A/N: Thank you for being patient with me. Some of you. Some of you heathens shall remain nameless. The song Outnumbered created the chapter. I listened to it on repeat for days, and poof! there was this scene in my head. Kez and Brynn, thank you deeply for all the help and for pushing me to excavate the emotion. For every single review, I thank you profusely. P.S. The secret floor exists...thanks Brynn.
(on the nights you feel outnumbered, baby I'll be out there somewhere)
"A sky
full
of stars
and he
was staring
at her."
-atticus
Songs: An Evening I Will Not Forget and Outnumbered, both by Dermot Kennedy
The frigid mist of the Pacific sits low over the island, making the chilly San Diego winter night cling to his skin as he enters the bar.
Across the street, the tony Hotel Del Coronado sits majestic upon the beach, filled with affluent tourists and an infamous haunted history. Here, in McP's, the world operates at a different pace. The Irish bar is unassuming and casual, the walls filled with memorabilia from the SEAL teams who frequent the military watering hole.
Outside the tables on the patio sit empty for the season. February is wet and cold, the air is heavy with the moisture.
He rounds his way to the bar, past the team guys and the wives and girlfriends, the enlisted, the officers, the establishment and the tatted-up door-kickers. He fits in seamlessly. In jeans and a worn pullover that hides his primary weapon, his face covered in scruff and his knuckles bruised from the last go-round, he's anonymous. The SEAL guys in here are like him. They disappear on their families without a word. They hide secrets. They pretend to be civilized when underneath they know how to kill quickly. They understand sacrificing for the greater good – both of their own lives and of human life in general.
They leave home and see atrocity, but then there are nights like this for some of them. When they bring their family and friends here and they do their fucking best to act like the world isn't a hellish shitstorm. They force their own eyes to brighten, they make their laughter loud enough to silence the horrors. They drink, too.
They drink to oblivion.
He's got no one he's got to mask his eyes for tonight. He slides into the bar stool saved for him, and the bartender nods at him and sets a domestic beer on the wooden counter.
He doesn't say a word as he picks up the icy bottle and downs half of it before he even acknowledges the man to his left with a silent nod.
"Who we celebratin' tonight?" For thirty years, Jack "Trigger" Callaghan had run roughshod through the SEAL team ranks. Somehow the bastard had ended up MCPO, running his team up until the coming day he'll be forced out via mandatory retirement. They'd met as nothing more than boys their first year in the military, assigned to a joint Marines and Navy unit in Jordan.
Now, Trigger is the only one who knows even the barest minimum about why he's really in San Diego. With no wife and no kids, and a security clearance higher than Elliot will ever have, it had been his sanity saved when he'd realized his old buddy had been living on base at the North Island Naval Air Station.
"It's her birthday," Elliot had managed to rasp, his throat so damned dry that he could barely swallow the bitter beer.
Used to a life where the only certainty is death itself, Trigger raised his glass into the air. "Well happy fucking birthday, sweetheart," he said to no one in particular.
The walls had begun to close in on Elliot lately. The loss, the unfinished conversations, the way he didn't recognize much of his former life anymore. He was untethered out here, operating on instinct and too little sleep. He was so inhuman that he didn't even get sick anymore.
Normal function had long since ceased.
It had been five years under. He hadn't seen her in seven. Or maybe that was a lie, because he goddamned saw her nightly in his head these days.
He has held onto the idea of her. He imagined his kids would have given up on him by now, but she…
Maybe she'd still recognize something of him. Maybe, if she saw him, her pity would outweigh her fury.
A few minutes later, shots of whiskey appeared in front of him. He imagined someone would have been with her tonight; someone would have taken her to dinner, made her laugh, and at this hour maybe they were even making her come hard.
His right fist closed, and he didn't know if it was grasping or ready to fight.
He did both the shots fast, the liquid burning his esophagus.
The liquor only proved how hollow he was on the inside. The truth was that going home seemed less and less possible. Two nights ago he'd lost a twelve-year-old girl who had been sent across the border right under his nose. They usually cleared their cargo with him ahead of time, but he'd been in Tijuana that night on a meet.
They had moved without him. Maybe they're catching onto him. Maybe they'll take him out soon.
He scrubbed his hand down his face and picked up his beer. "Fucking birthdays," he muttered. He couldn't even remember his own, but hers had been creeping up on him for days. In a few weeks he will be back in this bar again. The twins turn twenty-five in less than two weeks.
Across the street, he knows the wealthy tourists let their kids play freely on the beach, unaware that six miles down the strand, children just like theirs are being sold for the price of a used car.
He's never going to get to go home.
He's now a man who is more familiar with the haunting, pounding surf of this ocean than he is to the currents of the Hudson, and that makes his skin blister with invisible bruises.
He will never, ever get used to the sting of the salt air.
He stares out at the reflections beneath him, absorbing the black ink of the Hudson from this elevated vantage point. The river curls and curves, slinking alongside the towering buildings, their lights reflecting in the murky water, interrupted only by the occasional patrolling Coast Guard or NYPD boat.
One hundred and two floors above the city, Elliot leans on the railing spanning the top interior deck of the Empire State Building. It's twenty minutes until midnight, and he's solely focused on the Freedom Tower off in the distance.
He's never been to the top of it. He knows that One World Trade Center is a psychological stake in the ground for the city. It's a symbol of strength, of resiliency and rebuilding, it is the manifestation of the idea that there is life after absolute destruction.
It gleams even in the dark, its spire stretching into the sky, as if a spoke in a compass that leads unerringly home.
She'd arranged for them to meet here, despite the fact that this floor had officially closed to the public over an hour ago. There are still dozens of tourists still gathered nearly twenty floors below on the exterior decks, but he assumes she'd pulled strings because the security guards hadn't required neither ticket nor badge from him as they had let him through.
He hasn't seen her in a few days, and he's struggling to sleep because all the things he wants to say to her have started running through his mind at night.
The city silently glimmers down below as he hears the elevator doors open behind him. She's a little late, but he knows it's his cases that are keeping her in the office until all hours lately.
He turns to face her, and just like that the crawling and restlessness on his skin stops.
Her movements are smooth, fluid. Calming.
In the dim lights and warmth of the now private deck, he takes his time looking at her. She's wearing a long, soft black coat with a wide collar, leather boots and fitted black slacks that are all business. Her creme blouse though, it reminds him of the past. It's utterly, impossibly feminine with a wide silk bow that sits on her chest, it's strands falling to her waist. A small gold chain disappears into her cleavage, and her hair is wind-whipped and tousled. She's carrying an oversized shoulder bag that is probably filled with her laptop and files, because even at the late hour he believes she might still go home and work after this.
When he's done looking her over, he lifts his gaze to her amused expression.
"You my present?" he rumbles, staring pointedly at the bow on her blouse.
Olivia's laughter is light and a little breathy from the way she had probably rushed here. "I always told you that I'm a gift that keeps on giving." She cocks her head and approaches him, letting her bag gently slip from her fingers until it lands carefully on the ground next to the railing. When she brushes her hair out of her eyes, she looks back up at him, now only two feet out of his grasp.
Her eyes are earth-shatteringly dark. Open. Watching him.
Olivia exhales, her lips lifting as if she's up to something. "Happy Birthday, Elliot," she says softly.
For seven years, he'd forgotten everything he could about who he was, including his own birthday. Nicholas O'Byrne's birthday was months from now, and it is a date he remembers only because it was on the falsified identification documents.
He's rendered silent. Not by the fact that she remembered his birthday, or that she'd found a way to meet him here before her hectic day was over, but by the simple fact that she's here with him at all, grinning at him as if it's nothing.
She reminds him of who he used to be. Who they had been. Nine years apart, and there is still an unmistakable link between them. It's a relief to feel that bind; it keeps him rooted when he feels like he's free-falling.
He's falling off the ledge of his life tonight.
"Liv," his voice is rougher than he intends it, but he's almost unable to speak. "You don't have to be here. You gotta be exhausted. Go home to your son." Every word he says cracks on the lies of his needs. He selfishly wants her here, even for a few minutes. The day had been overwhelming, and he's too wound to be alone anytime soon. "Go home to Noah."
She doesn't even acknowledge his words. "How was dinner?"
Olivia is so painfully gentle in how she asks him. Despite everything he's done to her, her grace has risen to nearly inhuman levels. She had always been strong, but this level of patience – of sheer kindness – it renders him speechless.
For a woman who had fought her way through life, her acceptance when it comes to him is humbling.
He won't push her away tonight. He can't, he needs her too much. He feels too much when it comes to her.
He loves too much.
His gaze lands back on the lights of Manhattan, sprawled out behind her now. "Maureen forgives me in a way I don't understand," he manages gruffly, his throat closing. "I got to her house early. She took me into the kitchen and showed me pictures of her wedding."
He shakes his head in still stark disbelief. He can't look at Olivia when he tells her of the irreparable crevices within him. If he sees the compassion he knows he will find, he will come undone. He just has to talk, and then wait for the relief that comes with telling her things these days.
Elliot licks his lower lip. "When Eli and Kathy got there, he and I got to throw the ball around a bit. He's a natural athlete and it's really something to watch him play. Liz called; Richard texted. Kathleen, she facetimed us. It's…far more than I deserve."
When he locks eyes with Olivia again, he knows she hears all the details he's not giving her. He can tell by her expression that she knows what it was like to see two-dimensional images of Richard walking Maureen down the aisle, to hear his youngest son ask him simple, incongruous questions like where did you live and do you like pizza? Olivia reads all of his silences. She seems to understand that Kathleen has her walls up, and that Liz inadvertently talks around him, as if he isn't there at all. Richard had only sent happy bday, and that is still more than Elliot had expected.
Olivia turns, her hands gripping the railing next to him. "What was the hardest part about tonight?"
He steps back as the blunt question slams into him. Elliot folds his arms over each other on the railing, then exhales as he hunches over, resting his forehead on his forearms for a minute as if he's been punched in the gut. He starts to talk a few times, but no words come out. He straightens fast then, rubbing both of his palms over his face.
She remains unmoving, just watching him as if she's got all the time in the world.
He shakes his head, then turns so that he's leaning back against the metal bar. "Do you think…" He wants to know the answer, he's just not sure he can ask the question that has plagued him much of the evening. It had haunted him as he blew out the single candle on the cake Maureen had bought, it itched at his skin as he tossed the ball with his son and realized that his child's talents were wholly unfamiliar. It had crawled over him as he stood quietly in the corner of his daughter's kitchen, feeling completely disoriented and displaced.
"Do I think what?" Olivia's voice is delicate, as if she is tiptoeing across glass.
He trains his gaze on the Freedom Tower, squinting at it as if it will share its secrets with him. "You think they ever thought about me on this day? Or you think they…blocked me out?"
Elliot doesn't like the wetness in his eyes, or the way his emotions are clogging his words. He hates the way he sounds pathetic. He's the one who had left, he'd made the choice. He's got no right to hope they hadn't written him off.
Olivia steps closer to him, and her fingers trail down his forearm. "Look at me."
He can't. He shakes his head and determinedly focuses on the Tower. It's blurring.
Her hand closes around his wrist, until she carefully unwraps his grip on the railing. She steps into the space between them, until she is only inches away from his body and still holding his arm. "It used to be wine," she murmurs. "First few years, I could put away two bottles myself on this night. I'd see October 20th coming up, and I'd stock up. Then whiskey was faster. Had Lucy stay with Noah twice because I just wanted to sit in a bar somewhere." Olivia looks up at him, right into his eyes. She's unguarded, open and honest with him in a way that takes his breath away. There is a deep, gutting haunt in her expression, and she's letting him see it. "It didn't get easier, Elliot. Not for anyone. Not for your family. Not for me. But eventually you learn how to co-exist with the empty places."
He wants to shake her until she realizes that she is his family. Nine years away and the pointless boundaries disappeared.
There are no more delineations.
He wants to erase that pained look in her eyes, but he knows he can't build monuments overnight.
He's shaking with the force of his emotion. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone. Even before I left…when I didn't take your calls. When I didn't answer. Jesus, Olivia. I mighta been in the house with my family at that time, but I was gone from them just the same."
"Elliot," Olivia grips both of his arms now, and she shakes him once. "You can't change the past. But you can figure this out, now. You want your family back? Then be present. You want Eli to know who you are? Then be his father, and eventually he will see you that way. But before you do any of that…" She drops her hold on him, and it's the first time he sees fear creep into her face tonight. "You gotta decide if you can stay. If you can really be here. For good. Because if all of this is too much, if you're going to work on this relationship with him only to leave, it will destroy him. Your family, they can't take you leaving again either. You get one shot at rebuilding trust, so if you're gonna lock down and run again, then-"
"Run?"
Olivia presses her lips shut and steps back from him fast, as if she's been caught doing something forbidden. As if she's said too much.
"What do you mean run again?" he presses, this time a little louder. "You think I'm gonna pick up and leave?"
She takes a deep, shuddering breath and looks over his shoulder as she tries to deflect. "I just wanted to see you for your birthday, I didn't mean to-"
"Olivia."
Her gaze flies back up to his, and he can see the apprehension in her vulnerable expression. "I'm just saying, if sticking around is going to be too much then you need to figure that out before you start rebuilding ties here again. If the pressure of a captaincy, and a new unit, if that's going to feel suffocating, and you're going to need to be on the move, then don't drag them into that." She stops, catching herself as if realizing her words are coming at him fast, tumbling over each other. She takes a deep breath and exhales, trying to slow herself down. "I know what an undercover can do to someone, and if staying in one place is going to be too much and you're going to crave that…freedom again, then consider that before you make Eli promises."
Her chin defensively lifts a little as she finishes, as if she is waiting for a rebuttal. "Because it's not fair to do that to him if you're going to want to leave."
He can't take his eyes off of her. It's plain just how thinly her words were disguised. She's worried about Eli, yes.
But she's scared of him leaving, too.
Elliot knows she is armed, and it makes the dichotomy of her vulnerability in this moment that much more powerful. This beautiful, infinitely strong, incredibly capable woman standing in front of him – the same woman who can take care of herself, her son and half this city – she's wondering if he's going to want to walk away from her again one day. She has it in her head that despite his promotion and the new unit, despite the new apartment, despite his family, despite the thorough, startling beauty of her – that he might want to abandon all of it again.
She doesn't understand that deep down he had never wanted to leave in the first place. He just hadn't been worthy of any of them, and maybe he still isn't, but at least he's tried to make amends with the universe over the years he'd been gone.
"You think I could leave them again? Leave you?" Olivia's body goes rigid when he mentions her. "I did that because I was shit, Liv. I was the one who was a goddamned mess. I did that because I was a selfish fucking bastard who let his misery and guilt hurt everyone else. When they gave me a chance to rectify what I'd…done? I took it. I had no idea it would go on so long. I thought a few months, and then it went a few years and finally it got to a place where I wondered if it was just better to never come back because what the hell would I say to any of you? And Christ, I thought about my family, I thought about you. Sometimes my memories of us were my only means of survival."
She's painfully silent, and he realizes that in the few weeks he's been back, she hasn't asked anything of him. It takes this, her doing something for him – yet again - for him to recognize that she hasn't expressed a single worry or moment of anger or frustration.
Until tonight.
Even now, Olivia won't ask him if he's staying for her, she asks him if he's staying on behalf of his son.
She's protected him, coddled him, encouraged him. The one-way street of his homecoming ends tonight. Right now.
"I wanted to come home, do you get that?"
She's still watching him, eyeing him warily as if he's a ticking time bomb. "Okay," Olivia accepts quietly.
But he's not done. "I didn't know what I'd come home to. Didn't know if you'd even be here. Didn't know if you'd see me. If you'd take a swing at me or if you'd give me the silent treatment. I didn't know if you'd stopped caring altogether. I deserved all of those things."
"You don't owe me anything, Elliot." Only her lips move, otherwise she is perfectly still.
Olivia's eyes are watering, so he takes a step closer to her. He wants to touch her hair again. He lifts a wayward strand from near her eye and tucks it back behind her ear as she sucks in a breath.
His eyes fall to her mouth then, and she licks her lower lip, lowering her eyes.
He doesn't want that. He wants her to look at him. Elliot slides his right hand into her hair and his whole body tightens. His blood is thrumming as he tilts her chin up. The things he wants to do…
"Coming home to you. Jesus, Olivia," he says roughly. "That was the holy grail when I was lost in years of lies. But in no dark corner of my fucked up head did I think you'd give a damn anymore. That you'd accept me back. That you'd be-"
Olivia's lips part in anticipation as she finally looks at him. "That I'd be what?" she whispers.
Single, he tells himself. He doesn't finish the sentence for her.
He knows what he wants to do. He wants to kiss her. He wants to get both of his hands into her hair and tilt her head back and taste her. He wants to brush his mouth against hers, because after more than twenty years, he has to finally know.
If he kisses her, he won't stop.
There won't be any way to hold back, to go home to an empty apartment. She's got her son at home, and by the things she's said tonight, she doesn't full trust him yet.
He has to slow this down. Tonight is not the night. Not yet. He's waited a lifetime; he can wait until she believes he's here for good. He has to wait until she trusts him to stay.
He traces his finger across Olivia's temple, across her scar. He slides it down onto her cheek and towards her ear. He prays he's reading her right; he wants to believe that the way she shudders just a little bit is from pleasure.
Elliot turns her then, so that she's facing the windows that overlook Manhattan. He closes the space, until he's nearly up against her back. "See that city?" he says quietly into her ear.
She shivers and nods just a little bit.
He presses his mouth into the back of her head. Her vanilla shampoo sinks into his lungs and it makes him slide his left arm around her waist.
God, the perfect curves of her. The way she fits against him, the way his hand instinctively splays across her stomach, as if she is his. He wants to know what sounds she would make if she let him touch her more, if he dared to mold her to him.
He knows her too well and not at all sometimes.
Olivia doesn't lean back against him, but she doesn't pull away either. Day by day she's letting him explore her more. He's going to earn every inch he's allowed, within and without.
"When I look down there," he begins evenly. "I see running those streets with you. Late nights in the car. I see all the shit we've been through, the times we've been come too close to losing it all. But I also see our favorite places to get coffee. The places where we closed a case, cleaned up that street for a little while. Had a drink and laughed when there was nothing to laugh about. When I was gone, that life with you felt like home to me."
He feels her weight against him now. He can feel her pushing her head back against his mouth, he can feel her mutely weighing the consequences of curling back into his body.
He holds her tighter now, as if he can inhale every detail of this moment.
"I'm back, Olivia. I've got your back, again. And I fucking promise you, that even in different precincts, you're not fighting out there alone anymore." He grips her closer and feels her sway just a little. "I'm gonna be on the same streets as you. No matter where you are, I'll be out there, too. That's our city again. You and me. You need my unit, it's yours. You need me, I'm there."
She might be holding her breath because he doesn't hear a thing from her.
"Give me a chance to prove it," he manages. "I'll earn it, I swear to God."
In a sudden swift whirl of unexpected movement, Olivia turns. Before he can even give her space, she's got herself up against him, her arms thrown around his neck and her face buried into the side of his face.
She's in his arms, and the relief of it pounds across his skin. She's grasping him hard, clutching at him and silent except for the ragged, deep breaths that escape her.
His cheek is immediately wet from where her eyes are pressed against it.
He wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her against him, his own wet eyes raising to the Freedom Tower.
The seconds pass and she doesn't let go. The minutes pass and he remains wrapped around her. Eventually, her breaths start to even out until he can match his own to hers.
Their synchronicity has always been inevitable. Magnets, he thinks.
He thinks about how after all the years he'd been out there floating, he's finally free to come home. Maybe she's the singular thing that pulled him through the horror, led him back here.
This is home.
Here, in this city, with her.
-o0o-
"You know," she says, as she climbs the steep, narrow metal stairway a few steps ahead of him. "Tourists buy special access to the 102nd floor, and they think it's the highest they can go. They think that experience is the best it's gonna get."
Behind her, she hears him give a huff of laughter as he blindly follows her, his footsteps echoing on the stairs that are almost as narrow as a ladder. "Did you date someone who worked here? Why are you treating the Empire State Building like it's your backyard?"
They'd taken a series of utility elevators and walked between electricity boxes and ducked beneath pipes to get this far. Olivia reaches the top step and waits for him on the tiny landing before opening the utility door. He's a few steps behind her only because he's still favoring his leg a little bit. "All of New York is my backyard now. You're lucky I said you could come play again."
She'd pulled herself out of his arms ten minutes ago, and her irises are still burning from the way she'd tried to stop herself from crying. Her makeup is probably smeared under her eyes, and she doesn't care.
She doesn't want to talk about it. He hasn't confronted her about that burst of emotion, and it's best left that way.
It's his birthday, after all. And he's here. That's all she wants to focus on.
There is a new lightness in her right now that she doesn't want to examine. A hope. There are dry hollows in her that are finally being hydrated just by his words, his presence, his teasing grin.
She shifts her tote bag higher on her shoulder as he reaches the top step. She pushes back carefully against the bar on the door and she's immediately hit with a burst of frigid night air.
He follows her out onto the five-foot wide balcony that is protected only by a low railing. As the door closes behind him, he lets out a low whistle as he looks around.
She's gratified by the look of awe on his face. "They built this thinking that one day passenger airships would moor here. Or maybe they just wanted this building to be taller than the Chrysler building. In truth the metal tip is 200-feet of useless height." She turns to face the dazzling display beneath them. "Unless you're in it for the view. Then it's breathtaking."
"It's incredible," he exhales, zipping up his jacket and turning his head to take in the full panorama that is laid out before him.
She sets her bag down and joins him in absorbing the view. The view inside had been stunning, but with the wind in their face and the utter silence that comes with being so far above the chaos, this is intoxicating. It's thrilling, the dizzying height sending a shock of adrenaline through both of them. She can see the river, the south end of Manhattan, the dips and nooks that make up the neighborhoods that she knows like the back of her hands. There's nothing between this terrifying height and a free-fall, but the beauty of where they stand is worth it.
It's just the two of them, reigning high atop the Empire State Building on a beautiful fall night. They stand in the stars, indestructible despite the chaos.
That's our city again.
His words.
She can't explain to him that she's felt the burden of this city without him.
With him, she feels invincible. Without him, there had been a growing weight of responsibility on her. There's a new energy under her skin these days, though. She might have been feeling defeat before he came back, but she's reinvigorated. She's ready for the fight again.
As he stands next to her, Manhattan feels beautiful.
It's light and perfect in some places, dark as hell in others. She can see the tiny dots of sirens on some of the streets below, pinpricks of red and blue. But she also sees the wide-open glass of the Hudson. She sees the ghost outline of the towers, and she sees the places that have been filled since they'd been lost.
As one person, she's felt outnumbered down there. With him, she feels like an army.
You need my unit, it's yours.
"El?"
She can tell he's turned his face to look at her, even if she remains ruthlessly focused on the night horizon straight ahead.
"My unit is yours, too."
His small, knowing grunt of laughter makes her smile. He'd assumed it, she hadn't needed to say it. She doesn't know if her eyes are watering because of the brutally cold air, or because of him. Of course he'd been gone nine years, and he still came home just a little bit full of himself.
She turns to look at him, and despite the majestic scene that envelops her, Olivia sees nothing but his all-too-familiar eyes.
She reaches up and unfastens the necklace around her neck, and she sees the flash of startled recognition in his eyes as the pendant is revealed to him.
"You sent me this once," she begins. "Semper Fi."
"Always faithful." He's so quiet she can barely hear him. Instead she feels the heated breath of his words on her cheek.
Olivia nods, and when the Marines medallion and chain is off, she cups it in her open palm, holding it between them. How she's held onto it, used it, worn it on the nights when the cold was too bitter and the loneliness too stark. She'd worn it in the days and nights after Lewis, sometimes she'd slept with it on to ward off the nightmares. She'd didn't wear it at work, but alone on the couch at night, her fingers would play over it sometimes, as she reminded herself that if it came down to it, he was out there somewhere.
Not just somewhere, anymore. Tonight, he is here.
"I don't have the small badge anymore, but it…served its purpose. So did this." Olivia shakily holds it out to him. "I don't need this anymore. If you say you're here, for good, then I believe you."
"Olivia, keep it-"
"No," she shakes her head, holding back her hair with her other hand, ignoring the wind despite the small gust. "Eli's birthday is coming up. Give it to him. He needs to believe you're staying, too. It's his turn to have this."
Elliot is unnaturally still. "You believe me?" he asks thickly.
Her chest is too full, and if she doesn't watch it, she will cry again. Instead she tips the necklace into his hand. She closes her palms around his fingers, so that he now holds the medallion. "Yeah." Olivia finally looks him in the eyes again. "I do."
Even up here, in the dark and at a terrifying, dangerous height, she feels safe. The last decade of her life feels like a blur. There are moments she wants to hang onto – those with Noah, especially. But there are also gaps and gnawing holes that she wants to finally quiet tonight.
He grins at her. "Okay, then."
She laughs softly. "Okay, then."
He puts the necklace into his pocket, and it's only then that she remembers. Olivia crouches and reaches into her bag for a few things. When she stands again, he hasn't moved.
He's just watching her.
She holds out the small, intricately folded pieces of green and white paper. "Noah made you this cupcake." The origami confection has a crooked smile on it, and her son had drawn a small badge on the cupcake figure. "I told him this makes you Officer Cupcake, and he wasn't amused by my observation."
Elliot takes the small gift out of her hands and she watches as it happens. He smiles, and as the seconds pass, he thumbs the badge, the smiley face. The folds of it make something unfold in him. His laughter is quiet at first, and then it grows until he lets out the loudest burst of laughter she's heard from him in a lifetime.
It rumbles inside of her, shaking something within her back to life.
Even up here, in a world enveloped by the brilliant night sky and the lights of Manhattan below, he's the brightest thing she sees.
She can't take her eyes off of him as he turns back towards the city, laughing still and rubbing the gift her son had made.
It gives her a chance to open the small box she is still holding.
Olivia pulls out the two forks from inside the paper container. She sticks a fork into the slice of cheesecake from Veniero's and takes a big bite of it. The strawberry and cream confection fills her mouth, and she feels the laughter, too.
"If that's my birthday cake, you better not eat it all," he warns, without even looking at her.
She doesn't want to leave the chilly spire of this building. She wants to perch atop this city with him all night, watching what is theirs again. This is theirs to guard, to protect.
This is the castle they have to defend. To fight for.
She fills her fork with a huge bite of the cake, leaning forward to stick it in his mouth. He takes the big bite and then his hand cups the back of her head.
His mouth full of the dessert, he presses his lips against her forehead.
She laughs and closes her eyes, absorbing the night.
So this is hope, she thinks.
-o0o-
