Author's Note: This is a look at season 12 onward that answers one simple question: what would have happened if Elliot had stayed, and how would he have reacted to the relationships, changes, and developments in Olivia's life?

As such, some lines have been taken directly from the show. The order of others has been swapped around. In many other places, lines or scenes have been expanded. This is most definitely true of scenes where Elliot has some of Amaro's lines/interactions, but…I stand by that decision. Because, if Amaro wasn't Diet Elliot—especially in his earliest seasons—what was he? Obviously, having Elliot around significantly affects the plot, so it's not a complete canon rehash, but you'll see moment you're familiar with, pieces of dialogue from the show, and references to cases you know.

Warning: Elliot is straight Not A Good Guy in this, but…isn't that canonically true? If he's married to one woman and the other is The Love of His Life? (And I say this lovingly, because Elliot Stabler was my OG television crush. Love the man, warts and all.) There will definitely be some questionable stuff in this fic later on. Jealous!Elliot is basically the bread and butter of this plot, and that paired with him witnessing all of Olivia's romances from season twelve onward—gratuitously, in some cases, so you've been warned that it gets smutty—doesn't make for the healthiest relationship. Please note that I'm not advocating for the real-life application of whatever toxicity or questionable choices you see on screen. This is fiction and fantasy and fun, for better or for worse, and involves situations, scenarios, and decisions I would never support IRL. If anything here is not your thing, I respect that. Please simply hit the back button rather than giving me hell for it. If anything here is your thing, I'd love to hear your thoughts in a review!

If He Stayed

Chapter One

It's a testament to how well he knows her—and nothing else, nothing else—that Elliot knows that Olivia will sleep with David Haden within five seconds of meeting him.

In the midst of a case in their fourteenth year together at SVU, Cragen gestures them into his office, shuts the door, and tucks his hands into the pockets of his trousers. "This is David Haden, our new Executive Assistant District Attorney." Somehow, the captain manages to sound entirely neutral. "Mr. Haden, Detectives Benson and Stabler."

Based on the way Haden reacts to Elliot's name—with a subtle shift of his eyebrows and a brief quirk of his mouth—Elliot has no doubt that news of his recent repercussions for the squad room shooting have reached the top floor of the DA's office. Shooting a teenage girl, justified or not, has continued to haunt him over the months, as have the mandatory psych evals, anger management, and endless hoops that he's had to jump through in the interim. In that brief change in expression, he can almost hear Haden sizing him up, judging him and questioning him, and the beginnings of familiar, ever-present, white-hot rage prickles at the back of his neck.

That feeling only increases, and exponentially, when Haden lays eyes on Olivia.

He can hear that look too, a secondary sizing-up that sits entirely differently on Haden's face. After nearly fourteen years at Olivia's side, it's a look Elliot knows well. From the infancy of their partnership, men have always looked at Olivia in just that way, a fact she's laughed off more times than he can count. "You're imagining things," she's often said when he's groused over a blatant, appreciative sweeping glance or a new gleam to a man's eyes at the sight of her. Strangers, coworkers, witnesses, perps—it's never mattered. Men simply look at Olivia like that. Often.

Worse still, although their introduction to Haden never veers off the path of the professional and sticks strictly to the case—one of sexual assault and military coverup and corporate corruption—Elliot sees the way Olivia looks back. If he had to guess, he would assume that most women look at David Haden that way.

To his complete lack of surprise, he hates it. Instantly, without questioning the consequences or the implications of the feeling, he hates David Haden too.

It's a sentiment Olivia doesn't share.

The case unfolds in typical fashion, with roadblocks and setbacks and upsets, until suddenly it doesn't. Without warning, things ratchet up one notch, and then two, and then three. On the same night that Elliot begins to field threatening phone calls to his home phone, those that Kathy answers and that push his newfound anger management skills to the very brink, he gets another call, this one from Olivia.

"It's nothing," she prefaces, and he knows instantly the opposite to be true. Across the kitchen in their house in Queens, Kathy holds a half-asleep Eli on her lap, her concerned expression the exact opposite of the forceful calm in Olivia's voice. "I just didn't want you to hear about it from somewhere else, but—my apartment was broken into. I wasn't home and CSU is here now, but—"

"What?" The sharpness of the question jerks Eli out of his slumber. Kathy, too, flinches just a little. "Are you—"

"I'm fine." There's commotion in the background underneath her assurance, the recognizable chaos and rumble of voices that always accompanies a crime scene. "I'm fine, El, don't—"

But how can he not, not do whatever it is that she cautions him against? "I'm on my way," he tells her, and he hangs up before she can protest.

Kathy protests enough for all of them, and he can't exactly blame her.

"You're leaving now?" she demands in a sharp whisper. They stand together in their bedroom, Eli once again resting peacefully in her arms, as Elliot changes from the day's rumpled button-down into a fresh one to wear through the night. "They've called our house, Elliot. They know where we live. If they've broken into Olivia's, who's to say they won't come here and—"

"You don't think I've thought of that?" He has, of course, at least as far as his mind will allow him to take the horrific idea. "I'll drop you and Eli off at your mother's, and I'll get a uni stationed outside. You'll be safe there, and I'll be back as soon as I—"

Kathy laughs, but it's not a joyful sound. Again, he can't exactly blame her. "My mother's?" she repeats. Her grip on Eli tightens. "I can't—Elliot, I can't keep doing this. I can't keep running and uprooting my life and Eli's life because of your job. It's too much. It's too much, and I'm—I'm tired. I'm so tired, and you're never here, and even when you are here—you're not. You're not, and I know you're trying—I know you're trying—but—the past few months—since the shooting—you haven't—we haven't—we're not—"

—the same. He doesn't need her to finish to know what she means, because he feels it too. Moreover, based on the gathering thickness in her words, he's not even sure if she can finish putting it all to words.

Still, she acquiesces in the end, just as she usually does. He talks her off the ledge, helps her pack an overnight bag for her and Eli, and tells her he loves her when he drops her off at her mother's house, a sentiment she repeats back to him.

And he does love her. He does. And yet—

Why does it bother him so much to see that David Haden has beaten him to Olivia's apartment, or that he's shown up at all?

Organized chaos reigns by the time he pulls up outside behind the flashing lights of several cop cars. Inside, the whole squad is there—Cragen, looking somber; Munch, looking tired; Fin, looking grim, new hires Amanda Rollins and Nick Amaro looking vaguely out of place. Olivia stands in the center of it all, holding a hand pressed to her forehead as she leans beside the kitchen counter where unopened mail spills haphazardly beside her coffeepot. And, at her side—

David Haden, who wears a long, dark overcoat and looks far too alert for such a late hour. Although their bodies don't touch, Haden has the arm closest to her pressed onto the countertop behind her back, and he has his head ducked down to quietly converse with her in a scene so intimate that it feels almost criminal to witness.

Fin spies Elliot first, and catches where he stares. Yeah, I saw that too, the twist of his head says, and a little of his grimness lessens. Fin, at least, seems to find a bit of levity in Haden's presence in an otherwise horrible situation.

If only Elliot could share those feelings. If only.

He pulls Cragen aside immediately, past the open door to Olivia's apartment where CSU dusts every inch of the doorway for prints. "Kathy and I got some strange calls tonight," he explains, and Cragen's eyes sharpen. "No outward threats, just—"

"Questions? Like, who was home, what you were doing, things like that?" Without waiting for an answer, Cragen leans through the open door. He lifts an arm into the air to wordlessly beckon Amaro, who somehow seems to sense the request even though he faces the opposite direction. In a flash, Amaro abandons the CSU tech at his side and joins Elliot and Cragen in the hall. Under the yellow, florescent lights, Elliot spies the faint remnants of something familiar in the creases beneath Amaro's eyes. It's an emotion he knows well: rage. "Amaro, has TARU gotten anything on your phone yet? From what Elliot just described, his family may be targeted too. I need you to—"

They've only worked together a handful of months, so Elliot doesn't know Amaro well. Still, the intensity with which he responds immediately makes him sound like an entirely different person from the detective Elliot knows from around the squad room, and he hears fury crackle under the surface of Amaro's responding questions. "Did you get calls tonight?" he asks. Each subsequent demand comes out like a barrage of bullets, as if he interrogates a perp. "When? Who answered? What did they say? Were they—"

In contrast, Cragen speaks softly. "Nick." It's a warning and a request both. "Nick, take a breath."

Amaro does. His shoulders shake with it. And in that moment, for the first time—

Elliot sees himself in the younger detective, and he doesn't particularly like what he sees.

Amaro confides in him there, in the hallway, after CSU has called Cragen back inside. "My wife's military," he explains, his dark gaze on a neighbor's door but his eyes far away.

Elliot had known as much from casual office conversation. Still, within the perimeters of the case, he hadn't quite put together what that might mean for Amaro, or his wife, or—worst of all—for their young daughter.

When he tells him that, Amaro smiles ruefully and reaches up to rub at the stubble lining his jaw. "I didn't either. Not at first. I should have, but—" He glances towards Elliot for the barest of moments, and then looks staunchly away. "This wasn't even supposed to be my case. You and Liv were meant to handle it, I know, but with Cragen subbing me in with her sometimes to learn the ropes—I didn't think I'd get this involved."

—Liv—

—subbing me in—

—to learn the ropes—

Which one rankles the most? The casual intimacy with which Amaro uses Olivia's nickname? The casual gesture towards his replacement at Olivia's side? The casual lie, the one Cragen had also used when assigning Amaro as Olivia's partner more frequently? The last, perhaps, because Elliot had known better immediately. Of all the hoops he's had to jump through since rejoining SVU, losing Olivia as his constant, steady partner has undoubtedly hurt the most, both far more than it should and far more than he'll ever admit aloud. To do so—especially to the departmental psychiatrist assigned to him by IAB who these days probes his every thought—feels akin to opening Pandora's box. If spoken aloud, he knows he'll have no hope of closing the lid on those feelings again.

"Working with other people is a condition of your return here," Cragen had told him the one and only time they'd ever spoken on the matter. Based on the slow, crawling cadence of his tone, Elliot had known that he'd counted each word carefully, and had perhaps rehearsed them as well. "You and Olivia will still work together, but not with the same frequency, which I think it will be good for the squad. We have a couple of new detectives coming in. I'm fortunate to have you and Olivia here to show them the ropes."

Kid gloves. He'd recognized kid gloves easily enough, and although he'd hated every second of it, he'd swallowed Cragen's explanation like a bitter pill. Keeping his job had been worth it.

Hadn't it?

Amaro pulls him out the darkness of the past and into the darkness of the present. "Is your wife okay?" he asks. "And your son? My wife—she's tough, you know, but I still—" He pauses; again, his hand flickers to his jaw, which clenches. "I worry."

"They're fine." And Elliot can only hope that they are, and that Kathy understands, as she almost always does. Almost. Unbidden, his own question flies free. "Your wife—she was alright with you leaving to come here? After the calls?"

Amaro shrugs. "Sure. It's the best way to catch these guys, isn't it? If they slipped up and left evidence anywhere, it's here."

But they hadn't, of course. By the time CSU packs up and leaves in the wee hours of the morning, they have uncovered exactly zero physical evidence as to the identities of the perpetrators of the break-in.

Eventually, it's just the five of them left—Elliot, Cragen, Olivia, Amaro, and Haden. The latter has shucked off his jacket, but he still sticks out like a sore thumb in Olivia's kitchen as they watch her attempt to set to rights the disturbed contents that litter her countertops.

Out of place or not, Haden also wears concern openly. "We'll set you up in a hotel," he says decisively. An attempt at a smile does nothing to cloak his worry. "I'll even make sure the department springs for something decent."

Olivia, predictably, refuses. "For how long?" she asks rhetorically, her chin held at a stubborn set. "Days? Weeks? Until we close out this case, which—what if that doesn't happen? Am I expected to move, or to—"

Haden's voice drops an octave. With it, his forced smile falls too. "It'll happen." It's clearly a promise. "I'll close it. No, we'll close it. We'll work at it until we have justice for Cory, and until you're safe." As if he catches himself, his attention darts from Olivia's back. "Until you're all safe," he amends, as if he's just recalled the threats to Elliot and Amaro's families, but—

Elliot knows an afterthought when he hears it.

Amaro offers his place to her for the night; Cragen follows suit. Yet, in the end, it's into Elliot's passenger's seat that she climbs with an overnight bag rested atop her lap, and for that he barely even has to push.

"I'm sorry," she apologizes on the drive out to Queens, her voice quiet and rather small in the dark cabin of his car. "I'm sorry, and you really didn't need to leave Kathy and Eli to come out. The calls—I had no idea they were targeting you too—"

He grips the steering wheel so hard that his fingers ache. It takes effort to relax, and he doesn't manage entirely. "None of this is your fault, Liv. None of it."

She doesn't answer. Upon her knee, her hand taps a repeated pattern. Only focusing on the traffic—of which there is mercifully but regrettably little—keeps him from reaching out to still her himself.

Kathy opts to stay at her mother's, a decision reached more for Eli's sake than her own. "I don't want to wake him," she explains when Elliot calls as they cross the Queensboro bridge, but she sounds exhausted too. "I had a hard time settling him down to sleep. Is Olivia okay?"

"She is." A sideways glance at Olivia' confirms that she stares out the window towards the dark skyline as he speaks what he knows he must. "She's going to stay in Maureen's room tonight."

Silence fills the other end of the call. When Kathy responds, sleep no longer lingers around the edges of the single syllable she intones. "Oh."

Seconds tick by, filled with a tension he can't put to words. On Olivia's knee, her fingers stop drumming.

Finally, Kathy speaks. "There are clean sheets in Maureen's closet. I don't think I've changed them since the last time she was home."

I trust you, she might as well say, and he hears it in just that way. I trust you alone with your 'work wife.' Don't make me regret it.

The house is quiet, almost eerily so, when he unlocks the door. He and Olivia don't speak much as they change the sheets on Maureen's bed, a task completed jointly with the same ease that they've always had when partnering at work.

As she pulls the duvet towards the pillows, Olivia expresses her gratitude in a short, stilted sentence. "Thank you," she says, her voice rather throaty in a way that tugs strangely at his chest. "For this, and—for tonight. When you showed up, I immediately felt—I felt so—"

She doesn't finish, and he doesn't trust himself to allow her to. He hugs her instead, encircling her a tight embrace unlike any they've had in recent years, at least not since Eli's birth. And yet it feels as natural as if they share such moments every day, as if he regularly folds her into his arms and she often presses her face into the crook of his neck and grips the back of his shirt as if for strength. She smells sweet, soft, and faintly floral, some combination of her perfume and the scent that clings to her hair, which tickles the bottom of his chin as he holds her within the four pastel-pink walls of his oldest daughter's bedroom, and—

That's all. Nothing else happens, and they exchange nothing more than a cursory goodnight. Still, it doesn't matter. He lies awake just the same, all too aware that only two doors separate them as she rests just down the hallway, and guilt twists his stomach into knots.

xxx

Just as the case had begun—with a bang, abruptly and out of nowhere, as almost all cases do—it ends. With it, he can only hope that Haden, too, will vanish from their lives.

He doesn't.

The whole squad plus Haden steps out for celebratory drinks the night before the grand jury, although Cragen has a single club soda and then ducks out early. "Grand jury bright and early," he reminds them as he winds a scarf around his neck to face the Manhattan winter. "Don't stay out too late."

"Sure thing, Dad," Fin cracks, and laughter follows. Even Elliot—whose nerves remain rubbed raw from the stress of the case, and the concern for his family, and especially from a therapy session had earlier that afternoon—can't help but join in.

Morale has improved with the new hires. He can't deny that. Munch has taken to Amaro greatly, the two steeped in different yet similar types of paranoia that clearly amuse the older detective. Rollins partners well with Fin, who has blossomed in the short months they've worked together. Clearly, mentoring suits him. The way that both Rollins and Amaro look up to Olivia—the prior as a senior female detective, the latter as a partner assigned to her with more and more frequency—shines through in their every interaction with her.

Elliot, on the other hand, feels as if he sits just outside the cozy group that establishes itself more and more with each passing day.

He likes Amaro fine most days, at least on those when he doesn't resent his spot at Olivia's side or he sees too much of himself in him. Catholic—a family man—quick to anger—sometimes, looking at Amaro feels like looking in the mirror, and he doesn't like the reflection he sees. Amaro is a great detective, capable and hardworking and clever, but he always seems to teeter on the edge of something deep and dark and dangerous. It's a more introspective understanding of his fellow detective than Elliot would have picked up on six months earlier.

"That's good," his therapist had enthused that afternoon when he'd voiced just that. "It's important that you're critically examining yourself through the behavior and outlook of others. Self-reflection is important, and it's difficult work. I hope you're giving yourself credit for the difficulty of facing this."

A part of him had wanted to laugh. Credit? More often than not, he leaves therapy deeper in loathing than when he'd arrived.

Elliot partners with Rollins infrequently, and they've never exhibited the same chemistry that she has with Fin. He experiences certain flashes of jealousy at that, too, at the easiness of their bond that has come so quickly, although their relationship doesn't surprise him at all. Fin just has that way with people, and—aside from Elliot and only Elliot—he's never had beef with anyone in the office. When it comes to partners, he's the definition of a true floater, in a way—

In a way that Elliot envies, although it has nothing to do with Rollins or the way Fin makes her laugh as he leans back in his chair in Mulligan's and teases her over her obsessive love for her dog. Instead, it has everything to do with the space between him and Olivia, who sits across the table from him between Munch and Haden, and whose attention bounces back and forth between the two.

He's only ever had that kind of ease with her. He's never worked with anyone else half as well. There's no one else who understands him like she does, and not just when it comes to policework. There's no one who understands him like she does, period, maybe not—

Maybe not even Kathy.

A steel door drops within his mind, forming a protective barrier around the thought. Again, it's Pandora's box. If he allows himself to linger on such things for too long, the careful compartments within him will surely burst.

Munch decides to head off before too long, and Amaro follows suit. "I'll drop you," he tells Munch, "As long as you don't talk go off on another tangent. I was up half of last night thinking about the JFK assassination thanks to your lunchtime rant."

A toothy grin breaks across Munch's thin face. "Why, Nick," he says, clearly delighted, as he places his hat upon his head. "I'm just trying to help open your mind. You know, if you'd question authority a little more and really look into things, you could make a great cop."

"Yeah, that's what he needs," Rollins mutters into her drink, and she smiles around the rim of her glass when Fin gives a quiet snort of appreciation.

With Munch gone, Olivia's attention focuses completely on Haden, and his focuses on her. With her legs crossed under the table in his direction, and his torso twisted entirely her way, neither of them so much as try to hide it.

Once again, it's Fin who spies the same thing Elliot sees—and, once again, it seems to amuse him more than anything. His eyes crinkle in the corners as he takes in the sight before them—of the crooked, annoyingly-handsome smile on Haden's face and the responding flush to Olivia's cheeks—and then he meets Elliot's gaze. "You catch the Knicks last night?" he asks, a poor cover to his blatant pleasure, and Rollins immediately joins the conversation with far more gusto than Elliot can muster.

Still, he tries. He'd had the game on in the background as he'd played with Eli, and he'd caught enough of it to hold a conversation, although he can't even begin to match Rollins' knowledge or enthusiasm for the sport. Yet, even as she picks apart the finer points of strategy and the Knicks' win, he also has one ear and one eye on the quiet conversation across the table from him.

Olivia toys with a glass of red wine, her fingertips strumming lightly around the stem. "I have to admit," she says quietly, as if she divulges a secret for Haden's ears alone, "We weren't sure about you at first."

Haden's smile remains as charismatic as ever. "You can trust me. I'm an attorney."

It's a shit line, to Elliot's estimation, but Olivia laughs quietly under her breath. "Little secret?" She brings her glass to her lips and takes a sip that courses smoothly down her throat. Her eyes never leave Haden's. "I can be a little testy when I work with new people."

Can she? When Fin had arrived, she'd liked him immediately. To Amaro and Rollins, she'd acted perhaps a little standoffishly at first, but that chill had quickly melted—with Amaro before Rollins, much to Elliot's irritation. It had seemed to only take her a couple months to settle into a new routine with them both, and she'd begun to bounce between partners in an echo of that same simplistic ease that Fin has so often exhibited. And yet—

Had Elliot ever asked her? Really asked her what she thought about the forced separation of their partnership and what it felt like for her?

Beyond that—and this, of everything, strikes the deepest blow to his stomach—the thaw that had taken Amaro and Rollins months to accomplish has only taken David Haden a smattering of interactions.

His beer tastes bitter as he swallows down the sourness in his throat. Automatically, when Rollins posits a question his way—something about the third quarter of the game the night before—he answers without thought. Although she takes his response in stride, he feels Fin watching him. He stares instead at the brilliant blonde of Rollins' hair—lighter than Kathy's, and curlier too—because—

If they make eye contact, he knows that Fin is too good of a detective to not read his every thought.

He can't look at Olivia either. Across the table, still wrapped up in their own world, Haden speaks. "I can be somewhat testy around my kids."

Elliot hears the surprise in Olivia's question, and maybe—just maybe—a bit of her disappointment too, although he refuses to dwell on the latter. "You have kids?"

"Boy and a girl." There's a pause, as if Haden takes a swallow of his own drink, or perhaps as if he waits to emphasize a particular point. "They live with my ex-wife in Cobble Hill. You?"

Ex-wife. That's a blatant massage, one Elliot reads loud and clear. Unlike his previous line, it's masterfully done—subtle but pointed, cloaked but clear—and—

Well, he's an attorney, after all. For the first time since meeting him, Elliot witnesses that blatantly in the careful way Haden guides conversation, but he doesn't appreciate it.

"No kids." What look does Olivia wear as she speaks? Is there disappointment in her expressive eyes, the same disappointment that she'd exhibited openly when she'd told Elliot that she'd been rejected as a potential adoptive parent? Or does she hide it somehow, perhaps behind a smile or underneath another sip of her drink? And what wouldn't he give to know, a desire that builds hot and deep inside his belly in a manner not dissimilar to anger, although he doesn't dare look when even a casual glance might give his eavesdropping away?

Haden presses further, his next question purposefully light, although Elliot still hears the intent behind it. "What about a partner?"

Fin listens too. An unwilling glance his way confirms as much for Elliot, and the smothered grin on Fin's face says everything. When he catches Elliot's eye, he winks.

Again, if only—if only—Elliot could share that clear excitement for Olivia. If only.

"No." Olivia, too, sounds keen to keeping her tone casual. "Not for a while. I'm kind of married to the job."

Haden answers immediately. "There's always room for that to change."

This time, when Olivia laughs, it's in a way unlike any that Elliot has ever heard. No, perhaps that's not true. Perhaps he has heard it before, but only under false circumstances—over a hidden mic when she's gone undercover in some risqué fashion and he's waited nearby with an earpiece, or at her side when they've partnered on a case that necessitated that they act out the role of a couple. Olivia laughs coyly, a breathy, flirtatious little thing that twists Elliot's stomach. "That's rich, coming from you," she says, and he hears her smile. "What did you say the other day after we were confronted by Rand and the deputy mayor? Wasn't it, 'I live for this'?"

"Sure," Haden agrees, his tone winning. "Sure, but—I live for other things too."

"Like what?"

Rollins catches on then, or perhaps Fin clues her in with a pointed kick under the table and a twitch of his head. The latter certainly takes place, although maybe Fin makes the move subconsciously and Rollins simply picks up the electricity suddenly crackling in the air, an electricity emanating entirely from the other side of the table.

In true Rollins fashion, she makes little attempt at subtlety. "Shoot, is that the time?" she asks, and she drains what remains with her drink after a pointed glance at her phone. "I have to get home and let Franny out. Fin, Stabler, would one of you mind giving me a ride to the metro? It's too cold to walk too far, and—Liv, you're good with finding a cab, right?"

"She'll be fine," Fin says. He stands and dons his coat, his smile bright and teasing. "You should head home soon, I'd say, since you heard Dad. Bright and early tomorrow—especially for you, Haden."

As he finishes his beer, Elliot finally allows himself to look at Olivia. More color has gathered in the apples of her cheeks, and she wears a smile of her own that suggest the barest hint of dimples. She's leaned one elbow upon the table and her head rests against it, her fingers delved deep into the shining roots of her hair as she faces Haden, and—

Haden's arm has migrated too. Just as in her kitchen, it's settled behind her, only this time draped across the back of her chair. He drops it the second attention shifts their way, as if he catches himself belatedly and questions the propriety and professionalism of it all, and a flash of guilt crosses the pane of his forehead.

Clearly, he'd forgotten that they were there at all.

Still, he hitches a familiar confidence back into place. "I'll be there," he promises Fin, but his attention turns swiftly back towards Olivia, as if he once again sets propriety aside. "Can you stay for another round?"

She hesitates. For the first time in what feels like an eternity, she looks to Elliot, as if for—

For what? For guidance? For permission? To spite him? Or none of it, somehow, although that seems impossible? She looks to him for some reason, and the rich color of her eyes renders him briefly unsteady as he rises to his feet.

Then she, too, rises. "Why don't we call it a night?" she asks, and she abandons what remains of her wine to remove her jacket from the back of her chair. "You'll need a clear head in front of the grand jury tomorrow."

Haden doesn't disagree, although Rollins does, and Elliot hears the tiny sigh she heaves.

Still, Haden persists. "Rain check?" he asks, and he takes the jacket from Olivia's hands, the motion easy, to hold it open for her to slip into.

Her smile creases again, and her head ducks with it as she allows his help. Like a knife, her words cut the delicate tissue around Elliot's heart. "I'd like that."