The new piece of information she found out over their next few encounters was that he loved it when she stayed over. He would literally get the broadest, kid-on-Christmas-morning grin on his face if she decided she was too lazy to go home in the middle of the night. At first, she thought it was cute. Cute and mildly annoying, because she actually liked sleeping in her own bed and being able to get ready at home in the mornings, so they quickly relocated to her place on most days. It became considerably less cute, and considerably more disruptive, when she realized that he didn't sleep. Ever. At least she never caught him at it, so his periods of sleep had to be short. He would toss and turn, find other things to do like watching TV or randomly wandering the apartment, even reading. She would wake up in the middle of the night to find him gone, would wake up in the morning to him being already awake. It was disturbing, and when she asked him what was wrong, he would simply tell her that he hadn't been active enough during the day, that he was used to a different rhythm, that he wasn't tired. Only he was, awfully so, considering how much better he was doing physically than in those early days when the painkillers had pretty much knocked him out. She saw him yawning, spacing out in the middle of a conversation, his eyes glazing over while he was supposed to be reading some rules and regulations. He was desperate to be declared fit for duty at last, and she wanted that for him so he would keep his sanity – and yet, you had to wonder if he was alert enough for it. Obviously, she kept her mouth shut about these doubts for the most part, except when she was desperately trying to get to sleep herself, and he kept moving around enough to make her wonder if he had restless legs syndrome.

"Brian" she sighed.

"Sorry" he murmured, stilling his movements.

She turned onto her side, bunching the pillow up under her head. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Just can't sleep." He was lying on his back now, staring up at the ceiling. She could see the outline of his jaw in profile. The sheet only came up to his stomach. In the darkness, you could hardly see the small, angry, red wounds that would turn into scars soon.

"How come?"

"I'm just not tired."

"You are" she objected sympathetically. Her own share of sleepless nights allowed her to recognise the distinction between someone who wasn't tired, and someone who was unable to shut down his brain.

"Look, I'm clearly bothering you, so how about I head on home and-"

"No, don't." She had known it would end this way, with him walking out rather than answering a simple question. She put her hand on his shoulder, scooting closer to him. "It's fine. I'm just wondering what's going on."

"I told you, I'm not used to this. I've been sitting on my ass for the past two months. The past few years, it's been…go, go, go, you know. And now…nothing."

"That's hard to get used to."

"Yeah."

"Do you miss it?" She could feel him tense up at the question. "It would be understandable, you know, it doesn't mean that you approved of…all that stuff. Three years is a long time."

"I don't even know, to be honest. Like sure, I miss having a purpose, a reason to get up in the morning and other…parts of it. But I don't miss random instructions to 'keep that bitch in check'. I don't miss being scared all the time, watching my back, thinking he's gonna find out who I am any second now." His voice sounded raspy as he talked about it like it was some sort of normal thing, as if existential threat were a part of any day to day life.

She had never heard him use the word "scared" to describe the experience. It was the kind of thing only darkness or a sufficient amount of painkillers could make him say. She stroked his arm with her thumb.

"It's funny, you know. Now I could rest easy, but…"

"What do you think about?"

"I don't know. Stuff." He put his other arm up behind his head, and she could still notice that split second of hesitation in his movement on that side. "You don't wanna hear about all this."

"Yeah, I do."

"Go to sleep."

If only it were that easy. She was wide awake now, trying to picture what life with Ganzel must have been like. She couldn't, because she had nothing to compare it to, and her guesses as to the best and worst of that life were drawn from gruesome SVU cases she didn't want to think about. And now they were talking, actually talking about something of substance and he wasn't pretending or playing it cool. "How did you do it for that long?"

"I know it sounds weird, but it wasn't that bad. For the first six months, while they were checking me out, nothing happened. Most boring job ever. And then you just…it becomes normal after a while. You just keep going. You don't think about it, not while you're in the middle of it all. I wasn't really expecting it to end…like that." He exhaled heavily.

She moved her hand to his chest, careful to avoid any painful areas. "But you knew the risks."

"Yeah. I knew. But you always think it's not gonna be you, right?" He reached up, covering her hand with his. "It's no big deal, it's over now."

It sure didn't sound like "no big deal". It sounded like all the stress of the past three years was only getting to him now. She always told herself that it would get better, that he would feel better once he went back to work. But what if that wasn't the case? How much of his negative outlook was because his career was going down the drain, how much was the adjustment to a new lifestyle, and how much was just him and how he had changed over the years? There was no clear way to handle this. She didn't know how to help, and somehow she doubted that having a friend/lover/someone you had great sex with every once in a while would be a magical cure for everything.

"Have you considered, uh, going to see someone about this? It's a lot to process, and-"

"What do you mean 'see someone'?" he asked suspiciously, as if she were trying to get him to confess a crime.

"You know, a mental health professional."

"Jesus, Liv, I don't need a shrink. I'm not gonna freak out the second I see a gun, okay? Relax."

"I know, but you've been through a lot…" She couldn't fail to notice the gun reference – he was worried about that. "It's not a sign of weakness."

"Oh, man…" He shifted his position, arching his back, then turned onto his side to face her. "Don't give me that speech, Liv."

"Well, do you need me to?" She was looking straight at him now, his eyes shining in the near-darkness. "I'm serious. I'm worried about you."

"Look, I'm not gonna give IAB one more reason to declare me unsuitable."

"You wouldn't have to go through work-"

"They'd know. They always know, you know that."

She didn't know why he was getting so defensively angry with her, as if she were the one who was being unreasonable here. Well, actually she did know, because this was the typical "ooh, I'm such a tough guy, I'm a man, I'm a cop, I can save the world" attitude she was used to from work, exacerbated by the fact that this new Cassidy struck her as deeply mistrustful of anything and anyone, especially any form of authority. "Just think about it."

"I just did. No."

"Brian, you…" She didn't want to bring this up, because fighting against his stubbornness was like playing dodgeball with a brick wall. "The other day, you said you're nothing, like your life is over."

"What kind of self-absorbed asshole would say something like that?" He tried to go for a charming grin, but it didn't quite work. Sometimes, self-deprecation wasn't humorous, it was just self-deprecation.

"If you feel like everything's pointless-"

"Not everything." He touched her hair, and gently ran his fingers down the length of one strand up until the very end.

Every once in a blue moon, Olivia wished that she had a female friend. It wasn't that she had a desire to sit around a brunch table having giggly discussions in a "Sex and the City" style, but occasionally, it would be nice to get a woman's perspective. Of course, all the friends she did have were work friends, and she found it much easier there to get along with men, and that wasn't just because they were the overwhelming majority. With female officers, there was always that bit of something, of mistrust or competition, of needing to defend your turf. The only woman she trusted there, really trusted, was Melinda, and it wasn't like they ever met up outside of work. This wasn't exactly a subject matter she could talk about with her colleagues, anyway, because she knew what they would say. She needed an impartial perspective, a non-Detective perspective. Or just the validation that what she was doing made sense and that it was perfectly okay to have an affair you weren't sure about. But how did people go about making female friends? How did they do it, when they got home from work late and then they had more case work, background reading, exercise and a potentially depressed secret lover to deal with?

So every once in a while, Olivia ditched all responsibilities, leaving everything behind to have a night out on her own, whether it was going to a bar or seeing a movie, treating herself to some nice food – just her, and she was fine with that. If she had a date with herself, she would actually refuse to make plans with other people, which was something Elliot had always teased her about. But it had decades of tradition behind it, stemming from those years where she would stop by her mother's apartment, trying to check up on her and never knowing what condition she would find her in. In those years of "I need you, I hate you, I love you, leave me alone, come back", she would have gone crazy without those escape nights to herself, when she had refused to take her mother's drunken calls. She needed that time. The only period in her adult life when she had really slipped out of her habit had been that blissful time with David – and that had been a mistake. Somehow, she had found herself lost in this new, scary relationship, and it had been wonderful and exciting and way too fast. She wasn't going to make that mistake again. The conditions had been so right on paper: an educated, emotionally stable, social guy with similar interests who liked kids, who wanted a real relationship, who wanted only her…until he didn't. But she had felt good with David, the full, nauseating butterflies-in-your-stomach kind of good.

Now, it was either butterflies or hornets, affection or nostalgia for what might have been, deep and meaningful or just a midlife crisis affair that she would regret. And why was she even thinking about it that way, comparing Brian to David and having these silly little scenarios in her head? She knew, in her heart of hearts, that neither she nor Brian were in the right place for a relationship. She wasn't even sure that he did "relationships", but then again, the same could have been said for her up until a year ago. But it was company, it was good, he made her laugh when he didn't infuriate her, she distracted him from all the other crap in his life. She just wasn't sure that she wanted to be that, a distraction or, worse, the only good thing right now. She couldn't be that for someone. That was how people got hurt.

Either way, she needed a drink.