Dancin' Away With My Heart
Inspired by the song by Lady Antebellum

He'd told his buddies he didn't want to go out, that he just wanted to stay home on his last night before leaving for boot camp. But they had argued that after just being dumped by his longtime girlfriend he needed a night of fun before heading off to the Marines. He'd begrudgingly agreed and now here he sits, alone, nursing his third coke (because even though he does have a fake ID, their will undoubtedly be a drug test the next morning) while his so-called friends dance with two mildly attractive women they have abandoned him for.

He glances around the room briefly, just to make sure his friends are still safely on the dance floor and not passed out drunk, when he sees her. She sits alone on the opposite side of the bar, her elbows leaning on the dark wood of the counter in a way that makes her dark brown locks fall in front of her face. It's just far enough so he can't get a real good look at her which consequently makes her that much more intriguing. He doesn't know why, but he suddenly feels an invisible pull towards this mystery woman. It makes him feel as though he will have missed out on something -or rather someone- incredible if he doesn't talk to her.

Before he knows what he's doing he has left both his seat and drink behind and is heading straight towards her. It takes him mere seconds to navigate through the small crowd mingling around the bar. He stops right beside her and is taken by surprise when she immediately notices his presence and swivels around on her stool.

"Um, hi." He greets, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand while mentally he is kicking himself for sounding so stupid.

"Hi?" Her reply comes out as more of a question and she smiles shyly at him.

"Would you like-I mean do you want to...dance?"

She considers this man for a moment. The way he self-consciously shifts in place and rubs his neck until it is beet red is endearing, cute even.

"Alright, sure." She answers and the way his blue eyes light up makes her smile grow wider.

She stands and slips her hand into his. He keeps a firm, but gentle grip on her as he navigates them through the throng of people on the dance floor until he stops in a corner that is relatively uncrowned. The song is slow, so she puts her arms around his neck while his hands settle on her hips.

"I'm Elliot, Elliot Stabler." He says as they begin to sway in time with the soft melody that drifts through the room.

She laughs lightly. "How very James Bond of you."

He chuckles too, "I try."

"I'm Olivia Benson. Nice to meet you." She says smiling at him.

They move in companionable silence for a few beats before he speaks again, "You come here often?"

She shakes her head. "No, there's enough alcohol in my house already."

A blush creeps furiously onto her face once she realizes what she's done and she quickly tries to recover. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to just dump that on you."

He shakes his head and gives her a faint smile. "S'okay, as long as you don't mind me asking why you're here then?

She sighs, glancing around the room briefly before meeting his eyes again. "Needed an escape I guess."

He nods, "I think we all need that once in a while."

"Yeah." She agrees, comforted by the way he easily accepts her answer and her previous admission.

As the song continues she finds her head drifting closer and closer to his shoulder until eventually she is leaning on it, her arms having moved to circle around his lower back of their own accord. She hasn't felt this comfortable around someone in a long time, if ever, and even though they've just met she wishes this moment could go on forever.

Olivia steps out of her apartment building into the crisp morning air deciding that she'll enjoy the pleasant fall day and walk the two blocks to work instead of grabbing a cab. She takes her time, enjoying the mostly quiet atmosphere around her, when a sign on a shop front to her right catches her eye. She stops in front of the run down bar, studying the sign for a good two minutes before she realizes why it's familiar.

It's been almost eight years but in an instant all the memories from that night and the rest of that summer come flooding back to her. His beautiful blue eyes swim before her and the feeling of his strong arms wrapped around her washes over her like he's standing right there with her. She's wondered over the years how he's been, what he's doing now, and most of all she's missed him like crazy.

The feeling comes and goes, but she knows deep down in her heart that Elliot Stabler still holds a piece of her that she's never willingly given away to anyone else. A piece that she gave him while dancing in a crowded bar in the city she'd spent her whole life in, but would soon leave at the end of that summer.

But she doesn't want to think about the end of their time together. So instead she keeps walking, but her mind won't give up that easy and she finds her thoughts drifting back to their first kiss.

"Do you do this a lot?" She asks, removing her head from his shoulder and he misses the sudden loss of warmth there.

"What do you mean?" He replies, taking a chance when he brushes a piece of soft, brown, hair behind her ear.

She smiles and rests her hand on his that still cups her cheek. "Ask a girl you've never met to dance and then make her feel like she never wants to leave your arms."

"No." He breathes softly, staring right back into the chocolate brown eyes whose gaze never wavers from his blue ones.

"Well, you're very good at it." She whispers as she begins to slowly close the distance between them.

"Really?" He questions.

Their lips are almost a hairsbreadth apart now and she merely smiles in response before covering his lips with hers. It's one of those moments, between two people, when you can almost hear two pieces of a whole clicking together. He knows he will remember it for the rest of his life.

He does remember that moment. Even after eight years the clarity of that night is still etched into his mind and every detail remains stored in his subconscious. The way she smelled, the way she sounded, the way she felt pressed up against him later that night in a hotel room not far from the bar.

They'd kept in contact the next few months by exchanging letters back and forth from the base where his training was to her home in Manhattan. They slowly opened up to each other until he knew everything about her down to her favorite color (blue) and her hatred for the name Betsy (to which, she explained, was in relation to an evil dog that lived down the street when she was a kid.)

Her last letter came the beginning of that September, a week before she went off to college and two weeks before he came home from training. He keeps it at home and rereads it often in an attempt to keep her memory fresh in his mind, or so he tells himself. Sometimes it makes him feel pathetic that he's still clinging onto this woman who has probably moved on with her life and forgotten all about him while he sits and wonders about her; the one that got away.

Regardless, something had convinced him to bring her letter with him to work today. He pulls it out, deciding to kill the time waiting for his new partner to show up by reading it. When he gets down to the last few lines he smiles because it's his favorite part.

Oh and by the way, don't write back to this letter. I'm moving into my dorm next week and if you send it to my house my mother is guaranteed to throw it away. I'll send you a letter with my new address once I get settled.

I can't wait until you're finished with training, I miss you so much. Funny isn't it? We only knew each other for one whole night, but it was enough to make me feel like this. You really are good at this, Elliot.

Love,
Olivia

That was the first and last time she'd ended a letter by signing it, 'Love, Olivia' and even though she never wrote him back, and he never saw he again, he knows he would've signed his next letter just the same way.

Olivia walks off the elevator when it dings and opens its doors, glancing down once again at the instructions the woman had given her in the main lobby of the 16th Precinct of the NYPD. She can't tell if the note says to get off on the eighth floor or the third, so she looks around the crowded squad room until she spots a man at the coffee station who looks otherwise unoccupied.

She heads over to him and gently taps him on the shoulder, "Excuse me?"

He turns around and her breath it taken away, because it's him. It's him, with his beautiful blue eyes, strong broad shoulders, and dark brown hair, though the latter appears to be receding just in the slightest. It doesn't matter though, because after all this time, to finally be seeing him again...it's the most amazing feeling in the world.

"Elliot?" She asks quietly.

His eyes light up, just like they did that night when he'd nervously asked her to dance. "Olivia?"

All of a sudden she's hugging him tight, scared that if she lets go he'll disappear. He hugs her back with the same fervor and rests his stubbly cheek against her smooth one.

"What're you doing here?" He breathes into her ear once he's found his voice again.

She pulls back to look at him and his breath is taken away again by how beautiful she still is. Her eyes are still the deep brown he fell in love with and her hair, though a few inches shorter, still smells like lilies.

"I might ask you the same question." She says, looking at him quizzically. "I thought you'd still be hacking it out in the Marines?"

"It was okay, but it wasn't really for me. I'm a detective with the Special Victims Unit now." He explains.

She laughs and now it is his turn to look at her questioningly. "What's so funny?"

"I am too, a detective here, I mean." She answers.

His eyes light up and he mutters, "Unbelievable."

"What's unbelievable?" She questions.

"It appears that you, Detective Benson, are my new partner." He replies, a wry grin forming at the corners of his lips.

She returns the smile wholeheartedly, both surprised and delighted by this news. "What a coincidence."

"Yeah, but I think I'll have to be asking for a different partner." He admits dejectedly and her heart sinks.

"Why?"

A smile spreads onto his face again and he leans in close, "Because I'm pretty sure there's a rule against me doing this."

He closes the minuscule gap between their lips and it's as if all their time spent apart has been erased. She kisses him back fervently and in the way history likes to do things, it repeats itself as the audible click of their two hearts snapping together can be heard in her ears.

A/N: Thanks for reading, hope you liked it!