August 14, 2021
This is nice, he thought. Sitting with Liv in the still dark hours before dawn, in an all but empty diner, the only other patrons cabbies with dark circles under their eyes who called the waitress honey. The waitress called Liv sweetheart, and asked if she wanted her pie a la mode, and Elliot smiled when Liv said yes, because he'd known she would. There was something familiar about it, about a long night, and Liv's face in the sickly glow of flickering fluorescents, the way she took her coffee, the way she reached across his plate to steal a bite of his potatoes without asking, the way she gave him her last piece of bacon. Home, that's what he thought; he'd been back in the city for six months, but this, right here, this diner, this woman, this was the first time he'd felt home.
"What?" she asked from across the sticky table, quirking an eyebrow at him, and it was only then he realized he'd been staring at her, watching her over the rim of his coffee cup, so lost in thoughts of her that he'd forgotten to school his features. He wondered what she saw when she looked at him, if he wore an expression of naked longing, if she understood the reasons why.
" 's nice," he said, voicing his thoughts aloud, waving his coffee cup in a gesture meant to encompass the table, and her, and him, and the whole night. "Feels like old times."
Working with her, bouncing ideas off each other, running recon, laying plans for a bust, that felt like old times, felt like being partners again. There was no denying it, their partnership; when she entered a room he felt drawn to her, called to her, felt the magnetic pull of time and trust and understanding that made them work so fucking well together, and he'd felt it tonight, had watched Bell take a step back, watched her let Benson and Stabler do what they did best. Us against the world, that's how it always had been, how it had felt tonight, and he'd thought she'd smile when he said it, thought she'd agree.
But she didn't.
Instead her face fell into a soft frown, and she ducked her gaze, studied her mostly empty coffee cup in silence. The waitress had left the carafe on the table for them and he was tempted to reach out and refill her cup then, if only to give them both an excuse to linger a little longer.
"It's not though, is it," she murmured after a moment. It wasn't a question.
"This time you're the one with the wife and kids at home," he said, intending to sound lighthearted, immediately regretting it when Liv raised her head to shoot him a baleful look.
"Cassidy looked good in that apron," he added, but that, too, was a failure as far as joviality went, and Liv's face grew even darker.
"You don't have to be mean," she said warningly.
"I wasn't," Elliot rushed to assure her. "Seriously, Liv, I'm…" I'm a little jealous, he thought, but he wasn't sure either of them would survive such brutal honesty, and so hastened to say, "I'm glad you've had someone. Even if you're not together now he takes care of you and I'm glad."
That earned him a reprieve; Liv was merciful, and did not try to fight him.
"We take care of each other," she said softly. "We always have."
And that killed him, really it did, that Liv could have an always he knew nothing about. The way he remembered it Cassidy and Liv hadn't been anything to each other, but now they had kids, and her face was warm when she spoke about him, and their always was a mystery to him.
"Always?" he prodded gently. There was something he wanted to ask her, something specific, something about things that had happened and how Liv and Cassidy had gotten through it, and she'd told him not now and he'd tried to be patient but truth was he wasn't patient at all, and he'd only managed to put it off for a couple of hours.
"You're going to be unbearable until I tell you, aren't you?" Liv said ruefully.
"We're partners," Elliot told her. They weren't, anymore; they weren't partners, didn't work in the same building let alone on the same team, and she was several rungs above him in the chain of command and tonight was an anomaly, not a return to the natural order, but he felt it, still. Felt like she was his partner, like she always would be. The other half of him, the one he relied on, the one he moved in step with, the one who knew him, inside and out. He looked at her, and thought partner. That was his always.
"I've missed that," she mused, and he blanched, thinking she meant to berate him for leaving her again, but she did nothing of the sort. "Having a partner. It gets lonely in that office."
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," Elliot murmured. Liv looked surprised and he grinned. "What? I've read a book."
"One whole book," she teased him, and his smile stayed right where it was. It felt good, to hear her tease him. It felt like maybe she was starting to trust that he wouldn't break if she said the wrong thing, that she was safe with him.
"It's true, though," she said. "The buck stops with me. There's no one to help me, no one to pick up the slack. I've gotta take care of my people, I've gotta be the one to keep them in the road, and…"
"There's no one there to do the same for you," he finished for her. It was an uncomfortable revelation, and one he hadn't considered before now. When he came back and found out Liv had made it all the way to Captain he'd been so busy being proud of her he'd forgotten to wonder if it hurt her. Not being able to do the legwork anymore, not being free to fuck up the way they used to. Not having anyone beside her when she needed it most.
"I can," he said. "I can, if you let me, Liv. Everybody's gotta have somebody."
"You been going to therapy or what?"
"Yeah, actually."
She was looking at him like she didn't believe him; she knew how he felt about therapy, about talking to a stranger about his problems. Christ, she knew better than anybody how impossible it was for him to be vulnerable. Impossible with anyone but her.
"Bell is making me," he explained. "It's required for my continued employment."
"Not the first time either of us had to go to mandated therapy."
"No."
No, they'd both been referred for counseling, more than once. It had never gone particularly well for them before, but they were older now. This time Elliot kinda felt like it might stick.
"So, yeah," he said. "I been going to the shrink. I been trying to be…better, I guess. And I want to be better for you. I don't want you all alone. Not while I'm around."
The modifier was necessary; she'd been alone for a long time while he was gone, he knew that now. Knew it, but couldn't change it, couldn't go back and rewrite the sins of his past. All he could do was be present for her now, and he was trying. It was hard as hell, trying to get her to open up, trying to be what she needed him to be, but it would be worth it. If she looked at him and told him the truth, if she trusted him, that would be worth any price.
"And what happens when you aren't?" she asked. Her voice was low, and sad, and cut him to the quick. Not teasing, anymore; she sounded almost scared, and she wouldn't look him in the eye, and he had done this. Had known that the one thing that scared Liv most, the one thing in the whole world she was most afraid of, was being left all alone, and he'd promised to be there for her and then vanished. Someone else, after ten years on their own, might have moved on, might have healed that hurt, might have felt differently, looking at him now, but he knew Liv. She'd been hurt too many times, in too many different ways, had been abandoned so often that she could not overlook what he'd done to her, wouldn't just get past it. His leaving was no ordinary blow, but it was just another in a long string of abandonments, was just further proof that she was right to be afraid, and she'd learned to survive by listening to her fears, running from them. Letting him in, that would feel to her like letting him hold a knife to her throat, and she wasn't ready to trust him with it.
"I'm not going anywhere, Liv," he said. "I know you don't believe me now. I know you got no reason to. But I've learned a lot, and I'm not gonna make the same mistakes twice. I'm here. My family is here. You're here. This is where I'm supposed to be. It's where I'm gonna stay."
That was all the reassurance he could give her now. The only thing that would prove the truth of his words was time; Liv would have to see for herself that he wasn't going anywhere, and six months of emotional upheaval and chaos wasn't enough. She needed time, and he could only pray that she'd let them both have it.
She let his words sink in, stirring her spoon idly around the rim of her coffee cup, thinking. Thinking about what he couldn't say, but she hadn't reached for her purse, hadn't stood up, hadn't turned her back on him and told him she'd get a ride home with one of the cabbies. She was still there, lingering in that moment with him.
"Mia's liver is failing," she confessed after a moment, and Elliot's hands shook so badly in response he had to set his cup on the table quickly before he dropped it.
It was a breathtaking piece of honesty, and he knew exactly what it meant. It meant that she had heard him, heard him beg her to let him in, beg her to trust him, beg her to give him some piece of her heart, that she had heard him promise to stay, and elected to believe him, even when her experience, her doubts, her fears were screaming at her not to. The news she'd delivered was enough to break him, though. The realization that her little girl was sick, really sick, that Liv had been dealing with this almost certainly on her own, that she probably hadn't told anyone else and was only telling him because he'd promised to be her partner, it hit him like a ton of bricks. No, he thought; God, please no. Hasn't she suffered enough? What kind of cruel twist of fate would finally give her the child she'd dreamed of, and then threaten to take that child away?
"I'm sorry," he said. "Liv, I'm sorry. I can't imagine what you've been going through."
By the grace of God none of his kids had been seriously ill. Kathleen's bipolar episodes could be scary as hell, especially when she was young and no one knew what the fuck was going on and Elliot worried she'd hurt herself, but her body had been healthy. Both problems were terrible, but they were not the same; he knew what his side of things looked like, but he didn't know hers.
"It's…I didn't have an easy pregnancy, with her. Some things happened early on and I was so scared I was gonna lose her. She pulled through but there have always been lingering problems. It just keeps getting worse. The doctor said…the doctor told me she may need a transplant."
"Jesus."
The kid wasn't even ten, and they were already talking about a transplant, and Liv had been walking around carrying the weight of that all by herself. It hurt him just thinking about it.
"We're running the tests to see if Brian or I can do it," she continued. "That'd be easiest. But they may not let us. We…Jesus, this feels weird to say, but we've both had damage to our organs and the docs may not take them."
What the fuck does that mean? Elliot wondered. Damn near said it, but caught himself at the last moment, seemed to realize through the haze of his wildly roiling emotions that now was not the time to press Liv on the matter of just what the fuck had happened to her over the last decade. She was giving him this answer, the answer to what's going on with Mia; maybe she'd answer the other questions in time, if he responded to this one well enough.
"But someone else could?"
"Yeah," she said, nodding. "She doesn't have to sit on a donor list if we can find someone else. And it doesn't have to be a kid, any healthy adult will do."
I will, Elliot thought. There was no question in his mind; in that moment, he was certain of his choice. If given the chance, he would. For her, for her child, he'd carve the beating heart from his chest; a piece of his liver was nothing.
"Liv-" he started to say, started to tell her, but her phone chose that exact moment to ring, and she flashed him an apologetic look before fishing her phone out of her bag.
"Benson," she said, and then Elliot was forced to spend several minutes in silence, stewing on the knowledge that Mia wasn't well and there was something he could do to fix it, if only Liv would let him, while she talked to someone - Fin, probably - about a new case the squad had caught overnight. Eventually she hung up, though, began to rise to her feet the second the call ended, and Elliot rose with her. He'd paid their bill a half hour before; there was nothing keeping them in the diner, anymore.
"Liv-"
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for the food. And for listening. It's…it's good to talk to you again."
"Let me take you," he said. "Wherever you need to go, let me-"
"Fin's close, he's coming to get me. You should go home and get some sleep."
"Well, I'm not gonna leave you on the street alone in the dark," Elliot grumbled.
That made her smile, and she allowed it, let him walk beside her out in the night, let him stand next to her for the five minutes it took Fin to reach them, let him be there, the way he so desperately wanted to be. It was not enough, but it was, he thought, a damn good start.