He went through the door first, held it open so Liv could pass through, locked it behind her. Watched with a strange, not entirely unpleasant sensation bubbling in the pit of his stomach as she slipped out of her coat and hung it neatly on the hook by the door. Her dark eyes drifted to the hole in the drywall he'd yet to repair, and she frowned, and he turned away from her then, ashamed. It wasn't like she didn't know it was there; she'd seen it already. The last time she was here. When he…
Shit.
"You want a beer?" he asked, stepping away from her and into the little kitchenette. He flung his jacket and coat across the counter, started picking at his tie with one hand while he reached for the handle of the refrigerator door with the other.
"You know what," she said, looking around uneasily. "This is a bad idea. I'm just gonna go, Elliot."
Courtesy dictated that he ought to let her; they weren't partners, any more, weren't even members of the same squad, were just a man and a woman alone and unsupervised in his hotel suite, and it seemed to him that the rules of engagement between them had changed. He'd never been allowed to help her on with her coat, to hold her hand before, never been allowed to acknowledge that she was a woman, and a beautiful one at that, but now he couldn't ignore it. Not now, when her nails were painted red - when had she ever painted her nails red before? He couldn't recall having ever seen such a bright color on her - to match the sash of that pretty, floral patterned dress, not now when she was wearing perfume and a dainty pair of heels, when her hair was curling softly around her face. She was all woman, tonight, in a way that made him a little uneasy, and he probably should have let her go.
But she was still Liv, and whatever was brewing between them, he was tired of hiding from it. He was tired of watching her walk away from him. He was tired of swallowing his words, and tired of the worried look on her face. He was just...he was fucking tired.
"We've come this far," he said, pulling two bottles of beer out of the fridge. "Why don't you just say what you've got to say to me. I can take it, Liv. I'm not running."
On the other side of the tiny kitchenette she frowned, and curled her fingers hard around her little red clutch. They'd taken a cab together; there was nowhere to park at the venue and they'd both chosen not to drive, and so had been forced to sit with their thighs almost touching in the backseat of that car, doing their best to ignore the driver and each other. You folks coming from a party? The driver had asked them jovially, but neither of them answered him, and he must have decided that discretion was the better part of valor, because he hadn't tried to talk to them again. Elliot had given him a sizable tip when they clambered out of the car in front of his building; the guy had more than earned it. The way he saw it after all of this build up, after the not-quite fight they'd had at the not-quite wedding and the awkward cab ride and the silent journey up in the elevator, the least she could do now was talk to him.
"You've been running since you got here," she said, and her voice was hard, and angry, but she threw her clutch onto the little entry table by the front door and kicked off her shoes, and he figured that meant she was here to stay. Surely that was a good sign, he thought.
"I've been working," he said. As far as he was concerned, that should have explained everything. For Christ's sake someone had killed Kathy, of course he'd been more worried about the investigation than anything else. Of course he'd been a little fucked up recently. But he'd found his feet, finally, now that Wheatley was in custody and Angela had agreed to testify against him, and he felt like he could breathe, now. That had to count for something.
"Yeah, you've been working," she said. "And you've been running away from every conversation I've tried to have with you. You've been running away from your kids."
The fucking intervention, that's what she wanted to talk about. He sighed, took a long swig from his beer and ran his hand over his head and tried not to yell. It wouldn't help him if he lost his temper with her now. Then she'd be the one running.
"Look, if you're talking about that night, I'm not gonna apologize. You should have known better than to try to sandbag me-"
"It wasn't my idea," she told him acidly. "I'm not stupid, El. I know-"
"What do you mean it wasn't your idea?" he asked sharply. That surprised him; it was Liv who'd told him she thought he had PTSD, Liv who thought he was in no shape to do the job, Liv who wanted him to talk to someone. He had started seeing a therapist - Bell had given him an ultimatum, and he needed the job too damn much to go against his boss's orders - and he hoped Liv would be proud of him for that, if he ever got around to telling her. But if it hadn't been Liv's idea, whose idea had it been? Why the hell had they ambushed him like that?
"Kathleen asked me to come," she said.
I should have known, he thought grimly. Kathleen had been worried about him, too. He just hadn't realized, before now, that she'd been worried enough to do something like this, to call all his children together, to call Olivia -
"She shouldn't have bothered you."
"What do you think would have happened if I wasn't there, Elliot? You really think I was gonna let them go through that alone?"
When he'd invited her over, when he'd asked her to come and talk to him, this wasn't what he'd had in mind. It had been his intention to talk about her, about all the things he'd missed and all the ways her life had changed and give her a chance to breathe, but here she was, talking about him again. Talking about how everyone was worried about him, talking about the hell he was putting his kids through, and shit, that made him angry. Just once he didn't want to be the topic of conversation, didn't want to watch her do what she'd done for years, step in and try to fix his shit when he was too lost or too worked up to do it himself. Just once he wanted to see her stand up for herself, and not let her own needs be lost beneath the needs of his family. The more he thought about it the angrier he got; how many times had she taken on extra work, and sent him back home to his family? How many times had she told him to call Kathy when all he wanted to do was work? She'd risked both their lives just to bring him a phone while he was undercover so he could call home. She was the one in the car with Kathy the day Eli was born, when it should have been him. All those years, she'd been carrying all that weight, and now that he was back she'd picked it right up again, answered when his children called and put herself into the line of fire just to keep them safe. Let him blame her for the stupid intervention, when it hadn't been her idea at all.
"Why do you do this, Liv?" he asked her belligerently. "They're not your responsibility-"
"Well, somebody's got to take responsibility for them," she snarled in response, stepping into the kitchen, stepping closer to him, "and if you won't-"
The insinuation that he'd been neglecting his children stung, mostly because it was true. Eli had moved in with Maureen and hadn't called him since, and Elliot had called, a few times, but not as much as he should have, and shit, he'd dropped the ball, and he knew it, but he couldn't listen to her say it, so he cut her off quick.
"They're my fucking kids, it's my problem-"
"And you're my problem, Elliot."
She never could let him get away with anything.
Her face was a picture of righteous indignation, her eyes wide and dark and focused unblinking on his face, the color high in her cheeks, and Christ, but she was beautiful, even when she was pissing him off. He was mad, shit, he was mad, but he wasn't so angry that he didn't hear it, the way she said he was hers, the way she acknowledged that no matter how much time had passed, no matter how bad he'd hurt her, they were still bound together, and she was still determined to be there for him, to protect him, even from himself. That he still mattered, to her. She'd told him the same thing that day in the car, when she'd told him she was worried about him, and it shook him just as much now as it had done then, because the day he lost Kathy was the day he realized he didn't have anybody in his corner. No one to call, no one to go to, no one to ask how he was doing except for colleagues who were worried he'd wreck their case. No one but Liv, who looked at him and saw him, and cared about him, still. That was changing, slowly; he and Bell were friends, now, and he had come to rely on his team, and things were getting better, but Liv was still the only person he had outside the job, and she was still with him, even now, when he was being a dick and he knew it.
"So that's it. You think the buck stops with you."
"Hasn't it always?" she asked him sadly.
It always had, because that's just who Liv was. She couldn't step back and let him ruin his life, ruin his family. She couldn't see a person in pain, and not try to help. She had a healer's heart, and all the grief, and neglect, and lonesomeness she'd suffered had only made her more determined to save anyone - everyone - else the agony of the same fate. Every time, she did this every time, threw all of herself into helping others, until there was nothing left of her to give. And that wasn't right, he thought, that wasn't fucking fair, because Olivia deserved the whole goddamn world.
Nothing changes, except what has to; that much hadn't changed. She hadn't changed. Not in the ways that mattered, he thought.
"I didn't ask you to come here so we could talk about my kids," he said heavily. The anger had faded, somewhat. It had always been like that, with her; she'd push his buttons and he'd push hers right back but they always found their way to the middle. They understood that about each other.
"Why did you ask me to come here, then?"
Because I didn't want to watch you walking away from me. Because I didn't want you to go home with someone else.
"I wanna know what happened while I was gone. You already know what I was doing for those ten years, and I don't have any idea what it was like for you."
He'd talked to Fin about his work, but he'd talked to Liv about his wife, told her they were happy, tried to tell her about Rome, and the way he'd look out at the city, sometimes, and think about her, and the travel brochures for the vacations she never took, and all the books she'd read about all the places she'd never get to see.
"I've been working," she said cooly, throwing his own words back in his teeth, and his jaw worked hard against the accusation he longed to throw at her. Why wouldn't she just talk to him? What had happened, in those ten years, that she was trying so hard to keep it to herself? What was she afraid of? Or did she really have nothing else to say about the last decade, nothing to show for ten years of life but a new office and a new son? Not that those weren't big accomplishments, moving up the ranks and starting a family of her own, but shit. There had to be something else. Didn't there?
"What about that guy? The guy Fin was talking about?"
Her eyes slid away from him, guilty, almost, and that didn't sit well with him.
"We don't have to do this-"
"What are you so scared of? It's just me, Liv."
Her eyes flashed up at him then, and he saw the answer there, plain as day. She was scared because it was him, scared to let him see, scared to let him in, scared, maybe, of how he'd react, so he just took a deep breath and looked right back, and made a promise to himself that no matter what she said next he wasn't gonna make her regret it.
"I lived with Cassidy for a while," she told him.
A strangled laugh escaped him and he looked away, because he didn't want to see the hurt on her face. He'd kept his promise for all of five seconds.
"Jesus," he said. "You can do better than Cassidy."
"Don't be an asshole," she told him, and took a long drink of her beer. It was nice, seeing her with a sweaty beer bottle in hand, like the old days, the few times he'd gone out with the squad after a tough case. Most of the time he just went home because Kathy had been crawling all over his ass and it was a long schlep back to Queens and he didn't want to be buzzed for it, but sometimes he'd gone with them, and watched Liv sprawl comfortably in her chair with her lips around a bottle, and tried not to stare. Maybe Captain Benson preferred her red wine and her fancy restaurants to dive bars and Coronas, but Liv looked good with a bottle in her hand.
"He's the asshole, and an idiot-"
"He's smarter than anybody ever gives him credit for," she shot back, "and you don't have any idea what he did for me. You don't have the first goddamn clue what you're talking about."
"So tell me, then," he said, but really, he didn't want to hear it. Well, he did; he'd brought her back here so she could talk about herself and he meant to let her, no matter how much it might drive him insane to hear it, but what he did for me, those words came out of her mouth so heavy, so full of grief, that it scared the shit out of him. What had Cassidy done? What had she needed him to do? What had happened to her, while Elliot wasn't there, and Cassidy was the one she'd had to lean on instead? He wasn't sure he wanted to know. He wasn't sure what would become of him if he found out.
"No," she answered, and then she turned and walked away from him, meandering towards the living room and putting space between them. He wasn't gonna stand for that.
"How did you two reconnect?" he asked her as he gave chase, followed her until they were standing around the shitty little coffee table. Her eyes flickered towards the couch, and the pillow and blanket piled up haphazardly at the end of it, giving silent witness to the fact that he still wasn't sleeping in the bed the way he ought to. Liv had spent a lot of nights on her couch after Sealview, too, and he wanted to ask her about it then, but he knew better.
"He was undercover, and our cases overlapped."
"And what, you just fell back into bed with him? After how many years?"
He was pretty sure she wasn't gonna throw the bottle at him, but she looked like she wanted to.
"Oh, screw you," she said. The words bounced right off him; it was hardly the first time she'd said that to him. "You know what, yeah. Yeah, I did. You know why? Because it was nice, Elliot. It was nice to be with someone who wanted me. It was nice to be with someone who knew me. The old me."
"As opposed to what?" he asked. The old me, she'd said, like there was a new one. He'd seen a flash of her, when they were at IAB after the shooting, authoritative and mistrustful in a way his Liv had never been; the new Liv was more tired than the one he remembered, but was she really that different?
"The me I had to become after you left."
He rocked back on his heels like she'd struck him, tried to look away but found himself caught beneath the fury and the hurt of her stare. He'd known what he was doing, when he left. When he didn't answer her calls, when he deleted the voicemails without listening to them. A clean break; he'd gone cold turkey on Liv, and suffered the withdrawals for months, shaky and lashing out at everyone around him, half-insane and miserable until the day he woke up and realized he wasn't jonesing anymore. He'd left because he had to, because the job was gonna be the death of him and the IAB investigation was gonna drag Liv through the mud and he just couldn't, anymore, and he'd cut Liv off because one word from her would have been enough to have him crawling back, no matter the cost. It had hurt like hell, but what hurt worse than his own shattered heart was knowing what it would do to her. To Liv, who didn't have anybody. To Liv, who always got left behind. To Liv who wanted to be loved, and wasn't. Who was she, without him? Who did she have to be?
"They saddled me and Fin with two rookies and we had to train them up. I had to take responsibility for them, and they didn't know me and I didn't want to let them. They became my friends, my family, eventually, but when Cassidy walked back through the door...he knew me, and it was like getting a piece of myself back. And I won't let you shit all over that just because you're...jealous, or whatever the fuck this is."
"Is that what this is?"
He hadn't meant to say that out loud. Mostly he was asking himself. Was it jealousy, that made his hands clench into fists when he thought about Cassidy with his hands all over Liv? Was it jealousy that made him so angry at the thought that she'd been leaning on someone else while he'd been away? Was it jealousy that ate him up inside thinking that Cassidy had returned something to her that she'd been missing, something that apparently Elliot hadn't given her? Maybe it was.
Across the room from him Liv huffed out an angry laugh, and looked away.
"Ok," she said tightly, like she didn't want to talk about it any more, and he let the subject of his jealousy - and whether or not he had any right to it - drop.
"So you were with Cassidy," he said. "And you got some new people on the team. And that's when you decided to move up the ranks?"
"Munch retired and Cragen was on his way out and I had been his number two from the minute you left. He wanted to make sure he was turning the reins over to someone he could trust."
"He wanted to take care of you," Elliot said, because he could see it, now. With Munch gone, Elliot gone, Cragen on his way out, the only person Liv had left was Fin. And SVU was her whole world, and bringing in a new CO with something to prove could have wrecked all that. Putting her in charge was the only way to ensure she got to keep SVU, that no one would ever drive her out of the only place she'd ever called home. It was what she deserved, he thought. Power, and respect, and a chance to stay where she belonged.
"Yeah," she said, softly, like she knew it, too.
"But that new partner they gave you. He was good to you?"
She hadn't told him anything about the guy, not really. Just that his name was Nick, and he'd killed Noah's dad, and she hadn't fucked him. It wasn't a lot to go on.
"Yeah," she said, smiling just a little as she thought about him, and Elliot's fist clenched around his beer. "He was. We didn't always see eye-to-eye, but he was a friend. I could count on him."
"And where is he now?"
"California. A perp put a bullet through his knee and it never healed right. He'd been through some other shit, he knew he was never gonna make it past detective. So he took early retirement and got the hell out of dodge."
"Good for him," Elliot said. California might as well have been another planet, and a small, selfish part of him was relieved to learn that her friend Nick wouldn't be showing his face any time soon. Shit, maybe he was jealous. At least, he tried to tell himself, at least she'd had someone reliable to watch her back. Cassidy in her bed and Nick at work; she hadn't been alone. Or not entirely, not the whole time. She'd been ok, without him. She'd found her way. And that was a good thing. Wasn't it?
"Had a couple of good ADAs," she told him next. "A couple you would have tried to strangle with your bare hands." She said that with a sad little smile, like she'd imagined it, a time or two. Like she wished she could have seen it. "Alex has lost her goddamn mind-"
"What's she doing these days?" he asked, and leaned back against the wall as he said it. They'd drifted into safer territory; this felt familiar, talking about old friends, the people they'd known, where they'd gone and what they'd done. It felt like...it was what friends did. Sit around and talk about the old days, smile over fond remembrances, shake their heads at the latest gossip. And whatever else they were to each other now, they were friends. Weren't they?
"Last time I saw her she was running an operation getting women and children out of dangerous situations. By any means necessary."
"So not necessarily legal ones, then?" It wasn't hard to picture; Cabot had been a stickler for the rules in the beginning, but the work got to her, the way it got to all of them. Turned her into a crusader.
"No," Liv said.
"Good for her."
Liv shot him a baleful look, but didn't call him out on it. He wondered what it would take, to make Liv go rogue like that. Wondered if she wanted to, if she was jealous of Alex having the balls to do it.
"Haven't seen Casey for a while," she continued, clearly not wanting to talk about Alex any more. "George comes by, from time to time. Melinda's still around. Cassidy's an investigator with the DA. Munch was too, for a while. Cragen got married, they spend most of their time on a cruise ship these days. Or they did, before Covid. I think they're in Florida now."
He nodded along with her recitation of their friends' whereabouts. It all sounded...nice. Like she still kept in touch, like there was still a web of people, spiralling out from her, a net to catch her if she fell. Old faces, and new ones, and now Elliot himself, stepping back into the frame.
"So that's it? You were with Cassidy, you got promoted, you got Noah. Nothing else I should know?"
She did it again, let her eyes slide away from his face, let guilt creep back into her expression, swayed back from him like she was thinking about running.
"No," she said. It was a lie, and they both knew it.
"Just tell me, Liv," he urged her softly. "If you don't, I'm just gonna ask Fin."
It was an empty threat, and he thought she probably knew that, but it made her angry, just the same.
"And he wouldn't tell you a goddamn thing," she said. "Not about this."
Dread settled low in his gut at those words. What secret could be so dark, he wondered, so painful, so heavy, that Fin would not speak of it? Fin who'd gleefully told him about Olivia's son, told him that she'd been with someone else just to watch him eat himself alive with jealousy? They had been friends before, Olivia and Fin, but they were something more, now, the ties that bound them stronger, the loyalty, the devotion they felt to one another breathtaking to him, who had not expected to find such care between them. She was Fin's Captain, now, and that made her inviolable, to him, a saint almost, and he would do whatever it took to protect that saintliness, would take the darkest parts of her and lock them away himself, would not let others see, and use them to harm her. That Fin should know these things about her, that he should be the one who swore fealty to her and fought her battles and kept her secrets, while Elliot himself was left out in the cold; it left a sour taste in his mouth.
"So you tell me, then. We never kept secrets from each other before."
"Didn't we?" she asked him sadly, and as she did he felt as if all the breath had been sucked from his lungs.
No, we didn't, that's what he wanted to shout at her; he wanted to shake her, to tell her that she had been his best friend, that she had known him better than anyone, and that was true, but they had always kept their secrets. There were so many things he'd never told her. They'd worked together more than ten years before he ever even spoke to her about his mother. He hadn't told her that he'd slept with Kathy while they were divorced, not until Kathy turned up pregnant and he'd no choice. He hadn't told her about kissing Dani. He hadn't told her that he thought she was the most beautiful goddamn woman he'd ever seen. He hadn't told her that sometimes he thought he was happier at the precinct with her than he had ever been at home with his family. All those secrets and more he'd kept, and he knew she must have kept her own, even if he didn't know what they were. Sealview, that was one. Something had happened down there and she never told him what and Fin wouldn't tell him then, either, and Christ. Whatever this was, this secret she was keeping now, was it anything like that?
"Olivia," he said her name softly, and even though there was miles of space between them he saw it, saw the warning in her eyes, the way she looked up at him from beneath her thick eyelashes, just as she had done while they were sitting in the hospital together, begging him not to do this. Begging him not to break through her defenses, not to peel back the layers of bandages she'd wrapped around her heart and reveal it for the wounded, shattered thing that it was. It seemed like no matter what he did, no matter what he said, he just kept hurting her, and Christ he wanted it to stop, but he feared that if they did not lance this wound the infection was going to kill them both.
"Don't keep secrets from me now, then," he said. "I want...Liv, I want us back. I want you with me. I want you to trust me. But you gotta...you gotta trust me."
"You don't ask for a lot, do you?" she said wryly. "How am I supposed to trust you, El? I look at you sometimes and it's like I don't even know you."
Oh, fuck that, he thought, and slung his beer down on the nearest table before turning towards her, marching quickly across the room until he was so close to her their chests were almost touching. Without her shoes she was shorter than him, barely, and he looked down into her face, into those dark eyes so full of hurt, tears gathering there, and he reached for her, as she had done that day at his office, reached for her hand and held on tight. Whatever this was, whatever was happening between them, whatever had Liv on the verge of falling to pieces right in front of him, he needed her to know that he was with her. That she was safe, here. That he would not let her go, would not turn his back on her, not ever again.
"You do know me," he said urgently, desperately. "Liv, sometimes I think you're the only person in the world who does."
"You've been gone so long…"
"Some things don't change, Liv. Some things are never gonna change."
And this, he thought, was one of them. This pull he felt, the inexorable gravity of her drawing him in, closer and closer, never letting him leave her orbit; that hadn't changed. Even when he had been on the other side of the world, thousands of miles and ten years away from her, the thought of her dark eyes had drawn him back across time and space, to the place where they had been one, to the place he longed, with every fiber of himself, to return. Her heart called to him, had him writing that letter to her as he sat on his balcony, homesick for a face he had not seen in a decade, the longing in his heart as acute then as it had been the day he left her. That had not changed. Would not ever change.
"Just don't...don't ask me to tell you now," she all but begged him. "Let me tell you when I'm ready."
That was not a no, was not a never, was not a get your hands off me, Stabler, and so he relented. He could not ask more from her than that, he thought, than the promise that she would try, that on a different day, a better day, she might let him have all of her.
"All right," he said, and he let her hand slip slowly from his grip, retreated back across the room in search of his beer. He wasn't really drinking it, at this point, but it gave him something to do with his hands, and he desperately needed the distraction, because without it he was pretty sure he was gonna put his hands on her instead. The way the cut of her dress highlighted the curve of her hip made him long to rest his hands there, but he settled for looking, instead, and as he did the thought occurred to him that while her dress was beautiful it covered her from the base of her neck to her feet, covered every inch of her skin, hid her almost entirely from view. They were older, now, and Liv had a respectable position and could hardly go about flaunting her body these days, but she'd never really had a problem with it before. Elliot liked her best in faded blue jeans and a leather jacket, but he'd seen in her a million different styles of clothes over the years, and none of them had been quite so buttoned up as this. Was this who she was now? He wondered. Hiding herself away, beneath the fabric and her rank, never letting anyone see?
"Who takes care of you now, Liv?" he asked her heavily. That was what he wanted to know. She'd said Cassidy took care of her but she spoke about that relationship as if it were long over. Was there someone, he asked himself, someone who got to see her, someone who knew her secrets, someone she trusted, the way he wanted her to trust him? He didn't think so, but he wanted to know. He just couldn't say what he wanted the answer to be. To find out that she was alone, that there was room for him beside her, would be a gift, but it would mean that whatever she had suffered, whatever grief she carried, was hers and hers alone, that she had been struggling beneath the weight of it all by herself, for god only knew how long. If there was someone, that would be better for Liv, but what the fuck would it mean for him?
"Elliot-"
"It can't have just been Cassidy, right?"
She'd told him so herself; you think in ten years there was only one? Now he could see it in her eyes; there had definitely been more than one.
"There's no one now," she said, but they both knew that wasn't an answer to his question.
"But there was somebody. Somebody else I know?"
His money was on Trevor Langan. That gangly son of a bitch had been hanging around for years, and he had helped her out when she was arrested, and Elliot couldn't think of any other men they'd known Olivia would have slept with. It wasn't like she'd hooked up with Munch or Fin, so there weren't really many options left.
"You're bound to find out eventually," she said ruefully, like she didn't want to tell him but she felt like she didn't really have any other choice. That made him nervous. Why was he bound to find out? Who was this guy, and how recent a lover was he? Maybe it wasn't Trever, after all. Shit, he really hoped it was.
"Look," she said. "Don't...don't get mad."
"That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence here, Liv."
"It was Ed Tucker."
"Ed," he repeated the name, flummoxed for a moment. Ed? Did they know anybody named Ed? And then, oh, shit.
"Tucker?" he barked out the name, incredulously. "The Tucker? IAB Tucker? Tried to take both our badges and tried to ruin our lives Tucker? The reason I had to fucking leave Tucker? That fucking Tucker, Liv?"
"I knew you'd be like this," she said, running her fingers through her hair, but he wasn't really listening. There was a roaring in his ears, loud, like the fucking cargo plane that had dumped his ass in Kuwait, so loud he could hardly think. Tucker had been the one spearheading the investigation into the shooting that spelled the end of Elliot's career. Tucker had been the one determined to bring him down, the one convinced he'd fired his weapon a few too many times, the one who wanted to tear through his service record and dig up every single incident, the one who blackballed him from the NYPD for years. The ban against him had been lifted four or five years back, and he'd never really found out why, but by then it didn't matter. By then the damage was done; Tucker had already, finally, wrecked his life.
And Tucker had fucked Olivia.
Tucker got to kiss her. Put his hands on her. Take her out to a nice restaurant, watch her smiling at him across the table, unfettered, unbowed, free. Got to taste her, got to touch her, got to see her sleepy smile in the early morning light, got to wrap his arms around her, and nevermind who saw. Got to sink himself inside her and feel her moving underneath him, got to see her, hear her, feel her come apart. Tucker...that son of a bitch got everything. Everything Elliot had ever wanted, everything he could never let himself have. Shit, there had been nights, more nights than he wanted to admit, when he'd woken up sweaty and hard and thinking about her, and he had to hate himself for it and have a cold shower, and Tucker - fucking Tucker - of all people, got to have the real thing, all to himself. Got to have the power and the passion and the strength and the ferocious beauty of her, and Elliot was left with nothing at all.
"You know, I thought you grew out of your infatuation with older men-"
"Oh, fuck you," she spat, angry now. But he'd wanted her angry, had lashed out at her because he couldn't stop seeing it, every time he blinked, fucking Tucker with his hands on Liv's hips, her tits, her ass, Tucker making her sigh, making her moan, making her -
Jesus.
She was the one moving now, marching right up towards him, angry and not backing down, not for a second.
"You always do this," she hissed, furious and unstoppable. "Every fucking time. No matter who I was with -"
"Oh, I think it matters that you were fucking Tucker -"
"No matter who it was," she continued, ignoring him, "you always had to get in a fucking pissing contest with them. You always had to get your back up and make sure I knew you weren't happy. Why did it bother you so much, seeing me with someone else?"
She knows, he thought. She was close, now, so close he could smell her fucking perfume, again, so close he could watch the rise and fall of her chest in time to her breathing, and struggled to keep his eyes on her face instead, that beautiful face so full of rage. It was the rage of a wounded heart, and he knew it. They knew it, both of them, knew the reason why it always got under his skin, seeing her with someone else. The reason he never wanted any of those guys hanging around her, the reason she never told him their names, not unless she had to. She knew what she meant to him, what he wanted, what he'd never asked for. What he couldn't understand, just now, was why she was bringing it up. Why it mattered. What difference it would make, if he spoke the truth now. Did she just want to hear him say it?
Oh shit, he thought. She did. She did want to hear him say it. Wanted to hear him say he loved her, and not take it back.
"You had no right," she continued when he didn't speak, just dug her heels in and carried on, pushing, and pushing until they were both on the verge of snapping. "You don't get a say in who I-"
He did snap, then. He reached out, caught her hips in his hands like he'd wanted to do from the moment he first saw her earlier that night, pulled her in close and leaned in, let his forehead rest against hers while his heart raced in his chest.
"It pisses me off," he said in a low, ragged voice, "because it should've been me."
They were both breathing hard, now, shallow, now, like they'd just gone ten rounds in the ring together, and his skin was buzzing, and she was so warm, and so soft, and so close, and she smelled like flowers, and he'd never been able to touch her like this, never, but she was letting him.
"Elliot," she whispered, her voice heavy and full of warning, but she didn't pull away. She was afraid, he knew she was afraid, afraid of what this meant, what it might do to them, what would become of them both now that he'd breathed life into this secret they'd both kept for so many years, but he was not afraid. Not anymore. He'd already told her that he loved her, and he meant it when he said it, and he felt it now, felt his need for her, his devotion to her, his longing for her, as sharp now as it had been ten years before, fifteen years before, as if it had never left him, as if it never would. Some things don't change, he'd told her, and he'd meant it.
"It's making me crazy," he confessed breathlessly. "Thinking about his hands on you."
Thinking about how she'd feel, the warmth of her skin, the softness of her, if she'd let him run his hands over her instead, thinking she'd let Tucker have her before she'd let Elliot. Thinking about that smug son of a bitch, his grim face, thinking about all the shit he'd said about Elliot and Olivia both, how ready he'd been to wreck Olivia's career when Elliot had been the one desperately trying to save it. And Tucker got to fuck her?
"Elliot-" she said his name again, but he wasn't done yet.
"Did you really want him? Really?"
It was hard to imagine. Tucker was...Tucker was, to Elliot's mind, a grizzled son of a bitch with absolutely no positive qualities to recommend him. What about that asshole had turned her on? What had made him worthy of her time, her attentions? Why was he the one she chose?
"Do you really want the answer to that question?"
She hadn't pulled back from him yet, and he didn't know what it meant. What it might mean, that she lingered here, let him touch her, let him stay with his skin warm against hers, her breath washing over his cheek when she spoke. He knew what he wanted it to mean but shit, he was so far out of his depth. Most of the time he could read her like a book, or he thought he could, but he was utterly lost, in this moment.
"Don't make me say it again."
"Yes," she said, and her voice wasn't breathy and uncertain, or guilt ridden and apologetic. It was hard, like she meant it, like she'd just delivered a blow and she wanted him to feel it, wanted to watch him recoil from the pain of it. "Yes, I wanted him. I wanted him to touch me."
"How?"
He couldn't get the images out of his head. Couldn't stop asking himself what he'd do, if he ever got the chance to touch her. Couldn't stop wondering whether she'd let him, what she'd be like if she did, what she'd want from him.
"What do you -"
"How did you want him to touch you? How do you want to be touched, Liv?"
She jerked back from him then, lifted her chin to stare up into his face. There was a question in her eyes, like she was trying to figure out just what the fuck he meant, just where this was all going between them, and he didn't hide from her. He wanted her, had wanted her for so long that he had forgotten what it felt like not to want her, and he was tired of losing out to other men, watching other people carry her away from him, while he stood by and let it happen. It should have been me.
"He touched me like I mattered," she said in a terrible voice, fierce and full of heat, still angry with him. "He touched me like he couldn't get enough of me. Like he never wanted to leave me."
That damn near broke him.
"I never did," he told her. "I never wanted to leave you-"
"But you did. And he didn't. He never hurt me, not like you did. And he never tried to hide it from me. He knew what he wanted and he took it."
Those words struck him square in the chest, sent him reeling. There was an accusation in them; she was telling him that Tucker had done what he could not, had seen something he wanted and gone after it, but he thought she was telling him something else, too. It sounded to him like she was telling him he could have had her, if he'd just had the balls to reach out and take hold of what he wanted. Like all this time when his love of her had been ripping him to shreds she'd just been waiting for him, waiting for him to realize what was right in front of his face. Like she'd been ready, and biding her time, waiting for him to catch up. And then he'd left her.
"Christ, Liv."
That woman was gonna be the death of him.
If that was what she wanted - to be wanted, for someone to choose her, for some to make her feel like she mattered - shit, he could do that. He'd wanted to for years.
She gave her head a little shake, like she couldn't believe they'd gotten themselves into this mess, and she started to pull away from him, and that was when he broke. He reached for her, caught the back of her head in his hand, tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled her in close, let his free hand clutch at her hip as he drew her to him, as his lips finally, finally crashed into hers. It had been so long coming that the moment he felt the softness of her mouth opening against his own his heart nearly ricocheted out of his chest. Dreams could only sustain a man for so long. Hopes could only be shattered so many times. A fantasy could not satisfy him indefinitely.
And Olivia was more than he had ever dreamed. She was still angry, still hurt, still full of righteous indignation, but her lips opened against his and her teeth caught against his lip and she didn't pull back. Didn't try to stop him, or tell him all the reasons why they shouldn't. She just kissed him back, like whatever he wanted, she wanted it, too. Like she'd been waiting just as long as he had. Soft lips, warm tongue, gasping breaths ragged against his cheek, she kissed him, and he burned alive beneath the sheer goddamn heat of her.
But she wasn't done yet; there was more she wanted to say, apparently, because after a moment she turned her head, let his open mouth land against her cheek, let frustration course through him at having been given a taste of everything, and then having it wrenched away. His hand tightened its grip at the base of her skull, tried to pull her back to him, but she was undeterred.
"So, now you want me?" she asked him, breathless, angry. "You found out somebody else had me and you want to stake your claim?"
You're just scared, he thought, but didn't say it. He knew what this was, why she'd pulled back, why she still needed proof. She'd been hurt one too many times; he'd hurt her one too many times, and she couldn't trust it, couldn't trust him yet, couldn't trust that he wouldn't take this kiss back, and pretend it never happened, the same way he'd done when he told her that he loved her. He needed her to know that nothing could be further from the truth.
"What if I do?" he answered. "What if I want to make you mine? God knows I'm already yours."
And I have been, he thought, for such a long time. God help me.
An unsteady little gasp escaped her, and she looked up at him sharply, as hopeful as she was afraid of that hope.
"I love you, Liv," he said. "That's something that isn't ever gonna change."
Not now, not ever. Being married to Kathy hadn't changed it. Leaving Kathy hadn't changed it. Getting back together with Kathy, having Eli, that hadn't changed it. Ten years away from her hadn't changed it. He loved her, and he always had, and he always would, and Christ, he needed to kiss her again.
"You are such an asshole," she said, but before he could respond she was reaching for him, her hand cradling his cheek as she drew him back to her, and kissed him like the world was ending.