A/N: Again, thank you for the reviews and follows and so forth. VERY appreciated. Obviously I don't own SVU or its characters or the whole 'law' and 'order' part of the show would take a slight backseat to seeing Elliot and Olivia just eye-fucking for forty minutes. And yes, I'll eventually bump up the rating a little bit. Just not yet.

The last time he'd seen her, she was wearing black. She's still wearing black.

It's their third day working together and Elliot wishes he could stop counting because that's not what this is about, this disgusting abuse of power, this wretched example of how society keeps letting the vulnerable down. And yet.

Today he arrives before her, is sitting at his makeshift desk rubbing his tired eyes and trying to concentrate on the transcripts in front of him when she sweeps into the squadroom. Eyes turn to follow her progress, his included, and even when she notices him and her brow furrows, he can't stop. She commands his attention, always has.

"Stabler, my office."

The door is shut before she speaks again, her bag landing next to her desk, her coat on the back on her chair. His fingers itch to untuck her hair (lighter, longer, wavyer) where it's caught at the back of her sweater but he gave up that right a long time ago. He clenches his fists behind his back as if that will stop the wanting.

"You like Keene for it?"

He bites back the words he wants to say, offers up a murmured agreement instead. They've managed to narrow down their suspect list substantially and the brass are grateful, but there's still so far to go. "Liv?"

She startles at her name and the part of him he's trying to hide, to suppress, wants to ask her if any of the men she's dated since he left have called her that. He can see it, see her and some nameless dick together in bed, and it shouldn't be so easy to conjure up those images. Not after all this time.

"Liv," he repeats, liking the sound of it on his lips, liking the ways her eyes widen ever so slightly at hearing it. "You want to let some of your guys handle it or - ?"

Hesitation. He hates that about who they are now. "No. We'll go."

He's been walking a tightrope ever since he'd been informed they'd be working together again, and if he weren't so scared of falling, of making her fall (she's been hurt enough already because of him), he'd ask Olivia whether she even likes being captain, whether it's enough for her.

Instead, he nods. "Just let me know when we need to leave. Going to work on the profile with Lincoln and Rollins."

Elliot wants to ask her when she became so hardened. When she started covering it up by acting softer. He probably doesn't deserve the answer to that or his other three hundred questions and so instead of speaking a rebuke into existence, he spends the trip into Queens staring out the window.

They fall back into their old dynamic when faced with a sneering Garrick Keene, and as Olivia leans forward in her chair, false sincerity radiating from her face, he wonders if that's enough for him. He can still remember their first few years on the job, the way she'd smile at him, so openly and joyfully that it sometimes made his chest clench, his breath catch. What had made her stop? The job? Him? Maybe even them. He absent-mindedly rubs the pale stretch of his finger where his ring used to be as he waits for Liv to carefully maneuver their suspect into a corner.

"We'll be in touch," Elliot tells the pompous son-of-a-bitch as he reaches out a hand to shake. "Soon." As they walk out the door and back out into the sunshine, Olivia's hand accidentally brushes his side and he feels the brief contact like a brand against his skin.

Unlike on the ride over, Olivia tries to fill the car with noise, immediately turning the radio on to a station he doesn't recognize. Maybe she can sense his restlessness, but maybe not. It's been a long time and as much as she's changed in some ways, he guesses he has as well. Being undercover changed him, made his anger even easier to touch. The forced therapy afterwards changed him, not back into what he was, but forward into something better. The divorce before both… No longer being a husband changed him in a hundred different ways, and he wants Olivia to know that him in a hundred more, God save his soul.

When Kathy had called on Sunday to check that he was still okay to have Eli the following weekend, he'd ended up telling her about working with SVU on the case. (He'd sometimes envisioned the end of his marriage, had anticipated fireworks and accusations and guilt. Instead, it had been a whimper and numbness.) He still isn't sure what he expected her to say but 'be careful' hadn't been it, and he'd pretended he hadn't understood.

"El?"

Olivia's still watching the road, knuckles almost white on the steering wheel and that's when he feels the buzz of anticipation in his stomach.

"Why did you go under? Cragen told me you retired."

"I didn't have green thumbs after all," he tries to joke. Her jaw clenches and she breathes in deeply. Frustration. "Sorry. It was after. The divorce. I felt like I had nothing left to lose, I guess."

"Except your life, Elliot," she says, her tone sharp. Delivering the final blow. "And I assume your children still existed or were you able to abandon them as easily as you did me?"

He turns the radio up and her soft apology goes unanswered.