Author's notes: I know we're all having EOverload and post-reunion fatigue, so here's another quick chapter to help maintain the instanity. 3 Thank you for your kind and motivating reviews!
She had read the last lines again and again before she comprehended them. Her shaking hands and pounding heart had made the words come apart on the page. Her lungs now ached to expand, but the walls of her office closed in on her, refusing to let her breathe. In a daze, she stood from her desk, looking left and right for her coat before finding it on the back of her chair. She tucked her hair behind her ears and tried to shake off the look of panic on her face as she opened her office door and walked with intent past the empty desks of her squad.
She took the stairs, unable to stop her body from moving until the cold air finally hit her skin and halted her course just long enough to breathe the night in and out. Then she was in motion again, her body aimed at his, taking no heed of the warnings sounding in her brain. She'd thought all of this fervor had been stripped, burned, trained out of her over the last eight years, but as she made her way down the sidewalk toward his hotel, her entire body pulsed with no-longer-dormant emotion, with words she needed to say to him — with the anger she was trying to stifle before she reached her destination. She circled the block, reminding herself of all the reasons to have this final conversation calmly.
When she stepped through the automatic doors of the Manhattan hotel, her face was placid, her body unruffled to anyone on the outside — where she intended to keep him. As she reached for her phone in the pocket of her jacket, suddenly Elliot was beside her, walking swiftly past her, and she opened her mouth to stop him.
"Elliot," she called out, and he swung around in almost a panic, his arm coming down from his damp brow.
"Hey, what're you doing here?" he said, trying to catch his breath as she took slow, detecting steps toward him.
"What just happened?" she asked, concern momentarily replacing all else.
"Whatdoyou mean?" he retorted, swallowing down his nerves as though she couldn't see right through him.
"You okay?" she pressed, tilting her head with a hint of suspicion added to her worry.
"I'm fine." he said too quickly, too defensively. "What's goin on?" he asked as if in a hurry to handle any business. "Why are you here?" His last question stung; he was the one keeping her on the outside, she realized, and she immediately re-adjusted her tone from seeking to giving explanations.
"I was just out at Hunt's Point, and I, uh…" she began, looking down to her pocket, from which she lifted the opened envelope as he nodded, hurrying her. "I read your letter, and... I thought we'd talk about it."
She watched his face conflict as he rubbed anxiously at his eyebrow. His phone chirped from his coat, and he reached back for it before the words had even left his mouth. "I want to talk. I just, um– I can't right now," he said hoarsely, meeting her eyes for a quick moment before he turned his back to leave.
"Hey," she heard herself call, following him a couple steps further into the lobby.
"Yeah?" he breathed, turning toward her again, his body itching to escape.
"Are you working?" she questioned, hiding her untamed need for more from him behind shop talk, like they'd always done. He opened his mouth to answer, but the phone ringing in his hand pulled his attention more than she did.
"I gotta go," he said, with a look that made her realize she no longer knew what he was thinking. "Stabler. Yeah, I'll meet you out front in 20... Okay." She watched him walk away from her, his voice unintelligible as he spoke into his phone before looking back at her static, foolish presence. She felt her hands and throat tightening as he tried to give her a reassuring nod, and then he disappeared, again.
She stood there a moment longer, the pounding in her chest a decade-long deja vu. "You wanna talk?" "No." "You wanna take a day?" "I'm fine." She turned around, and she walked away too, their last conversation more meaningful than he could possibly know.