Purgatory
"Say you couldn't be a sex crimes detective anymore.
What would you be?"
- Dr Jackson, Law and Order:
Special Victims Unit, "Slaves."
Cragen delivers the commissioner's verdict in his office. The entire squad waits for them outside, faces turning toward them expectantly, as the doors open and they walk out, their badges and guns left behind. Elliot gives them the news and there's a collective murmur of shock and disappointment.
Alex tells them to appeal and promises to find them a lawyer.
"They'll expect you to appeal," she says.
Cragen agrees and promises it isn't over yet, but Elliot knows differently. He sees it in Olivia's face, the whole world crashing down around them, reflected in her downcast eyes.
At home, Kathy cries - not for herself, but for him. "Will you be all right?" she asks him.
And he would. He'd been through hell and come out the other side more times than he could count and he'd get through this too. But it's little comfort as he remembers the look on Olivia's face, the way she held her arms to her chest, took a step forward and backward simultaneously, her direction suddenly absent. They'd never looked so out of place.
Kathy puts herself back on full-time at the hospital. Overnight he's become a stay-at-home-dad and that's something he never contemplated in the grand scheme of gender roles in the twenty-first century. It's largely redundant, anyway. Kathleen and the twins are at school, Maureen's at college and Kathy still cooks. He does laundry, washes the dishes from the night before and makes beds.
Former cops become security guards and private detectives. He wonders how long he should wait before he reaches for these safety nets.
He stays up late every night, reads the newspaper, reminding himself that bad things exist outside New York and there's a whole world of horrors out there that would surprise even a sex crimes detective. Kathleen, the only other night owl in the house, finds him like that: elbows on the kitchen table, luke-warm coffee and the newspaper spread out before him.
"What are you doing, dad?" She asks.
"Reading," he tells her. He doesn't look up. When he does, he finds her still standing there, staring at him. "What?" he says.
"You're creeping me out."
He laughs a little, smiles at his daughter. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," she says, nodding emphatically.
"Yeah, well I creep myself out sometimes."
Kathleen shakes her head, says, "weird," and fills a glass with juice from the fridge. She returns to her room and he goes back to reading.
He tells himself he should call Olivia, but it's a thought that gets buried in the world news.
Over breakfast says, "how's Olivia?" and he's embarrassed to say he doesn't know.
It's been one week to the day. An anniversary already.
"I was thinking about her," Kathy says. Her hands are wrapped around her coffee mug, warming her fingers. "- she always seems so vulnerable."
"She'll be fine." He contemplates his own mug. Lately, he finds himself craving the instant coffee from the squad room kitchen. They always complained about it, but it was always there - reliable. "She's resilient."
"I'm not so sure." Kathy gets up from the table and puts his mug on the sink. "I gotta go," she says as she bends down to kiss him on the temple. "You should call her."
"Yeah," he says.
Alex arranges a lawyer as promised. She calls and tells him she's set up a meeting for that afternoon. Olivia is meeting with her in the morning.
"You're welcome to seek your own counsel," Alex says. "But if you have no objection, I see no reason why she can't represent you both."
"Sure," he says. As an afterthought he adds, "You spoke to Olivia?"
"This morning. Why?"
"How is she?"
A pause. "She's fine."
"Okay." He wants to say more, wants to ask the questions circling in his head: What's she doing? Is she angry with him? Instead he repeats himself. "Okay."
"You should call her," Alex says, like she's part of the conspiracy.
One day later, he tries her buzzer. She answers, "Yeah?"
"It's Stabler."
He hears the click of the lock and he lets himself through. She's left the door open for him but he knocks hesitantly before going in, a habit formed from living in a house of women.
Olivia's sitting on the sofa, elbows on her knees, leaning her head into one hand. She's dressed in sweat pants and a grey t-shirt. "What time is it?" she asks him.
"9.30 - you slept in?"
"I'm unemployed."
"So am I."
"I don't have kids."
He shrugs. "Okay." He takes his jacket off and sits in the chair opposite the sofa. "Want me to make coffee?"
She shakes her head and gets to her feet. "No, no - let me."
She disappears into the kitchen. Elliot sits in the single armchair, taking a moment to survey the apartment. Olivia has always lived modestly, decorations or ornaments displayed sparingly and mostly provided by her mother. He thinks the coffee machine came from her mother as well. Olivia doesn't eat at home.
Olivia's mother has been dead one year. No one left to fill the apartment.
Olivia returns with coffee. She places both cups on the coffee table and returns to her place on the sofa.
"So - Kathy's back at the hospital full-time?"
"Yeah." He doesn't ask her how she knows. Their networks are still in place in their absence.
"It must be nice being home with the kids."
"The kids are at school. I'm home alone, mostly."
Olivia takes her mug from the coffee table, clasps it in both hands. She sits with her knees apart, masculine style, her usual "fuck you" attitude.
"What about you?" he says.
She raises her shoulders. "What about me?"
"What are you doing to pass time? Got any plans?"
She snorts. "You think I need a hobby?"
"That's not what I meant."
She lifts her shoulders in a half shrug. "No plans," she says. "It's been a while since I've had so much free time. Maybe I'll just get used to it for the time being."
He nods. "It takes some getting used to."
Olivia presses her lips together, looks at a spot on the floor. There's a moment of silence while they both sip coffee.
"You saw Elaine Bruckner?" she says eventually.
Elaine is their lawyer. Nice, earnest woman with big plans for their appeal. Pro bono to boot, doing her bit for the cause as she put it. He was nowhere near as enthusiastic as she was.
"Yeah," he says.
"She thinks we have a chance."
"She's a lawyer. Lawyer's alway think they have a chance."
Olivia puts her mug back on the table and rolls her shoulders, stretching her neck. "Maybe it pays to think positive," she says.
"Maybe it pays to get out in the sunshine," he says. "Christ - when was the last time you opened the blinds? It's like a crypt in here."
She throws up her hands. "Be my house guest anytime, Elliot. You're so pleasant to be around."
"It's just kind of dark in here," he says, placating. "It's not good for you." Kathy is always telling the kids to get out in the sunshine. Seventeen years of marriage and the behaviour washes off.
Olivia picks up the vibe. "You think my mom died and left a vacancy, Elliot? In case you haven't noticed I'm a grown woman and one of the benefits of being a grown woman is you get to sit alone in the dark if you want to."
Elliot rubs the bridge of his nose. He thinks he should probably leave. His coffee is still half full, still a little too warm to drink in large gulps. He wonders if leaving before finishing coffee lacks propriety. The last person who gave him coffee when he called was the suspect in a date rape.
He decides to change the subject. "You seen Jeffries lately?" It's a loaded question. Jeffries gave the force away two years ago and is, therefore, the most likely person to offer Olivia advice on how to make the break from being a cop. She went into business teaching self-defence or something - he can't remember the details.
"We went climbing a couple of weeks ago."
"Not..." he wants to say 'recently' but he's pushed the overly concerned friend angle too far already. Instead he says, " - not heard from her much lately, how's she doing?"
"She's good." Olivia nods. "The business is going well, she's got a new guy - she's doing great."
He wonders if leaving the force is just the right thing to do for some people. "Well, if you see her again soon, say 'hello'."
Olivia rolls her eyes, reminding him of his daughter and his wife at the same time. All the women in his life have the same reaction to his less than subtle attempts at intervention. "Sure. And then maybe she can give us both advice on how to be a non-cop."
He puts his coffee on the coffee table, still undrunk. "You know, my wife thought you'd appreciate someone to talk to right now. Apparently she knows you less than she thinks she does."
"Is that what you call this?" she says. "Because it seems a lot like you're here to keep an eye on me."
He stands up. There's some truth in what she says. His best intentions have a way of being horribly misplaced. "I should... Kathy wants me to pick up the dry-cleaning, I should get going."
"Yeah," Olivia says. She gets up to follow him out. She leans on the doorframe, looks apologetic. "I'm sorry - these late mornings - they're screwing with my head."
It's vague and unconvincing but it's as good as any other explanation. He gives her a faint smile. "Don't sit in the dark so much," he says.
Sitting in the same place with the same mug in his fist, he realises he hasn't turned a page in the last 30 minutes.
He's not introspective like his partner. The issue becomes his responsibility but not his fault. Maybe that's how he smiles at his wife in the morning, kisses his children before they go to school, does all those things necessary to get from one day to the next and to bring a paycheck home at the end of the week.
Somewhere in between all this he lets Olivia down. When he doesn't catch the serial rapist, when he tells her she's crossed a line and when he packs up the grief and anguish that comes from the job and compartmentalises it so that it remains hidden when he returns to home life. A complete contrast to Olivia who wears her frustrations the way she wears her leather jacket, like it's moulded to her body.
He lets her down when he sits here, alone in the night, quietly passing hours away surrounded by sleeping loved ones. He copes. He manages. He gets by.
He turns the page.
Kathy is on night shift so he drives the kids to school while she sleeps through the morning. Dickie says his music is "lame" and Kathleen turns around from the front seat to tell him to, "can it." His second oldest is now running interference the way Maureen used to. It's something they learn between 16 and 17 - absent one day and in his face the next.
He drops them off at separate schools, Kathleen first so he can watch his youngest until they're safe inside the classroom. He takes a mental check of every single male that passes, cataloguing facial features and wardrobe out of habit. He takes a mental inventory of a man standing just outside the gate: five foot eleven, 40, dark brown hair (receding), glasses, corduroy jacket, denim jeans. He collars Dickie before he can get out of the car and asks, "do you know who that is?"
"Mr Major," Dickie says, and he does an exaggerated eye roll that tells Elliot in no uncertain terms that it's a stupid question.
"He's your teacher?"
"He's the headmaster!" Dickie shakes himself loose and leaps out of the car to bound after his sister.
A woman across the street smiles and waves, her hand gripping the wrist of a child around the twins' age. He waves back, remembering her face but not her name. The twins had a birthday party last year. Mothers congregated in the kitchen to exchange stories while he filled balloons with helium in the living room. The fathers were few and they didn't stay long but they all looked the same, vaguely out of place and uneasy and wondering who the hell these strangers were who promised to look after their child for an afternoon.
The woman crosses the street, head turning from left to right and back again, watching for traffic with hawk-like vigilance. She lets the child go on the other side of the street and waves enthusiastically as the child disappears in a crowd of children, never looking back.
The mother taps on Elliot's window. "I heard you were suspended," she says, looking sympathetic. "How are you holding up?"
He rolls the window down. Her name is Gail? Elaine? Amy? "Fired, actually." He smiles ruefully. Not proud, not evasive.
"Kathy said you were appealing."
"Yeah," he says. "Got a hearing in five weeks."
"What will you do in the mean time?"
He doesn't want to have this conversation. "I don't know," he says. "Spend some time with the kids, take a class..."
She nods. "It must be hard," she says. "-changing career."
He hasn't changed yet. He shrugs. "Got to roll with the punches." It sounds even more stupid out loud than it does in his head.
She smiles, wishes him well and returns to the other side of the street. She climbs into an SUV and he wonders if she only has one child to fill her super sized vehicle.
Every second car that passes him is an SUV or a station wagon. On the surface this world is healthy and happy and, most importantly, safe. On the surface husbands don't beat their wives or have sex with their step children and the strange looking man with the just out of style hair cut and glasses is a teacher, not a paedophile. Scratch the surface and you realise it's all just a bad paint job.
The woman in the SUV pulls away from the curb. He still can't remember her name. He shifts into "drive" and manoeuvres into the steadily decreasing traffic.
He's due in court on Friday. He calls Alex and suggests that two discredited police officers might prove more hindrance than help to her case.
"I won't lie," Alex tells him. "I prefer my police witnesses to hold badges. But you're an eye-witness and I need your testimony."
"They'll make a big deal of it," he says. They'll crucify him.
"The charges are under appeal. I'll argue their inadmissibility on those grounds. And if that fails I'll challenge on the grounds of relevance, but Elliott - " She pauses and he can hear her sucking in her breath. "- you haven't been convicted, you have nothing to hide."
He understands what that means: the more effort Alex puts into concealing the charges the guiltier he'll appear. Better to put on a brave front, face the music, and act like a man who's been wrongly accused.
"What about Olivia?"
"She'll testify, too - which is something I need to talk to you about." She pauses for a breath. The effect is unduly ominous. "I want you to go first."
"Why?"
"They won't try twice - and I'm not confidence Olivia can stand up to an attack. She's... volatile right now."
She's often volatile. So is he.
"Okay," he says.
"I'll see you Friday." Alex sounds relieved.
He hangs up. He spends a moment studying the doodles on the paper by the phone. It looks like Kathleen's work: suns and moons and stars. There are several names and phone numbers scrawled haphazardly across the page, no care for an orderly arrangement. The house is full of details like this, markings etched in the corners and the blank spaces.
By Friday he's contemplating buying a packet of cigarettes. He never really smoked. They smoked a little in basic training - late at night in rare moments of personal time before lights out, a social rather than physiological habit. Even then it seemed like desperation, a tiny act of defiance in a controlled world.
Today he envies the look of relief on the smokers' face outside the court. A look that says, I'll get by - if I can just smoke this cigarette, I'll get by.
In the hallway outside the courtroom, Olivia echoes his thoughts by professing a desire to drink. He doesn't answer her. He dwells on his testimony, rehearsing his answers his head - answers for Alex and answers for questions they anticipate from her opponent. He's done this a thousand times and today shouldn't be different. It is, of course, but he prefers to dwell on the familiar.
Olivia stands, thrusts her hands in her pocket and walks aimlessly. She takes a few steps toward the entrance, turns and ambles toward the staircase at the end of the hall. She's wearing black trousers, suit jacket and a blue, collared blouse underneath. The look has a uniform feel to it and he wonders if that was deliberate.
He's wearing a tie and a white shirt he wore two months ago at Kathy's father's funeral. As a consequence the shirt adds to his maudlin mood.
Olivia bends slightly, trying to see something just out of sight up the stairs. He is watching her when his name is called.
Alex's questions are succinct and to the point. She avoids asking him for anything more than his account of events and the history of the case. No professional opinion, no attempt a speculation.
The cross-examination is more inquisitive by comparison.
The defence counsel pushes his chair back and gets up from behind the desk. "Mr Stabler - " He emphasises the "Mr," takes his time walking to the witness stand. "- why is it that Miss Cabot referred to you as Mr Stabler and not Detective Stabler?"
Alex is immediately on her feet. "Objection! Relevance."
Defence counsel raises his hands, palms out. "Your Honour, how can we determine the relevance of Mr Stabler's professional status if we don't even know what it is?"
The judge clasps her hands together in front of her. "Counsel, approach."
Alex and the defence counsel go to the bench. They speak quietly but seated immediately to the judges left as he is he catches most of what they are saying.
"Miss Cabot's witness was held responsible for the death of a citizen in the federal witness protection programme," the defence counsel is saying. "The Commissioner found he cut corners in the pursuit of his own case which he determined took precedence over a major federal investigation into a crime syndicate responsible for multiple murders."
"The Commissioner found Mr Stabler incorrectly surmised an informant's organised crime connections," Alex says. "And that decision is under appeal. It bears no relevance to Mr Stabler's ability to account for the actions of the defendant."
Elliot scans the courtroom, his eyes falling briefly on the accused before settling on the jury. There are two women, eyes on him, whispering to each other. A man on the end looks to be falling asleep, while an older man next to him is watching the two women whispering. The rest are sitting patiently, waiting for the judge to send counsel back to the respective sides of the court.
It reminds him of basketball: Alex's team against the accused's, with the judge as referee and the jury as scoreboard. Currently they're disputing a free throw but eventually they'll get back to toeing the three-pointer line, looking for a break in the defence.
Time-out is over. The judge sends counsel back to the desks with the defence scoring a minor victory. Defence counsel is permitted to proceed with caution.
"Mr Stabler, can you tell the court why you are no longer with the New York Police Department?"
Elliot looks briefly at Alex, sees her nod ever so slightly in encouragement. He shifts his look to her left and his eyes fall on the accused, a young man, barely out of his twenties. His eyes are fixed on a far point in the courtroom, somewhere beyond the judge and the jury and the witnesses. His father always made Elliot look him in the eye if he suspected him of an untruth. Even now, Elliot believes the innocent don't hide their eyes.
He answers with his eyes fixed straight ahead and feels guilty all the same.
Alex finds them outside on the steps, soaking up the fading sunshine on a just warm enough to be outside day.
"Guilty on all counts," she says when she's in earshot. She's too professional to be jubilant but he can hear a note of elation in her voice, a quickness to her speech, the Alex Cabot version of a victory dance. "I owe you guys."
"I'll take a beer," Elliot says. It's an invitation.
He looks at Olivia and she nods. "Me too," she says.
Alex buys them beer at Maloney's, honouring a ritual performed for losses as well as victories. They take up a position at a corner of the bar, while Olivia scans the bar for free table. It's a fruitless gesture. The after work crowd are like vultures on empty tables, swooping in as soon as the previous occupants are on their feet.
Elliot downs his drink fast and orders another. Alex and Olivia are barely halfway. They avoid being labelled as dainty by ordering masculine sized glasses but they drink slowly, aware of their feminine biochemistry.
"Cragen tells me you're thinking of going back to college," Alex says to Olivia. Olivia's mouth parts slightly and she glances quickly at Elliot. She never told him that. She didn't tell him anything.
"I'm looking into it," she says. She shrugs noncommittally.
"What will you study?" Elliot asks.
"Psychology, criminology - I haven't given it a lot of thought." She looks ill at ease.
He considers her choices. "Have you been talking to Huang?"
"It came up once..." She sounds defensive. He wonders if it came up before or after she left, whether she's been talking to Huang since the hearing.
He tries to catch Alex's eye, see if she and Olivia are on the same page, but she's just as intrigued as he is.
"You've thought about this before," Alex says.
"It was -" Olivia looks away quickly. Her eyes roam over the bar patrons, looking for something that isn't there. "- I was reminded not so long ago that I hadn't considered a career outside special victims. It made me think."
"I never considered a career outside of Law," Alex says. "Maybe we could all use that kind of introspection."
Elliot contemplates his beer. He was a marine and then he was a cop. It always seemed like he fell into his career. He couldn't afford the luxury of choice.
Alex and Olivia become engaged in the prospect of the careers they never had. He loses interest, downs the rest of his beer and leans across the bar to flag down the bartender and order another.
He catches a woman on the other side of the bar giving him an appraising look. When she sees she's been noticed she smiles and lifts her drink in a tiny salute. She has blonde hair, tightly knotted on top of her head. She wears a black suit jacket buttoned down the front, no visible blouse underneath.
He smiles back - trying not to put the kind of effort into it that might be seen as encouragement but also not wanting to seem impolite - and then the bartender cuts into his line of vision and the woman is forgotten in favour of a beer.
Alex finishes her drink and announces that she has a date across town and has to leave.
"New guy?" Olivia says.
"Old guy," Alex says. "I'm giving Langan a second chance."
"That's two more chances than I'd give him," Olivia says.
Alex smiles a "what are you gonna do?" smile, hugs them both and leaves.
They stand there nervously in her wake, not sure how to be in each other's company since things changed. Partners no longer but connected by their professional history. They should be better friends.
Elliot breaks the ice. "Want another one?"
"How many have you had?"
"What's it to you?"
Olivia shrugs the question away. "Sure, I'll have another one."
He orders two more beers from the bartender, while checking across the bar for the woman who smiled at him earlier. She's gone. He wonders if she got what she came for.
"I saw her checking you out," Olivia says, taking her beer from him.
He raises his eyebrows in surprise. He forgot how she notices these things, the undercurrents of human interaction that evade normal people. It makes her an excellent detective in sex crimes.
It would probably make her a great criminal psychologist too if she really was considering that path. He takes a swig from his beer. He doesn't want to think about that.
"She was just being nice," he says.
"Sure she was."
He doesn't like her tone. "You think I was flirting with her?"
"I didn't say that."
"Then what are you saying?"
"Nothing!" She leans on the bar, hand wrapped around her glass, the other hand in her pocket, defensive and elusive. "Jesus, Elliot, you're goddamn touchy tonight."
"Yeah, well, if you'd had your professional history on the line in court today you might feel the same."
"You're going to blame me because Alex asked you first?" He is taken aback. It must show because she goes on to say, "You think I don't know how lawyers work? How many times have we been in court since I started at Special Victims? Alex asked you to go first because she knew the defence would hold up our dismissal for the entire court to see. She didn't think I could handle it."
"Well I agree with her - look at you." He waves a hand vaguely at her. "You look like you haven't slept in a week, you sit at home in the dark and you won't even talk to me - you're falling apart, but god forbid - " He holds up a finger for emphasis. "- god forbid you ask for help."
"That's rich coming from you, Stabler." She nods at his drink. "How many have you had? Have you even been counting?"
"I'm not driving, it's early, and what the fuck do I have to do tomorrow that's so important I can't celebrate putting a scumbag behind bars for fifteen years!"
His voice is getting loud. Olivia cast a furtive glance at the crowd, looking for gawkers. One or two heads quickly turn away, embarrassed at being caught staring.
Olivia holds up her hand in a surrender position. "Okay, just calm down, all right? Let's not get thrown out on our asses."
Elliot puts a hand on the bar, repeats Olivia's scan of the crowd. No one is looking at them, the moment is gone and it's everything back to normal.
He finishes his drink. Olivia was right, he hasn't been counting. It could be six? Seven? His senses are slightly dulled, feeling the effect of the alcohol. It's a pleasant feeling. Comforting. He waves at the bartender and orders another. Olivia opens her mouth but he gives her a look and she closes it again.
She looks away. When she turns back to him she nods at his drink.
"Hey - order me one too," she says. "So what do you do when the kids are at school, Elliot? Somehow, I don't see you as the house-keeper type."
"I do the laundry," he says. "Maureen says she needs a book case for her dorm room - I was thinking I could make her one."
"I didn't know you were a handyman."
He shrugs. "I took shop in high school."
"So you're good with your hands," she says. "That's useful."
"Is it? These days everyone uses computers. Even carpenters - they have these programmes where you can have the whole thing designed for you. Gives you the specs and all."
Olivia looks thoughtful. "You think the work force is getting ahead of you?"
He looks away. The bar is full of people. For the first time he wonders what they do during the day. "What the hell do I know? I'm just some guy who used to be a cop."
"Used to be? Don't count us out yet, partner. We still have an appeal to get through."
An appeal that won't be heard for months. He can't wait that long. Neither can Olivia. Many more months of sitting in the dark of her apartment and she'll fall apart, as surely her mother did. Coping mechanisms are inherited. You get them from your parents.
His father taught by example: chin up, shoulders straight and never let them get to you. It wasn't good advice but in the absence of alternatives he followed it anyway.
"Yeah," he says. He leans both elbows on the bar and watches the bartenders pour beer from the taps. He doesn't understand why drunks hang around in bars when they could be peacefully drunk at home. Maybe it's all about atmosphere?
Olivia notes his dismissive attitude and tries not to look offended. Her gaze travels off in a different direction to his, keeping her protests to herself.
He wonders why their relationship has always been more critical than the relationships he's had with previous partners. Olivia is difficult and he's not patient. They should have requested new partners by now. Maybe a hearing was inevitable. They've been close before.
"Why do we do it?" he says, and at first he's not sure he's said it out loud but Olivia gives him puzzled look and he knows she, at least, heard it.
"Excuse me?"
He forges ahead with the thought. "Why become a cop? It's like - asking for trouble."
She looks briefly at the ceiling. "You're drunk."
He turns so he's facing her. "Come on, Olivia, you never think you might have been better off somewhere you don't have to think about your father everyday?"
"I think it's time I went home." She downs the remnants of her beer and places the empty glass on the bar.
He does the same, follows her as she retrieves her coat from the rack by the door. "You know, you start out with all these big ideas about putting the bad guys in the pen where they belong and then you end up drinking so you forget that for every bad guy you put away there's another to take his place."
"Neither of us are drunks, Elliot," she says, throwing her coat over her shoulders.
"Not yet. But say this appeal thing goes our way, and we're back on the job by next year - how much longer do you think you can do this? Ever think about what happens ten years down the track when you're still in Special Victims?"
Outside is cold and there's a hint of rain in the air. Olivia is walking fast, hands thrust in her pockets, not looking to see if he is following.
He's taller than her and his step is wide, it doesn't take much for him to catch up.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she says when he is at her side. "Is this your idea of coping?"
"What the fuck is wrong with you? We lost our jobs, remember? You want to start acting like you care?" His voice is raised louder than it should be.
"You going to show me how it's done, Elliot? Alex put you on the stand first - must feel good to have it all under control."
"You want to go first next time? Be my fucking guest. Let them drag your reputation through the mud until it's so damn dirty you can't recognise it anymore."
She turns around and faces him. They're barely one hundred yards from Maloney's and neither of them is going in the direction of home. "What is it you want from me, Elliot?" She throws her hands out to the side. "You want me to thank you for saving me from cross examination? You want my undying gratitude?"
He nods. "That would be a start, yeah."
"I didn't ask you!"
"Too bad, I did it anyway." He grabs her arm, fixes his look on her until she meets his eyes. "And I'd do it again, you understand? I'd do it for you."
She doesn't respond. His hand still grasps her arm and he can feel her muscles tense under his fingers, steeling herself. He's fuelled by a mixture of alcohol and inflamed emotions, so he leans into her body space and kisses her, reaching for her waist and pulling her against him.
She is slow to respond, stiffening at first, her body freezing with shock, but gradually she falls into him, kisses him back her arms wrapping around his neck. He pulls her tighter into him, increasing the heat of contact. It's a volatile situation, hazards inevitable. He thinks about it briefly but the magnitude of the wrong is so vast it's impossible to conceive of in the moment.
And he wants the moment: the place between the past that has brought them here and the future that will be their inevitable undoing. No tomorrow, no consequences, no cops, no victims, no dismissal and no appeal.
He buries his mouth in her neck, hands inside her coat underneath her shirt where her skin is burning hot against his cold fingers. He slides his fingers up her rib cage, reaches the cup of her bra when she when she finally speaks.
"Oh - Elliot - shit - " She puts her hand on his, halting his movement. Her eyes are wide open, looking at him. "This is - we can't do this."
They are still for a moment, breathing heavy and in time.
He releases her and turns to look down the street, hoping for a cab. "Let's get you home," he says.
He escorts her all the way to her door, the conversation ranging from, "I'll get this," with regard to the cab fare and "they should fix your door," when it takes her three tries with the combination.
In hindsight he thinks he probably had it planned from the moment they climbed into the cab. It was one thing to face harsh reality in plain sight and another to hide away from it in a small, New York apartment. But he likes to think he had altruistic intentions somewhere in the night. He wants to believe he never set out to screw their lives over because the alternative is to think he's losing his grip on the person he used to be, and he's not ready to face that.
Olivia doesn't question his presence in her apartment and he figures that was probably when she decided, a tacit agreement, no words necessary.
She throws her coat on the couch and offers to make coffee as she heads in the direction of the kitchen. He grabs her hand as she moves past him and pulls her to him. She comes to a halt inches from his face, her fist pressed against her chest defensively, holding him away. He eyes her lips, moves closer.
"We should talk about this," she says.
"No talking," he says. He tilts his head at an angle to meet her, an instinctive prelude to a kiss. "Don't talk."
The sex is manic and desperate and completely without poetry. He wants too badly to be inside her, to be buried in her so far he can't feel himself anymore. They stagger in various stages of undress to the bedroom, spend a moment leaning against the wall just inside before falling onto the bed. He thinks he hears something tear but the sound is lost somewhere in the mayhem.
He dispenses quickly with her underwear - bra and panties landing in a tumble on the floor. He fucks her with his fingers first, probably not long enough and probably not gentle enough. He thumbs her clitoris and she arches her back towards him. Years of marriage and he knows exactly what to do with a woman in his hands, but he's having trouble holding on to the need, the desperation. He has minutes rather than years with this woman.
He uses his free hand to fumble with his belt buckle, clumsily wresting himself free of his pants, pushing them to his knees. He slides his hands under her ass and pulls her against his hips, pushes himself into her as slowly as his need will allow. The harsh physicality of it all reminds him of the European movies Kathy liked watching on cable - emphasis on hard realism, no soft focus or shadow lighting.
He fucks her to be inside her, Olivia with her legs spread around him and her breasts arching toward the ceiling. He wants to make her come, finally crack her open for him if for no one else. He licks his fingers for lubrication and kneads her clitoris with a little more finesse.
Eventually she does come, grasping the sheets tightly in her fists and thrusting forward with her hips. She says his name when she comes. It pushes him over the edge so that he's right behind her, closing his eyes and saying, "fuck - Liv - god..." all at once.
When his breathing slows he opens his eyes and looks straight into Olivia's. It's an oddly misplaced moment, something real in the hazy unreality.
He slides out of her and sinks onto the bed beside her. His pants are tangled around his knees, causing him to land with one foot under his leg. He ignores the discomfort in favour of stretching his arms above his head, lacing his fingers so he can rest his neck in the cradle of his hands.
He fixes his eyes on the ceiling, listens to their breathing shallowing once more. He thinks about things he should say, normal afterglow pillow talk. Nothing is appropriate.
"Do you think that's what it was about?" she says, eventually. She turns to look at him her arm across her chest, instinctively covering herself. "Sexual tension?"
"I don't know," he says. He has less answers now than he did before. He had no answers before. "Maybe."
She sits up in bed, swings her legs over the side and walks to the bathroom. He watches her, a part of him knowing this is the last time he'll see her naked. When she returns from the bathroom she's wearing a robe.
"You should go," she says. It isn't unkind, just stating the obvious.
He gets to his feet, puts his pants back on and searches the floor for his shirt. He finds it tangled in hers, blue and white intertwined. He threw them to the floor together.
"I want to talk about this," he says, when he's dressed. He holds his tie in his hand, feeling foolish.
"What for?"
He's struck by the notion there's something that should be said, but he doesn't know what it is. "I don't know."
"It won't happen again," she says. And they both know it's true.
She sees him to the door. He kisses her forehead before he leaves, imprints the memory of her skin on his lips.
The appeal is upheld in their favour. Elliot celebrates his reinstatement by requesting, and receiving, a transfer to Organised Crime. Olivia doesn't ask him to go but somewhere in their unspoken agreements they always knew it would be him that had to leave if it came down to it. This was where she belonged, where she would stay.
Eventually he told Kathy what he'd done and she reacted by calmly asking him to leave until she could get her head around his infidelity - something she'd not contemplated in their seventeen years of marriage. Something he'd not contemplated either. Her calm surprised him but on reflection he realised he had no idea how she would react. She was always the rational one.
One week later she allows him to return. The marriage is strained but she tells him she wants to try and she believes him when he says it won't happen again.
"I know you want me to forgive you," she tells him. "But I can't do that. I probably never will."
But it doesn't mean they can't be married, and it doesn't mean they can't pretend to forget.
At night he still reads the newspaper, alone at the table. There's a cold comfort in the stillness of his sleeping household, everything in its place.
On one occasion Kathy joins him, sits on the opposite of the table, leans her head against her fist and looks at him, a contemplative expression on her face.
"You turned out a lot more complicated than I expected," she says. "You know - when we were married."
"Yeah," he says. He turns the page, doesn't look up. "Yeah, me too."