She gets it in her head to drive him home from the hospital. She doesn't think about what home might mean for him, three years undercover, twelve years of slogging on the job, a shovel full of bitter and let down. She never imagines home for other people, can't picture it amongst the filmstrip of dead children, fled crack houses, Serena drunk in the living room, Elliot, Eli, Kathy, Cragen's bed. She finds it best to wait and see.
He flirts with the nurse who wheels him to her car. Her skin is on fire through the corridors. He looks totally composed and it pisses her off, steels her to turn and walk away because he has become an ass, a real prick, all of the things she hated about the chip on Elliot's shoulder and Brian knows about Elliot, the shooting, the rage, the city wide gossip chain on how Benson and Stabler got fucked and no one knows where Stabler ran off to but Benson must be a hot mess. Wouldn't trust that one with a gun.
Home for Cassidy is nicer than she expected. It's plain but clean and painfully close to hers, a home decorating catalogue that stays away from the dangerous and the personal. He eases into the couch and she makes coffee. They aren't speaking. The dripping and percolating gargles in the air and hangs with time. She can't stop pulling her cuticles. She finds it in herself to say that she's sorry about Carissa but he stops her almost before she starts.
"We're not going to be sorry for each other. You and I don't deserve that."
There are years between her eyes and his and she can't find the air in the room. She's cold and discarded and her hands can't seem to let go of the counter.
"You and I Liv, we're just the stuff that's easy to leave behind. Always have been."
She can't talk. She wants to tell him that that's not fair, that she has worked too hard, fought too long but he has all her words, all her oxygen, he's playing ball and she can't find the bat.
She spills coffee on her hand, right off the burner and he is up then, cold washrag on the burn, his hand on her back but she is shaking because this has been too much, is always too much.
He is painfully gentle, the way he kisses her. Like there is everything in the world and he kisses like he is still young and hopeful but she knows he is not and this makes her choke, makes her grab for his lapels. He slows her down. There are injuries, bullet holes and stitches and she remembers that dark spot, mid thigh, the remnants of Sealview that never went away. A tiny scar that means everything. Her eyes are boring into her jeans because he would know, were he to see it, he would know something happened because he once covered every inch of her body with youth and passion and he remembers that.
"A lot has happened Brian,"
"I know."
And he does know, she realizes, because he has been at the middle of everything for three years, the nexus of secrets, her's included. His hand meets hers on her thigh and there is nothing left.
"we're not who we used to be."
He smirks, pushes her hair behind her ears and leads her to the bedroom. The silence hangs with the time between them, and slowly folds them into the night.