In his mind she was always ten feet tall, proud and unchanging as if she had been carved from marble, as elegant as one of the Berninis in the Galleria Borghese Kathy had dragged him off to see. No, that wasn't right; she wasn't Proserpina's grief, nor was she Pluto's clutching hands. She was not Truth, exposed, nor Daphne, caught and half-transfigured already. She was something else, something grander, something wilder. Any room she entered, she filled it, took up every inch of available space until there was no room left even for air, filled his lungs until all he breathed was her, and he suffocated gladly. Only they weren't in a room, just now; they were standing by the water and the air was vast and she looked, for perhaps the first time, small, swallowed up by his coat, the delicate fabric of her dress swirling around her calves, her hair rustling in the breeze. She looked small, and soft, in a way he had not ever seen her, and when the wind lifted her hair it lifted the scent of her perfume, too, struck him in the chest with it. She'd never worn perfume, before. But they'd never stood beneath sparkling lights at the water's edge late in the evening with wineglasses in their hands before, either. Perhaps, he thought, it was a night for firsts.
"Did you give your regards to the happy couple?" she asked him in a low voice. Her voice had changed, too, with time, had deepened into a register warm and rich as honey, and it made his heart ache every time he heard it, now.
"I did," he said.
He had; he'd come late, on purpose. It was too soon, for him, to sit and listen to talk of love, to sit and bear witness to a new beginning, when his own ending was so fresh in his mind. The thought of sitting through Fin's wedding vows in a crowd of misty-eyed women was unbearable, but the man had been a friend to him, once, had been a better friend to him since his return than he deserved, and he had not wanted to spurn him entirely. The party would have been safe enough, he'd thought, and he'd timed his arrival well, missed the theatrics but not the opening of the bar. When he'd stepped out into the maze of tables he'd spotted Fin at once, gone to him and shook his hand and wished him and his new love well, but he had not lingered. Fin was happy, with his girl, and people were eager to speak to him, and Elliot didn't recognize a single goddamn person there except for Garland. In an effort to avoid the Chief Elliot had stepped away at once, cast about desperately for some safe quarter, and found her, Olivia, standing alone by the railing in that beautiful dress, and he had been then, as he always was, grateful to see her.
"They really didn't get married?" he asked. He still wasn't clear on that part.
"You know Fin," Olivia said easily. He had, once, known the man, but now he wasn't so sure. "He doesn't really care about doing things the official way. He didn't even want a wedding."
"How did we end up here, then?"
She turned her head towards him, smiling a mysterious, feminine smile that made him slightly nervous.
"The women overruled him," she said vaguely.
"Ah. Of course."
They always did. Women and weddings. Christ, he almost felt sorry for the guy.
"Surprised she went along with it," he said, thinking about Phoebe, about the women who talked Fin into a wedding, and the woman who'd let him talk her out of it.
It was a strange sensation, standing on the edge of a party making small talk with Olivia, but the strangest thing, he thought, was how strange it wasn't, how they had never done this before, never attended a wedding and sipped wine in their Sunday best, and yet they had, many times before, stood on the edge of a sea of people and drawn a veil of privacy around themselves, a bubble no one else could enter. Behind them people were passing by, but those people gave them a wide berth, and no voices carried to their ears. Looking out at the water, he could almost pretend they were, entirely, alone. And in his heart, he wished they were.
"They're a lot alike," she told him.
"Partners," he mused.
"Partners," she agreed, softly.
Partners, as he and Olivia had been partners, once. A matched set, moving in sync. Two halves of the same whole. Reunited, after years apart, discovering a different sort of partnership altogether. Partners. That word settled at the base of his throat, blocked his airway, made him run his hand over his head and close his eyes, just for a second. The NYPD was full of partners, of all different kinds; some barely tolerated each other, and some were friends, and some were brothers, and some were half in love. He and Liv, they'd been more than family and less than lovers and he'd never known where to put it, his feelings for her, the want and the fear and the trust and Jesus. All of it. Had Fin felt the same for Phoebe? Maybe he had, and he'd finally figured it out. Maybe Elliot would figure it out, one day. Maybe one day he'd know where to put it.
"So much has changed," he said then, staring out at the water. He'd been thinking about partners, and thinking about Fin; back in the day, Fin had always been hard to read, and he'd not talked about his personal life, not any more than he absolutely had to. No pictures of his son on his desk, no anecdotes about the woman he was seeing, if there was a woman at all. But now Fin was smiling brightly with his arm around a woman he plainly adored, and laughing with people whose names Elliot did not know. If it had been ten years before, Elliot would have been surrounded by friends, but the time had stolen all his friends away. Except for her.
"Something Cragen said to me, before he left," she said, her voice thoughtful, and almost sad, remembering that man who had been as good as father to her. "Nothing changes except what has to."
He chewed on that, for a minute. In some ways it felt to him as if everything had changed; he was living in a fucking hotel, without his children, without his wife, working a new job, with a new team, alone in a way he had not ever been in his entire life, adrift and confused, hopeless. Christ, when had he ever felt hopeless? Even Olivia had changed, her face, her body, her voice; she was calmer now, quieter now, reserved in a way he had not ever seen her. But not entirely changed, he told himself; she was still eager to help, and undaunted in the face of his rage, still strong, still beautiful, still her, underneath it all. Wasn't she?
"I can't help thinking about how much I missed."
He'd missed Cragen's departure, missed whatever the fuck had happened to make Olivia want to move up the ranks, and do it so successfully. He'd missed the birth of her child, and Munch's retirement, missed her brother's death and Fin's rediscovery of his old partner, his new love. All that time; he'd been alive, watching his son grow, finding a new kind of comfort with Kathy, but he wasn't sure he'd been living. His older children had stayed in New York and built new lives without him, and his friends had all moved on, and they had experienced so much and he'd...what? Gone to a few museums? Done some private contracting work that didn't amount to much? Weaseled his way back into the NYPD only to lose Kathy on account of it? Ten years...what had he done, with ten years?
"Elliot," she said his name softly, in a tone of warning he didn't quite understand. He turned his head to look at her; they were both leaning against the railing, looking out at the water, but she didn't show her face to him, didn't let him see what she was feeling reflected in her big, dark eyes. Left him to work it out on his own. A decade before, it wouldn't have taken any work at all, to figure out what she was feeling. He just would have known. Was she angry with him now? He asked himself. Why would she be?
Because you left her, you asshole, and she doesn't want to talk about it now.
But if they didn't talk about it now, he feared they never would.
"Will you tell me?" he asked her. "About...about everything."
Since he'd come back they hadn't done a hell of a lot of talking, but what talk they had managed had mostly been about him. About how he was doing, about how she was worried about him, about the kids. It was inevitable, given his recent loss and the depth of compassion Olivia possessed, that she would turn every conversation towards him, wanting to reassure herself that he was okay, that he was gonna make it. Right now, this moment, he felt steadier than he had in weeks, and he didn't want to talk about himself, any more. He wanted to listen, now. He wanted to know what had become of her, while he was away.
"Everything?" she said. "We don't have that kinda time." Her voice still carried with it that edge, letting him know he had crossed into dangerous territory, that he was on the verge of upsetting her, and yet, still, he couldn't let it go. Why didn't she want to tell him? About her son, about her man, whoever he had been, about her friends, about her job; she had done so well, it seemed to him, had done so much, and he didn't understand why she wouldn't share it. Unless, he thought, she just didn't want to share it with him.
"You got plans tonight?" he asked, pushing just a little. "'Cause I got nowhere else to be."
"You never could just let things go," she said wryly.
"Tell me about Noah," he said. That was as good a place as any to start, the biggest change, the one that mattered most, to both of them. The child she'd always wanted, the family she'd always deserved, that little boy she loved so much. Her son. Liv had a son; he'd never imagined that, not for a second, could still recall the way all the breath had vanished from his lungs when Fin told him about the boy. When Fin told him her dreams had come true, and he hadn't been there to see it.
"When was he born?"
"2013," she said, and he thought that was odd, that she'd only given him the year, and nothing else. He'd thought surely she'd want to talk about her kid; she'd waited long enough for him.
"Where's his dad?" If she wasn't gonna offer him anything, he figured he'd just ask for it.
"Really, El?" She turned to look at him then, an expression on her face that looked perilously close to anger, and he couldn't quite figure out why. Surely, he thought, she'd ask the same thing if their roles were reversed. Wouldn't she?
"I'm just making conversation-"
"Noah's dad is dead. My partner killed him after he attacked a court officer and stole her gun and tried to escape."
Okay, that was not what he'd been expecting. He just stared at her, dumbfounded, trying to work out what she meant, wondering just what the fuck she'd gotten herself mixed up in, wondering just how badly she'd been hurt, while he wasn't there to watch her back. Her eyes were blazing at him, full of grief, and a terrible anger he'd always known she possessed, an anger she'd kept hidden from him since his return, until now. Maybe later he'd think it was a good sign, that she thought he was stable enough for her to unleash that anger on him, but in the moment he just felt like an ass. Hearing her call someone else partner just made things worse; who had he been, Elliot wondered, the man who'd taken his place? Was he here tonight, somewhere? Had he been any match for Olivia at all? Had she liked the guy, had she trusted him? Had she ever felt about him the way she felt about - Christ, he had to stop thinking like that, he was gonna make himself crazy.
"Noah's adopted. His mother was a prostitute and his father was a piece of shit pimp."
I'm gonna kill Fin, he thought grimly. Maybe not today, on the man's should-have-been wedding day, but soon. That conversation they'd had, Fin made it sound like Noah was Liv's, like she'd been with some man and he'd gotten her pregnant and she'd lived that life, for however brief of time, and all along Fin had known that wasn't the truth at all, and just let Elliot torture himself for weeks thinking about who had mattered enough to Liv that she'd had a kid with him.
"And you took him in," Elliot said. It was exactly the sort of thing she'd do, he thought, see a kid with no parents and no hope and no home, and give him one, give all of herself to save a neglected child, to spare him the pain of abandonment. He was so proud of her, he felt like his heart might just burst out of his chest. That was his Liv, the woman he remembered, brave and selfless and so fucking desperate to save the world. That much hadn't changed.
"I did," she said. "On my own."
That part she'd added for his benefit, he thought. She wanted him to know she'd adopted Noah by herself, that whoever she'd been with over the years and however she might have felt about them, none of those men got to call themselves Noah's dad. She knew that mattered to him. Because she knew him, and he'd never been able to hide anything, not from her. But Fin had said there was one guy, one in particular, and that was what Elliot wanted to ask her next. Who she'd been with, if it was anybody he knew. Maybe it was, he thought, maybe after he left she'd gone home with Trevor or one of the guys from the DA's office or -
"Cap?" a woman's voice called out softly from behind them, and Elliot and Olivia both jumped, caught off guard. No one else had paid them any mind, the whole time they'd been standing together, and Elliot had sort of forgotten, somehow, that there was a party full of people just out of his line of sight. Liv had that effect on him, sometimes.
They swung around together, like dancers, moving in unison the way they always did, and found themselves face-to-face with a pretty blonde and that ADA who'd been at the station the night Kathy got...hurt. The guy cleaned up nice, in his blue suit, but Elliot wanted to hate him anyway, just for having been there. The blonde he didn't recognize; he would have assumed the two were married, if it hadn't been the woman who'd called out to Liv, but she'd given herself away. She was a cop, and there was no way in hell she was married to an ADA, no matter how close they were standing.
"You two getting ready to leave?" Liv asked.
They both managed to look shamefaced about it, like they were just a pair of kids necking on a sofa and Liv the girl's mother, walking in on them.
"I've got a sitter on the clock," the woman explained. Her eyes flickered curiously to Elliot's face, but she didn't hold her gaze there long. Like she had questions, and she knew better than to ask them. Liv noticed it, though.
"Amanda Rollins," she said, gesturing towards the blonde, "this is Elliot Stabler. And El, you remember Carisi."
"Rollins, Counselor," he said, nodding to them.
"Carisi used to be one of us, before he went to the dark side," Liv told him.
One year when Elliot was about twenty he had gone with Kathy to her family reunion in the summer. Kathleen was still little enough to be held on her mother's hip, but Mo had been up and running, had gone off to join her cousins under the watchful eye of a bevy of aunts while Kathy took him on the rounds. She'd introduced him to everybody, whispering names out of the corner of her mouth, explaining who was married to who, and who was fighting with who, and whose kid was in trouble. It seemed to go on forever, all those fucking introductions, and his head had been spinning, just a little, wondering how she kept it all straight. This moment, it felt an awful lot like that, only it was Liv standing beside him, introducing him to her family. Making room for him in her life, letting the people she cared about see her standing beside him, and not flinching.
"You were a cop?" Elliot asked the man, surprised. Carisi would hardly be the first to make the leap to the DA's office, but it was still a rare enough occurrence to make him raise his eyebrow.
"I was," he said. "And the Captain is the finest CO I ever had the pleasure of working for."
Kid's laying it on a bit thick, he thought. Like he was trying to butter up his girlfriend's parents. Like he knew praising Liv was the fastest way to get Elliot on his side. Maybe he was right about that.
"You ever miss it?" Elliot asked him.
It didn't escape his notice that Carisi's eyes slipped to Amanda's face before he answered.
"Sometimes," he said.
"Anyway, we should-" Amanda rescued him, curled her hand around his elbow and pulled him gently back, gesturing over her shoulder with her free hand. She was a cop and he was an ADA and they were leaving together, and Liv didn't seem in the least bit surprised.
"Drive safe," Liv told her, and her face was soft when she said it, warm and full of affection.
"Y'all have a nice night," Amanda answered, something strangely knowing in her eyes, and then she was leading Carisi away, and Liv was smiling a soft, private little smile that made Elliot desperately curious, and they were, again, alone.
"Let me guess," Elliot said quietly. "They were-"
"Partners."
Around them the party was slowly thinning out, and Elliot was starting to think that Amanda and Carisi had the right idea, cutting out before they were the last ones standing. Maybe they had the right idea about other things, too. They looked happy together, and Fin and Phoebe, shit, they looked so happy, and Liv was standing right next to him, and she was so goddamn beautiful -
"It's not inevitable," Liv said.
Maybe to someone else listening the comment would have sounded strange, apropos of nothing, but Elliot knew what she meant. He knew exactly what she was thinking, because he was thinking it, too.
"You never slept with one of your partners?" He asked, and immediately regretted it, because it wasn't until the question left his mouth that he realized he didn't know the answer, and he wasn't sure he wanted to.
"Did you?" she fired back. She was leaning back against the railing now, looking out at the party, one arm wrapped around her own stomach, just beneath the full swell of her breast, her wine glass held daintily in her other hand, beautiful, and taunting him.
They never did this. Or they hadn't ever done this, before. Hadn't spoken openly, frankly, about sex and each other. She almost never told him the names of the guys she was seeing, and he knew she'd fucked Cassidy but she only told him about it because the prick was making a stink - fucking Cassidy, what she was thinking falling into bed with an asshole like that Elliot had never understood - and most of the time they just...avoided the subject. It was a line they didn't cross, a line they knew they had to respect, because she was his best friend but she was also a beautiful woman, and he couldn't stand the thought of another man's hands on her, and they both knew why and they both knew what it meant and they both knew what it could cost them, and had silently agreed that don't ask don't tell was the best policy. But now they weren't partners, anymore, and the boundaries were shifting right in front of his eyes, and he'd asked her first, because he had to know.
"No," he answered truthfully. If he wanted to hear her story, he knew he'd have to give her something first.
"Not even Dani?"
He turned to look at her sharply; Christ, he hadn't thought about Dani in years. Why had her name come to Olivia's mind so easily? How long had she been waiting to ask him that? Her eyes were hard, when she looked at him; she wasn't gonna let this go.
"Cap?"
Another interruption, this time from the young officer who'd been in Liv's office the same night he met Carisi. This girl cleaned up good, too, and so did the pretty woman hanging off her arm. Brave new world, Elliot thought; twenty years before, no officer, male or female, would have turned up in front of all their colleagues with a same sex date. Good for her.
"Heading out?" Liv asked her.
And wasn't it funny, Elliot thought, that this was Fin's shindig but everyone kept coming to Liv. She was still the boss, even here, even now. He'd thought, when he first heard she'd made Captain, that it would take some getting used to, seeing Liv in command. He'd thought it might chafe, that power might have changed her, might change the dynamic between them. And it had, in some ways; she was more protective of her people, her interview room, her turf, but she was still Liv, all balls, all heart, unstoppable. Nothing changes except what has to; maybe Cragen was right. Liv was the queen in the castle, now, but maybe she always had been. Munch, Fin, Cassidy, Elliot, hell, even Cragen; she'd always been their girl, the one they protected, respected, loved, and every single one of them would have burned the whole world down for her.
"I think Fin's ready to get out of here," the girl told her, casting a glance back over her shoulder towards the happy couple. "He didn't really want to be here in the first place."
"He should have thought about that before he bought a ring," Liv said, but there was no venom in her voice; she was smiling, softly, warmly, as she thought about her old friend and his happiness.
"Have a good night, Captain," the girl said to her, but her dark eyes flashed towards Elliot's face, curious, and strangely hard. The girl had been there, same as Carisi, when Elliot crossed the line in interview and Liv had to throw herself between him and the suspect. It was hardly the first time that had happened between them, but it was the first time her team had seen it, her team who loved her so much and yet didn't know the first damn thing about him. The girl didn't trust him, Elliot could see that written on her face plain as day. It didn't seem possible, he thought, that someone could know Liv, trust Liv, and not know him, but they'd been apart for so long, and shit, it was all his fault.
"You, too," Liv told her, and then the ladies were walking away, and he was, once more, alone with Liv.
"I didn't sleep with Dani," he told her.
A soft sound escaped her, a gasp, a sigh, he couldn't quite tell. Maybe she thought he'd forgotten, about the question she'd asked him, the game they'd been playing. He hadn't, though; whatever was happening between them now, it was important, and he wouldn't, couldn't let it go.
It had been years, since Dani. None of Liv's people would have recognized the name, the significance. Hell, Fin had probably forgotten all about her, too. But Liv, Liv who'd never even met the woman, she remembered, and she'd been stewing on it, all this time, thinking he'd crossed the line. Crossed the line with someone else, given to a new partner what he'd never given to her. She was in for a surprise, he thought, because Liv had something no one else ever had, or ever would. She had his heart, whole and entire.
"What about Jo?"
"Seriously?" he laughed. Liv was digging up all the old secrets tonight, asking him all the questions she'd been asking herself for years, for decades, maybe, all the questions she'd never felt safe enough to ask him before. Before, and after, their lives were split in two by his abandonment of her, his departure a sharp, stark line running right down the middle of everything that had ever happened to them. They couldn't talk about this stuff, before, but they were in the after, now, and everything was changing.
"She said something to me-"
"She was just trying to get a rise out of you. I never touched her."
And he never had, because Jo had been a good partner but she had a mean streak, and he knew he couldn't trust her, not with all of himself, and he'd been so young, back then, and things had actually been good between him and Kathy in those days. He'd been happy with his wife, and his kids. That was another before, before he ever met Olivia, but he could hardly recall it now, those days lost to the foggy recesses of time. She had changed him, completely. He wondered if she knew that. He wondered if she felt the same.
"I never slept with Nick," she told him then.
Nick. That must have been the partner's name. The partner who'd killed Noah's dad. Was he the only other partner she'd ever had? SVU was her first assignment as a detective, and Elliot was her first, her only partner there until the day he left, and she must have started moving up the ranks not too long after that, to make it all the way from Detective to Captain in ten years' time.
"Who, then?" he asked her. "Fin said there was somebody-"
"Fin needs to keep his goddamn mouth shut."
She didn't swear often, and it always hit him hard every time she did, always made him see stars. Always made him wonder how much of herself she kept under wraps, even around him. Always made him want to find out how much of her she'd reveal, if he pushed her.
"Maybe, but come on, Liv, throw me a bone here."
"You think it was just one?" she asked acidly, and when she turned to look at him her eyes were flashing, again, full of fire. "You think in ten years there was only one?"
It took him by surprise, her petulant indignation, the way she seemed almost...not hurt, exactly, but shit, yeah, maybe hurt. Like it hurt her to think that he thought so little of her, that he thought she'd spent the last decade alone, and missing him. He didn't know what to think, about how she'd spent all that time. He'd wondered about it; not a week went by, while he was away, that he didn't think about her, didn't ask himself what she was doing and who she was doing it with. Olivia was drop dead gorgeous, passionate, smart; she turned heads everywhere she went, and every man who crossed her path ended up half in love with her. No, he hadn't thought she'd been alone, not entirely, but shit, maybe he'd wanted to think that she was. Maybe he'd wanted to think that she was alone so that he could imagine that whenever he did walk back into her life there would be room there beside her, just for him. Did that make him a selfish bastard? Probably. No wonder she was pissed.
"No, I know you never had any trouble in that department," he grumbled, thinking about the nights she showed up at crime scenes wearing a slinky dress and pouting about the interruption to her dates. Thinking about the way she'd smile at her phone, sometimes, getting a message or a call from a man whose name he wasn't allowed to know. Thinking about all the nights she'd walked away from him and into someone else's arms, and he was left feeling jealous, and hating himself for it.
"Why do you have to be such an asshole?" she spat at him. "You were married, El. And then you left me. You have no right to shame me for enjoying myself."
That was a thought that was gonna fester. The thought of Olivia enjoying herself with some tall, faceless man. The thought that whatever she got up to, and whoever she got up to it with, she liked it. The thought of how she'd look, sweaty and naked and glorious above him, the thought of the sounds she'd make, the way she'd-
Shit. That woman was gonna be the death of him.
"No shame," he said. He didn't want to shame her, didn't want to make her feel dirty for going home with someone else, because she was right. She had never belonged to him, not the way he'd wanted her to.
"I don't know what we're doing here," she said then. "You turn up, you give me that letter, you tell me…"
And just like that, he couldn't breathe. He'd told her that he loved her, and she'd had the good grace not to mention it again, not until now, when she was standing there in that beautiful dress and he could hardly take his eyes off her. She mentioned it now, when they were in a more casual, more friendly environment than they'd been in for years, when for the first time there was nothing, absolutely nothing, holding them back from one another. He wasn't married, anymore, and she wasn't his partner; they weren't even on the same squad, and there were no guns at their hips, no perps to chase, just wine glasses and twinkling lights and music playing softly above the lapping of the water. Something about this situation scared him as much as any gunfight; this was a life or death battle, too.
"Liv-"
"How could you just say that? To me? Like that?"
He knew what it meant to her. To Olivia, who had been searching for love all her life, and never got it. Olivia who wanted, more than anything, to be loved, to have someone to give all her love to, Olivia who was, still, alone. It meant everything to her, but he'd dropped his love on her like a bomb, and taken it away seconds later, left her once more alone, wondering what it all meant, what he'd been thinking, whether it was true. He'd been running from it himself, from the second the words passed his lips, terrified of what it meant, scared shitless because he thought he'd just ruined any chance he might ever have of...of what? Holding her? Having her? It wasn't a possibility he'd ever really let himself consider, before, but now, now there was nothing holding him back, nothing but her, and him, and all this hurt.
"I shouldn't have said it like that," he told her slowly. "But the way it came out doesn't make it any less true."
She sucked in a sharp breath, looked down at her feet.
"I wrote that letter while I was still in Italy."
That letter, he'd written it before he ever even got on the plane. While Kathy was still alive, and his wife. He'd sat on the terrace of his gorgeous flat with the bustle of Rome beneath him and poured out his heart to a woman he hadn't seen in ten years, while his wife stood just on the other side of the door, making him lunch. He had been married, and had no reason to think he ever wouldn't be, when he wrote those words to her. And she needed to know that, he thought. She needed to know that it wasn't just grief, that made him love her. That he always had.
Before she could formulate a response there came the sound of footsteps, and then Fin and Phoebe were winding their way through the tables toward them. Elliot gave his head a little shake, tried to get his bearings, and realized that nearly everyone else had left.
"Cap," Fin said as they drew close, and Liv stepped away from Elliot, reached to wrap Fin in a warm embrace.
"I'd say congratulations," she told him as they parted, as she reached next for Phoebe, and the two women kissed each other's cheeks. There was such a stark contrast, he thought, between the Liv who'd stood with him a moment before, angry and swearing, and the Olivia who stood with him now, smiling and gentle. She'd changed, grown, settled into command and motherhood, but that angry girl he'd known still lived within her heart, and he wondered, then, how often that girl saw the light of day, or if she only came out now, with him, and receded into the shadows when he was not by her side.
"Thank you," Phoebe said. "I know everyone was expecting something else, but...this felt right."
"That's all that matters," Liv reassured her gently. "As long as you two are happy."
"We are," Phoebe said. She was looking at Elliot curiously, and Liv must have noticed it. They'd met, briefly, Elliot and Phoebe, when he first arrived, but maybe she was wondering what he was doing, loitering at the edge of the party with Olivia all night and not mingling with the other guests. Maybe she was wondering just who the hell he was; all Fin had said, when they were introduced, was Stabler used to be one of us. Used to be, and was no longer, and yet still he was here, long after the other, more casual acquaintances had departed. Phoebe was a cop; she must have been asking herself what it meant, that he had chosen to linger by Liv's side.
"Elliot and the Captain were partners, back in the day," Fin explained to her. The man seemed determined to make them both uncomfortable. He'd been playing this game from the moment he sat down for coffee with Elliot, and Elliot didn't know yet whether or not he should be grateful for it. "Her first partner," he added.
Okay, he wasn't grateful. Those words, spoken by that man, holding on to that woman, carried with them a world of meaning, and all four of them heard it.
"It was a long time ago," Olivia said, and Elliot winced.
"Not that long," he murmured, and she shot him a withering look.
"It's nice you two could reconnect," Phoebe said diplomatically, but her eyes were dancing with mischief, and Fin's hand tightened its grip on her hip.
Does everybody know? Elliot wondered. Had they all been watching him and Liv all night, laughing behind their hands? It's not inevitable, Liv had told him, and maybe it wasn't, maybe there were plenty of partners who worked together and never fell in love, but so far SVU was batting a thousand, he thought. Maybe she'd meant they weren't inevitable. Maybe she just resented the thought that they might be, that no matter how hard they'd tried to keep themselves apart, no matter how hard she'd tried to build a life without him in it, fate had made up its mind about them years before, and was just waiting for the right moment to bring it all to bear. The thought of fate was reassuring to him, but it would make her crazy, he knew, thinking the decision was out of her hands.
"But the party's shutting down," Fin said. "We're not as young as we used to be."
"Ain't that the truth," Elliot said.
He and Liv, they'd been young, once. But now there were little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and he'd lost nearly all his hair. They were both tired, now, in a way they never had been, before. An ocean of time stretched from the moment of their first meeting, in the pouring rain outside a crime scene, to this one, standing warm and quiet by the water's edge, a sea of memories, and regrets, moments of pain and exultation, a lifetime of grief, and victory, hand in hand. What would it have been like, he wondered, if he'd told her that he loved her when they were young? If he'd made any one of a hundred choices differently? Had she loved him, when they were young? Would it have mattered?
"We won't keep you," Liv said to Fin. "I was just about to leave."
Had she been? He wondered. Had she been thinking about leaving him, when he was telling her that he loved her? Had she been clocking the exits, thinking about putting as much space between herself and this conversation as possible? He didn't think so, somehow, but he didn't like the idea that she could lie so easily.
"Yeah, I should head out," Elliot said, because he knew it was expected. "Thanks for inviting me, man. It's good to see you happy."
He reached out to shake Fin's hand, and Fin took it, and then there was nothing for it but to go. But go where? Back to the hotel, with the fist-shaped hole in the drywall, back to the quiet and the empty fridge and the bed he wasn't sleeping in?
"You take care of yourself," Fin told him seriously, but then someone else caught his attention, and he was turning away. Phoebe shot one last look at Liv, and Liv covered her hand with her heart, a gesture of affection he'd never seen from her before, and then they were alone. Again.
"You wanna go get a drink?" he asked.
He really, really didn't want to schlep across the city and settle into some bar; covid regulations meant the bars weren't at full capacity these days, but the thought of even one more person in their proximity felt like too much of a violation. The thing was, though, he didn't want to leave her side. He didn't want to go home alone.
"I don't think that's a good idea, Elliot."
"You wanna come back to mine and have some water, then?"
She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.
"I really don't think that's a good idea."
"I'm tired of this, Liv," he said, frustration rising in his gut. She was just so fucking determined to keep throwing up walls between them, and no matter how hard he tried to disassemble them for every brick he removed she laid down two more. "I'm tired of avoiding things. This. You. I just wanna talk-"
"You're tired? How the fuck do you think I feel?" she hissed. She wasn't looking at him, though, she was watching everyone else, walking away, watching the caterers starting to clear out the tables. "I've been worried sick about you every day, and you just keep…"
She trailed off, shook her head, closed herself off from him, again, and he was so sick and fucking tired of watching her shut down, he couldn't restrain himself.
"What?" he demanded, angry now. "Keep what? All I'm trying to do is talk to you-"
"You just keep piling on. You're heavy, El, and I'm tired of carrying you."
He ground his teeth, tried not to say the words that were on the tip of his tongue. She thought she was carrying him? Liv had been an albatross hanging around his neck from the moment he first saw her. He'd been carrying her with him everywhere he went for twenty-two years. She thought she was tired? Did she have any idea, he wondered, the fights he and Kathy used to have about her, the way her name had hovered in the air above their heads every time things weren't going right between them, the way Kathy would look at him, sometimes, sad, like she knew she'd lost something and there was no way to get it back, and how that look used to eat him up inside, and he still couldn't let Liv go?
But maybe, he told himself, maybe she did know. Maybe there was a reason none of those guys ever stuck around. Maybe he'd been hanging over her head, too. And maybe she was right; he'd been thinking for months how much it fucked him up seeing her again, but he was the one who'd chosen to go. She was the one left behind, and she couldn't even curse him for it, because he was grieving and she was too good to kick him while he was down. Maybe she'd been swallowing her own pain for months, trying to heal his. Maybe her grief had been heavy enough, and his had broken her.
"Let me carry you, then," he said. "You think I put too much on you? Put some of it on me. I can take it, Liv."
In the darkness her eyes looked almost black, but they were shining as she gazed up at him, full of an emotion he could not name. When they were partners, when they'd been together, before, they'd passed the weight back and forth between them, taken turns teetering near the brink, pulling each other back. Elliot, he'd been on the edge for months now, and all that time Liv had been steady for him. Maybe it was her turn to break, he thought, and his turn to pick up the pieces.
"You wanna do this now?" she asked him. She'd asked him the same thing in the hospital, he remembered, found the grace to give him one last chance to save himself from her anger. He hadn't backed down then, and he wasn't backing down now.
"I really do," he said.
"Fine," she answered.
She started to walk, then, and he fell into step beside her, walking on her left the way he'd done back when they were partners. He always covered her left, always walked down the sidewalk between her and the road and the cars and the noise, covered her vulnerable side while her gun covered her right. It was just what he did, without thought, and he did it now, nevermind the fact that they were safe, her in her dress and him in his suit and not a perp in sight. He didn't know what was coming next, didn't know whether this was really a good idea, didn't know whether he was about to fuck everything up, but he knew in his gut he had to try. He had to tell her, what she meant to him, how fucking sorry he was. And he knew there was plenty she had to say to him, and the time had come, he thought, for her to get it off her chest.
Nothing changes, except what has to.