6

"But it's over now and I don't know how
Guess it's over now
There's no getting back to good" - Matchbox Twenty, Back 2 Good

He's shocked that she lets him leave. He's expecting a confrontation, counting on it, thinking through a hundred different scenarios for what he'll say when she follows him from the bar. Because this is Olivia and she always chases him when he get upset or hurt or angry or dumb. She chases him down and forces him to face what he doesn't want to face and he's hoping for that from the moment he steps out onto the street, waiting for her to notice he's gone, to give chase while he staggers an extra three blocks to give her enough time to excuse herself and follow him and demand that they talk. As angry as he is, as hurt and broken and crushed as he is, he'll listen. He'll beg. He'll do anything. He'll accept any excuse.

But she doesn't follow him. She doesn't call him. He's drunk as hell and he makes it all the way home without hearing from her and he wants to pass out, but he's just fucking waiting for her to say something and he waits all fucking night and not a damn word. He scrapes himself off the couch and takes a shower and heads to work and opts for an Uber because he's fairly certain he's still a little drunk and he's early for work because he was wide awake, but he knows Olivia gets up early and he's just waiting and waiting for her to show the fuck up. He tells himself she's just hungover, that she feels as shitty as he does, refuses to consider the idea that she went home with Langan, but the longer it goes without a word, the more uncertain he becomes. There's still a way to save this, he's sure, because he loves her enough to forgive anything if she just fucking asks.

By seven, he's in Bell's office and meeting a whole fucking raft of FBI and ATF and who the fuck knows agents who are already in a joint investigation and have tripped into one of Elliot's cases and of course there are several underaged girls involved and he knows exactly where this is going and he can't fucking face it, can't face her because she must be wide awake by now and has probably been at work for hours and she has nothing to say.

By eight, they're sitting in her fucking office and she's not even there yet and Fin looks nervous and Elliot is looking everywhere but at her desk because he can't help but think of the night before and what they were doing on that desk and how things seemed so fucking much better and finally, finally his phone lights up with a message and it's from her and he's smiling when he looks at it because all he needs is a fucking apology and a promise that she's not going to start dating Langan and the whole thing will be forgiven and forgotten and he swallows hard as he read the series of texts, about how excited she is for a dinner she never accepted from him and asking about Noah joining them and then the one that kills him, a remark about everyone knowing about them now.

She's probably in a hurry to get to work - almost three hours later than normal - and she's driving and not paying attention and texting the wrong man. Her texts are obviously meant for Langan, the man she's apparently been seeing, the reason why she's probably been so unavailable and distant and Langan can grope her at her birthday party and take her out to dinner and spend time with Noah when he's not sick and Elliot is relegated to being her fuck buddy.

He doesn't respond to the texts because he's sure she'll be embarrassed enough when she realizes her mistake and he's not going to bother pretending he expects her to go out in public with him and he's not going to make her schedule a date with him that she'll have to arrange to conveniently cancel. He's not that pathetic. The sex wasn't that good. Well, it was, but he thought it was because they loved each other and now he knows it was just when Langan wasn't available and maybe he was that pathetic but he's not going to be anymore. He shoves his phone in his pocket and stares at the floor.

He notices during the introductions that one of the Feds, the FBI one he thinks, keeps looking in his direction and she keeps at it during the discussions and she's absolutely nothing like Olivia and she's clearly interested and so he smiles back and he sees her blush and he thinks it's kind of cute that this middle-aged woman is blushing from a friendly smile. It's certainly a step up from a woman he's known for twenty-five years who freaks out if he makes eye contact with her outside of her apartment.

He gets another text from Olivia as he's leaving, but he only glances at it long enough to see her name and assume it's an attempt to get out of the dinner she'd meant to plan with another man, so he ignores it and puts his phone back in his pocket and pretends to listen to Bell and McGrath while he's watching the blonde woman nervously pick at her nails every time he glances in her direction.

When it turns out they don't need SVU's help for anything besides a few statements and offering of resources to the girls - a task that two young detectives he doesn't even know handle - Elliot thanks his lucky stars for the break. He's working on tracking down some loose threads on Thursday when he gets a text from Agent McCann, Jordan, asking if he's free for coffee sometime. She sends another message two seconds later, apologizing if it seems inappropriate since their case is still open. Two seconds after that, she's explaining that she's just been transferred to New York and she's used to Quantico and New York is very different and she doesn't know anyone and she has no idea where the good coffee shops are. He tells her that he had the same culture shock during his time stationed in Quantico and by Friday, they're having coffee in the middle of the morning rush with people everywhere and she looks so happy and interested and she's not Olivia, but she's not ashamed of him either.

He sees Olivia's calls that night and he knows if he answers, it'll go right back to the way things were and she'll convince him that it was all a mistake and she didn't mean to hide the fact that she's dating Langan and she'll say she didn't realize they were exclusive and he won't be able to say she's wrong because they never talked because he was willing to accept whatever she gave him and he understands now that he was mistaken, that it was never enough, that he wanted all of her, that he was thinking about moving in with her and she was fucking another guy. So when she texts that she's trying to apologize, he can't let her. It was as much his fault as hers because he knew from the start that they needed to talk and he didn't force the issue and he hadn't told her they were exclusive any more than she'd told him they weren't.

His case heats up at the end of the following week with a big deal being made to trade a ridiculous number of guns for an obscene amount of money and the UC flinches at the wrong time and the carefully organized bust turns into chaos and the ensuing shootout guarantees a mountain of paperwork and as he's leaning on the back bumper of a bus and waiting for the paramedic to finish wrapping his forearm which had been sliced open on a jagged pallet while he was diving for cover, he notices a commotion out of the corner of his eye and he sees a frantic Jordan searching the scene and grabbing the arm of every NYPD officer she sees and he can't flag her down because one arm is attached to a blood pressure cuff and the other is bleeding through the first layer of gauze. He watches while someone finally points her in the right direction and she sees him and she looks terrified and then he smiles and all of a sudden she's running across the street and wrapping her arms around his neck and exclaiming how worried she was.

It's a little embarrassing, especially with the disbelieving stare from Bell and the irritated look from Jet. But it's also a little endearing. A lot endearing really. She cares about him even though they've only gone out a couple of times and she's in a professional setting and has a twenty-plus year career to worry about, but she's not worried about it because she's worried about him and she doesn't give a single fuck who knows it.

They make love for the first time that night.

Their joint case is officially over except for the paperwork and so there's no reason for it to be wrong. It's not heat and passion and love and lust and desperation. It's gentle and sweet and they're learning each other and she rolls over and snuggles with him after she sets the alarm on her phone for the morning because she has no plans to run home and he stares up at the ceiling and waits for her to fall asleep before he sneaks into the bathroom to cry.

He's not sure where this is going. There's something so comfortable in Jordan and he thinks maybe it's because the relationship reminds him of his marriage, where the other person is far more invested in making it work and it's not that he doesn't care, he just doesn't care as much and he had four fucking decades of riding along with the current and Jordan really likes him and she still blushes when he winks at her and it reminds him of Kathy when they were kids and absolutely doesn't remind him of Olivia. He's the strong silent type and dating another strong silent type had just hurt them both. He's been on both sides and it's so much easier to not have to worry so damn much what the other person is thinking because Jordan will just say it.

Maybe that's the attraction. Dating Jordan is simple. Easy. Clean. The antithesis of his relationship with Olivia. Except he misses the messy.

He's sorting through some files and trying to put them back in order because Bell always makes a mess of things when she's thinking because she thinks by paging through the records and reading notes and moving from one file to another and back again and he can't function with everything all out of order so after she's gone to lunch, he's alone in the conference room trying to organize things and he's waiting on Jordan who has been back in Virginia for three days finalizing the sale of her house and he's enjoyed the time alone, but he smiled when she said she was on the plane and she'd be home in time for a late lunch.

He hears footsteps and he's turning to smile at Jordan and tell her he missed her even though he's not sure he did and it's not Jordan. He's just staring for a minute, trying to calculate how long it has been since he saw Olivia's face and then he realizes her timing is just so fucking bad and he's glancing out at the office and praying there's a traffic jam to slow Jordan down because he's not prepared for this, he's not ready for them to learn about each other's place in his life, he's ashamed now because he can't even breathe because she's so fucking beautiful and he's missed her so damn much and he knows the reason things with Jordan are so calm is because he doesn't love her. He can't love her. His heart belongs to Olivia and it has since the first time he saw her and it always will.

Except she doesn't love him, he remembers, as she starts talking about a misplaced file from their last case together and he's pointing at Jet, mostly in a desperate hope that Jet will design a teleportation device to get him the hell away from staring at the love of his life who doesn't give two shits about him outside of maintaining a polite working relationship.

He sees something in her face, in her carefully schooled expression that's too blank to be real and she's asking him to lunch, not in some distant future, but now, like let's-go-before-the-universe-hears-us-and-something-happens, and he wants to say yes and remember what it's like to not be numb, but then Jordan is there with her excited smile and her bright eyes and then he sees Olivia's face, and it's her, the woman he'd talked to at Christmas, the one who loved him, and he's watching while she's realizing he's dating someone else and he's realizing he never even broke up with her. He'd just assumed they were over because she was with someone else and he wasn't interested in sharing and she's so devastated she can't even hide it and he knows, he fucking knows, he was wrong.

He's trying to put off Jordan because as sweet as she is, she's not Olivia and she'll never be Olivia, and he'd do anything to soothe how Olivia feels right now because it's exactly how he felt on her birthday and he knows she wants to die for how much it hurts. He's paralyzed, watching her flee, knowing he can't stop her because it'll cause some enormous, public scene that she was so damn worried about that she'd hidden their entire relationship and he wants to chase her anyway and pull her into his arms and remind her that they love each other even if it's complicated and hard and messy, but he can't because she'll never forgive him for bringing her status and rank and career under fire.

He begs off lunch because he's not feeling well enough to eat anymore and he dodges Jordan for a couple weeks because he doesn't know what to say and he doesn't know what she saw between him and Olivia and he's not ready to talk about it. He tries to call Olivia twice that night because he thinks there's a chance for them if they can just finally talk, but she doesn't answer. He keeps trying, here and there, and understanding more each time she doesn't answer, that he must have been confused about what he saw because she's obviously not willing to talk to him, so she's probably not willing to forgive and forget either.

Jordan sends him an email the third week, not a text, not a call, but a formal email asking if something is wrong. He feels his heart break for her, thinking about how she must have thought about writing and calling and texting and finally decided to email him and, knowing her, she probably wrote six different drafts and slept on it for two days before she sent it. He sends flowers to her office, apologizes for being a jerk, blames his job and asks her to dinner. She forgives him, of course, because she cares more than he does and he wonders more often than he should if maybe they both wouldn't have been better off if she hadn't.

They talk a lot, more than they make love, and it's another stark contrast to his relationship with Olivia. They spend most of their nights watching TV and falling asleep on the couch and after a few months, Jordan opens up about her ex-husband who she'd met in her late thirties after she'd thought she'd never get married, and who swept her off her feet and promised her the moon and stars and after they'd gotten married, she'd found out that he was sleeping with at least three other woman, and she'd tried to put it all behind her, but she admits the experience burned her and left her a bit paranoid and extremely insecure. So Elliot opens up in return, talking about Kathy and how she'd always confused the job with him having an affair and he promises Jordan that he would never cheat, that he would end things before that ever happened, and when he realizes his statement wasn't received as the reassurance he meant for it to be, he promises her that it'll never happen anyway. And it won't, he knows, because he's not a cheater and he never has been because if he hadn't been willing to cheat to be with Olivia, he's not going to start now.

He feels like a liar for never opening up about Olivia, but he can't and he knows that bridge has burned anyway and it doesn't matter if he still loves her because she doesn't love him and they haven't spoken for three months and he knows there's no point in hurting the woman who loves him by telling her about the one who never will.

It's the middle of the summer when he hears the call. The third week in July is hot as hell and his pants are soaked with sweat and the air conditioned seats aren't able to compete with the unrelenting sun and he's got at least two more hours of the misery of staring at an abandoned warehouse before someone comes to relieve him unless he has to give up the oppressive heat in the car for the even more oppressive heat outside to have a foot chase. He's ruminating on Jordan's request for a drawer and some closet space which he thinks is reasonable, but he's afraid of her taking a mile if he gives an inch and they've only been together a few months and he's not sure he wants her to move in even though she hates her shitty apartment and she stays with him most of the time anyway.

"10-13, shots fired," Fin's shouts carries across the radio and sets Elliot's heart racing as he hears the location that is clear across town and he wants to respond, wants to provide backup, but the shooters aren't going to wait an hour for him to get there.

His hands are gripping the wheel, his attention completely off his job as he waits, hears the chorus of responding officers, hears the check ins from the foot pursuit, and then her voice, a breathless description of the building the suspect has ducked into. He wants to scream, he wants to grab the radio and tell her not to dare follow, because his instincts as her partner are still there no matter how thoroughly he's tried to deny them and he doesn't even wait now, he's already driving because he already knows, and he's got the siren going while he's racing across the city and texting Jet that he's left his post. He doesn't hear it over the wail of his own siren and he imagines it's a blessing because he probably would have died had he heard the call of "officer down" from Fin.

He's as late to the party as he expected to be, arriving after half the city's units. He's ducking under the tape and checking the ambulances and looking for anyone he recognizes and he thinks he sees someone he knows and asks about Captain Benson, but the woman just shrugs at him and he's left searching. He's not aware of his phone ringing with Jet's perpetually important updates, a text telling him that Olivia is headed to Mercy with a non-life-threatening injury. He finds the building Olivia had described, sees the spray of blood on the wall, the path of drops on the floor and he's almost sick as his stomach heaves and he can't fucking find her.

If he were able to focus, he'd see that everyone is milling around in a pattern completely unlike that of a fatal shooting. He'd see that people are chatting and laughing and looking at their phones rather than staring at the scene. He'd realize that there aren't nearly enough members of the brass present. He'd recognize that he's the only one having a fucking panic attack.

He's forced to stay there, his car blocked on all four sides by a crime scene van, another ambulance, and a hopeful tow truck looking for something to do. His breathing eventually slows and he notices his phone and all the messages from Jet and he wants to thank her, but he's too busy being embarrassed that his feelings are so obvious even though Jet and Jordan seem to be friends.

He's a late arrival to the hospital as well, navigating unnoticed among the crowds of people with varying stages of heat and dehydration related illness, sneaking into the sea of blue uniforms. He has no reason to be there, he trusts Jet's report that Olivia was wounded in the arm and she's fine and the emergency department is just backed up. He knows he should be explaining to Bell why he abandoned his job and begging for mercy that he revealed their surveillance by hitting his light and siren before he pulled out, but he can't think of anything besides being there because even though they don't speak anymore, this is the first time Olivia has been shot and he feels like he should be there because he's her partner.

He's got this whole fantasy going on in his head as he leans against the wall, imagining Olivia emerging from the treatment room and seeing him there and waving off Fin and allowing Elliot to take her home and then they finally talk and she admits she has always loved him and still loves him and he confesses the same and they spend eternity happily ever after.

He's replaying the scene over and over again in his head and it almost feels like it has already happened because he's seen it so many times in his imagination and then the door to her room actually opens and he's smiling and she comes into view as beautiful as ever with a wide smile on her face, and he steps forward, thinking it's finally their time and then he realizes that his little fantasy did not include her walking through the door with Trevor fucking Langan's arm wrapped around her. He imagines it's a blessing that she doesn't even see him.

Jordan moves in the following week.

He's working late at his desk one night in October, dreading the idea of going home. Since she moved in, Jordan has been redecorating, slowly replacing every functional thing in his apartment, their apartment, with a floral-printed replica. At least most of the time he'd been married to Kathy, they hadn't had the money to waste on anything fancy, they'd spent every dime on the kids and ate what was left. But Jordan doesn't have any kids and his kids are grown and Eli has no intention of ever coming back from LA and so Elliot really doesn't care if the kitchen towels are cornflower blue or cottage rose and he doesn't know how to tell Jordan that without making her feel bad so he's hiding at work.

"Stabler, are you seriously sitting here right now?" Bell looks furious and he can't remember why, but he does recall that she'd wanted him to do something before he'd gotten sucked into Jordan's string of texts with pictures from the Pottery Barn catalog that's been sitting on the coffee table for months.

He swallows and looks up, trying to think of anything besides his utter confusion over Jordan's last text asking if he had any objection to "clumsy ivy" patterned curtains and he almosts asks his boss what clumsy ivy curtains might look like and he feels like he's about ten seconds from descending into hysterical laughter when he gets another message from Jordan blaming autocorrect and asking instead about climbing ivy curtains.

"Everything ok?" Bell cocks her head to the side and studies him and waits for him to nod before she frowns. "Then there's no legitimate reason you didn't do what I asked?"

And then it comes back to him, their current case, the reluctant wife they'd questioned with the bruises on her face and her wrist in a cast and Bell's request from a few days ago to contact Olivia and get some assistance. He shrugs because he knows exactly why he didn't do it and he's convinced that everyone already knows what happened or at the very least that something happened because he has desperately tried to steer everyone away from involving SVU in their cases for months.

She moves toward her office, shaking her head when he doesn't follow. "Get your ass over here, Stabler. Time to suck it up, whatever it is."

And then he's sitting in the chair facing her desk while she calls Olivia with the phone on speaker. He listens to the polite greetings, the even tone of Olivia's voice revealing that she has no idea she's on speaker and he glares at Bell but she's busy giving Olivia some of the details, explaining they suspect domestic abuse and hoping that making the wife feel safe will help convince her to talk and Olivia is asking how soon they need the help because the squad is pretty busy.

"Stabler was supposed to call you two days ago and get everything set up, but apparently he forgot." Bell glares back at him, watches as he gestures at the phone, and doesn't seem to understand that he wants her to tell Olivia she's on speaker.

"He might have talked to Fin." There's not even a pause, but he hears the slightest change in the cadence of her voice, and he knows she's lying, he'd swear to it, even before he hears her words and realizes she's fucking covering for him. She clears her throat and he listens as she concocts a completely bullshit story and finally realizes that she's not just covering for him, she's covering for both of them, because she knows as well as he does that she wouldn't have answered if he called and he wouldn't have thrown her under the bus either. "I set up a new position here to help manage the cases from other departments when SVU is called to assist. Seems to be happening a lot, so it's straining our resources a bit. All requests for consults will be going through our interdepartmental liaison going forward."

Bell looks confused probably because it's the first she's heard of this and she starts searching through her email for a notice of some sort and Elliot wants to tell her not to bother because even the interdepartmental liaison himself doesn't know about it yet, but instead he just sits there and says nothing because she could have just said she was busy and hadn't gotten the message and instead she's creating a new fucking job title for Fin and it's all to prevent her ever having to talk to him again and he's suddenly got his phone in his hand and texting Jordan that he's sure she'll pick something nice. The call ends quickly after that, Bell ordering him to get in touch with Fin as soon as he can because she wants to move on this possible witness and decide if she's an accomplice or not and Elliot ignores the order again because he has to give Olivia enough time to tell Fin about his new job.

Elliot was expecting to bring Jordan to Thanksgiving with him and while he was a bit nervous about dropping the woman into the middle of a Stabler holiday, he figures it's about time she meets everyone. But her father has a stroke the day before and she's flying home to stay with her mother for a few days while her dad is hospitalized and he knows he should offer to go but he doesn't and while he's sitting at the table and feeling thoroughly disloyal to her, he mentions to his kids that he's been seeing someone and that it's fairly serious and that he might eventually start thinking about getting married again and he doesn't even know where the words are coming from except that he's a traditional kind of guy and it feels so weird to him to settle for living with someone when being married sounds more permanent and official and serious. The kids take the news better than he expected and honestly they don't seem to even care as they go back to whatever they were talking about before he spoke. His mother pulls him aside after dinner and she studies his face carefully and asks if he's happy and he knows better than to lie to her so he just smiles instead. Later that night, he's watching his grandsons playing and they keep running over to touch Liz's very pregnant belly to see if they can feel the baby kicking and he suddenly remembers the previous year and how he'd imagined Noah playing with them and how he'd honestly expected Olivia and Noah would be here this year.

Kathleen finds him hiding at the edge of the living room, observing but not joining the group as they put on a Christmas movie and start talking about all the cookies they want to make. She leans into him, still seeming so young and sweet that he has to remind himself she's a grown woman.

"Missing her, daddy?"

And he's thinking about Olivia and she's talking about Jordan, but he doesn't bother to correct her as he swallows the lump in his throat. "Yeah, I am."

"So bring her next time, no one will be mad. You're allowed to be happy." She smiles at him and then rejoins the group, leaving him to wonder if he'll ever be happy or if it's his lot in life to settle for being satisfied.

When Jordan comes home the following weekend, she's talking about how her father doesn't seem quite right although he did survive the stroke and it makes her mom nervous and she's thinking about talking to her mom about them moving into an assisted living facility because it would give them all peace of mind and by Christmas the decision is made and she's planning on flying back to Colorado at some point in January to help her mother pack and move and she's waxing romantic about how her parents are still so much in love and how she thinks there's still hope that she can have a marriage like that and Elliot isn't refusing so much as pretending not to get her hints and he really doesn't want to go with her to help because even if it's not some subterfuge excuse to introduce him to her parents, he still remembers the hell of cleaning out and selling his mother's house like it was yesterday and he's trying to figure out if he can possibly get out of it while also thinking maybe he needs some time away from the city. But by the time Jordan gets all the insurance paperwork finished and enlists the help of a realtor, she's announcing that she's flying out on February seventh and asking if he's coming or not and all he can think about is that it's Olivia's birthday.

In the end, OCCB makes the decision for him, another case, this one a multistate, multinational weapons and sex trafficing ring and he's talked to Fin more than he's ever wanted to talk to Fin and most of the time Fin comes to his office, but sometimes there's no way to avoid it and he's standing in the bullpen at the one-six and after the fifth time in two weeks, he knows it's not a coincidence that she's not there when he is.

He makes the decision while Jordan is stuck in Colorado waiting out a blizzard, that he has to settle things. He knows it's always going to hurt, but he also knows that their jobs are going to keep overlapping and to spare Fin and Bell and everyone else, they need to find a way to work together. As much as it hurts to think about her and them and what almost was, it hurts more to pretend it never happened, to deny they ever found solace in each other, or at least he thinks it does and the only way he'll know for sure is to try.

He waits until the current case is closed, when he's no longer expected to show up, figuring he'll be much more likely to find her there if she's not anticipating seeing him. It's early afternoon the week after her birthday and he's making his way across the office and he spots her, watches her escorting a woman out of her office and towards the elevators and Velasco is talking to him and asking him if he saw the Knicks game and Elliot is craning his head to see who it is Liv is talking to because he'd swear it's Kathleen, but by the time Elliot pushes past Velasco, Olivia is back in her office and the woman is gone.

He's so distracted by the doppelganger that his nerves fade and he feels strangely calm when he knocks on her door. He watches the way she looks up, a moment of panic on her face before she hides it and waves him in. He's not here to make trouble and he hopes she knows that, but judging from the uncomfortable expression that's creeping back across her face, he's not so sure.

He nods toward the hall. "I could have sworn that was Kathleen." His phone is buzzing in his pocket and he's sure she can hear it, but he doesn't reach for it. He doesn't care who it is. This is the most important thing in the world to him.

She bites her lip and he gets the distinct impression that she wants to cry. "What can I do for you?" He worries then, because if his daughter is somehow involved in an SVU case he wants to know and he knows Olivia would never break a victim's confidence and the fact that she's not answering is threatening to send his thoughts down a deep, dark, unhappy, angry, overprotective, guilty spiral. "That was Kathleen. She's fine." She waits a moment after offering him comfort when she knows he needs it even if she's obviously so painfully uncomfortable herself. "So is there something you need?"

He nods, trying to calm himself from the panic that had threatened which is now simply knotting into anxiety over this discussion. He meets her eyes and he feels that connection between them for the first time in a year. "You don't have to avoid me, you know."

She looks away and takes several deep breaths. "I'm not avoiding you," she lies through her teeth and glances up at him to see if he's buying it and when she confirms that he's not, she continues. "I just thought it might be easier for both of us." She's chewing on her lip so hard he's afraid she's going to bite right through it and he's reminding himself that it will not help if he tries to comfort her right now. And then she's looking at her watch and he knows it's another lie, but she tries it anyway. "I should really be going, I have to meet-"

"It's been a year, Olivia, you still can't stand in the same room as me?"

"It still hurts, Elliot."

The statement throws him. Not just because he's surprised at the sentiment, but because she's admitting it to him. He doesn't know how to unpack her words in a short amount of time so he changes the subject. "How's your arm?" He's surprised by his own words, only now realizing this is the first time he's seen her since that afternoon at the hospital.

She looks down at it and then back at him. "It's fine. I didn't know you knew about that."

"I was there." He sees the way she looks up, the way she opens her mouth to argue so he keeps going, thinking his concern for her might earn him some good will. "I heard the call go out and I didn't get there until after you were gone, so I went to the hospital." Her face is softening, the idea that he responded means a lot to her and he's so glad he did because it's one thing he did right. "I wanted to make sure you were ok."

She nods, and tries to smile, but she still just looks like she wants to cry. "I didn't see you."

"You were with Langan." It takes all of his self control for him not to spit the name, to not resent that man who got what they both wanted.

"So how's Jordan?"

He wants to pat himself on the back for not sounding angry when he said the lawyer's name, because Olivia sounds like she's really asking and not just throwing the relationship in his face. And then he finds himself stepping forward, feeling maybe a little bit welcome or maybe just not unwelcome, and he sits down in one of the chairs facing her desk. "She's fine. Her dad's been sick so she's dealing with that."

"That's a year now, sounds serious."

He knows she's not asking if he had known Jordan, had been seeing Jordan, when he was seeing her. He's sure of it. But he hears something in her tone that he doesn't understand and he can't press her because they're not close anymore and he doesn't want to send her running from the room when he's only barely gotten her to speak to him. "She's hinting about getting married, but I don't know." He feels like he's said too much, because he's sure his reluctance is obvious, and he's talking to his ex-something about his current girlfriend and it's just so wrong to be discussing his girlfriend's desire to get married with the woman he wanted to marry.

She smiles sadly and snickers. "Better you than me." She's teasing. She's hurting, but she's teasing.

And then he smiles back, feeling like maybe they can salvage something here after all. "Oh I don't know, I think Langan might surprise you."

"He already tried. I said no."

It takes him a minute to process it, to realize she could easily have taken the opportunity and he wouldn't have known until some random day when he saw a ring on her finger, and it hurts so much he can't speak for a minute. "I'm surprised," he manages to croak out, but it's more about how fucking much it hurts to think about than her response. "You really said no?"

She shrugs and starts playing with the pen lying on her desk. "I've made it this long without a husband, why would I want one now? Besides-"

She stops so suddenly he looks around to see what caught her attention, but there's nothing there, she's still staring at her pen so hard he knows she doesn't even see it and he realizes what she was about to say and he'd cut off his own fucking hand to hear her voice it.

"Besides what, Liv?" His voice is a rough whisper and he's trying to convince himself not to cry, but he's not sure that's even possible if she says what he's thinking.

And then she surprises him again, actually speaking the words and reminding him she has always been the braver and stronger of the two.

"There's only one man I ever would have considered marrying anyway," she's struggling now, her chin trembling, and he wants to move, to get up, to hug her, to beg for her to give him another chance, but he can't because he's with Jordan and she's with Trevor and that's how it is. "And before you get married again, you might want to introduce her to your kids."

He's disappointed she didn't say it outright, but then he realizes she did. She just fucking admitted to his face she would have married him. Or at least thought about it. And then he's remembering how he'd expected this year to be different, how he'd being thinking about them living together and celebrating the holidays together and it's so much fucking worse now because he knows he could have had it, he knows he was so damn close, and he fucking lost it and maybe it was better when they weren't speaking because then he wouldn't have known.

He knows Olivia is waiting for a response, an acknowledgement of some kind, a statement that he thought about it too. But he can't look up. He can't even think. He can barely breathe. His phone buzzes again, several times in rapid succession and the pattern scares him because Jordan is so far away and he's always worried about his kids and his mother is staring down ninety, and so he pulls out his phone and finds one message from Kathleen which makes no sense, and then about ten from the family group chat and they don't make any sense either.

He's so distracted by it that he looks up and he sees Olivia has composed herself after her admission and is looking worriedly at his phone. "Everything ok?"

"I guess?" He shrugs and puts the phone away. "Apparently Kathleen isn't speaking to me and all of the rest of my family has decided I'm a fucking idiot."

It's the way she winces that reminds him both that Kathleen was just there a few minutes ago and that Olivia just mentioned his kids.

And then he gets it, a deep sigh escaping his lips as he puts it all together and remembers the way Kathleen had talked to him at Thanksgiving and how Olivia had seemed prepared for the news that marriage was on the table for him and Jordan. "That's why she was here?"

Olivia nods. "Wanted to have lunch with her stepmother."

"Oh, shit, Liv-" Sorry isn't even going to cut it.

"Not your fault." She pauses and checks with him. "I'm assuming when you mentioned that you might get married again someday you didn't mention any names?" She nods to herself while he's waiting for that teleportation device he's been waiting for Jet to design. "Awkward, but I think she'll get over it."

He recalls suddenly that day Kathleen had roped Olivia into having an intervention for him, at the way he'd been damn near psychotic and how he'd just been staring at Olivia and still not quite believing she was there in front of him again and how all of the feelings he'd thought he'd buried weren't really buried and how in one desperate, frightened, resigned moment, the absolute and utter truth had fallen out of his mouth. He'd been so terrified of how Olivia would respond that he hadn't realized it at the time, but over the weeks and months and years that passed he eventually recognized that not a damn one of his children had been shocked. Eli was understandably confused and the others might have been surprised about the timing and context, but none of them hadn't seen it coming. So he sees the path now, how they all just assumed he was talking about Olivia at Thanksgiving and they all know her and they're all comfortable with her and it hadn't bothered anyone.

He suspects they will be far less supportive of Jordan. He feels bad for her because he knows they can be a feral group. He's lost in his thoughts, wondering what it means that he already knows his kids aren't going to particularly like or trust Jordan, wondering what it means that he can't seem to muster up any feelings whatsoever regarding getting married again, wondering what it means that even here, in this tense, painful conversation he feels more comfort than he has in all the months he's been with Jordan.

"Elliot, what happened with us?" He barely hears her voice, but he feels it, the hurt, the pain, the sorrow pulling his eyes back to hers.

He shakes his head, feeling the tears well, as much in response to her pain as from his own. He shrugs and looks away and when he shakes his head again, one of those tears spills over and he's angry at himself because he didn't mean for this and she's never going to believe that. "I don't know."

"You just stopped talking to me and then you were with her and I-" she stops talking and she's wiping at her eyes and he wishes he could just undo so many things and make it all be ok again.

He knows he should have ended things better, officially at least, and that's on him, he'll own that, but it wasn't all on him, that much he remembers clearly because he never would have ended things at all and they'd be planning their wedding right now if they hadn't already gotten married had it been left up to him. "She wasn't ashamed to be seen with me."

He watches the confusion, the shock, the disbelief wash over her face and he knows, he absofuckinglutely knows that what he felt wasn't what she'd meant. She's shaking her head and sniffling and clearing her throat to force out words. "I wasn't ashamed of you." He can see her thinking, recalling details, playing things out in her mind, the way he'd seen her solve a hundred cases. "I wish you'd told me that's what you thought."

"Well, we really didn't talk much, did we?" He's looking down and trying to force back the tears because he's going to have to leave this office at some point and he'd rather not face all her coworkers with tear stains on his cheeks and it strikes him now that this is what she'd been trying to avoid, the stares and the whispers and the misunderstandings and the rumors and it had nothing to do with him, but with the way people would talk.

"No, we never did."

And then he's just staring at her and thinking that this is probably the first real, honest conversation they've had in at least fifteen years. Except like always, it's not quite honest, not fully.

At least that's one thing he can fix. "I always loved you, Olivia." Her eyes move back to his and he can see how very much it means to her to hear it and that gives him the strength to finish. "I always will."

She's fighting back sobs now and he can't stand to watch and he gets up anyway, knowing it's way past time to leave because he desperately wants to reach for her. "El, I just wish-"

He moves to the door, not sure what he accomplished by talking to her, except it's not what he'd intended and they're both hurting and all he wanted was to be able to see her without it hurting and he understands now that is never going to happen but maybe he just needed to see her again and they've cleared the air and maybe they don't have to avoid each other any more and maybe they do because it still hurts too much but things were said that needed to be said and at least they both know now they were both wrong.. He nods and stares out the door, unable to look back at her again because he's too damn close to trying something stupid and doomed and desperate. "Yeah, me too."

"El-"

His head turns sharply toward her, his clenched jaw and red eyes begging her not to say it. She loves him. She still fucking loves him and he cannot let her say it because he'll fall the fuck apart right there.

He steps out into the hall, feeling like he's made out of lead, every cell in his body feeling pulled back to her, and he can barely move for the undertow that's trying to drown him. He can hear her on the phone, telling someone, Langan he assumes, that she's not in the mood for dinner. And he recognizes that tone and he knows that is over because he's heard her do it a hundred times over the years and he realizes now that she'd never used that tone with him. She'd never meant for things to turn out like they had either.

He's punching the button for the elevator and remembering when he was standing there waiting with Jordan only a fucking year earlier and it feels like a hundred and he remembers the shy smiles she'd offered and he's turning for the stairs because he can't stand there and remember that day and instead he's remembering a different day as he staggers down to the ground floor and he can hear his own voice, his words repeating in his head that he'd never be unfaithful, that he'd break up with her first and he realizes that he's been unfuckingfaithful the whole fucking time.

And he finally realizes this is what Kathy had always been so pissed off about and this is why he's never told Jordan about Olivia and this is why he's going to be calling to break up with her before she even flies back home. He's never going to move on from this, from her, and he doesn't even fucking want to so he's going to stop pretending.

When he makes it down to the street, he looks back up at the building, still feeling a pull as strong as gravity to go back, and he's wondering if he should, if he can, if she'd let him. His eyes travel across the row of windows, mentally counting rooms to find her office, and it wasn't even necessary to count because she's standing right there, looking down at him. He thinks about his mother asking if he was happy and he knows that Olivia was the closest he ever came.

He wonders if maybe he could be again.