She's got a booth back in the corner and a cup of coffee in front of her. Her coat is still on, but she has hung up a knit hat and matching scarf on the coat hook mounted to the pole beside her seat. His sure step falters when he rounds the corner and sees her. She looks up. Time stops.
He pulls off his own hat and works it between his hands, watching her, waiting for a sign of what she wants him to do. Of course she wants him to join her. She tilts her head, pulls her lips into a flat smile, and he hastens to meet her at the table. Just as he slides in, their young, bearded waiter appears.
"Coffee also?" he asks.
"Yeah, that's fine."
The waiter vanishes as quickly as he'd appeared, and it's finally just the two of them.
"I'm sorry it's so late," Olivia says. "I didn't think you'd answer."
He quirks his head to the side. "Then why'd you call?"
She takes a breath and sighs, looks at him and tries so hard to smile. Instinctively, he reaches out and takes her hands.
"It doesn't matter," he says. "I'm glad you did."
"Well. I'm glad you answered." He squeezes her fingers in response, but they break their hold the moment the waiter arrives with a second mug and a steaming pot of coffee.
The younger man fills the new cup and tops off Olivia's. "You want food, you tell me, yes?" he says, mostly to Olivia, because this had been their entire exchange for the thirty-five minutes she had already been there.
"We're fine, thank you," she says with a sweet smile, her eyes fluttering closed in emphasis.
"Okay!" he responds, apparently dubious, but then he retreats again to the opposite end of the diner where the register is, where the menus need to be wiped and the silverware rolled, where an older man is glued to a small TV playing soccer highlights.
The smile had transformed her. "You look good, Liv," he offers softly once the waiter is gone.
"Elliot—"
"What, am I not allowed to say that?"
She gazes down at her coffee, at the tabletop, at her hands that he had just been holding, but she doesn't respond.
"I mean, we don't work together anymore, it's not harassment—" He cuts himself off and, grinning a little, waits for a reaction. There is none, so he backpedals. "Jeez, Liv, it's just what people say to each other—"
"Yeah, well, not us."
He looks away and holds his hands up in surrender. "I take it back."
The table grows quiet, and Elliot rolls his shoulders inside the jacket he still hasn't taken off. He takes an awkward sip of coffee, eyes shifting from one end of the table to the other. Anywhere but Olivia. "I'm sorry," she suddenly blurts, hiding her face with one hand. "There's been a lot of stress, and I—" She stops, looks up at him, and gives him a watery but genuine smile. "You look good, too, El." She blinks, swallows hard, and adds with a laugh, "You look really good."
He grins and finally settles into his seat.
An hour later, they have their coats off, and it's as easy as it once was. They had exchanged perfunctory texts at holidays and birthdays in the years since he left, but nothing personal. Nothing meaningful. She had started the trend after receiving his badge pin in the mail, but she figured that he needed his space and decided that she probably needed hers, so the messages they exchanged never went beyond standard greetings. Now, he's making up for all of that. He has his phone out, swiping through recent photos of Eli in the snow for her, and she's admiring how big he's gotten, remarking how much he looks like Dickie.
Elliot had told her about his new job, a position he had created for himself at the Archdiocese of New York, leading internal investigations and conducting background checks on the parochial schools' new and existing staff. As he explained it, it was a way to use his skills, a way to help known victims and protect potential ones, and he couldn't hurt anybody doing it. "I don't even carry a weapon," he'd said with a proud, easy smile. Olivia imagined that was why he did look as good as he did: he wasn't having to control his anger all the time, and he wasn't faced every day with choices that would haunt him.
"But what about you, hm?" he says now, placing his phone face-down at the far end of the table. "What has Detective Olivia Benson been up to?" he asks with a tiny glint in his eye.
"Well," she draws out, dangling her fork over the piece of pie Elliot had suggested they order to placate their waiter, "it's Sergeant Olivia Benson now..."
He smiles warmly at her. "Congratulations," he says firmly.
She grins at him and works the fork through the pie. "Thank you. It's been official for a few weeks, but it still doesn't feel real. The ceremony was today." She takes a short breath through her nose and decides just to put the truth out there: "I wish you'd been there."
He expels all the air from his lungs, grits his teeth, and laces his fingers together before admitting: "I was."
She looks up at him instantly, the smile falling from her face. "What?"
"Yeah, I've still got friends on the job, and... well I heard you'd made sergeant, were getting sworn in, and... I couldn't miss that, you know?"
It's all she can do to blink at him. "I—I didn't see you," she stammers.
He lifts his eyebrows and looks away. "How we left things—how I left things—I wasn't sure how you'd take it if I showed up."
"Elliot," she whispers because it's the loudest her voice will get right now.
"So I stood in the doorway, and when you went up to the stage, I ducked away so you wouldn't see me." Thinking about it now, he bites his lower lip and chuckles once. "Fin walked right by me, but he was talking to someone and didn't notice." He pauses, chances a look at her, and then can't take his eyes off her. "I'm so proud of you, Olivia."
For reasons she can't explain, her heart has picked up its pace. "Why were you there?"
He shrugs, glances away then back. "You're my partner," he says simply.
"Former partner," she says, as if he's forgotten.
He hesitates. "Is there a difference?"
Suddenly it hits her. It bowls her over. She loves him.
He was the one she'd been looking for this morning.
Because he came, even when he thought she might not want to see him. Because he didn't not come when she needed him to be there. Because he's always seen her as his partner, and apparently he always would. And, of course, he was right—there was no difference. Not with them.
He was how she took care of herself.
She reaches for his hand and grips it. "It means so much to me that you came."
He grins and, with his free hand, jabs his fork into their pie. "Wouldn't have missed it."
Her heart is racing again as her thumb runs along the ridges of his knuckles. She catches herself and stops, withdraws her hand quickly. "And tonight—all the way from Queens," she adds.
He shakes his head as he takes a bite of pie. "Hm-mm," he says around his fork. Mouth full, he manages, "Midtown."
"Where?" she asks, wondering what else would drag him out of the house so late at night.
He swallows and runs his tongue along his gums to clear them. "Murray Hill."
"What were you doing down there?" she asks, unable to curb the curiosity as she takes another bite of pie herself.
He sniffs, shrugs. "I live there," he says.
She cocks her head to the side and frowns at him.
"Kathy kept the house. We, uh, finally did it this time," he says uneasily. Then he holds up his left hand for her. She can't believe, with all of their uncharacteristic hand-touching tonight, that she missed it. But she did. His ring is gone.
"El, I don't know what to say..."
Again he shrugs. "It's been coming. It's been coming a long time." He grimaces. "Turns out, our problems had nothing to do with the job. We were two kids who made a mistake and tried to 'do the right thing.'" He sighs, but not in defeat. "And for twenty-five years, we did it. But when you strip it all down and you don't have the job to blame anymore, and you don't have four little kids to raise, and you wake up every day next to someone you just don't love... at that point, stepping back is the right thing."
She flinches involuntarily. "Like you 'stepped back' from our partnership?" she asks, unable to look at him.
"NYPD," he says. She's still not looking at him, so he leans forwards and tries to catch her gaze. "Hey. I left NYPD," he rasps.
"Right," she whispers.
"Liv," he chokes. "You've gotta know—you and the job were never the same." He swallows hard and looks away from her. "I've always..." he starts, but he can't make himself finish. "Well, you were never just the job to me," he says instead.
She smiles bleakly, trying to muster her strength and trying so hard not to cry about something that couldn't be changed.
He licks his lips. "I just wish you'd called me sooner."
"Phones work two ways, El," she says quietly.
"And you'd've answered?" he asks skeptically. "The way I left?" There is an endearing innocence in his doubt.
She rolls her head to the side and gazes down at the plate between them. "You've always been more than the job for me."