Chapter Text
Elliot
The first thing he does is call her.
It can’t be like last time, he refuses. She can do with the information what she wants. But he's learned his fucking lesson.
He had actually learned his fucking lesson approximately 10 minutes into retirement.
Elliot's head hangs low as he leaves One Police Plaza, pulling out his phone before he can stop himself as his thumb hovers her name and presses.
It rings three times before she picks up.
“Benson,” she answers like she's blindly accepted the call in the middle of something else.
“Hey, partner.” The words stick in his throat this time around. Calling her his partner had transcended the days they’d stalk up to crime scenes with the confidence of more seasoned detectives than they were, flashing their badges. He’d say I’m Detective Stabler and this is my partner Detective Benson. Now, the woman he called partner is a Captain and it briefly pulses a surge of pride through his body at the reminder.
“El?" Her tone shifts to something soft when she recognizes his voice. "Everything okay? How did the doctor’s appointment go?”
Elliot rubs the back of his neck as he comes to rest against a street lamp. “Concussion's mild, I don’t have any pain looking left to right anymore, and my tremors are minimal.”
“That’s good, good.” There’s an audible relief in her voice, a breathy change that further softens her tone. “And you had your meeting with 1PP?”
He lets out a sigh. “Yeah. This isn’t easy– despite the fact that it was a clean shoot– they aren’t really sure that a Detective who turned around and got hit by a car–”
“El–”
“I’m done, Liv. Between my jacket and my injuries. It’s medically induced retirement. I’ll recover but my doc and the brass don’t think I’ll ever be fit for duty. They all but filed my papers for me.” He can’t have a panic attack or anything in broad daylight, leaning against a fucking lampost outside of 1PP but he feels damn near close. He rubs his eye with his free hand not holding his phone, still in disbelief that he's done.
“No, they– that can’t be right.” There’s a waver in her delivery but her tone of voice is all Captain Benson. “I’ll meet you down at 1PP– we can figure something out–”
“Don’t–” His chest tightens. This is what he’d been afraid of when he left the first time. Entangling her jacket with his like some kind of fucked up straight jacket. He can't be one of her problems, he did that enough by accident. “I’ll get more time with the grandkids,” he forces out. “Maybe I’ll take up woodworking or something.”
“I’m not having dinner with you and your mom with a canoe in your living room.” The tone has shifted back to friendly and it lets oxygen into his lungs a little easier hearing it.
So he barks a laugh at the mental image, grateful that even if she’s struggling with his news, she’s not sharing it. “Nah– no boats– ducks maybe? Or birds? Or I could just make those figurines that look like penises from one angle but are completely innocent when you see them straight on?”
And he wants to bottle the sound of her laugh from the minute it escapes her lips and enters his ears. He’d place the bottle next to the moment shared in her office nearly three years ago. The shelf collects dust now, with their moments together so few and far between.
“If you make one, they stay at your apartment, not around Noah.”
“Liv– he’s a teenage boy, he'd think it’s hilarious.”
“I will hang up, right now.” There’s no real threat in her voice and they’re silent again for a beat.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come down to 1PP and vouch for you or?...”
“Doctor’s orders. Hard for me to get around ‘em.” He scratches his eyebrow. “I needed the distraction though, so thank you.”
“Thank you for telling me." There's a softness to her voice, like her throat is so thick with emotion she can't speak any louder.
“You’re the first call.”
And there’s silence on the other end of the line again, and he’s almost sure the call dropped.
“Liv?”
“Call your mom– and your kids.” The slow careful words push out of her mouth. “Thank you... for calling me first.”
He doesn't know why he says it, but the words come vomiting out of his mouth anyways. "It’s uhh not going to be relevant much longer but you know you’re the one on my 10 card right?”
“I do. Why do you think I knew about you getting hit by a truck?” She laughs, quieter than the bellowing playful laugh of before.
“I never want the choice to be taken from you again, Liv. That’s all. So even if I’m unconscious or concussed– you’d know.”
“Well, okay then.” Her breath shakes.
“I’ll call my family next if you promise me one thing.”
Another beat of silence.
So he takes it as the go ahead to continue.
“You talk my family out of throwing me a retirement party.”
Olivia laughs from the other end, not quite the relaxed tone from before, but not the choked up laugh from just moments prior. “You got it.”
“Liv?" He breathes. "What am I gonna do?”
“You’ll find your way. And if not, I’ve got some dry cleaning you can pick up.”
Elliot laughs. “Still use that dry cleaner over on Fulton?”
“I sure do.”
“Creature of habit.”
“Pot meets kettle, Elliot. Uhh– just a sec.” There’s indistinct chatter he can hear in the background of her phone call for a moment, her murmuring something about Mercy– 30– got it– Thanks Fin– before she returns to her phone.
“Gotta go but I’ll talk to you later? You can tell me about how telling your family went.” He’s surprised she’s offering but he’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
So he says, “okay.”
The call ends and he stares at the contact card. After his accident, he’d changed the picture to one of them, one of the only pictures of them they’d taken after his return, her tucked into his side. He studies the brown of her eyes, the caramel of her hair, the delicate slope of her nose, the perfect curve of her lips. She’s easily the most breathtaking woman he’s ever seen. And he’d do anything for her. That wasn’t new, it’s never been new or novel, it’s just been… innate.
Wanting to love and cherish and honor Olivia Benson has always felt more innate, ingrained, than any vow he’s ever taken during a sacrament.
He finally closes his contacts and opens up his maps, double checks how far the walk is and clicks his phone shut until he sees the green street sign above his head reading Fulton Street.
Olivia
“I’m done, Liv.”
The three words have been ringing in her ears for the last several hours. She hadn’t bothered asking him how he was feeling, the shock in his voice told her everything. She’d pushed down, down, down, every feeling of Elliot retiring, despite it not being his choice, brought up. His calling her had not come as a total surprise, they’d been damn near intentional with chatting, talking, and texting, when they had a free moment in their busy lives. She could honestly say that their equilibrium had restored itself to the closest it had been in almost five years and the closest it was to their dynamic from 15 years ago.
She’s not sure they’d ever be Benson & Stabler ever again because neither of them were those people anymore. While she doesn't like to think about his absence, about what it may have been like for him, the good, the bad, the Kathy, a decade can change a person no matter how stagnant they may think they are. You’re older, wiser, with people floating in and out of your life, teaching you lessons of where to and not to go, whether you intend for them to or not.
And now here they were, nearly fifteen years since their eyes locked over the body of a dead teenager, one he’d shot to save her, save them, save everyone. It was traumatizing. Full stop. For years, thanks to therapy, she was able to stop herself when she’d think about their final moments at Benson & Stabler before she spiralled out over okay he had to leave but why leave her, okay he had to retire because yeah his jacket didn’t look so good but why retire and not tell her? Why leave the fucking goddamn country without so much as a word to if he was still breathing for ten fucking years? For more than 3500 days.
For more than 4700 days they breathed the same air on almost a daily basis.
If she’s being generous with herself and lives to the ripe age of 99, she’s got roughly 15000 days left. And she knows, deep down, she wants most, if not all of those days to be spent with Elliot, or being allowed to think about Elliot, or Elliot actively in her orbit.
But the news of his retirement, forced retirement, she tells herself again, has rocked her fucking shit.
And she’ll process later, because they’re in a good place right now, she tells herself. She’ll do what she does day in and day out when things bother her privately but she still has to put on a brave face for the victims. And she’ll help him through this.
If he lets her.
Her stomach drops.
She’s just stood to fetch a file, but she feels like she needs to sit right back down. Her hands splay across her desk as her throat thickens with emotion.
What if he cuts her out again?
No.
She shakes her head despite her rapidly increasing heartbeat. He’d called her. He hadn’t done that last time. He’d done the exact opposite, the pissed off scared voice inside her head tells her. She tries to shove down into the depths of her soul. He’d called her. She’d actually been his first call, she reminds herself. She was the one on his ten card. He’s done everything in his power to make sure she was told anything and everything.
Which gives her hope, the equivalent of a small flicker of a flame on a tea candle, but hope nonetheless.
She’s still standing when there’s a knock at her door and she lets out a breath before looking in the direction of her door.
“Come in.”
And in walks Elliot, with a dress bag draped over his arm and a togo cup in his hand.
“Heard someone needed their dry cleaning picked up?” He gestures to the bag on his arm and she sees it now, her dry cleaner's logo in white on the clear dress bag.
Olivia just blinks. Elliot Stabler in every aspect of his being really knew how to rock her shit (and okay, maybe one aspect was still a mystery to her, but she didn’t want it to be.)
“What–” She’s finding herself taking the proffered togo cup and there’s a tag for a teabag stuck into the sleeve and he remembers she takes tea after lunch and not coffee most days and–
He brought her dry cleaning. The dry cleaning she’d forgotten to prepay because she'd been on the phone with Noah’s dance teacher when she’d dropped it off.
“Thank you?” She’s blinking rapidly, still buffering just a little as she takes the clothes from him as well. “Elliot you didn’t– that was a joke.”
“I was in the area,” he shrugs.
She looks between the cup in her hand and the dry cleaning in the other. The dry cleaner’s was by 1PP but she knows for a fact that the coffee shop he’d gotten her favorite afternoon tea from was not. In fact, it was in the exact opposite direction of 1PP, the dry cleaner’s and the 1-6.
So Olivia just offers him a grateful smile. “Thank you. For the tea– for picking this up. I’ll pay you back. I’m actually running late to grab Noah actually so this is–”
She watches him wave her off at paying him back and her breath catches as she stares at him. She’s so close to word vomiting not only her gratitude but possibly her undying love for the man so she stops herself. She’s still at work. She’s still an SVU Captain. Olivia sets the cup down and drapes her dry cleaning over the back of her chair before she rounds her desk.
“How ya holdin’ up?” She asks, itching to reach out and touch him. She knows she could, in theory. They’ve hugged in recent memory, Don’s memorial comes to mind. She’d pulled him in and his body had moulded to hers like the balm they both had needed that night.
And then he’d said three words like he said them all the time. Like he said them to her before pecking her lips and turning in on his side of the bed or when he had to hang up before pulling an all-nighter on a case or like he was dropping her and Noah off after an outing as a family.
She had no doubt he meant them. But how he meant them? She’s not sure. Platonic or romantic, she knew Elliot didn’t throw those words around flippantly. Recklessly maybe? Ill-timed? But never in a way he didn’t mean.
Elliot offers her a small shrug and brave smile that she wishes she could tell him he didn’t have to put on for her. “Gonna be weird, walking through here as a civilian to visit you.”
“Who says I’m still gonna let you visit after you’re retired?” Her lips quirk into a smile and he matches it, much more genuine than the smile before.
And now she really can’t help herself. Olivia pulls him in for a hug, much like she did at Don’s memorial. He rocks into her, like he’s surprised at the embrace but he needs it and she needs it, too. She needs to remind herself that he’s retiring but he’s not walking away from her like last time. And he needs it because he’s just been told that the career he’s built his life around for more years than not, is over.
One arm goes under his and the other hooks around his neck. She presses her face into his neck and she feels him take that as permission to nuzzle into her hair. The familiar gesture has been present in almost all of their hugs. So she lets him. And she stays there. Oxytocin should begin to release after 20 seconds of holding onto him, or that’s at least what she read somewhere. His presence alone (when he wasn’t scaring the hell out of her or pissing her off) released oxytocin, she believed that. But, what’s an extra 20 seconds with the man she’s been in love with for more than half her life?
Not long enough.
They stand there and she just lets herself be, her muscles relax, her heartbeat syncs with Elliot’s. She can tell by the pulse that thrums underneath her fingertips at the juncture of his neck and shoulder.
And then he does something that he hasn’t before. He squeezes.
She lets out a small noise, not one conveying the squeeze was unwanted, just unexpected. She worries he takes it as the former and he starts to loosen his grip but she just returns the squeeze in kind, letting him know this it's more than okay.
So he doubles down in that Elliot Stabler all-or-nothing way and it’s quite possibly the best hug she’s ever had in her life.
In that moment, she feels like they’re the only two people in a city of eight point four million. And, God, she is more than okay with that. This hug will do wonders for her nervous system, certainly more than the tea he so kindly brought her.
Olivia’s learned one thing in her long career, that (especially with kids) the person who needs the hug decides when it ends. Elliot had without a second thought done something for her after one of the worst days of his life. So letting him hug her for as long as he needed was the least she could do.
His face nuzzles further into her hair and she swears she can feel his lips resting on a pulse point at her neck. She doesn’t mind, lets him, actually, and tries to not let her increasing heartbeat betray her. Her right hand splays across the middle of his back and she rubs soothing circles into it, consoling him like she would her son or a victim.
She knows that he’s Elliot Fucking Stabler and he’s going to get through this, but she’s finally at a place where she doesn’t immediately feel triggered by the trauma of his last departure and she can be who he leans on without it taking so much out of her.
Their comfort is officially reciprocal, symbiotic, even synchronous.
A piece of Benson & Stabler that had returned to them.
She doesn’t count the seconds, so she’s not sure how long they stand there, but he finally starts to pull away. She doesn’t step back, just places her hand on his shoulder and keeps the other at his ribs. If they were more, if they could be more, she’d kiss him, pull his head to rest on her chest, listen to her heartbeat through her breasts as a way of comfort. But she’s not sure they’d ever be there, so she instead offer him another sympathetic smile and squeezes his shoulder.
“I should get going,” he says with a reluctant huff.
“You don’t have to. We could get Wo Hop?”
“Don’t you have to go get Noah?”
Reality crashes back into her and it’s not 1999 and she’s wondering if her partner wants Chinese food.
She’s a mom. He’s a widower. And their dynamic had in many ways still sat in stasis since 2011.
No hug could fix that.
“Right. Well– since I offered– and can’t– rain check?” She feels a little bad now, because having Wo Hop with his partner may cause painful memories to stir up or it might be the right level of nostalgia to remind him that, fuck yeah they had a good run.
When she offers the rain check she watches his features brighten even more than when he proudly presented her with the tea and dry cleaning.
“I’ll hold you to that, partner.”
“I hope you do,” she finds herself saying before she squeezing him a final time.
Olivia heads back over to her desk to start collecting her thinks and Elliot lingers by the door, scratching the bridge of his nose like he’s unsure about what to do or say next.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” She’s about to call Amanda, ask her to collect Noah if Elliot really this distraught and simply not showing it because they're in public.
“As good as I can be. But– I’d be a little better if I could walk you out?”
Olivia’s cheeks flush as her heartbeat threatens to thunder in her chest. She finds herself nodding, however, with a cool, “I’ll just be a minute.”
Elliot holds up his hands before sticking them in the pocket of his jeans. “Take your time.”
She knows what it may look like to the stragglers in her squad that are left for the night, and she’s thanking the universe that Fin is checking out a lead before heading home himself, but she knows any discomfort from any question she has to potentially dodge tomorrow pales in comparison to the comfort her partner needs right now. He’s asking for it and he didn’t all those years ago.
So she lets him guide her out, hand on the small of her back, dry cleaning draped once again on his arm. He breaks the touch only to press the button for the elevator and she finally takes a sip of her tea.
For a split second she’s knocking knees with him on the stoop of his apartment in 2007 until she glances at him, sees all the ways he’s changed, and then at the reflection of herself in the mirrored elevator doors and all the way she’s changed. And, yeah, they may never be that Benson & Stabler again but whatever this was building between them doesn’t scare her like it used to.
That’s what she tells herself, anyways.
Elliot
All his family except Kathleen have left the impromptu family dinner he’d called the next night. She offered to help him clean, and he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth to hear about his daughter’s life away from the input of seven other people plus a baby.
Kathleen passes him a dish to wipe clean and Elliot settles the plate on the drying rack shortly after. With a clear sink, she turns around, resting her elbows against the counter before she looks at him.
“How are you really feeling about all of this?”
Elliot lets out a breath. How did he feel? For a long while, shame had beat loud in his chest when he’d gathered his family together.
“I’m–” Elliot stands at the head of the table, fists clenched at his sides. Bernie’s to his left, Eli to his right. He’d told them already, and it was his other four kids he was most worried about.
“Finally dating Olivia?” Richard asks.
Elliot puffs out his cheeks, shoulders slump. There’s no drink in his hand, so he looks more close to announcing a death in the family than anything.
It’s no sooner that Dickie said it that Lizzie is thwaping him upside his head. “He looks upset, Dickie–”
“Richard–” he corrects.
“Whatever, Dickwad. What if he’s upset about Olivia? And you just reminded him of her?”
He watches Kathleen then, glancing between the twins and Maureen before diffusing the situation. “Daddy, whatever it is, you can tell us. It’s not Olivia, though, is it? Is everything okay? Is it her son?-”
And Elliot wants to smile, his daughter the empath thinking about everyone in the situation, even Noah. His chest swells with a brief moment of pride before he refocuses. “That last op I was on didn’t go as planned.”
“You got hit by a car,” Bernie chastizes. “Again.”
Elliot grimaces. “I went to the doctor to be evaluated, get cleared for duty, the routine every time I’ve gotten hurt on the job. My doc knows the drill, 1PP knows the drill.”
“So you’re back to work? We should be celebrating!” Lizzie offers, and starts to raise her glass of water.
Elliot waves her off. “I’ve had too many concussions." He swallows. "Too many injuries in the last year, I’m healing but–” He thinks about the way telling Olivia, Eli, and Bernie that he was “done” had felt like his heart was ripped from his chest again and again and again.
“Go on, dad,” Maureen encourages. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not–” He looks away, off at some random dying branch in the garden. “I wasn’t cleared. I’ll never be cleared to… be a cop again.”
There’s silence around the table. Silence he expected. But then one-by-one his kids get up. He could laugh at the way that they approach him in birth order (though Richard was technically younger than Elizabeth by 3 minutes, he’ll let it slide for the crushing bear hug his son gives him).
And it’s the broken look that Kathleen and Dickie give him and suddenly it’s more than a decade ago, and he’s helping them stay out of trouble, Olivia is helping them stay out of trouble. He didn’t know that in just a few short years he’d be retiring for the first time and less than 17 years later, he’d be forced to do the same.
Elliot scrubs a hand over his face before he pulls his kids back in, that is, until Richard’s stomach growls and they all laugh.
He pulls back, puts on a brave smile for what’s felt like the millionth time since he left 1PP and says, “let’s not waste a perfectly good meal on tears, huh?”
“Do you want me to answer as your dad–” He crosses his arms as he leans against the counter next to her, dish towel slung over his shoulder. “Or like a patient, Dr. Stabler?” He elbows his second oldest, pride swells within him every time he thinks about his board certified psychiatrist daughter. So maybe the fact that his daughter had gone into the field had made him more susceptible to therapy, she’d never expect him to say, and he’d never tell.
So instead Kathleen nudges him right back and shrugs. “However you want to answer it, I’m listening.”
“Okay, Dr. Crane.” Elliot snorts. He’s transported, briefly to perching against Olivia’s desk, diagnosing her with… what had she called it? Normalitis. They were truly cut from the same cloth when he told her all the ‘normal’ things she was afraid of, that ending up being encapsulated in a tacky Christmas ornament from her son’s half-brother’s adoptive mother.
He’d had “normal” for most of his life, he supposes. The wife, the house with the yard, the (more than) 2.5 kids that all looked like some variation of him and Kathy shaken together in a jar. But he’d also had a hard job that haunted him, that it made it hard to go home some days, that also made it all he wanted to do. He became a creature of habit, not normal.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with my time, my life. You kids– you’re all grown up.” He jerks his chin to Eli's old room. “Even the one I still had to actively parent the last time I went through this. So I’m swinging between that and the fact that I’m done. Last time was worse in a lot of ways but I could always go back, I wasn’t ‘not fit for duty’ I just was done.” He scratches the bridge of his nose with his thumb.
Kathleen wraps her hands around his bicep and offers an empathetic smile. “You’ll figure it out.”
“That’s what Liv said.”
“So you did tell her?”
Elliot nods. “Don’t hate me but she was my first call.”
Kathleen nearly barks out her laugh. “Dad, please, I think we all would’ve been pissed if she wasn’t.”
“Hey–”
“And while we don’t want you doing what you did last time–” Her tone turns serious. “Don’t put all of this on her. She’s put this family back together more times than she should’ve.”
“She’s great like that, huh.” His chest tightens thinking about her. His torso still tingles as he remembers the feeling of her body pressed against his in her office just yesterday. He’d walked her out, a slightly possessive hand on her back, her dry cleaning over his arm. To the average stranger, he looked like a husband walking his wife out after a long day of work. That puts an ache in his heart and that almost hurts worse than the reality that his decades of police service have unceremoniously ended.
He should’ve picked her over the job a long fucking time ago.
“I wish– I don’t know if there will ever be enough time or– I don’t even know, to thank her, repay her.”
“You could always woo her.” Kathleen offers with a cheeky smile, swaying into him.
“Katie–” He feels his cheeks and ears flush and with a freshly shaved head there’s no hiding the reaction. “It’s more delicate than that with Olivia, you know that.”
“It is if you keep dancing around it. It’s like that scene in Mamma Mia. They’re all finally letting go and dancing at the end and the cobblestone breaks, the water comes out and there’s nothing but joy.”
“Woo her?” He chews on the sentiment again. “Like what?”
“You picked up her dry cleaning, right?” And Elliot’s face flushes again. He’d been at the dry cleaner’s, when he'd made the calls out to his kids. “Cause we all know you go to a dry cleaner’s here in Queens, not down the block from her precinct.”
“You got me,” he admits.
Kathleen pokes his bicep. “Stuff like that. Pick up her dry cleaning again, pick up her kid when she’s in a bind, bring her coffee, take her out to lunch.”
“I’ve tried do that stuff, Kathleen, and she’s said no before.”
“You’ve got time now. You’ve got a lot of time. Before she could deflect and say you should be focusing on the job like her.” Kathleen cocks an eyebrow and yeah, okay that degree he helped paid for he feels like he’s really paying for it now. “But that’s not a factor anymore. The best way out is through, right? Give it a month, dad. Woo her for a month, and if she’s still just wanting to be friends then you have your answer and you can be ‘great friends,’” She air quotes with a smirk. “--yeah Uncle Randall told me about that, and she can still help you figure out the next stage of your life, even without being romantically involved.”
“What if she wants nothing to do with me? The last time I retired I just dropped out of her life, I don’t blame her for being worried that will happen again.”
“If she overcorrects and cuts you out first that’s her problem, not yours dad. So all you can do is show up. You love her, right?”
“Kathleen, I–”
“Don’t deflect and bring mom into this.” She puts a hand up. ”When you were spiralling after she died Olivia was the first person I ran to. She means a lot to this family. She is family. If there’s anyone that would have to get used to her being around they'll get over it and the rest of us will welcome her with open arms, okay?”
“Sounds like you guys talk about it all the time.”
“Just after she showed up when you got hit while you were under. It didn’t take long to realize she’s was your emergency contact.”
Elliot nods, a little bashful. “You really think I should ‘woo her’?”
Kathleen nods. “Sounds more romantic than what Eli offered in the group chat."
“Which was?” His wiry eyebrows wrinkle.
“I believe the phrase he used was ‘rizz her up.’” The two Stablers share twin grimaces before laughing.
“Hey now– I have charisma.”
“How do you even know what that means?” Kathleen laughs. “Dickie had to tell me when Eli refused.”
“Had to read through texts of a 23-year-old suspect once, Jet clued me in,” he replies.
Kathleen nods and presses up to kiss his cheek. “I gotta get home and feed Mabel but keep me posted, and you can always call me.”
Elliot holds up a hand and nods. “I know, I know. Thanks, Kathleen.” He pulls her in for a hug. “Now go home to your cat.”
As Kathleen collects her bag she turns, hand on the front door. “Hey– maybe you should–”
“I’m not getting a cat. Goodnight, Kathleen. Love you.”
“It was worth a shot. Love you too, dad.” She waves. “Night.”
And when he’s finally alone, Elliot leans against his kitchen island, forearms resting against the cool freshly wiped countertop. He stares into the New York night, at the drab, dead tiny backyard that he’d hoped he’d do something with but it’s been years since he moved in and nothing ever stayed nice for more than a few months.
If he lets himself, he pictures twinkling lights, warm summer nights, and dancing to soft music with Olivia out there. He can see her, in a sun dress as the skirt spins out while he pulls her back into his arms to sway with her. They’ve never danced together, but what he wouldn’t give to dance with her just once, anywhere, even in her office.
His eyes drift to his watch as Kathleen’s words echo again. Woo her. Woo Olivia. Even when they were partners, he knew she wasn’t easily impressed by the showy things her (usually failed) dates did. He had to be intentional, methodical, plan this whole thing out. Day by day. For a full month like Kathleen suggested. He’s retired now after all.
So he has his retirement plan.
He glances at his watch again. 8:03 PM.
Eh, fuck it.
There’s definitely still a stationary store open somewhere in one of the five boroughs.
So he grabs his keys and jacket and heads out the door.