There was no reason for it, the calm that settled over him as they crammed themselves into a sticky booth, as he ordered two glasses of bourbon for him and Liv, as Kosta watched them across the table. He should have been coming out of his skin, but Liv's left hand was resting on his thigh, and his arm was wrapped around her shoulders, and they were close, and warm, and it felt good, having her next to him again. The brush of her hair against him when she turned her head, the warm wash of her voice, the sight of her fingers wrapped delicately around a glass; he could do anything, take on any challenge, conquer the whole fucking world, as long as she was with him.
"What do you do for a living, Lorraine?" Kosta asked her as they sat together. His eyes were dark, and watchful, a hawk circling its prey, but Liv made a good show of ease, gave no sign that she was uncomfortable, though she surely must have been.
They hadn't talked about this, about the character they were inventing together out of whole cloth; sure, Elliot hadn't told Kosta anything about Lorraine, but Liv didn't know that. She'd have to be asking herself right now what sort of story Elliot would have told, if forced. What he would have said about her, what sort of wife he would have invented for Eddie, what sort of woman he'd think she could be, if she wasn't herself.
"I'm a nurse," she said, and Elliot had to close his eyes, just for a second, had to take a breath, and remind himself where he was.
Kathy had been a nurse. Olivia had been given a split second to decide what career Elliot would have chosen for his ex-wife, and she'd settled on nurse. The key to a good lie was to stick as close to the truth as possible, not to embellish overmuch. A lie too complicated was hard to remember, and easy to disprove. This lie, it came too easy. It came easy, and it came easy because she knew him, better than anyone else in the world. She knew him, and he'd walked away from her, again, and then dragged her into danger, and shit. She deserved better than this. Better than him.
"A nurse," Kosta repeated. It sounded like he was buying it.
Please let him buy it.
"A respectable profession for a woman," he continued approvingly.
Liv raised her glass to him in acknowledgment of the praise, and took a long sip.
"How did a nice girl like you get mixed up with a troublemaker like Eddie, huh?" The smile Kosta offered her was all teeth, but Liv didn't blanch; she wasn't afraid of him. Elliot was pretty sure she wasn't afraid of anything.
"We met when we were kids. Catholic school," she said, and Elliot tried not to flinch. It was not their story Olivia had chosen to tell; she was telling Kathy and Elliot's story. A story they both knew off by heart. A story they wouldn't have to invent details for. A story that belonged to him, and not to her. She couldn't tell their story, couldn't talk about work, and bloodshed, and bullets. Couldn't talk about her mother, or her brother, couldn't talk about Oregon, or a childkiller with a gun held to her man's head. She couldn't talk about the death of a teenager, couldn't talk about kneeling with Sister Peg's blood on her hands and looking at her man with horror in her eyes because she knew the whole goddamn world had come to an end right there and then. Their story was littered with bodies and grief, but Elliot and Kathy's story was softer - at least it was until the end - and it was the safer one to tell. Some secrets were meant to be kept hidden.
"He was sweet back then," she added, shooting him a dark look.
"I'm still sweet," Elliot murmured, leaning in to let his forehead rest against her temple.
I'm sorry, he thought, wondering if she could hear him. I'm sorry.
"I know, baby," she said, very softly. Maybe she could hear him, after all.
"She's a heartbreaker, Eddie," Kosta said, watching them, and Elliot pulled back from her slowly, tried to focus on the job in front of him. He needed to keep the boss happy; whatever was going on between him and Liv, he'd have to push it out of his mind, at least for a little while.
"You don't know the half of it," he said ruefully. He was thinking about Liv leaving him for computer crimes, Liv leaving him for Oregon, Liv calling him a son of a bitch in the middle of the station, Liv and her men, Liv always walking away from him, and him just stuck, having to let her go. She'd broken his heart a hundred times, but he'd broken hers right back, and maybe that just proved they were meant for each other, because nobody else would put up with shit like that from them. Even Kathy, she'd left him once, and would have stayed gone, probably, if he hadn't knocked her up, and tried to leave him a few more times after that, though he'd always managed to convince her to stay. Maybe he should have just let her go. Maybe he should have known that he didn't deserve someone as good as her.
"You're one to talk," Liv said sharply. "You're the son of a bitch who left."
This would be good, for their cover. Revive an old argument, make it plain that despite the affection they'd been displaying for one another there were still old grievances keeping them apart. It would jive with what Reggie's mother had told him, and it would jive with what Eddie had told Kosta himself. It would look real, he thought. It would look real because it was.
"I got picked up," he said through clenched teeth. "You think I wanted that to happen?"
You think I wanted to kill that girl? You think I wanted to walk away from you?
Eddie's story was that he'd gone to prison. Elliot's story was that he'd gone to Rome. Maybe they weren't so different. Rome was prettier, sure, but he hadn't been free, there. Hadn't been home. He'd been locked up a world away from his own life, and he'd tried to find happiness there, knew that Kathy had, but beneath the Italian sunshine his heart yearned for the frost of a New York winter, and withered.
"I tried to reach you, and you wouldn't answer me. What was I supposed to think?"
She'd called him. She'd called him so many times she'd filled up his fucking voicemail. She'd called, and he'd never answered. One word from her would have sent the whole thing tumbling; one word from her and his whole life would have been wrecked and at the time he'd thought he was doing them both a favor, but now he wasn't so sure.
"I was trying to keep you clean," he said.
That would be good for Eddie. If Kosta knew Eddie wanted to keep his girl out of the life, he wouldn't be worried about pillow talk and Eddie letting secrets slip to her. If Kosta knew that Eddie's girl still resented him, he wouldn't be worried about her turning up places she shouldn't have been. But Elliot didn't say it for Kosta's sake, or for Eddie's, didn't speak those words for the sake of the lies he had to tell; he said it for Liv, because she needed to hear it. When he'd left, after Jenna, he'd chosen to go because he knew his own life was wrecked and he didn't want to do the same to Liv. And when he'd gone under without calling her, he'd done it because he knew he was about to get dirty, and the last thing he wanted was to bring that shit to her door. She ought to have been clean. She ought to be free of the stain of him. She needed to know he had his reasons, that he hadn't done it because he didn't care. Truth was, he'd avoided calling her because he cared too damn much, and he couldn't bear to see her hurt.
But she looked at him, now, looked at him with dark eyes full of accusation, and he saw how stupid he'd been, because whatever he wanted, whatever he'd intended, he'd hurt her just the same. And Liv, Liv was tough as hell and unafraid, and it was the damage to her hurt that hit her hardest. She'd take a beating over a leaving any day.
Liv hummed, and Kosta smiled, and they kept right on playing their game until they'd finished their drinks and the boss seemed satisfied.
"It was a pleasure, Lorraine," he said, reaching out across the table to take her hand in both of his. "You take care of yourself, yes?"
"I will," she answered. And of course she would. Liv always took care of herself, because no one else was gonna.
"Eddie," Kosta said, giving him a little nod, and then he slid out of the booth, and walked out of the bar with a few of his goons falling into step behind him, moving quietly as shadows out into the night. Elliot watched them go, frowning; three of the boys had gone with him, but two lingered by the bar. They weren't out of the woods yet.
"I'm gonna call it a night, Eddie," Liv told him. She nudged at him; he'd have to slide out of the booth before she could.
"Lemme walk you out," he said.
And so he did; he rose to his feet, offered her his hand and watched her refused to take it and swallowed back against the surge of guilt that filled him at that rejection. He deserved it, he knew. He'd dragged out of her comfortable home, away from her son, put her in the line of fire in an operation she didn't know a damn thing about, and she didn't know they were still being observed, maybe thought the time had come to drop the act and give him the ass-chewing of his life. Whatever she had to say to him he wanted to hear it, but they weren't in the clear, yet, so when she started to walk away he caught up with her, slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her in close, didn't give her a chance to distance herself from him. He waited until they stepped out into the night to turn to her, to press his forehead against her, his lips close to her ear.
"We got company," he said, very softly. "If you go home now, they might follow you."
Liv shifted against him, turned so that she was looking up at him, wrapped her arms around his middle and made a show of teasing him, but he knew what she was doing. She was trying to get a look at their tails, trying to suss out which of those men were paying too much attention to the couple standing together on the sidewalk.
"Where do you suggest we go instead?" she asked him.
"Come back to my place," he told her. "We can have a few beers. We can just talk."
And maybe they'll get bored of watching us, maybe they'll just leave, and then Liv can go home in peace and forget this ever happened.
It was a slim chance, but it was all the hope he had, at present.
"Lead the way," she told him, and so he did.
"You really know how to show a girl a good time," she told him, grinning, as they shuffled through the little path that ran from the road down to Elliot's fan, squeezing through stubby bushes and crunching dried leaves and old cigarette butts and god only knew what else beneath their boots.
"Only the best for you," he said, grunting. It was hard enough to navigate through the scrub on his own, but he was carrying the ice and the beers, too, and she hadn't offered to help and he wasn't about to ask her. She'd helped him enough, tonight.
"Jesus, Elliot," she swore, stopping short when she caught sight of the van.
It was broadside, from here, backlit by the city, the river ghosting along silently behind it, grim and dirty and not at all inviting. He knew what it looked like; depressing as all hell, that's what it was. He'd just signed a lease on a bright new apartment and it was sitting empty, now, while he chose to live instead in a glorified dumpster, far from everyone he loved, cut off and lonesome. Through her eyes, it must have looked like desperation. Maybe it was. Maybe he'd been so fucking desperate to hide from his mistakes, to do something that felt meaningful and distracted him from the disaster of his own life that he'd run all the way here just to escape himself. Maybe if he hadn't seen her tonight he would have kept right on running, but something about having her near made him want to stop. It made him want to breathe in this moment, this woman, the familiar warmth of her friendship. It made him want to be himself, for the first time in a long time.
"Not as bad as it looks," he said. "C'mere, lemme show you something."
Kosta had let him clean up, a little, before they left for the bar, and he'd put the cooler back between the chairs on the river side of the van, and that was where he led her, now, to a place where two chairs sat facing the water with the cooler in between them. He dumped the ice and the beer into the igloo, then popped the tops off two of the bottles. He tucked the caps in his pocket; somehow he didn't think Liv would approve of him chucking them in the river.
"Take a load off," he said, and so they did, each of them taking a chair, clinking the bottles together before taking a long sip, letting the quiet settle heavily on their shoulders. Oh, they could hear the rushing of cars on the road behind them, could hear the distant sound of sirens, the sluggish wash of the current against the shore, but Elliot figured he felt the same way about the lullaby of the city that people in other places felt about the hum of cicadas in the trees. It sounded like home.
"It's actually kinda nice," Liv said after a while, stretching her long legs out in front of her. "Can't remember the last time I just sat and looked at the water."
She was like him, he knew. Her life was too goddamn loud, and there was never any peace, never a chance to catch a breath, never a moment to sit, and reflect. One crisis after another, the hits just kept on coming, waves rolling and rolling and rolling and she'd no sooner crested one than another came to take its place, came to buffet her against the rocks once more. Don't you ever get tired of swimming, Olivia? He wanted to ask her. Don't you just wanna let the water take you, sometimes? Maybe that's what he'd done, coming here, walking away from his life, from his family, from her. Maybe he'd given up, and sunk beneath the waves, and let the current wash him out to sea. Maybe that wasn't the worst thing that could happen.
"I'm still pissed at you," she told him when he didn't speak. She wasn't looking at him, was instead addressing her grievances to the river, letting the water bear them downstream, carrying them out to the vast grey of the Atlantic, never to be seen again. "I'm so fucking pissed at you, Elliot."
"I know."
I can take it, he thought, looking at her. Looking at the city lights throwing shadows across her skin, looking at that necklace lost between her tits, looking at the tight set of her jaw, the line of her legs, just looking, the same way she was looking at the water, indulging in a quiet beauty he'd too long denied himself. Whatever she had to throw at him, whatever accusation, whatever rage, whatever disdain, he wanted her to let it loose. He was stronger now than he had been, before, and he knew he deserved every bit of it, and he wanted her to let him have it, because the only way she would be willing to unload on him was if she trusted that he was strong enough not to shatter under her. She wouldn't kick him when he was down, had swallowed her own fury for the sake of his grief for so long now, but he wanted her to see that the time for holding back had passed them by. He wasn't crumbling, any more.
"But I had fun with you, tonight." She wasn't quite smiling, sounded almost rueful, but she wasn't yelling at him, either. Maybe he wouldn't get her anger, now. Maybe she'd save it for later. Maybe that was better. She'd know; she always knew, what was best, what was needed. He'd follow where she led.
"Yeah," he said. "Me, too."
It's like the old days. The two of you together. Always so in sync.
There was never gonna be a day when that didn't hurt, he knew. There was never gonna be a day when the thought of Kathy didn't stab him like a knife. There was never gonna be a day when the memory of her didn't wreck him, because she had been the center of his life for as long as he could remember, because she had been good, and he had tainted her, and his love had killed her. She'd deserved better than his love but she'd taken it anyway, and clung to it, and that love had burned her to ashes, and left her dead and gone. A life, a whole life, snuffed out, as payment for Elliot's sins. Blameless, and dead, Kathy haunted him, and always would. He'd made room in his heart for her ghost now, though.
"What are you doing here, El?" Liv asked him softly.
That was the question, wasn't it? Why he'd taken this assignment, why he'd just left her, why he was here, sitting in a shitty half-broke plastic chair by a river that smelled faintly of sewage, why he was sleeping on a lumpy mattress in a converted van instead of in the apartment he'd promised her he was looking for. Why he'd left, and why he'd only called her when he needed something.
"When Kathy died," he said, and it still tasted like ashes in his mouth, that word died, but he wasn't gonna let himself be afraid of it, any more. Everyone died. Everyone, everything, always; there was no life without death, and he wasn't gonna pretend like he didn't know that. Liv knew that. Liv wouldn't be afraid of it, either. "Going after Wheatley gave me purpose. It gave me a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It made me feel like I was doing something, like my life...like I was here for a reason."
"Your kids didn't do that for you?" she asked him. A little sharp, a little angry, a little disapproving, like maybe she thought he was just being selfish. Maybe she was right.
"I'm not sure I'm good for them, Liv," he said honestly. "I'm not sure I ever have been. Maureen and Dickie and Lizzie and Kathleen, they're grown. They've found their feet. They don't need as much parenting as they used to. And Eli...Mo and Carl are taking better care of him than I could. And right after we lost Kathy, I wasn't doing anything but hurting them. Every time I looked at them I remembered I was the reason they lost their mom."
"Elliot-"
She was gonna tell him it wasn't his fault, but he wasn't about to hear that, not from her. It was his fault; he hadn't pulled the trigger, but if he had just settled into a quiet retirement with his NYPD pension and the money he'd saved up doing the private contracting work, if he hadn't taken the liaison job, if he hadn't gone digging around in Wheatley's work in Puglia, if he'd just settled, it never would have happened. If he had been a better man, a better husband, Kathy would still be alive. If he'd been able to let go of his past and the longing he'd felt for the rush of the job, he wouldn't be sitting here next to Liv, and Kathy wouldn't be in the ground. He didn't want to hear Olivia tell him it wasn't his fault; he didn't want to hear her lie. So instead he bulled ahead, kept trying to explain himself to her.
"So I worked. Maybe too much, I don't know. You'd say I was working too much."
Her lips quirked up, wry and knowing, and she didn't contradict him.
"But then we caught him. We saved Angela, Morales went down, and it was over. And there was just this great big silent hole right in the middle of my life."
No wife, no job, no reason to keep going. There'd been a whole lot of nothing, after that.
"I need something to do, Liv. You know how it is."
She would know, he thought. She'd know, because he'd been gone ten long years and she was right where he left her, in the trenches, still slogging it out, day after day, still fighting like hell and spending more time at the station than at home. She'd understand the need he felt to keep himself busy, because she was never still, either. In the quiet, in the stillness, all the ghosts came walking, and she wouldn't want to face them any more than he did. She still wasn't willing to forgive him for it, though.
"So you picked this? Jesus, El, you could just get a fucking dog."
"Look, it's not forever, Liv-"
"No, it's just until the next time. There's always another case. I know you know that. You gonna take the next one? And the next? You gonna keep hiding yourself away in someone else's life? Going UC changes people. You stay under too long, and…"
She trailed off, like she'd just realized maybe she'd said too much. Like she'd drawn close to a revelation she didn't wanna make, and decided silence would be better than revealing her vulnerability. That made him curious, though, because for so long she hadn't kept any secrets from him. For thirteen fucking years, every dark truth she harbored in her heart had belonged to him, too, and he didn't like the way that things had changed, didn't like the thought that there were things in her past he didn't know about.
"Yeah?" he challenged her grimly. "What would you know about it, Liv?"
"I know Brian Cassidy went under too long and it cost him his shield and damn near killed him," she snapped, suddenly furious. "I watched my partner deal with the fallout from going under ten fucking years after he came out. You really think you can just forget your problems, Elliot? You really think it's easier being Eddie, the piece of shit lowlife who lives in this fucking van? Talk to me in six months when you're bleeding out on the street somewhere and can't even remember your own fucking name."
She rose to her feet, started to pace, and for a second Elliot just stared at her, dumbfounded. He didn't know what she was talking about, Cassidy or her partner - Jesus, that hurt him more than he thought it would, hearing her call a stranger partner when the only partner she ever should have had was him. But he knew that tone, recognized that she was grieving, for men whose stories he didn't even know, for him, too, maybe. Recognized that the bit about bleeding out on the street, that wasn't just for dramatic effect; something had happened. She'd seen it go bad, seen someone she cared about get so lost in a cover that they forgot themselves, and she was scared out of her mind that the same thing was gonna happen to him, and he wanted to promise her that it wouldn't but he didn't want to lie to her, either.
"You've done this before," she said accusingly, standing over him, a shadow of vengeance in the dark. "Shit goes sideways and you try to run-"
"You wanna talk about running, Liv?" he fired back, setting his beer down on the cooler and hauling himself up, marching towards her with anger burning low in his gut and the memory of Oregon bouncing around his head. "Cause I seem to remember you-"
"Oh, don't throw that shit in my face. I didn't have a choice-"
"You coulda fucking called me-"
"So could you! You asshole!"
They were close, now. Too close. Close enough for him to watch the warm softness of her breasts rising and falling in time to her ragged breaths, close enough he could almost smell the soft scent of her perfume over the reek of the river, close enough that he could see the streetlights sparkling against the black of her eyes, close enough that he couldn't deny how fucking beautiful she was, and how fucking alive she made him feel. Here, with her, with her anger and her hurt and her accusations, he could feel his heart pumping in his chest, could feel the blood racing in his veins, could feel the ground steady beneath his feet and the breeze brushing across his cheek. This was worth living for; fighting with her was better than fucking anyone else.
"No," he said. "I couldn't call you, Liv, you know why?"
He leaned towards her, so close they were almost touching, and her eyes flashed up at him, a warning swirling in them, and he just smiled, grim and determined.
"Because you deserve better than me," he said, and she rocked back on her heels, unsteady in the face of that revelation. She hadn't been expecting that, he knew, and maybe she didn't really believe it, but she'd asked him, and she was gonna hear his answer now.
"Wheatley killed my wife," he said. "He crashed your car. If he could do that, what the fuck do you think these guys could do to you? The work I do, this shit is dirty, Liv. And you're clean. You were happy, without me. You were good. You were solid. I didn't call because I don't wanna drag you down."
"What the fuck makes you think I was happy?" Liv snapped at him, and it was his turn to blanch, his turn to be caught off guard by her. It was always like this, with them. The push and pull, switching places on the brink of disaster, never steady but always balanced. He'd hit and she'd hit back and neither of them would fall unless they did it together.
"Of course you were."
Of course she was happy. Wasn't she? Nice apartment, cute kid, good friends, professional advancement, maybe she didn't have a man now but she'd had one, at least one, had enough of him for Fin to feel like it was worth mentioning. Why wouldn't she be happy, when she had all that to show for the decade they'd spent apart? Why wouldn't she be happy, when she was out from under him, when he wasn't there to cast a shadow over her sterling record, when he wasn't there to frown at the men who came traipsing out of her life? And Jesus, if she hadn't been happy, that meant there was no justifying what he'd done. Ten years he'd been telling himself she was better off without him and now she was telling him that she wasn't and the guilt was gonna eat him alive.
"You don't know a goddamn thing," she spat. Furious, she was furious, and on the offensive, now, cutting him off at the knees, because he'd been wrong, and he didn't know her story as well as he thought, and all those secrets, she was keeping them to herself, and as long as she did she'd have the upper hand and he'd be at her feet, begging for forgiveness.
"Tell me, then," he said.
Tell me. Let me in. Don't hide from me.
"No."
Frustration licked up the base of his spine; she accused him of running away, accused him of cutting her off, accused him of recklessness, and then she turned around and did the same damn thing and acted like the rules of engagement - rules she'd written herself - just didn't apply to her. Like the same shit that would make her call him a son of a bitch if he did it, she should be allowed to undertake with impunity. Like she was some kinda martyr. Didn't she know how much he'd lost? Didn't she know how much it had hurt him, walking away from her? Didn't she know he'd done it for her, had been trying, both times, to give her a chance for a life that would surely be better without him in it?
"Goddamn it, Olivia," he grumbled.
"Don't fucking swear at me."
His mouth dropped open, and for a second he just looked at her, his gorgeous, furious, righteous Liv, indignity holding her spine ramrod straight even as her tits came spilling out of that blouse, that blouse she'd worn just for him, still standing here, fighting with him, when she could have told him to go to hell hours ago and spent the night in her bed instead. He looked at her, telling him don't fucking swear at me as if there was nothing hypocritical or ridiculous in that statement at all. He looked at her, and he thought about them, the pair of them, both on the wrong side of fifty, still bickering like kids twenty however-the-fuck-many years later, driving each other crazy and yet refusing to turn their backs on one another. He looked at her, and he started to laugh.
He couldn't help it; it just came bubbling out of him, and once he started he couldn't stop. Don't fucking swear at me, she'd said, because that was Liv, because Liv was always gonna do whatever she wanted to do and she was always gonna be on his ass about something and he wouldn't have it any other way. She'd hurt him and he'd hurt her and at the end of the day it didn't fucking matter, because they belonged to each other. Because they were both half-crazy, and no one else would have them, and they wouldn't want anyone else, anyway. Like a great big fucking cosmic joke; you belong to the person who tears you apart, the universe said, and wasn't it fucking funny, wasn't it just fucking perfect?
For a second he thought she was gonna hit him, she looked so mad, but then her eyebrows settled and her mouth quirked in a rueful sort of smile.
"Shut up," she said, but there was no heat to it; her anger faded, and so too did his laughter, until all that was left was them, a little tired, a little broken, together, still.
What he wanted, more than anything else, was to touch her. He could still feel the heat of her hand against his thigh in the bar, the phantom touch of her tugging at him, leaving him hungry and desperate for more. And she was so close, and she was mad at him, but not really, was the kind of angry that could only come from a place of care, the kind of hurt that only care could heal, and Jesus, she was beautiful, and he wasn't really himself, out here, and neither was she, and there was no one around to witness this - no one but two of Kosta's boys, sitting in their car up by the road - and so he indulged himself, reached out and brushed her hair back from her face, let his palm settle against the side of her neck and watched the way her soft lips parted, a soundless little gasp escaping her at the touch.
"I was stupid," he said. "I can't walk away from you. I carry you with me everywhere I go."
"Then quit trying to leave me," she told him, begged him, almost. It was as close to begging as Olivia was ever gonna get.
"I'm standing right here, Captain," he said, and when she laughed he leaned in and brushed his lips against her, and tasted that laugh for himself, and never, he thought, he'd never tasted anything sweeter than her laughter.