Elliot knew five different ways to cook eggs, and when Olivia admitted she didn't actually know which kind of eggs she liked best he suggested they make all five kinds so she could decide for herself. It seemed like a remarkable waste of eggs, but he smiled so warmly when he spoke - and offered to buy more eggs to replace the ones they used this morning - and she found she couldn't tell him no. Didn't want to, either. She wanted to know what kind of eggs she liked. She wanted to know who she was.
She wanted to know who he was, too.
A mystery, that's what he was. One contradiction after another. Warm and gentle when he spoke of her son, but his eyes were hard and angry when the conversation turned to Ed. Quick to suspect Malcolm of less-than-gentlemanly behavior, and yet Elliot himself had been dishonest with her, at least in part. Hidden things from her, even if he hadn't outright lied. Told her that he'd loved her, not as a brother, but swore they'd never crossed the line into physical intimacy. Boasted a marriage strong enough to bring five children into the world but not strong enough to survive his job. To survive Olivia, and whatever havoc she'd wrought in their home.
She wanted to trust him, but she wasn't sure that she could. The things he'd told her; how could it be, she wondered, that she could have married a man her dear friend, her partner, apparently despised? What didn't she know about Ed; what didn't she know about Elliot? Which man should she be faithful to now, the one in front of her or the one who existed only in photographs and in memories no one wanted to share with her? How could Elliot speak so easily, so unreservedly, of his love for her, when by his own admission they had not spoken in years? The questions haunted her; disturbed her, even, for she did not know how to begin to differentiate truth from lies, found herself forced instead to believe the words she was told, or else believe nothing at all. It was unsettling, not knowing which way was up, not knowing if the people guiding her were leading her in the right direction.
If she asked, she knew that Malcolm would warn her not to trust this man. Would tell her that she didn't know him, not really, didn't know why he'd left or why they hadn't spoken or why Fin, her brother, wanted to keep her away from Elliot. Would tell her that the obvious bad blood between her former partner and her deceased husband was a sign of darker secrets as yet unearthed. Would tell her to be careful.
And maybe Malcolm was right; he cared for her, she knew he did, and only wanted to keep her safe. The thing was, despite the inconsistencies in Elliot's story and the way his mood seemed to fluctuate from brooding to gently teasing at random, she felt safe with Elliot. The heavy weight of him beside her as they worked at the stove top, the careful press of his broad, calloused hands as he showed her how to handle the eggs, the grumbly murmur of his voice in her ear and the brilliant warmth of his blue eyes above his rangy beard, all of it, all of him, made her feel safe. Protected, sheltered, certain, somehow, that this man would not hurt her, would instead fight with all of himself to keep away the shadows that meant to bring her low.
She had no reason to trust him; she did, anyway.
Her thoughts kept turning back to the kiss she'd shared with Malcolm, the burning, electrifying passion of it, the hunger it wakened in her. But when she thought of that kiss now she thought of Elliot, too. Thought, and wondered, wondered what it might feel like to press her lips to Elliot's instead. The scratch of his beard against her cheek, the warmth of his thick arms wrapping around her. Wondered how it might feel to lay her head on his shoulder, and relax in the comfort of his embrace.
"Here," he said, one hand settling warm and heavy at the small of her back, the other wrapping gently around her wrist, guiding her as she prepared to flip over the eggs in front of her. Making eggs this way was called over easy, according to Elliot.
"Real gentle," he said, helping ease her spatula under the first egg. The hard plane of his chest brushed against her back with every breath she took, and she found herself feeling suddenly quite warm, though she could not say whether it was the heat from the stove or the warmth of his body that lit a fire in her blood.
"See how the whites have started to change color around the edges?" he said. "That means they're almost ready. We'll turn this one over and let it cook a little while longer and then this will be done. Ok, here we go. Nice and steady, don't try to move too fast."
People kept telling her to slow down, and it was starting to drive her a little crazy.
"I can do it," she insisted, and he released his grip on her wrist, though his other hand remained at the small of her back.
"I know you can," he said.
And she did; with a steady hand, she flipped the first egg over, quietly relieved she hadn't completely wrecked it in the process.
"Now the other one," he said.
She shot him a look over her shoulder, raising her eyebrow at him as if in challenge; really, she wasn't a child. But she did ask him to teach her. He was only doing what she'd asked him to.
"You got this," he said, grinning, taking a step back and raising both his hands in surrender.
"I do," she told him primly, and then flipped the second egg.
"Which kind do you think you'll like best?" he asked her then. They had already made scrambled, and those were sitting on the counter in a bowl, wrapped in foil to keep them warm while they worked on the rest. An omelet was sizzling in a pan to her right, and the over easy eggs were almost done. Next was sunny side up, and then Elliot planned to do poached eggs last.
"The omelet, I think," she said. It smelled the best; Elliot had chopped up a pepper he'd found on the side, and added cheese and salt and pepper and all sorts of things, and she was desperately curious to know what it was going to taste like. The scrambled looked ok, too. She was less sure about the over easy.
"Which one do you think I like best?" she asked. If they were such good friends, shouldn't he know already?
"I know which kind you used to like best," he said. "But I'm not gonna tell you. I wanna know what kind you like best today."
He was still smiling.
"You have such a nice smile," she said on impulse, turning her attention back to the eggs. "I don't know why you hide it behind that beard."
"You don't like my beard?" he asked in a tone of mock indignation.
"All those old pictures, you don't have a beard in any of them. Are policemen not allowed to have beards?" Surely, she thought, there must have been all sorts of rules about what they could and couldn't do. Whole books of laws and regulations she'd once known by heart, and had now forgotten. Liv was the cop; Olivia wasn't anything at all.
"We can," he said. "But most don't. Lot of the old school senior officers frown on it. I was in the military before I was a cop, and shaving was just sort of a habit."
"And now that you're not a cop anymore you stopped shaving?"
"Uh," he said, and cleared his throat in the way he did when she said something to make him uncomfortable. "I'm still a cop, actually."
The eggs were doing just fine on their own with no intervention from her so she turned back to face him, worried, again, about what he knew that she didn't.
"You said you left," she pointed out. He'd said it several times now, actually. Said some bad things happened, said he had to leave, said his leaving hurt her. He said he'd left, that his leaving was the reason they hadn't talked in so long. So how could he still be a cop? She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, wanted to believe that he wouldn't lie to her on purpose, that it was only regrets and his own less-than-stellar memory that made him soften the truth here and there. Her gut told her to trust him, but how could she trust her gut?
"I did," he said. "I left the job. About seven years ago now. And about six months ago, I came back. I wanted to make things right. I didn't like the way I left the job and I…I didn't like the way I left you. I got an undercover assignment. That means I spent a few months pretending to be someone else, trying to get information about some really bad guys. That's why I grew a beard."
He was lying for a living, she thought. Pretending to be someone else. And he must have been pretty good at it, if he'd been paid to do it, if he'd survived with his body and his job intact. If he was so good at pretending, how could she know if he was being truthful with her now?
"I kept telling myself that when it was over, I'd be back on the right side of things, and then I could come find you and show you that I was trying to fix what I broke."
He reached out, turned the heat off under the eggs, his arm brushing against her hip, his eyes beseeching her all the while. Those eyes...she wanted to trust those eyes. But the bad guys he'd been investigating, they must have trusted him, too.
Maybe she was being too hard on him. It made for a nice story, she thought. He left, and he regretted it, and he was trying to make his way back in the best way he knew how. But -
"But I've been here for two years," she said. "I wasn't there, Elliot. If you'd tried to find me, you wouldn't have."
"I know that now," he admitted, rubbing absently at the back of his bald head. The photographs she'd found, she could chart the passage of time in the way his hairline receded, and now he had no hair left at all. "I would've found you, eventually. I wouldn't have given up."
This is what we do, Liv. We show up for each other.
There was something very sweet about it, she thought. About Elliot deciding to come back. About Elliot wanting to do it right, wanting to fix his job first, wanting to prove that he was trying, to give her evidence of his efforts, and not just promises. There was something terribly sad about it, too, though, because he was trying so hard to make amends with a woman who was not there. Who no longer existed.
He was still standing so close to her, close enough to warm the thin satin of her pajamas by his proximity alone, his blue eyes wide and honest. Such lovely blue eyes, she thought. Blue eyes just like Ed's. Did she prefer a man with blue eyes, she wondered, or was it just a coincidence? Or was it not a coincidence at all; did she like Ed's blue eyes because they reminded her of someone else's?
"Olivia," Elliot murmured, his face drawn and serious, stepping a little bit closer, his hand rising up as if he meant to reach for her. As if he meant to touch her.
And oh, how she wanted him to touch her.
Complicated, messy, difficult; he was all of those things. Confusing, and comforting, he was those things, too. Raw, and vulnerable, and strong, all at once, and she longed to lose herself in him, to feel something that belonged to her, and not to Liv. To make new memories in this place, to know this man on her own terms, and not on the terms of a stranger she could not recall.
She really, really wanted to kiss him.
But would he want to kiss her?
She didn't get the chance to find out, at least not right then; as she swayed toward him she heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside the kitchen, and looked to the doorway in horror, just in time to see Malcolm come marching into view.
As he caught sight of them he did a comical double take, his eyes going wide and his whole body shuddering to a halt.
"Olivia," he said, alarmed. "What the hell's going on here?"
I wish I knew, she thought glumly.