"No, no." He suddenly pulled back in a rush, freeing his arm from behind her and sitting up.

"Damn it." She pushed herself up with one hand, scooting away from him.

He leaned forward, burying his head in his hands with his elbows on his thighs. "I'm sorry."

"Why?" She smoothed her shirt and tried to straighten out her hair. He needed to stop freaking out over this.

"This isn't right."

"We both wanted it."

"That's not the point!" he exclaimed in a burst of anger. "What's this supposed to be, friends with benefits? You can't end a serious relationship and go back to just hooking up like it's nothing."

"It's not nothing" she replied bewildered, struggling to understand the leap his mind had made there.

"So what, then? We do it on the couch, I pack and walk out, and that's it?" Charming. He had such a blunt way of putting things.

She suddenly felt cold and cheap, as if her body had betrayed her. "I don't know. What did you want? Some soppy goodbye scene, me being here so I can tell you not to go?""

"What? No! Jesus…I wanted to talk."

"So talk." She crossed her arms and leaned back, looking at him expectantly.

"Not like that." He shook his head. "This is all wrong."

"I'm listening."

"Remember that day when I came to pick you up after work, before-"

"I remember." She didn't need to hear him say it.

"I wanted to work things out then. I was going to think about it all, and come back from UC, and we were going to sit down when things were calm and figure all our shit out. But now…I mean, do you even want that? I don't know anymore."

She didn't know either. What she didn't want was their constant back and forth, their indecisiveness and arguments. "Things haven't exactly been calm."

"I know that." His features softened and he reached for her shoulder, but she pulled back. "You've been through a lot with Lewis and the investigation, and it's not fair to put this on you now."

"It's never a good time for us. That's the problem." She didn't like that he brought up Lewis. She had been hearing his name too much over the past couple of weeks, and just now had been the first time in days she hadn't been thinking about him. Lewis was dead, rotting in the ground somewhere in an anonymous grave. Still, even just being able to kiss Brian without being reminded of that bastard's forceful intrusion seemed like a huge achievement.

"You said you needed space to deal with it. I shouldn't have pushed you."

"Brian. Please. Leave Lewis out of it. Just talk to me, I can take it." She was sick of him treating her like she was some fragile creature waiting to shatter. They were past that.

"I can't leave that out of it. Because when you were gone, I thought 'what if that's it', what if I'd lost you, and…" He broke off. "I can't keep doing that, I'm sorry."

"Doing what?"

"Going after you, trying to get you to let me in, going with whatever choices you make…"

"I didn't choose for Lewis to come after me again" she said bitterly.

"I didn't mean it like that. But since Lewis…since the first time, I mean, it feels like I'm always running after you while you're trying to make it seem like everything's okay. And I just can't keep up. I mean we move in together, and you throw yourself into work like you're trying to prove something, we have these dinner parties, but you don't talk to me, then you get upset, but the next day, you want to act like nothing happened. You call me, and then you want to me to stay away, but now you also want me here. I don't get it."

"Where is all this coming from?" He had never, not once, concretized the problem like this before. "We broke up because we both agreed we wanted different things out of life for the future."

"No, we broke up because you decided what our future was going to look like and when. And when I wasn't on the same page, that was it. As usual."

"That's not fair." She wasn't prepared to take all the blame for their failed relationship. "I didn't try to force you into having kids with me, or moving in with me, or staying with me, or any of that."

"Nope, you didn't. The opposite, more like it. And forget the kids thing, it's not that I don't want a family with you, ever-"

"That's new."

"Yeah, well, I had some time to think about it and…but that's not my point now." He seemed to need to keep talking now that he had found the courage to speak his mind. Dumping all his crap on her at once. "But there were other things that were off between us, you know that."

"I know. I just thought we'd been doing better." Somehow, the idea that they really hadn't been doing better, that, despite her efforts to communicate with him, he had somehow felt imprisoned in their relationship, made the whole thing worse. This newfound openness of his was supposed to be a good thing, but it sure as hell didn't feel good to her.

"We were, and still, you didn't seem happy. You didn't look happy. It was like that whole baby idea was a way of fixing things for you, and all the other problems were just supposed to go away."

"But you never told me what the problem was for you" she answered, frustrated with his expectation that she was somehow supposed to know what was going on inside his head.

"That's what I'm trying to do!"

"Well, I'm sorry if I wasn't…cheerful enough after the year we've had."

"No, it's not-"

"I'm not going to be the same I was before. Ever." And maybe, just maybe, the new her and the new him weren't right for each other. Which was something they had been too afraid to say, a question that was too forward for either of them to ask. It was the instinctive fear she had been carrying around somewhere on the threshold to consciousness, the certainty Lewis had taken from her that she could still love people enough, that she could still be loved.

"I know" he replied, looking dejected. "And I wanted to help you so bad, but you…everything I did seemed to be wrong." She remembered how, in the old days, he had struggled in dealing with victims of sex crimes, how this stuff got to him and how hard it was for him to express himself.

"That's not true, Bri." She put her hand on his forearm. "You got me through the worst time in my life. It's just not…it's a long process. I tried the best I could."

"I know you did." He covered her hand with his, squeezing her fingers. "I don't want to be an ass and I'm not telling you to 'get over it already'. But I have to be honest with you, and with everything you've been through, it's like I can't."

"Of course you can. I'm just not sure I understand. If I've been too absent since Lewis, if surviving through bad times is all we have between us-"

He shook his head. "The problem goes back way further than Lewis. You're always calling the shots. It's who you are, Liv." She opened her mouth to protest, but he continued too quickly. "And that was fine 15 years ago, and it was fine two years ago –it's what makes you so damn sexy- and it was fine when we were just having fun. We'd go to your place, or to mine, depending on what you wanted, we kept it a secret because you were embarrassed. Really, the only time we were free was when we went to the Bahamas, do you remember that?"

"I wasn't embarrassed by you" she objected. "We both agreed that we wanted to separate our private lives from work."

"But your life was work. And when Munch and Amaro found out, you were so ashamed-"

"Because I was half undressed, wearing your shirt and two of my colleagues were staring at my naked legs! Do you seriously think I'm embarrassed about being with you? We've been to NYPD functions together, we've had people over at our place-"

"To show everyone that we're okay, that you're doing okay and they can treat you normal."

"That's bullshit" she snapped, wondering if he was partly right. She had been trying to make a point about her recovery, but one thing didn't preclude the other. She had been so happy with Brian in their new apartment at first, she had wanted to share that new life with the people who mattered. It wasn't fair of him to pull all that through the mud.

"Is it?" He got up from the sofa and started to pace through the room. "When I lost my shield, you were so invested in helping me get it back-"

"Because it mattered to you! You were miserable!"

"-when we went to that boring lawyers' dinner, you briefed me about all the developments in the department before, like you were afraid I would say something stupid at the table. You didn't like the furniture at my old apartment, we'd go out to a restaurant and you'd change your mind about it at the last minute, like it's not good enough. You picked this apartment, you picked the furniture, you set dates, then cancel them, then reschedule them. You decide one day we're going to buy organic fruit from now on and tell me I'll like it…it's all you in charge, and nothing's ever good the way it is."

"You're acting like an asshole" she burst out, getting up from the sofa as well. "It takes two to mess things up, I'm not taking the blame for you being unhappy for two years and only now opening your mouth to tell me! I asked you what you wanted, and you always agreed with me, or said you didn't care, or mostly, didn't say anything at all. But we're adults, and we're not getting any younger, and at some point, someone has to make the decisions. Grow up."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm the immature one who can't possibly keep up with you, my bad" he retorted sarcastically. "You're perfect." He walked away from her into the kitchen, helping himself to a glass of water.

She followed him, unwilling to let him end this conversation now that it had finally come to this inevitable confrontation. "You're incredibly insecure, you know that? Maybe I made too many decisions, but you left me to make all the decisions. When you don't like something, you just walk out. We'd grow apart, and you would just go on some undercover mission for weeks at a time…."

"That's my job. You knew that; it's something we've always been very clear about. Our jobs matter to us." He took a long sip of water, emptying the glass and setting it down again loudly, supporting his upper body with both arms on the counter.

"But they're not everything." Sometimes, she wondered what took more work, her job or this relationship. They had both taken a huge leap by moving in together, as two people who had grown used to getting by on their own and answering to no one. "I don't want to change you, Brian, or dress you up, or buy furniture you hate. Screw that."

"I don't hate the furniture" he mumbled gruffly.

"I sometimes feel like I'm doing all the work and you only go along with it because it's easy. That you're not really invested in it. And whenever you're unhappy, you run away, saying you don't want to fight, like one fight is going to break us up."

"But it did."

"Because we were stuck." She leaned forward on the counter, her elbows turned inward. "You say I'm making all the decisions. Then tell me: What is it you want?"

"What I want…" He exhaled heavily, running one hand down his face. "I don't want to move out. I want to make this work. I want us to have a future together."

She was baffled. Hearing him verbalize it, hearing him make such a firm, definitive statement so untypical of him, cleared some of her doubts. "Me too" she confessed. "But it won't be easy."

"Hell, no. I think we need to try to spend more time together. And talk, not just about work. And make decisions together. And I'd like…" He hesitated, looking at her. "Shit, I don't know how to say this without sounding corny."

"Try me."

"I don't want to be, you know, a footnote."

"You're not a footnote!" The formulation was, she had to admit, a tad ridiculous.

"You know what I mean, I don't want to always be on the outside. I want to know what's going on with you."

She nodded slowly. "Okay. I'll try. But the same goes for you, you can't…just not tell me and withdraw. And we'll need to take it slow."

He walked around the counter to stand beside her. "I can't lose you again, Liv."

"Me neither."