Elliot swallowed another tepid mouthful of coffee, watching Huang do what he hadn't been able to accomplish. Talk to the boy. Touch him. Draw him out of himself like sap from a tree: bleeding, painful, thick. He'd felt jealous the first couple of times. Now he got mildly frustrated if the captain even suggested that Elliot should handle the problem cases instead of the doctor. What Elliot had learned early on in life was simple and straightforward as preschool puzzles: the orb fits into the circular hole. The cube fits into the square hole. There was no sense trying to force a pyramid into a circular hole; the sawdusty smelling wood would never relent.

He'd learned it then, but it had taken awhile to sink in. As a young man he thought it was his lack of trying, and he twisted that damn piece this way and that. His marriage to Kathy. Twist. The first child. Grating the sanded edges together, pivoting the piece on its end. The next. Twist. Separation, and reconciliation. And finally the divorce. Elliot still thought about it, sometimes in mourning, sometimes in a bizarre sense of peace. It was a comfort to have finally accepted things as they were. Things were. And he.

He 'met' Huang's eyes through the one way glass. Huang couldn't possibly know that Elliot was looking at him, but the smaller man stared back all the same. Cragen knocked on the window, and Huang exited, shucking his blazer as he did so.

"He doesn't know who raped him," the doctor said with deferential assurance as he folded the blazer over his arm. Elliot had grown to appreciate his at-first disconcerting habit of making continual eye contact as he spoke. "You might want to get him some tissues," he added as Cragen sighed, motioning at his blood-stained blazer.

"Elliot, get Fin and start making some calls. I want this kid placed in foster care and I want his parents down here for a little chat." Cragen pulled a handkerchief out of his own pocket and headed into the interrogation room to stem the flow of the boy's bloody nose.

"He gonna be okay?" Elliot asked Huang as they walked slowly, comfortably back to the bullpen.

A pause. "You'd know better than I would. He's gone through a lot."

The detective slowed his pace, taken a little aback, brow furrowed. "What d'ya mean, I'd know better – "

"Look, Elliot, I could quote typical statistics. I could wax about the resilience of the mind and the spirit. I could cite usual mental difficulties and disorders associated with childhood rape. But just because someone can hold a nine to five job and is legally sane and doesn't commit crimes doesn't make them good, or happy. You've seen a lot more of this." Huang turned off in the corridor toward the bathroom, paused, faced Elliot. "I'm sorry. What I'm trying to say is I'm very tired, and I don't know."

Elliot nodded in aquiesence and let Huang leave, but after a minute followed him into the bathroom. The smaller man was bent over the sink, scrubbing at his blazer.

"Something bothering you?"

Huang shrugged. His fingers went in tiny circular motions around the bloodstain. The orb fits the circular hole, Elliot thought absently. "I've been tired," he repeated.

"One of your clients?"

"I'm sure you read about her." His hand stopped, shook slightly.

"You can't blame yourself…"

"I do, of course. I would be crazy to protest that. It's natural and human. But moreover, I'm relieved." Pause. The water dripped into the porcelain sink beneath his stilled hands. The blazer was black and sharp against its clean white curves. "That I don't have to contrive a new way to make her feel better about her life. That I don't have to listen to her scream about how her father raped her. That I don't have to call 911 every time she calls me in the middle of the night making another suicide threat."

Elliot nodded again, feeling like a bobblehead figurine. "Is that why you're upset?"

"I'm tired." Huang's elbows splayed out a bit to the sides as he leaned on the edge of the sink.

There was a moment of silence. Wanting to say something before someone else entered the room, and at the same time wanting desperately to leave, Elliot thought of Kathy: the nights she'd broken away from him in the middle of their lovemaking weeping, and refusing to talk; the days when he'd find absently placed socks in the fridge and a butter knife in his lunch; the way her voice sounded when she said: "No, Elliot. I don't want to talk about it. I'm not in the mood," in a tone that absolutely commanded that he press and squeeze her for information until she was pink and raw as a grapefruit, and felt he was worthy of her pain. "It's hard to carry other people's pain," he offered finally, feeling it was tardy and lame.

The door clanged open. "Phone's for you, Doc," Fin called.

It was as if a scene in a movie had abruptly ended. Huang straightened, seized his coat and headed out, brushing past Elliot. The two detectives watched him walk quickly down the corridor. Fin leaned back against the still-open door, then glanced at Elliot. "I interrupt something?"

"Do you think you could handle the caseload this afternoon?"

"Yeah, if I light a fire under Cavotta's ass. Why? You got something to do?"

"Yeah."

The bicycle gears kept up a steady din of buzzing as Elliot pedaled. He'd noticed only recently that when he exercised he snarled, almost, his face curling into a concentrated sneer at the maintenance of his body. Sweat gathered in clumps on his inner thighs and at the base of his throat, and he concentrated on the growing wetness of his body, feeling disgusting and purified at the same time. He focused on the thought of a shower, and dinner, home-made dinner, he'd gotten very adept at cooking, learned to take pleasure in maintenance, in eating well. He usually watched TV, but maybe tonight he'd call Liv, have her over, they'd listen to the taped recording of Maureen in the orchestra that she'd sent him…

The intercom's buzz sounded louder than usual. Elliot slowed down and then hopped off, irritated that he'd been interrupted and resisting the impulse to drag his arm across his forehead. "Yep," he barked into the grated beige face of the machine.

"Elliot, it's George. I wanted to apolog – "

"Come on up." He unlatched and opened the door, glanced hurriedly around the room, scooped up a few empty wineglasses; an old crumpled TV Guide, and tossed them behind the couch. The sink was full of dishes, but there was nothing he could do about that. He closed the doors to the bathroom and bedroom, and was absently rubbing his foot at a mysterious stain on the carpet when the front door creaked open. Huang peered in, looking calmer and almost curious.

Realising how disheveled he must have looked, Elliot struggled out of his sweatshirt while offering, "Come on in, sit down." He broke free and used the thick material to wipe his face and arms. "Sorry. I was just working out."

"I didn't mean to inconvenience you. I just wanted to apologise."

Elliot shrugged, guiding Huang over to the couch. "Forget it. You want anything to drink?"

"I wasn't planning on staying."

"Yeah, but you don't have anything else to do. Who wants to go home to their apartment and read the DSM in their spare time?" Elliot talked over his shoulder as he poured drinks in the kitchen. Huang looked around, settled himself on the couch.

"I enjoy reading the DSM. Occasionally."

"You might as well page through the Encyclopedia Britannica for fun." Elliot sat down on the opposite end of the couch and jettied a stream of water from a red insulated bottle into his mouth. "I know, I know, some people do that too."

Huang picked up his iced tea, but stared into instead of drinking it. "Elliot." He may have been beginning to say something, but he did not finish.

Elliot ran a hand over his skull uncomfortably. "You don't have to apologise. We're all under a lot of stress."

"You've changed a lot." Huang turned eyes like beetles onto him. "Was it the divorce?"

"In part. I've spent a lot of time in church, too. Father Angelo's been giving me therapy-of-sorts. And Liv. She's been," Elliot trailed off, smiling and shaking his head.

"This is none of my business," the doctor said quietly. "Is she your lover?"

"They teach ya how to be blunt in shrink school, huh?" Across the room, the grandfather clock kept an unconscious rhythm to their conversation. Elliot could feel a playful trace of the old cynicism threading into his voice. "No, she's not."

A minute passed. The ice tea sweated clear droplets over Huang's clenched fingers. Elliot gnawed on the spout of his water bottle. Then, as if the words had been drawn from him – he must have done something! no one could coax things out of him like the doctor –

"Are you okay?"

Huang met his eyes: that steady, mild, assured gaze, like staring at your own reflection in water. After awhile one's eyes would begin to unfocus and a brilliant on-and-off light, like a strobe, would pulsate behind his head. Perhaps that was why Elliot thought he was still looking into Huang's eyes when the doctor kissed him.

It was a decidedly male kiss, a firm connection of call and response, two lucid visceral beings meeting in a shuddery solid form. It was a trigger kiss, prompting movement from hands and eyes and facial muscles – Elliot's eyes closed, his hands lifted palm-up, met shirted flesh, rested there. On the backs of his eyelids, Huang's burnt stare was branded as if on the hide of a roan horse. He saw the dark head bent over white porcelain. The small hands moving in circles on the back of the boy who was weeping. Someone was weeping; there was warm wet fluid between them. The water bottle felt clammy in his hands. Elliot tasted his own sweat.

Across the room, the grandfather clock groaned out the time.