Elliot: No plus one.
Reed:you should try dating sometime
Reed:might improve your personality
Elliot’s mouth curved.
Elliot:My personality is fine.
Reed:your personality is terrifying
Reed:but I like you anyway
Reed:see you Saturday
Elliot set his phone down and clocked the interior of his office. Standard issue desk, filing cabinets, framed commendations. Captain's bars earned six months ahead of schedule.
He’d spent three years building a career that appeared perfect on paper.
He'd also spent three years having sex with men whose names he didn't bother learning, chasing thirty minutes of feeling anything that wasn't the hollow ache of going through the motions.
Elliot knew how to compartmentalize physical need from everything else. Meet someone at an app, go to their place or a hotel, keep it efficient and anonymous. No phone numbers. No second meetings. Nothing that could turn into expectations he'd inevitably fail to meet.
Except it never quite worked. Every encounter left him emptier than before.
The next forty-eighthours passed in a blur of work and runs that didn't quite burn through the tension coiling in his chest. Elliot memorized the itinerary, while his brain ran scenarios that all ended with him making Reed's wedding awkward.
By the time he pulled into the parking lot of the venue Friday evening, his hands were steady on the wheel and his face completely neutral.
That had to count for something.
The rehearsal dinner was at some Italian place—red and white checked tablecloths, string lights wrapped around fake grape vines, an aggressively charming atmosphere that was supposed to make people relax. Elliot’s shoulders tightened the second he walked through the door.
The restaurant had closed the back room for the rehearsal dinner. Maybe fifty people scattered around tables, already loud with conversation and laughter. Elliot scanned the room automatically, cataloging faces: Reed's family, Sarah's family, a handful of guys from Selection he vaguely recognized, several officers from Fort Liberty.
And there, near the bar, talking to Novak?—
Hale.
It had been three years of Elliot telling himself he was over it, that it had been a temporary thing born from proximity and convenience. And yet, his breath stopped.
Hale looked different. Older, obviously, they all did. Hair slightly longer than regulation but still professional. He'd filled out slightly, shoulders broader under his white button-down shirt. But the way he moved was exactly the same—that loose, confident energy that Elliot's pulse recognized before his brain did. Hale had his head thrown back laughing at whatever Novak said, throat exposed, completely at ease in his own skin in a way Elliot never managed.
Elliot's hands flexed at his sides. Heat crawled up his neck.
He should leave. Should turn around and walk back out before anyone noticed he'd arrived.
"Shaw!"
Reed's voice, loud and delighted, cut through the noise.
Elliot turned. Reed wove through tables, grin wideenough to show he'd already had a couple of drinks. In his peripheral, Elliot caught the exact moment Hale registered who Reed was calling to.
Their eyes locked across the room.
Hale’s smile faltered for a second, a slight hesitation before he molded it back into place. But Elliot saw it. The three months learning to read every micro-expression on Hale’s face apparently hadn't faded.
"You made it!" Reed grabbed Elliot's shoulders, pulling him into a brief hug that Elliot tolerated because refusing would make it ‘weird.’ "I was starting to think you bailed."
