Work Text:
I don't wanna talk down on your lover
I don't wanna be a homewrecker
I just know I can be better, be better, be better
Homewrecker/Sombr
God will not tempt you beyond what you can bear; that's what the Bible promised him. The Bible said no temptation would come that was too great to be withstood, that God would be faithful and provide, always, an escape from temptation, a way out so that his children would not of necessity sink hopeless into sin. God would tempt each man according to his measure and provide a way out, and wait for that man to choose the righteous path, or crumble into dust.
That, Elliot thinks, is a load of shit, because a temptation has been laid in his path he can not withstand. He can not bear it, the denial of this, the dearest longing of his heart; he can not bear it. No way out has been provided to him; or at least, no way that is tenable to him. To remove this temptation from his life would be to end his life, for what he desires most is not a thing, not wealth or glory or power; what Elliot desires more than anything else is the other half his soul, the only person who has ever made him feel whole, the only piece of goodness left in a world gone black with grief and insatiable rage.
She is his temptation, and he has succumbed to that temptation with eager, grasping hands, and as he feels himself swallowed up by the sweet sin of her he feels himself changed. Or, perhaps not changed; laid bare, instead, revealed for the beast he has always been, selfish and prideful and covetous. He tells himself there is no other choice, that a life without her is not a life worth living, and maybe that's true, or maybe he just wants it to be. Maybe it's easier to believe that this, that she, is inevitable. Easier to tell himself that he has no other choice than to admit that he's too weak to follow God's commandments. Easier to believe he was damned already than admit that he has done it himself, and gladly.
But oh, how could any man resist the temptation of her? Beneath him she is glorious, wild and luscious and his, the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. Naked and wanton she sprawls across the starched white bedsheets, the scratchy, bleached fabric providing an intoxicating contrast to her soft tanned skin. She is golden, all over, golden like the setting summer sun and twice as hot, burning him everywhere they touch. Dark hair fanned across the pillowcase, dark eyes watching him, hooded and wanting, pinks lips pouty and soft, open for him as she invites him into her, and she's pink and soft and open there, too, between her long, lean legs.
As he spreads himself out over her, as he reaches between her thighs and lets his fingertips dance over the softness of her, he wonders what she thinks about it. About this sin they're committing, have been committing, will keep committing because they don't know how to stop and don't want to, anyway. Wonders if she regrets it, if she's worried about her soul. In the old days she scoffed at religion, and he doesn't think that's changed but there's so much that's different about her now and they don't talk about it. About what changed, what didn't, what left the scars on her soft, heavy breasts and the wary look in her dark eyes. They don't talk about much of anything.
His hands say what his words can't. He touches her, greedy and needful, sinks his fingers into soft flesh. Grips her tender thigh hard enough to bruise and wants to, wants to leave a mark on her, his brand lingering long after she's left his side. Curls the fingers of his other hand inside her, strokes through the velvet soft hell of her and feels a rush of ravenous pride when she moans for him, breathy and eager, her back arching, hips rising off the mattress to chase the sensation of him.
The spread of her makes his mouth water. Her belly is soft between the hard points of her hips; he knows, now, the way the curve of her bone fits in the palm of his hand, knows the taste of the tender skin beneath her navel, and craves it. Her tits spill everywhere, not perky and round the way he remembers but heavy, and soft, so soft; he knows the way the skin of her breasts catches in his teeth, knows the fullness of her nipple between his lips and the way she keens when he suckles her there. What he doesn't know is how it makes her feel; physically he knows it lights her up but what does it do to her heart when she looks down over the slope of her chest and sees him mouthing at her tits, facedown in the softness of her?
These days she runs hot; there's a sheen of sweat making her glisten already, her skin sparkling like diamonds in the sun, and on impulse he ducks his head, licks the salt from her neck and feels her arms rising up to hold him, her hands cradling the back of his head, trapping him against her. It would be easy, so easy to mark her there, and he thinks she wants him to. Or, right now she wants him to, craves the sting of it, longs for him to claim her, aches for the possessiveness of it, but when this moment of madness passes she'll hate him for it, and he's not so lost in the now that he forgets there will be an after. The bruises on her thighs can be explained away, but her husband will not believe her if she tells him that the hickey on her neck is a burn from her curling iron, and she won't thank Elliot for it, the calamity that will unfold if her man discovers how she's been spending her time.
Her husband. The word burns in his belly, shame and hate intermingled. It's a cruel twist of fate; for thirteen years Elliot watched her wander the world lonesome and searching, watched the men come and go, none of them staying, none of them capable of taking her from him, but then he went away. Spent a decade far from her side, Odysseus lost on the long journey back to Ithaca, and maybe it was stupid but he thought that when he finally returned home he would find her just as he had left her, Penelope fighting off the suitors and keeping the homefires burning for her wayward man. Not so for him, not so for her, his Penelope; she did not wait for him. She has accepted a suitor and made a home with him and lets her Telemachus call another man dad. Too long, he wandered too long, and she gave up on him, and now that he has come home he has found that home irreparably changed, his place usurped by another.
By a man he hates, a man she loves, a man who has everything Elliot ever wanted, a man she won't leave, not even for the sake of her own heart.
The anger makes his jaw clench at her throat. Her breath catches, her cunt tightening around his fingers; she likes it, the danger of it, the way his teeth punish her for the crime she has committed. Likes it, wants it, craves it, but cannot have it; his mouth slides away before it goes too far, before he does something he can't take back. Right now, in this moment, in this bed, he wants to say the hell with it and mark her, but he knows that when the fog of lust clears he'll regret it. Maybe it's not madness, then, this furious need he feels for her; he is in control, still. He is choosing, still, even as he tells himself that the force of this want is too overwhelming to resist. The contradiction makes him contrite on Sundays, but it's Thursday now and he will not be ruled by guilt tonight. That's a problem he'll save for the daylight.
Around his fingers she is dripping for him, wet and inviting, and his cock has been hard since he checked into the hotel. Standing at the front desk, waiting for his key, shifting on his feet and thinking about this, her naked and wet and clinging to him, her moans soft in his ear. In this place they are anonymous, no risk of her son or his son or anyone who knows them overhearing, but she's quiet, still. Doesn't like it when he makes the headboard bounce off the wall, chides him when his groans grow too loud. Doesn't want anyone to know what they're doing here, even though there's no doubt the desk clerk has figured it out already. They check in late and leave before sunrise and maybe it would be smarter to vary the location of these illicit rendezvous but they like the consistency of it. The same hotel, every time, and it starts to feel like, not home exactly, but the place where they belong. A place that's theirs, for a few hours on the sporadic occasions her schedule will allow. It's the only thing that's theirs, this bed, this room, this secret they guard so viciously.
All they are is shadows, a mockery of the intimacy they crave, that she shares with another. It's not lost on him, the way their roles have reversed. For so long he was the one bound to another, and her the one left on the outside, watching him go home to someone else. Now it's his turn to watch her walking away, and he can't help but think that she handled the abandonment with more grace than he's capable of. She used to encourage him to go home to Kathy. Now he's the one begging her to leave her man behind.
Not that she ever will. Not that he knows what he'd do if she did.
"Tell me what you want," he growls at her, his fingers thrusting inside her, his lips skating over her breast while she mewls and shakes and claws at him, tries to hold him still, tries to keep him with her. The question has been on his mind for months now; what the fuck does she want? Does she want the man who put the ring on her finger, or the man who makes her fall apart in this nondescript hotel room? Partner or husband, which will she choose, or is she like him; has she chosen already, and just doesn't want to admit it? What does she say to her husband, after, when she leaves this olive tree bed for her marital bed; does she slide beneath her own sheets and wrap her arms around him instead, tell him she loves him with Elliot's cum between her thighs? Does she fuck him, too, sometimes, after she's been with Elliot, let Elliot ease the way for the man who comes after him, and never tell him? He thinks about her husband's fingers inside her the way his are now, and his vision goes red with murderous intent.
"You," she pants back at him. It's an answer but it's not; right now she wants him, but she's going to leave him, after. Maybe she's just telling him what he wants to hear. Maybe she just wants him to fuck her already and knows that's the fastest way to get the job done.
He wants her to want him. Wants to know that he's not the only one drowning in this longing, the only one who has become a slave to this desire. Oh he thinks she wants him, because she wouldn't be here if she didn't, wouldn't take this risk, wouldn't give him her time, her body, if she didn't want to, but there's thinking and there's knowing. He doesn't know her anymore, not the way he used to. Not the way he wants to.
The woman he knew before was not an adulterer; it might've been easier if she had been. If she'd spit on his vows and reached for him he might've taken her hand, and maybe it would've been her and not Kathy who got pregnant in '07, and maybe Kathy would still be alive and it would be Elliot's ring on Olivia's finger and maybe they'd be happy. The maybes are killing him, inch by inch. Because no matter what the maybes might've been, they did what they did and Olivia didn't choose him and his son isn't hers and her son isn't his and Kathy is gone and they are both shadows of themselves. Ghosts of what might have been.
The spirit is vengeful in him tonight; his mouth captures the hard furled bud of her nipple and he worries it between his teeth while he fucks her with his hand. Three fingers is one too many for her most nights and the punishing thrust of those fingers inside her makes her cry out, her voice just this side of pained, while her body bows for him. It's a rush, heady and intoxicating, the knowledge that he has done this to her, torn those desperate, needy sounds from her, made her so wet, so eager, so hungry for him. Makes him feel powerful; makes him feel like a god, or would if he couldn't see the shine of someone else's ring on her finger.
"You ever make that noise for him?" he asks, and catches her breast in his teeth to stop any more incendiary words spilling from his lips. It's not a question he ever meant to ask her; it's not a question he's sure he wants the answer to. Because now he can't stop thinking about it, can't stop picturing that fucking prick with his hands on her, in her, teasing her, tasting her, her legs spreading wide to accommodate someone else's hips.
It'd be easier if her man was a stranger. Just some guy, some doctor or lawyer or banker, an affable blank space of a person, but Olivia never does anything by halves. She didn't just marry someone else; she married a man Elliot hates, a man who hates him. Married fucking Tucker, that evil piece of shit who spent years trying to take Elliot's badge and gloated in his face when he finally succeeded. Ed fucking Tucker, that's who gets to share Olivia's bed, and he can't help but wonder whether that was Tucker's plan all along. Get Elliot out of the picture, get Liv all to himself. Can't help but wonder if that's why Tucker took her to bed the first time, just to prove he could, just to take one more thing from Elliot after he'd already stolen everything else.
Probably that's not fair. Probably Tucker just loves her, because everybody loves her, because it's impossible not to love her. Probably thumbing his nose at Elliot was just icing on the cake. Elliot's not feeling especially fair minded, just now; all he can think is how much he hates that son of a bitch, how he'll never understand why Liv chose him, how it's killing him to think about Tucker's hands on her body when it should've been Elliot instead. Sure, Elliot's touching her now, but it's not the same; when they're finished here she'll go home to Tucker, and he'll go home to an empty apartment. Eli stays with Maureen, most nights. His own son doesn't even want to spend time with him.
"Don't be - oh - an ass," Olivia gasps at him, and that irritates the shit out of him. She calls him an ass, but she's the one who married someone else, married Tucker; she's the one who didn't wait for him, the one who won't leave her husband for him, the one who gives him half of her heart and leaves him aching for more.
She's also the one who got left behind. She's the one whose calls he didn't answer, the one who knows he chose his wife, his family, over her, over the job. She's the one who had no reason to think he was ever coming home and she's the one who had to build a new life without him. There's enough blame to go around, here. It doesn't all rest with her.
But now he's thinking about it, about Tucker, about the sin they're committing here, and now that he's started he can't stop.
"He ever make you this wet?" Elliot pants at her. He can feel her arousal slicking up his palm, easing the way for the three fingers he's thrusting brutally inside her, can feel her swollen and wet and hot for him, everywhere, and there's no way, he thinks, there's no fucking way that Ed Tucker ever turns her on this much. The man is too straight-laced, too uptight, too fucking normal for her. There's things she needs he can't give her.
"You really wanna know?" her eyes flash at him, challenge him, goad him; there is a warning there. Don't ask questions you don't wanna know the answer to.
Maybe he's wrong. Maybe Tucker does turn her on. Maybe Tucker slaps her ass and makes her call him daddy and maybe she craves him, too. The way she craves Elliot.
It's a craving, he knows. This thing, him and her together, they crave it, both of them, are addicted to it, and like any addict they'll sacrifice anything, even their own souls, for just one more hit.
"Just - Elliot - please."
The challenge in her eyes falters and her hips stutter underneath him and her pouty bottom lip is trembling; he's pushed too far, he realizes. Every time he mentions her husband he's just reminding her of the risk she's taking, the happy little family that's waiting at home for her and the way she's turned her back on it for the sake of a few stolen hours spent in Elliot's arms. This bed, this room, this place, it's supposed to be them, just them, just the two of them alone with their aching want and their trembling hands, and if he invites her husband into this room it will spell disaster for them both. He's got his mouth on her tits and his fingers inside her and he doesn't want Tucker to take this from him, too, so he changes tactics.
"You want this?" he asks, his voice harsh and almost mean, lips dancing over the shell of her ear while his cock replaces his fingers, nudges against her while her body sings in anticipation.
"Yeah," she sighs, her hands turning gentle, smoothing over the feverish skin of his back. Her tenderness breaks him; it'd be easier if she was cruel, demanding, selfish, but she isn't. She is soft instead, accepting, enticing, and he sinks into her with a groan that is half a sob.
The thick, heavy length of his spreads her open; she accepts him wet and willing, keening as her hips rock beneath him, drawing him deeper and deeper into herself. She feels like heaven, sweet and slick and silky around his overheated cock, her diamond hard nipples catching against his own where their chests press together. With one hand he gropes at her, needy and desperate while the other holds him steady over her and he wants to hate her, wants to think that what they're doing is fucking and nothing more than that, but when her eyes flutter open and capture his gaze he can't lie to himself.
He loves her. Jesus, he loves her. Loves the brash, ballsy way she laughs, loves the swing of her hips and the shine of her eyes, loves the wrinkles between her tits and the softness of her belly. He loves her anger and her compassion, loves her strength and her vulnerability, loves the Captain and the girl she used to be and every version of Olivia she has ever been. Loves her, and needs her, his partner, his perfect other half, the only force on earth that can balance him, the only hands that have ever brought him peace. He loves her, and when she looks up at him like that, her dripping cunt spread wide around his cock and her eyes shiny with an affection that makes them both ache, he can't deny it.
"Say it," he grunts at her, not as grim as he was before; it's not so much a demand as it is a plea. Begging for her now, his hips rocking into her, driving his cock into her again and again, and every time, it feels perfect every time, and he is breaking into pieces.
"Look at me," she tells him, catching his face in her hands, pulling him in close. The movement of his hips falters; he slows, stops for a moment, buried inside her, vibrating all over, heartbroken and aroused to the point of pain. Time stops as she holds him, as her dark eyes sear into him, as he shivers in her embrace, eager to take her and wanting to stay like this forever, and he can't have it both ways; they're gonna have to choose.
"I love you, Elliot," she tells him. Eyes wide open, soft pussy clenching and fluttering around him, naked and beautiful she gazes up at him, and tells him she loves him, and he believes her.
"I love you," he says. "I love you."
There's nothing for it then but to kiss her, and so he does; her tender hands and their whispered confessions have tempered the wildness of his need, and he doesn't pound into her, doesn't piston his hips and make them both see stars. He rocks into her, slow and deep, his hips barely moving so he can stretch this moment out, so he can kiss her without impediment. Her soft lips part for him and she welcomes the slide of his tongue in her mouth, and she's hot and wet around his tongue just like she's hot and wet around his dick and nothing, nothing in his life has ever felt as good, as right as this does.
There's a silver cross around his neck, and with his body stretched out over her like this the chain pools in the valley between her breasts, and he wonders if she can feel it, the cool accusation of the cross, the way he can feel the cool gold of her wedding rings against the stubbled skin of his cheek. His God, her husband; they're both betraying someone tonight. It doesn't feel that way, though, doesn't feel like a betrayal, not in the moment; in the moment she belongs to him, and he's right where he always should've been, and something like relief surges through his blood.
But he can't ignore the way his body is clamouring for her; even as he kisses her his hips start to move a little faster, and her own rise up to meet him, and the seal of their lips is broken, now, though his head hangs low over hers, still, lips catching, panting breaths rushing from her open mouth into his and back again. Her nails turn into the skin of his back and her tongue licks at his teeth and she is everything, everything he ever wanted, everything he ever needed, everything he craves, everything that is going to kill him.
Shit and fuck, they trade gasping curses as he drives into her; harder now, faster, skin slapping wetly together, their voices rise despite her trepidation. There is always a moment, near the end, when she loses herself, forgets all the reasons why she shouldn't want this and just lets herself be with him, and it's coming, now; she's coming, now.
He feels her start to fall and thrusts into her harder, faster, grinds his pelvis against her so she can feel him from her clit to her cervix, from the tips of her pink-painted toes to the roots of her dark hair. Her whole body trembles for him, pussy clutching him so tight it makes his eyes water, and he swallows the sounds of her desperate cries as she falls apart for him. That temptation is too great for him to resist; he ruts into the fluttering, frenzied heat of her, stokes the flames of her desire until his own reaches the tipping point, and he spills himself inside her with a bone-deep groan of satisfaction.
It hits him like a goddamn train and his arms give out; he collapses, briefly, onto the softness of her, pants wetly into the curve of her tits while her spasming cunt pushes his slowly softening dick out of her, and he feels it, feels the sudden absence of her warmth around him, and tries to rally. He wants - needs - to see it, so he slides slowly down her body, watches as the pulsing of her overstimulated sex sends his cum dripping slowly out of her. Rests his cheek on her thigh and reaches up to run his fingers over her. It's not right, he thinks, that she should expel him so quickly, so readily; he doesn't want her to.
Slowly he turns his fingers, gathers up his cum and thrusts it back into her, and she's so fucking slick, so fucking wet from both of them, and he wants her to keep him inside her, just a little while longer. Paints the velvety soft walls of her with his cum, curls his fingers against her and draws another breathless little moan from her.
"I can't," she gasps at him, her trembling hands reaching for him in an ineffectual attempt to push him away, but he will not be deterred. When she says I can't, all he can think is you will.
She can come one more time. He can do this one thing for her.
With a singleminded focus he devotes himself to this, to her pleasure, to his fingers fucking his cum back into her. It's his right hand between her legs, those the fingers curling into the heat of her; with his left he reaches for her clit, and rubs, faster and faster, a maddening pace that makes his forearm burn, makes her squeal. The pleasure is too much for her and she tries to run away from him but he doesn't let her; the weight of his body on her thigh holds her down, and his hands tear this last gift from her, turn her into a shivering, shuddering, insensible mess, and this time when she comes she soaks them both.
"Stop stop stop," she's pleading with him; he's pushed too hard, maybe, judging by the almost tearful sound of her voice, so this time he listens to her, kisses her thigh and draws his hands away, slides back up her body to take stock of her.
To his horror, he finds that she is crying. Shaking as the last waves of her orgasm wash over her, rolling into him, she is crying, soft tears running down her perfect cheeks. It scares him, her tears, the way he doesn't know what caused them, but when he reaches for her she goes to him readily, curls into the warmth of his chest and wraps both her legs around one of his thick thighs, his cock soft and sticky at her belly while the mess of them, her cum and his, soaks into her skin.
"I'm sorry," he whispers into her hair.
"Don't be," she answers, her lips soft at his collarbone.
He is, though; he's sorry. He's sorry for pushing too hard, and he's sorry for whatever he did that made her cry, and he's sorry for her son. Noah's a sweet kid and he's had a safe, happy childhood, sheltered in the embrace of two parents who love him and love each other, and every time Elliot touches Olivia he risks ruining that kid's whole life.
Most of all, though, he's sorry for what he's done to Liv. Thirteen years she spent protecting his marriage. Kath invited her for dinner once, the first year they were partnered up, and Kath took one look at her and saw what a goddamn knockout she was and her eyes narrowed, and Liv saw it, and Liv never came for dinner again. Didn't swing by to see him when the family was home, didn't come to the fourth of July barbeque. Liv kept her distance, let him shelter his family from the reality of their day-to-day, and never, not once, gave him reason to be unfaithful to Kathy. Thirteen years she wanted him, and never reached for him, and he couldn't last eight whole months.
That's how long it took. Eight months. Kathy died, and Elliot was spinning out, and he found out Liv was married, found out she had a son, and eight months later he pinned her against a wall in the parking garage under One PP and kissed her like he had something to prove. He couldn't go eight months without blowing her life up because of his own selfish desires. Because he wanted her, needed her, craved her, because he hated her fucking husband, because he loved her too much to let her go but couldn't love her enough to leave her alone.
She's a better person than he is. She always has been.
But it takes two. Maybe he'd have cheated on Kath, if Liv had reached for him, but maybe not. He loved his wife, loved his family, never strayed once. Maybe he loved Kathy more than Olivia loves Tucker. Christ, he hopes that true.
"I hate this," she whispers, her voice shaky and soft and dripping with regret.
"I know," he says, because he does. He does know. He knows what she hates, and it's not them. It's not the way they fit together, the relief they find in one another's arms. She doesn't hate him any more than he hates her. What she hates is this, the way they never seem to get it right. He was married, and now she is, and the time has never been right, and they have always had to choose. Partner or spouse, lover or family, job or each other; every day of the last twenty years they have had to choose, and no matter what choice they make someone always gets hurt. It's harder now, harder than it ever was before, because now they know how it feels to hold onto one another. Now he knows the taste of her mouth and the sounds she makes when she comes and how the fuck is he supposed to walk away from that?
How can he not? How can he keep doing this to her, to himself? Every time they meet like this they tear another piece of themselves away. How much will be left by the end? What will the end even look like?
"He's getting suspicious," she confesses then, and his arms tighten around her.
Truth be told, he's been expecting that. Tucker was a cop - apparently the prick's been retired for a year or two now and Elliot hates him for that, too, hates him for being able to walk away, for playing stay-at-home-dad and loving it, for being there to support Olivia in a way Elliot can never hope to do himself - and he's not an idiot. The man spent his career rooting out liars; he can probably smell it on her. The lies, if not the sex. One night every month or two Liv tells her husband she has to stay at the station late and comes to meet Elliot instead, and how long could they really expect to hide this from him? It wouldn't take much. All Tucker has to do is call her office phone and listen to it ring until her voicemail picks up. All he has to do is call the desk Sergeant, who'll tell him Captain Benson left hours ago. All he has to do is stop by one night, and see the lights off in SVU, and he'll know.
Tucker's not stupid, but maybe Elliot is, for thinking he could get away with this. For thinking they could do this in the first place. Can't have your cake and eat it, too, he thinks. They were always gonna have to choose.
"You say stop, and we'll stop," Elliot tells her hoarsely. Christ, he doesn't wanna stop, but he will. For her sake, he will. If she tells him to, he'll walk away, and hate himself every day for the rest of his life. Maybe he'll get himself killed on the job; sometimes he think the life insurance would help his kids more than he ever could. Maybe that's how the story ends, Liv holding hands with her husband at Elliot's grave side.
"The fucked up thing is, sometimes I think…I want him to find out," she says. The way she's laying, holding on to him, her face buried in his neck, he can't see her eyes, can't read her expression. He doesn't need to, though. He knows what she means.
"It'd be so much easier if he just left me."
It was like that with Kathy, he remembers. She left him the first time and he hated that, but then they slept together after the family annihilator case and he realized he didn't want to go back, and he just kinda drifted away, hoping she'd decide for herself that she didn't want him. That backfired spectacularly; it turned out she didn't want him, after all, but the damage was done and she was already pregnant and he had to go home and she had to accept him. Those years they spent in Rome, he kept working, all the time, wondering when the other shoe was gonna fall. When she was gonna realize that he was never around, that she missed her family, missed her home, when she decided she'd had enough and left him for the last time. He used to lie awake in bed staring at the ceiling, wondering what he'd do if she left. He always thought about calling Liv.
But Kathy didn't leave, and then she died, and waiting for her to do the thing he wasn't strong enough to do himself is one of his biggest regrets. She might still be alive if he'd just had the balls to tell her the truth.
"Since you came home, he's been different," she continues. "It's like he's just waiting…"
Jesus. It'd be funny if it wasn't so fucked up. Liv is lying in Elliot's arms, waiting for her husband to leave her, while Tucker sits at home, waiting for Liv to tell him she's leaving him for Elliot. It's a hell of a stalemate.
How has he been different? Elliot wants to ask her. What changed in her husband, when he found out her old partner was back in town? Tucker was there, in the old days, knows what they were like together, gas and a match, burning wildfire hot, out of control. Knows how they covered for each other, protected each other, understood each other. Knew that the best way to guarantee Elliot left the force was to threaten to take Liv's badge, too, and fuck him because it worked. What did he think, when he heard Elliot was back? Who told him? What questions does he ask his wife when she comes home late? Does he really think she'd be willing to break up their family for a man she hasn't seen in ten years?
Is she willing? Will she ever be?
"One of these days, you're gonna have to make a choice," he tells her. Like it's that easy; he knows it's not. Ten years ago he made his choice, and he's spent those ten years wondering if he got it all wrong. Wondering if everyone might've been better off if he'd chosen something else instead. It's not the kinda guilt he wants Liv to carry. He doesn't know how to save her from it.
"I will," she says. "But not tonight."
"Not tonight," he agrees, and kisses the top of her head.
Tonight she's his. Tonight she lies, sated and sad, in the warmth of his embrace. Tonight his cum is drying tacky on her skin and he can still taste her on the tip of his tongue. Tonight he tells himself they're going to be ok. Tonight he loves her, and hopes that love will be enough to see them through the dark days that lie ahead.