's like I'm at my own funeral."
She laughed. "How many years and how many bullets has it been, Stabler? Turns out it's beer at McManus' that scares us."
He grinned. God she was going to miss this man.
"Well," she said. "Don't let the guys get too much of a head start on you. Could get ugly."
"I think it's absolutely gonna get ugly. God help me if Munch gets emotional." He paused and caught her eyes again. "You sure you can't come? No pressure or anything, it'd just be nice to …"
"No," her reply was brusque. Then to soften the refusal, "rain check."
"Yeah, rain check." He forced a smile and inhaled. "Well, I should get going." He looked at her for a long moment and then turned away toward the door.
Despite her enforced calm, she could feel the panic rising inside as she watched him walk away.
"Elliot," she called as he neared the locker room door.
"Yeah, Liv," he was already moving back toward her.
She paused for a second, wondering what the hell she was doing. She decided she didn't care. "Do you want to come over for dinner later?"
"Dinner?" He looked confused. Of the million things she could have said to him right then, she knew that was the last thing he ever expected to hear.
"Yeah, I just … I don't want to do this here. Like this. I … I thought maybe we could … eat. If you don't want to, it's ok … it's just …" She looked at him. She wasn't used to stumbling around like this. She never had trouble saying what she meant with him.
She steadied herself and looked up at him, finally saying, "We've been doing this a long time, Elliot. I don't want to say goodbye to you in a bar."
He didn't respond right away. He looked at her and she could see everything he was feeling in his eyes.
"Or a locker room," he said.
"Or a locker room."
He was quiet again for a moment. They should both be thinking fast, considering the implications. She knew, though, that just this once, on this last night of their partnership, they weren't thinking at all.
"Yeah," he said. "I'd like that."
"Great," she said steadily, finally feeling the calm she'd been reaching for all day. "I'll see you later then."
He started to say something but stopped himself. Something in her expression seemed to catch him.
"I'll see you later," he agreed. He waited another moment, and then turned and walked out of the precinct. For the last time.
Olivia found peace and distraction doing something she almost never did. After leaving the precinct, she walked home by way of the open-air market. She took her time visiting different vendors, slowly adding to the increasingly heavy bag hanging from the crook of her arm.
It was common knowledge around the squad that Olivia didn't know how to cook. At all. She subsisted entirely on take-out and grab-and-go from the city's infinite vendors and food trucks. Her fridge was a wasteland.
At least it was usually a wasteland.
Very, very rarely, Olivia reached into her past and found a memory that was pure and good. She was ten or twelve years old – old enough to understand the depth of her mother's depression and the full consequences of her drinking. Also old enough to remember the handful of times when her mother, in a lucid moment, acted like a real mom.
"You need to know how to cook one great meal," her mother had told her. Olivia was never sure if the meal itself was the point, or if her mother's motive was to assuage a tiny piece of her own guilt and despair.
And so her mother taught her. Not how to cook, but how to make one great meal.
Olivia was maybe 30 the first time she'd tried to reproduce it. Not for her mom or for a boyfriend, just for herself. Since then she'd only done it a handful of times, and only ever to enjoy alone.
Tonight, for the first time, she would share it.
One of the great things about not keeping any food in the house was that, when she did decide to dust off this piece of her history, there was always plenty of room to do it. The fridge was empty, the counters un-cluttered, the equipment clean and still feeling new.
She changed her clothes, unloaded her bag and methodically began the remembered routine of cleaning and chopping, searing and stirring. She turned the oven on low, washed up as she went, and soon was ready to carry her glass of wine to the couch where she could curl up to wait.
As she had expected, it was nearly nine o'clock when she heard the stairway door bang in the hallway outside. She didn't hear him approach her door, but rose slowly and walked to the door enjoying the feeling of clean, comfortable socks on her feet. She wasn't thinking about anything at all.
He knocked and she opened the door to him, and easy smile on her face. Somewhere in the past couple of hours' activity she had let go of the anxious feeling that had been twisting her inside for weeks. She was simply here, in this moment. The rest she could deal with another time.
Elliot started to say something as he moved into the apartment and then stopped suddenly. "What is that?" he asked, his brain clearly deceived by his nose.
She smiled, "Beef stew. It's my one great meal."
He didn't reply, just stared, incredulous.
"Feeling a bit through the looking glass, Elliot?"
"Yeah, I guess I am …" he looked around and back at her. "But you can't cook," he exclaimed, as if affirming that fact to himself.
"No, Elliot, I can't cook. Not a bit. Ask me to make anything besides this and I'm a train wreck. I can't even scramble an egg. But this, I can do."
"When did you learn? Who taught you? Did you take a class and not tell me?" He started rattling off questions, clearly trying to make sense of what was happening.
"I learned a very long time ago, Elliot." She cut off his words. She reached for his hand and turned to lead him inside. "Now come in and eat."
They sat together at her small table, eating the stew and thick chunks of bread torn straight from the loaf and smeared with fresh butter. The wine was perfect, full and smooth, cutting through the richness of the meal.
Elliot's disbelief at the dinner was eventually subsumed by his elemental pleasure in eating it. He seemed to respond physically to the savory hardiness, relaxing into his bowl, casually refilling their wine glasses. When he finally leaned back from the table, his bright smile was uncontained.
"That, Olivia Benson, was incredible," he said. "Utterly unexpected, and completely incredible."
She returned his smile, feeling pleasantly full and happy. "It was my pleasure."
She stood and reached for his bowl. "No way, Liv. You cooked, I clean. Sit down." He directed her to a stool at the kitchen bar and topped off her glass before setting to work. She watched him as he ferried the dishes and remnants of food from the table. He moved easily in her kitchen, not asking for her guidance or preferences. Truthfully, she had none to offer. The only thing she really cared about in her kitchen was the coffee pot.
He dried his hands one final time, reached for his wine glass and pushed himself up on the counter opposite her chair. He swung his legs a little as they talked. She found it immensely satisfying to watch him there, his feet bare below the frayed hem of his jeans.
As she emptied her glass for the fourth time that evening, he hopped down from his perch and reached across the counter to fill it once again. She thought about declining, but the stew and bread had done their work and the alcohol was affecting her only nominally. She felt warm and content, pleasantly free and easy.
Above all she felt completely present in the moment, enjoying every speck of this unusual evening.
Elliot set the bottle down again, spread his hands wide and leaned against the counter facing her across the bar. He sighed. "I gotta tell ya, Liv, I haven't felt this good in a long time."
"Couple of hours into retirement and suddenly you're a new man?"
"No, Liv," he smiled warmly, "it's not retirement. It's this. It feels really nice."
She looked at him openly, a half smile on her face. "Me too."
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Without taking her eyes from his she asked, "Do you want to stay for a while?"
His own look was steady. "Yeah," he said, "I do. I really do."
"It's late …" she offered, giving him a chance to remember life on the other side of this night.
"I know," he replied. "I've got time. It's my retirement party after all. Kathy made sure I wasn't going to try to drive home across the bridge. She expects me to get poured into a rack at the precinct somewhere around 4 a.m."
She smiled. "OK then."
She swiveled her chair toward the living room and slipped down. She took the seat at the end of the couch and sat with her back to the arm and her feet curled up underneath her. He watched her for a moment and then followed her into the room. He set his glass down on the coffee table next to hers and dragged her only comfy chair toward the couch. He relaxed back into it and put his feet up on the soft couch cushions. She thought she had never seen him look so content.
With most men she would have wanted music – something to fill the quiet moments, something to add fuel to the conversation, something to engage the part of her brain that always felt a bit impatient and restless, the part she held back. Tonight, though, she craved the silence. She wanted nothing to occupy her senses other than him.
Of course they did start talking, though with no particular subject or agenda. They laughed. God they laughed. It wasn't the first time, of course, but in the past, on the job, there had always been something that held them back. Something to remind them of their dark purpose and of all the pain that twisted in their city.
But now the laughter poured forth, flowing warm and rich and unconstrained. The habitually fleeting light in his expression that had always struck her like bursts of air and electricity seemed to have forgotten its temporary nature and instead colored his whole being. She too became aware of the muscles in her face that went too unused.
Some of the talk was reminiscence, some was the inconsequential things that each had filed away, wanting to share for no particular reason but never finding the moment quite right.
This moment was perfect.
She was struck by how many of these little observations and connections each of them had stored away. She had always thought that hers were a consequence of single life. There wasn't anyone to unload to at the end of the day. She didn't even have a cat. Or a houseplant for that matter.
His, though, came as a surprise. She had always assumed that these were the things he took home to his wife. Not the cases or the job, but the little things – those odd thoughts that human beings seem programmed to collect through their day.
For whatever reason, though, he hadn't kept these for his wife. He'd kept them for her.
As he talked, she watched him. She knew his gestures, his body, better than anyone else's in the world besides her own. Sometimes she thought even better than her own, because she saw things in him that she was certain he was never aware of in himself. The way his t-shirt gathered the tiniest bit on his torso when he leaned back into the chair, sliding across the firmness and muscle. The way he moved into his humor physically, his whole frame active. They way his eyes changed color the subtlest bit with his mood – never more strikingly clear than when he was angry, flecked when he was tired or had retreated into himself.
Now his eyes danced. He was tired, sure, they both were. But his eyes danced like she had never seen them.
Her awareness of the pleasure in every moment of this night felt like a gift. Her success professionally was built on her ability not to feel when she couldn't afford to. She didn't always manage it – neither of them did – but for the most part they got through the days in control of how much they allowed themselves to feel. She worried on some level that she wouldn't remember how to feel anything fully anymore. It was good to know that she could.
He had opened the third bottle of wine some time ago, fueling the warmth and good humor that seemed to fill the room. She put down her glass and stretched back over the arm of the couch, her arms pulled high, releasing muscles that had been sitting now for hours. The pleasure in the motion compounded as she folded back in on her self, relishing the sensation in her core.
She found him watching her, just as she had watched him. She tried to read the expression on his face and found it surprisingly open and relaxed. After so many years of surreptitious glances and furtive observations, there was extraordinary power in watching one another so plainly.
She didn't look away. Instead she let the smile linger and after a moment said simply, "hi."
"Hi." He kept his focus on her face. The manner of his reply let her know that he understood what she had meant, that she was happy to be greeting him in this new, other place, and that he too was happy to be there with her.
She unfolded herself from the couch and reached for their empty glasses. "Should I dig around for another bottle? I think there's one somewhere, and if not we can always move along to the stronger stuff."
"No," he replied, "thanks. I'm happy."
"Me too." She smiled again and moved to carry the glasses into the kitchen.
She wasn't sure what she intended with the motion, just that she wanted to move. Under different circumstances she might be afraid that a shift would have shattered the spell. Not tonight, though. This spell wouldn't be so easily broken.
He followed her to the kitchen, catching up the empty wine bottle as he came. He put it next to her as she stood at the sink rinsing their glasses. He turned and leaned with his back to the counter, his hands lightly curled around its edge at his sides. She looked at him sideways as she worked, enjoying the ease in his posture and proximity.
She set the glasses to dry and half turned to face him. He started to push himself away from the counter – back toward his comfortable chair and her corner on the couch, to more shared laughter and lightheartedness – and then stopped himself. She had caught his eyes with hers and something in them held him where he was.
He seemed to be waiting for her to speak. She sensed his sudden deflation and realized he was worried that she was about to bring their evening to an end. But that wasn't what she was thinking at all.
She had promised herself when she'd left the precinct hours before that she wasn't going to have any expectations about tonight. She was just going to be. With him. She was just going to be with him.
And now she knew. Being with him was exactly what she needed. The only thing she needed. Tonight, just this one time. To help her say goodbye.
She looked at him for another moment and let the smile build across her face. It was her truest smile of the whole night – maybe in all of their years together. She could see that he was captivated by it. She drank in his expression.
And then, without a word, she turned and walked from the room.
Her apartment wasn't large – no New York City police officer's apartment was large. But it fit her well. Not so big that it made her feel lonely, just big enough.
She left the kitchen and crossed the living room to the hall. She turned the corner into her bedroom, pulling the ponytail holder from hair. She set the elastic on her bureau and, with neither hesitation nor rush, pulled her shirt over her head.
She heard something from the kitchen, a creaking of the counter, perhaps a hand sliding down a doorframe. In answer she pulled off the socks that had made her so happy earlier in the evening, and stepped out of her pants. She stood for a moment in her bra and panties with her back half to the door. She was listening for him, for the sound of his decision.
In the end she didn't hear anything. He was suddenly just there, standing in the doorway. Her breath caught. She was waiting for him, wanting him, and still her breath caught.
His hand had come up and opened toward her – in apology? He must have thought for a moment that he had walked in her, on something that wasn't meant for him. And in a way it wasn't.
It was meant for her.
This was hers to offer. Hers to demand.
She was turned half to him and half away, but her eyes were locked on his. They stayed locked on his as she reached behind her, unhooked her bra and let it fall. She heard the passage of air as he inhaled sharply.
She took a breath, and turned to face him fully.
His hand was still frozen partly raised. His mouth was just open. He was breathing fast.
"Liv …" He barely managed to get out her name.
"Elliot." She spoke his name quietly, assuredly.
She didn't move from where she stood. Her hands were relaxed at her sides, and she was breathing almost normally.
His breath had become more hoarse if anything. His eyes moved down her body, flicking back to her gaze, wanting her permission to look. She granted it.
"Elliot …" she offered after a moment, "your family."
"This isn't about them." His response came fast. More slowly, he finished. "This is ours."
She stood and watched as he took a step forward. He stopped a pace from her, reached back and slowly, deliberately dragged his t-shift off over his head.
He stood for a moment. She could sense the warmth of his bare torso. "Liv, you are so … incredibly … beautiful." Emotion made his voice thick. His eyes were locked on hers and she could the hint of tears there, hear his tense breathing.
"So are you," she said quietly.
In the end, she was the one to close the distance. She took that last step slowly, bringing their bodies close, letting her hand settle on the warm skin at his side. Her lips sank into the soft spot just below his collarbone, and she inhaled the completely familiar scent of him. Her hands moved to his back and she pulled herself close to him.
Elliot's breath poured from him as his arms closed around her and he buried his face in her hair. "You are so beautiful," he said again, though she knew his eyes were tightly closed. He didn't need to look her, to know it. He'd looked at her every day for years. To know this beauty, he needed to touch her.
They stood locked together, still, tightly bound. She inhaled, kissed his chest and ran her hand down the small of his back.
"I'm not going to be able to stop," he warned her, still clutching her to him.
"That's good," she said, "because tonight is what we get. And I want every bit of it."
He pulled her head away from his chest then and stared at her for one moment more. Then his lips came down on hers and she stretched onto her toes, straining to meet them. His arms closed around her waist and he lifted her. He took the two steps toward her bed with her as if it were a familiar path to him, and lowered her across it.
He stepped back then, looking down at her. She drew her knees up, her toes curling into the duvet as she watched him. He unbuttoned his jeans and let them fall open to reveal that place, so low on his torso, than she'd pictured a thousand times. She imagined her lips on it as he leaned forward again, reaching for the sides of her panties. Olivia wasn't sure if she was surprised that her body didn't tense at his touch. Or at the feeling of her panties being dragged past her hips, down her thighs.
He picked up her lower legs and snaked the panties off over her feet. She reached forward, fingers locking around his wrist, pulling him down onto her as she lay back. Her hand plunged toward his lower back, sliding into the open waist of his jeans, pushing under his briefs. His muscles there were bunched and hard as she clutched at them, pulling him toward her.
Her breath caught sharply as his hips ground into hers, the bone and rough denim assaulting her. Her knees came up around him, though, and she pulled with her hands, wanting more of this delicious pain.
He kissed her hard as his hips thrust forward. He rocked to the side as his hand dropped to her waist, pushing up her rib cage and spreading over her breast. His thumb ranged over her nipple, making it ache and swell. Then his mouth closed over it, his hand wrapped around the firm roundness, claiming it, consuming it.
Her own mouth strained open. She struggled with her hands, arms, legs, to pull him more firmly to her. To touch every part of this body that she felt such a clear right to.
She pulled his mouth back to hers and reached again for his waist, pushing his jeans down, stretching and yanking his briefs off over the enormity of his erection. When he was free from them, her hand locked around him, guiding him into her. His eyes met hers at the moment she felt him touch her. She strained forward and tried to pull him into her, but he held her from him … ruthless, muscles steeled, refusing to move.
He'd let her think until that moment that she was in control, that her own strength was a match for his somehow. As he held her, though, his body was a brick wall, unmovable, unreachable. Her desperation grew and she scrambled against him, trying to pull him into her. He would have her on his terms, though, she now knew. He would control this moment.
Any other man would have gotten a sharp kick to the groin, and would have been lucky if she tossed him his pants on the way out the door. Never, ever would she have tolerated someone else taking this kind of control. She only ever let the men she slept with think they were in charge, but in truth they were all there to serve her exactly how and as much as she wanted. Then they were gone.
Elliot was the only one close enough, safe enough, intimate enough to take this away from her. To possess enough of her trust, to know enough of her demons that he could force her to belong to him – and to know that she needed him to.
She was wholly aware but totally unafraid of her own helplessness.
He kissed her then, hard, and finally he pushed forward. She felt him enter her, stretch her, start to fill her. Her muscles clenched around him and she squirmed to bring him closer still. Her hips tilted up and her knees wrapped around him as he pushed into her, stilling himself only when he filled her completely.
She groaned, feeling sharp tugs from deep within her core as her body strained to accommodate him. But still she wanted more.
Her head tipped back as their bodies ground together, trying desperately to gain even a fraction more of one another.
"Liv." His voice was surprisingly clear when he spoke to her. "Liv, open your eyes. Look at me."
Unwilling to shift her concentration at all from the sensation of him, but desperate for the reassurance of his face, she inhaled and opened her eyes. He was staring down at her, breathing hard but unhurried. Sweat beading on his forehead.
He didn't speak again, but commanded her eyes with his as he slowly withdrew and pushed into her again. Again she felt the pull of him deep inside, the fleeting and wonderful pain, the pleasure of straining against him.
He ran his hand over her forehead, pushing the hair back, forcing her to look at him. Her mouth arched up to his as he withdrew again, and he held it there with his as he picked up a deliberate rhythm.
The pressure of his body felt relentless to her, and yet still wasn't enough. She was half out of her mind as he came down onto her again and again and again. His eyes sought hers the whole time. He seemed to hold her there deliberately, right at the edge, so much longer than she could possibly bear.
Then all at once she was falling. Darkness closed in on her vision and the waves of orgasm consumed her. Her body clenched at this, her muscles a vice around his erection. He crashed into her again and his eyes flickered. His breath caught, a low, gasping groan coming from deep in his chest as buried himself in her. She dug her fingers into his back, claiming his release.
Her teeth were closed gently on the flesh of his shoulder and she felt his lips moving in the crook of her neck. Her body shuddered as she tasted his skin, recovering her breath. She heard small sounds coming from him as he kissed her under her ear, toward her pulse point. Words maybe, or maybe just breath and emotion.
He pulled back to look at her then, and kissed her mouth gently, lingeringly. She kissed him back completely, feeling his teeth on her tongue, tugging at his lips with hers.
He breathed in but didn't pull away, the kisses smaller now, moving across her lips as if trying to stitch something up inside. Something that needed to be kept – safe and treasured – forever.
He rolled to his side and she rolled with him, their arms and legs still wrapped around one another. A warm smile spread across his face, crinkling his eyes.
This time it was Elliot's turn to say, "hi."
"Hi," she returned, an answering smile on her face.
She watched, though, as the warmth started to seep from his eyes. Suddenly there was pain there, and sad helplessness. His fingers dug into her more deeply, and he clutched her to him.
They lay wrapped together, still and quiet. She brought her hand up to his face and felt its warmth. Her fingers looked small to her as they wrapped around the hard line of his jaw.
His eyes were liquid again as he looked at her.
She blinked back her own sudden tears and kissed him, her hands furrowing into his hair, forcing their mouths together. As the kiss deepened, she hitched her knee up to his side and rolled onto him. His response was immediate as she slowly rocked her hips against him, his hands at her waist.
She trailed her hand down his chest and over his stomach. Her fingers slipped between them, and she guided him into her once again.
She gasped a little as she sat back, settling onto his full length. He looked up her with what had to be amazement on his face. His hands lingered at her waist, rocking with her. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, arching into him. She felt his hands lift to her full breasts, the warmth of his palms radiating into her.
The sensation building deep inside her was different this time, more direct, more raw. Her mouth fell open and she looked into his eyes as it started to take hold. The moment it grabbed her she tried to lift away from him to lessen the intensity somehow, make it more bearable, but he grabbed her and held her to him, slamming up into her with his own climax. She cried out and pushed against his chest but he was relentless, demanding that she feel every incredible, excruciating moment.
When her orgasm finally began to ease, she slipped down onto his chest. She was trembling and gasping for air. His chest was wet with sweat and he was panting, his arms wrapped protectively around her, holding her to him.
Slowly her trembles ebbed and her breathing slowed. Her body felt heavy, her muscles limp and unresponsive. Eventually, she drifted away into her exhaustion. She thought she could sleep the night exactly as they were, him all around her, still inside her. She was utterly relaxed, utterly weary, utterly spent.
When she woke sometime later, the air was moving slowly and deeply inside his chest beneath her. She lay with her cheek against his neck, lingering in the rhythm of his sleep.
Slowly she eased off of him, wincing when he finally slipped from her. Her flesh was raw and swollen, and she felt lightheaded when she stood from the bed. He stirred, turning to look at her as she stepped toward the bathroom. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, rolling onto his side to look at her.
"You really are beautiful, you know," he said in a voice husky with sleep. She'd heard his newly-woken voice on the phone many times before, but always as a result of some terrible thing calling them out to work in the middle of the night. Never like this. Never in this place. Never these words.
She smiled again and left the room. When she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror, she stood for a moment looking for what he had seen. To her, the beautiful thing was all him. It was how her skin felt after his touch, it was the warm soreness in her flesh and muscles that mapped his course over her, it was the smell of him – of them – on her body. Her hair was tangled and dark, her lips swollen, her eyes heavy. When she looked at herself, all she could see was what they'd done.
She smiled at the thought.
He was awake and watching her as she re-entered the room. She was naked still, unselfconscious, and shivered a little as she slid back into the bed next to him. He pulled her to him and they lay together, warm and completely comfortable under the covers. It felt both every bit as deliciously new as it was, and as familiar as if they'd lain together like this every night for a decade.
The held each other quietly for a time, and then talked on and off. They didn't sleep. Neither was willing to give up any more of the time they had to sleep, contented though it was.
Sometime near dawn they got up and stood for a long time underneath the hot shower. He washed her hair. She stood behind him, resting her cheek between his shoulder blades as he let the water run down onto his face. They held each other.
The water started to cool, finally. They'd used all the hot. It was time to get out.
She could feel his mood shifting, the tension gathering in his body. It was a physical response in him that she knew well – anger, frustration. Not unfamiliar emotions in their working lives. Here, though, it cut so much deeper. They were running out of time. The night was ending.
Instead of turning off the water, now cold, he kissed her hard. It was a desperate, consuming kiss that she returned fully. Suddenly he spun her away from him, bracing her hand against the shower wall. She cried out as he plunged into her from behind, the soreness in her flesh dwarfed by her need to have him inside her. The shockingly cold water ran over them as his hips smashed into her, but neither of them cared. It felt good. Brutal and elemental as the their need for each other.
Agonized sound exploded from him as he came, pouring himself into her. She rested her forehead against the cool wall for a moment breathing hard, and then leaned back into him. Finally, he flipped the shower lever off, and they stood panting together, his arms wrapped around from behind. He buried his mouth into her neck and she reached back to hold him.
Finally he stretched out of the shower for one of her big, thick towels. He turned her to face him, wrapping the towel around her. He dried the cold water from her back and shoulders and she leaned into him, greedy for his warmth. He dried her hair, and pulled the towel tight around her as they stepped out of the shower. He wrapped another towel around his waist and they returned to the bedroom. She sat on the end of the bed, huddled under her towel and watched him start to dry his body.
He looked at her for a long time, and then slowly, reluctantly, reached for his jeans, pulling them on over his still-damp thighs. She saw his stomach muscles contract instinctively as he buttoned the jeans and settled them onto his hips. He stopped, then and instead of reaching for his shirt, stepped toward her. He grabbed her hands and pulled her off the bed into his arms, their naked torsos pressed together, their arms tightly around one another.
She lingered there for a moment, but she knew it was time. Silently, deliberately she reclaimed the control she had ceded to him.
She took a long breath against his skin, and looked up at him. She took his face in both of her hands and pulled it down to her. She kissed his cheeks just under his intensely clear eyes, and then his mouth. She found his hand with hers and held it while she stepped away to pick his t-shirt up off the floor. She ran her hands underneath his arms, lifting them high and pulling the t-shirt on and down over his head.
She left him watching her as she pulled her own t-shirt on over her naked breasts and slipped into her soft pants. She took his hand again and led her from the bedroom back into the main apartment. She slid her bare feet into a pair of shoes and waited as he retrieved his own from the door. She wrapped her fingers around the waistband of his jeans in the back as he bent to pull them on. She'd sometimes caught a glimpse of that bit of his exposed skin over the years, and she took it for herself now.
He stood again and held her in the entryway until she reached for the doorknob. They didn't speak as they walked down the stairs together and out into the cold early-morning of the street.
He turned her to face him again and she slid her hands around his waist inside his open jacket. The fabric of his t-shirt was thin and she felt every bit of his warm skin and muscle underneath. He buried his face in her hair and wrapped his arms around her back, holding her to him hard.
She felt her own tears start to leech from her eyes and pulled away, a broken smile on her face. He smiled down at her, his own smile similarly distorted with grief.
"I do love you, Liv. So … much," he said. "I need you to know that." His eyes were urgent and seeking.
"I know." She smiled, "I love you too."
The stood looking at each other for a long time.
She inhaled deeply, and smiled again. "Now," she said, planting her palms on his chest, "go."
He started to speak but she stopped him with a look. "Please," she said. "You need to go."
He closed his mouth and forced a quick nod of his head. He smiled again, a brittle sad smile that didn't reach anywhere close to his eyes.
"Ok," he said.
"Ok."
He took her face in his hands one last time and kissed her deeply. Then he turned quickly and walked away down the street, not looking back before rounding the corner out of view.
She stood for a moment in the empty street.
"Ok," she said again. To herself alone this time. "Ok."
She turned and climbed the steps back up to her building. When she reached the top, she looked toward the corner where Elliot had disappeared. He was gone.
She took a deep breath, rubbed her eyes and glanced up at the sky. It was cold and clear. She breathed again, pulled open the door and walked inside.