Author's Note: This chapter has been cursed from the very first day I started writing it, for one reason or another. Hopefully, now that it's done and posted, the curse will be lifted. There should be two more chapters after this, and I think that number should be final at this point.

This chapter is dedicated to my "ladies of chaos" who have never given up on seeing it posted one day, and my real life friend J. for his indirect assistance in getting it posted tonight. Y'all rock.


"I want this," Olivia says, softly, and she's never seen the sheer hunger in anyone's eyes the way it reflects in Elliot's, as his lips capture hers. She's never been one for wanting anything, because experience has taught her that wanting leads to hoping, and hoping leads to expectations that are inevitably dashed against the rocks.

But, oh, if this is what taking what she wants gets her, the feeling of his teeth lightly nipping at her bottom lip, his tongue softly caressing hers, and one of his hands trailing to cradle her hips while the other holds her by the shoulders, then she'll allow herself to want more. The fact they're making out in the middle of his bathroom – when there's a couch and a bed and chairs and other, more comfortable places to be doing this not too far away – isn't lost on her.

This is the last first kiss I ever want to have.

She's not sure where the thought comes from, but it hits her like a crystal-clear bolt of lightning.

By all rights, the thought should terrify her; she's had precious few long-term relationships in her life, and while the ones she's had have all been good in their own ways, she's always spent them waiting for the other shoe to drop.

She runs her palm tenderly along the side of his jaw, feeling the sensation of his newly-shaven face ripple under her hand, and she knows she's kissing Elliot, not Eddie. Eddie is gone: he's dead, gone to the same ashes that gave him his nickname. Elliot has returned to her, in his full glory.

"Liv – ia –" she hears him groan against her lips. The fact that she's the one that can bring this powerful mountain of a man to his knees, the one that exposes his every weakness but allows him to showcase all of his strength, doesn't fail to delight her.

Truth of the matter is, she'd be content to spend the rest of the day right there. She wants this, whatever this is; she wants him and he obviously wants her.

He looks at her from under a half-lidded gaze, as their kiss naturally eases apart, and his smile is warm and inviting. "I've been waiting a long time to do that," he confesses, laughing under his breath. "You have no idea how long."

"Too long," she says, agreeing with him. All those undercover assignments, where they had to pose as a couple, all those long nights spent doing paperwork or chasing leads until the single digit hours of the morning, and those same early mornings where they grabbed each other coffee before running out to every corner of Manhattan for another grisly scene. All that, and never once, not in all that time. "Elliot, I –"

"I know."

"Do you, though?" She cocks her head to look at him from a slightly askew angle, arching her eyebrow impossibly higher. "Do you know?" His unrelenting, unwavering faith in her is sweet, if somewhat unfounded, but he doesn't know what he's talking about. Not with this.

Her words aren't meant to be accusatory, only questioning, but they likely have the same effect on him either way: his shoulders slouch forward slightly, as if she's taken the wind out of his sails, but his eyes are still trained on her face.

The air between them is heavy and laden with the bittersweet tinge of resolution that's come far later than either ever desired, as well as the conversations they want to have, but can't find the words for. "Maybe I don't know," he says, finally, and he traces the contours of her face with rough, calloused fingers that speak of such tenderness. "But I want to."

"I want you to, too." And she does, because he's the one person who's always been able to look at her and see past all the artifice she puts up. He's never wanted her to be anyone other than herself, and she's never wanted him to be anything but himself, occasionally-infuriating loyalty to wedding vows and all.

All she's wanted is Elliot in her life, in whatever way she could have him; for so many years, it was as partners and best friends, and now, the future is wide-open as to what they could be. Best friends again – yeah, she'd really like that. Partners of a different sort, perhaps, especially if this kissing thing is going to continue.

She gently extracts herself from their tangle of limbs and takes his hand in hers. "Let's go to the couch," she says, and he smiles softly at her words, as if he's never heard a better suggestion in his life.


Their hands remain clasped together, as she tucks her feet under her on the couch and smiles at him. It's so nice to see him clean-shaven, so much more like the man she's known for so long. And perhaps, for the first time since the night of Fin's wedding that never was, she can see him so clearly.

"I missed you," she says, and she's not sure if she means since the undercover, or since he left her all those years before. "I missed you so damn much, El." And it's not lost on her that she's finally calling him El, again, without life-altering trauma on the line. First, the hospital with Angela and Morales, then that phone call before the fire – but now, he can simply be her El.

"I missed you too, Liv." His thumb idly strokes hers. "It's never been the same, not without you."

Through the years, they've been Benson and Stabler, Elliot and Olivia, Liv and El. And in all of them, his name and hers have been inextricably linked, no matter which order they go in. Maybe, too, that's why his disappearance from her life had such a profound impact.

"I'd look out into that squad room every day, especially after I took over as commanding officer, and I don't know why, exactly, but I'd half-expect you to come walking in with coffee and sitting down at what used to be your desk," she says. "And I'd stand there, in the doorway of what was Cragen's office and now is mine, and think about what I'd say to you if that ever happened."

"What would you have said?" His tender stroking continues; his fingers kneading gently at the joints of her hand, releasing built-up tension she didn't realize was even there. "I deserve it, whatever you would have said."

She pauses, thinks. It's not that she hasn't thought about this conversation, in one version or another, a thousand times over the last ten years. "I was angry for a long time," she says. "Angry that you could have left without saying anything, especially when you know how much I've always feared being alone."

He opens his mouth to speak, and she reaches out her other hand and places her index finger over his lips. "Let me talk, okay?"

He nods, acknowledges, and continues stroking her hand. It feels good, to have him touching her like this, in such a simple way – there's no romance, no explicit heat, but it's reestablishing and maintaining that connection between them, the one that has sustained them for more than two decades. It's been fractured and bruised, but it's still intact.

"I was angry, but I could never hate you, Elliot," she says, "because hating you would be like hating a part of myself."

"I would have hated myself for what I did, if I were you, but I never could have hated you, if the situation was reversed," he says, and Olivia doesn't try to stop him this time. "I did hate myself, for a long time." There's a glimmer of a tear in his eyes, and she gently swipes it away with the tip of her index finger; he bows his head into the touch of her hand. "I never stopped thinking about you, wondering where you were, what you were doing. If you were happy, like you deserve to be."

She sighs, resting her palm against his cheek. "I didn't spend those ten years waiting patiently for you to come back, if that's what you're asking. I made friends. Great friends. Raised Noah. Dated a little, there was even one guy I thought I could commit myself to, for a time." She doesn't want to think about the bad things that happened, though she knows those conversations will come.

"And?" She doesn't miss the flicker of disappointment in his eyes, the one that asks the silent questions – why isn't he here now? Who is the mystery guy who won – and then lost – your heart?

"We, uh, we wanted separate things," she says, inhaling a deep breath and focusing her gaze exclusively on him. "He wanted to retire, I still felt like there was more work to be done. And then –" she pauses, because it still hurts to think about, even all this time later, even after all the grief of the pandemic and the calamities since, "he died." And she breathes out, breathing out the pain Ed brought her with his death.

"Oh, Liv." He wraps his arms around her, holding her against him; she feels him breathing her in, soft breaths against her temple, taking in the pain she's shared and making it a part of himself. "I wish I'd known."

"It's fine." She's used to it by now; this is her life, and she's living it, no matter what's thrown at her.

"Like hell, it is." He rests his lips along her hairline, pressing small kisses along the curve he finds there.

She feels the gentle curve of his smile against her skin, and the continuous soft kneading of her hand by his, and she feels more tension dissipate from her body. And for once, maybe she can agree that it's not fine, that this kind of loss is anything but normal, but that she wishes more than anything for it to be otherwise.

Maybe, now, it can be so.

She hums her approval, her acknowledgement, and curls further into him. "I hope you know, though, that those friends I mentioned? Are still very important to me."

"I wouldn't expect anything else." His voice is soft against her, muffled by the silky cocoon of her hair, and his grip tightens just a little bit more. "I've met some of them, haven't I?"

"Yeah. They were there for me when you weren't, and they might –" she laughs slightly to herself, picturing her petite blonde detective standing up to a man twice her size, all in her defense. Amanda's not to be underestimated, though she thinks the two would have more in common than they might think. It'd be a matter of getting them to talk to each other, first. "They might get a little possessive of me, but they care. And I needed that sometimes. Still do."

She feels his heart beating, and she can almost hear the gears in his mind turning as he thinks about these people that mean so much to her, and are nothing more than passing acquaintances to him, at best; faces he'd be able to walk by on the street without acknowledging the shared mutual connection that runs deep beneath them all. "You deserve all that. Always have."

She wants to bring all the parts of her life together – all the pieces of her heart, that have been scattered to far shores with gusting winds – and bring it all together. She wants to be able to look out onto her life and see Noah and Elliot and Rafael all sharing a laugh about something, or to overhear Elliot and Carisi trading secret tips about Italian food.

She's tired of the delineating and compartmentalizing, especially when the crucial thing of it all is that every one of them matters to her in their own uniquely important ways. That's what she cares about, especially now.

"They might actually hate you, at least at first," she says, her tone slightly light and teasing as she rests her head against him. "But they're important to me, remember that."

His loose hand, the one that hasn't been giving her a knuckle massage for the last little while, threads its way through her hair, and she loves the softness and stillness of this moment. There's been so much anguish and loss, and threat of loss, and the fact that they're actually sitting here and holding each other, beginning to tell each other all the things that they've meant to say but let their minds get in the way of actually saying – that's the fact she's going to cling to.

"And Noah," he says. "Do you think he's going to hate me, too?" He almost sounds heartbroken at the mere thought. For a man who loves his five children more than life itself, and who has always bristled at those who hurt children in any way, the thought that her son, of all the kids in the world, might not like him has to be shattering.

She thinks for a moment. It's not that she thinks Noah would hate Elliot, necessarily, but his track record with male role models has been dicey at best. The most constant have been Carisi and Fin, and they're even sparse, given what they all do; it's not that they don't care, but that all their free times are limited, and not everyone wants to spend those precious moments with their boss's kid, no matter how much they like the kid – or the boss in question.

"He's very protective of me too," she says. "Ever since the start, it's been pretty much him and I as a team. Team Benson, we call it."

A slight smile quirks at the corner of his lips. "Team Benson. I like that," he says, tracing her waves with the edge of his hand. "I'd do anything to win him over."

"El." Her voice comes out slightly more insistent than intended, a little more forceful; she wants him to hear what she's saying though, because Noah is the single-most important factor in her life. There's a slight waver, a tentative break, as her voice cracks on the emotion behind her words. "Break my heart, if you must, though it'll be the last time you ever see me, but don't ever break his. That's a promise, not a warning." She's protective of her boy; they saved each other, once upon a time, and there's no reason why that should change now.

"I swear, Olivia, I won't. Not ever again. Not either of you." He gently tilts her chin up to look directly at him. "I give you my word. As your friend."

"Friends don't kiss and cuddle on the couch like this," she says, looking into those eyes of his that have always spoken so many words without saying a thing. And it's true, because this is wholly more intimate of a moment than she's spent with anyone in some time, whether or not she had a romantic involvement with them. She feels some of the armor she's worn to protect herself begin to melt away. "Best friends might, though."

If she's not careful, they're going to end up spending the whole day losing themselves in each other's warm embrace, and while that doesn't sound like the worst idea she's ever had, she doesn't want to do anything that would affect his healing.

Although she can think of plenty of things they could safely do and not aggravate his injuries or disrupt the healing process, she'd rather save it for a time when there's no restrictions, physical or otherwise – only the two of them, alone. Together.

"Let's change your bandages," she says, looking at the one that was wrapped around his elbow, "and then, I think I've worked up a bit of an appetite." She arches an eyebrow, looks at him, and laughs at the stunned expression on his face. "I had to promise Liz I would actually take care of you."

"Kissing is good for your health too, you know!" Elliot calls out, as she walks away to find the tray of bandages and ointments, and she can't help but ring out in another peal of laughter.

He might be a lot of things to a lot of people, but he's hers, and damnit, she doesn't want that to change.

-to be continued-