Rating= M
Dislcaimer= I don't own these characters. So don't sue me, I'm really not making money off them.
A/N = So… this story is my take on how Olivia and Alex met and grew up, it'll start in high school with flashbacks to junior high, then go to college, law school/police academy, and then their jobs. Hope you enjoy.

You and Me

Olivia - 7:25am

She reached down to tie up her shoelaces. It was game day for the Cathedral High School Bears.

Taking a deep breath, Olivia Benson reveled in the adrenaline rush that came from her nervousness. She loved this feeling. She felt like she could just burst from excitement.

She thought back through the routines of her day. It was a Friday, and she woke up in time for school, checked her bag to make sure everything she needed was there. Pulling on her yellow t-shirt with blue lettering, she leaned into the mirror to look at herself. She grabbed a brush and hastily pulled it through her dark brown hair. Then she pulled it back into a ponytail so it wouldn't get in her way during the game. After she used the bathroom and brushed her teeth, she grabbed a banana and a yogurt from the fridge and took off out the door.

It wasn't necessary, she knew, to tell her mother she was leaving for school.
She would surely still be passed out from her drinking the night before. Just like she was every night.

Olivia wished she could be like other kids, with normal parents who supported them and came to watch their basketball games. But then she realized that she could never survive the embarrassment of having her alcoholic mother attend one of her games. Who knows what she would say or do at a public event after having a few too many glasses of scotch.

Alex - 7:25 am

Across town, in an Central Park West apartment, Alexandra Cabot was also getting ready for the game. She put on her makeup, but not too much because she planned on sweating later that evening. She grabbed her red and silver game day shirt from her drawer and put it on.

A knock sounded at her door.

'Come in,' she said sweetly. She was in a good mood, it was game day and she had never been more ready.

Her mother entered, carrying a brown paper bag and a tray with breakfast on it.

Alex looked down at the tray filled with scrambled eggs, toast, oatmeal, and orange juice and smiled at the thoughtfulness of their cook, Mae.

'That was so sweet of Mae to make me breakfast. She didn't have to go through all this trouble.'

Her mother smiled back at her.

'Alexandra, dear, she made breakfast for you last week before your game and you were the high scorer. We've obviously got some voo-boo going on here.'

Alex laughed, her beautiful voice resonating throughout her bedroom.

'Mother, it's 'voo-doo'. And yes maybe we do. I'll make sure and tell her thank you when I go downstairs.'
'All right,' her mother said, standing to leave, ' Oh, and Alexandra,'

Alex looked up from the bag she was rummaging through.

'I won't be able to make it to your game today, your father and I have that benefit gala for the Red Cross Association. '

Alex tried to hide her crestfallen face, but apparently she didn't do a good job.

'Don't be sad, dear, we'll be able to come to the next one.'
'Mother, this is the district championship, the most important game so far this season. This game decides seeding in the playoffs.'

'I know, Alexandra dear, but we simply can't miss this gala. I'm sorry.'

With that, she leaned down and kissed Alex on the cheek and walked out of the room.

Sorry. Hmph! She could care less about my games. She doesn't want me playing basketball at all.

It was true that her mother would prefer Alex to focus on her studies and stop wasting her time with this team sport nonsense.

Alex shook her head to clear her thoughts. You've got to get your mind right for this game. It's like you said. The biggest game so far this season. And St. John's Prep finally has a chance to beat Cathedral. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to hold down the feeling of excitement that threatened to overcome her. She was a sophomore on varsity, moved up from the JV when a starter tore her ACL. It helped also that she was the leading scorer every game on the JV. So she was feeling the pressure to perform, without a doubt.

After nine consecutive years of losing basketball games to Cathedral, St. John's had built up its program and was looking at going all the way this year. Their team was young, but they had heart and were talented.

She ate her breakfast quickly and hurried out the door, stopping to kiss Mae on the cheek in thanks for the breakfast. Hugo, the family chauffeur, was waiting outside for her next to a black Mercedes sedan. She greeted him and slid into the car as he held the door open for her.

Olivia - 8:05 am

Olivia walked through the maze of people crowding the hallway of Cathedral high school. She wore her letterman sweater over her t-shirt. Maybe it was old-school, but it gave the team unity and had been a tradition for probably a hundred years for the athletes to wear their school sweaters.

At her locker, she spun the combination lock and pulled it open. Just as she reached for her geometry notebook, she felt someone standing behind her. She spun around to face whoever it was; she hated having her back to people.

It was Jessica, her teammate, a junior; she had dark hair, pulled back in a French braid with a blue headband. She also wore the letterman sweater.

'Oh. Hey Jessica. What's up?'

'Nothin', said Jessica, 'ready for the game tonight?'

'So ready,' said Olivia smiling confidently.

Jessica didn't return her smile.

'I don't know, Olivia. Did you read the St. John's versus Holy Trinity results in the paper? '

'No,' Olivia said, looking away. Her mother didn't subscribe to any papers. All the extra money in the house was dedicated to alcohol.

'They brought up a girl from the JV, a sophomore, just like you. She scored 23 points.'

Olivia raised her eyebrows.

'Wow. Why wasn't she on varsity to begin with?'

'Don't know. But all that matters is she'll be playing tonight against us. What do you think?'

'We'll be fine. I'll take it to her every time. Make her foul out. Besides, I know how to play defense.'

Jessica didn't look completely convinced.

'All right. Maybe Holy Trinity had a bad game, or maybe it was beginner's luck for the new girl. We'll see.'

Olivia grabbed her book and slammed her locker closed as Jessica walked away. She wasn't too worried. She was all-district as a freshman last year after all. But still, 23 points for a sophomore? She needed something to take her mind off of this new stud ball player. She looked around in the hallway and sought out a particular face among the senior boys standing along the wall.

She walked up to one right in the middle and smiled.

'Hey Sean,' she said. 'You guys are traveling to Queens to play tonight right?'

He nodded his head and the guy next to him, Justin, also wearing a letterman sweater, elbowed him in the ribs and raised his eyebrows suggestively at him.

Olivia ignored the immature boy, but she really needed a distraction. She grabbed Sean's hand and pulled him along the hall, smiling back at him as she went.

RIIIIINNNGGG

Oops, the bell for 1st period. Oh well, we'll say we had a meeting or something.

She led Sean to the basement. No one ever went down there except to check the boilers and she knew it was the perfect place to be alone.

At the bottom of the stairs, Olivia pushed him up against the wall and kissed him. He tasted like chewing gum, which was nice, but his lips felt like they were too small. He too quickly thrust his tongue into her mouth, deepening the kiss. Growing brave, his hands roamed up and down her back, squeezed her ass through her school uniform khakis.

She didn't mind him touching her. Other boys had kissed her and she had even gone as far as letting them put their frantic, thrusting fingers inside her. It felt good, not great, but she got off most of the time by putting her mind somewhere else.

His kisses trailed down her throat and his hands came around front to grasp her breasts. He pulled her body up against his and she felt the hardness of his erection.

She pulled away from him then, looking into his lust-filled eyes and realizing at that moment that she hardly knew him. She was just using him for pleasure. Something clicked in her mind and she realized: this didn't feel right.

Pushing away from him, she ran up the stairs and hurried to her class. She left him standing in the basement stunned and confused. She opened the door and slipped into her desk towards the back of the class; her teacher said nothing of her disheveled look or tardiness. Olivia was a bright student and took care of business. No need to fuss over something as trivial as this. Olivia also had an innate ability to charm her teachers. She could never put her finger on it, but maybe it was her combination of sweetness, sarcasm, and sass. Teachers let her get away with too much.

She couldn't focus on math, however, her mind was all over the place. Never before had she had such hesitant feelings toward a boy before. So much for distractions, she thought glumly, doodling basketballs on her paper.

Alex – 8:06 am

Alex pushed open the doors to St. John's Prep. It was a nice school, freshly renovated with state of the art technology and beautiful architecture. God knows her parents spent enough to send her there.

It's not like it puts a dent in their wallets though, she thought to herself.

It was a difficult thing, being a Cabot. One had to balance to niceties of the expected behavior with humility. It was hard for her to be grateful and humble about her life when she had never wanted for anything. Sometimes she wished she was normal, not rich and privileged like all of her classmates. Snobs, all of them. Always looking down on kids from other schools because they didn't have the resources to attend the highly esteemed St. John's Prep. She kept her mouth shut when her teammates bad mouthed other teams; she never spoke up, but she certainly wasn't going to join in.

It was hard for her as a sophomore in a large school to make friends. Her parents had moved her only this past summer from Connecticut, where most of the Cabot clan resided. Her father needed to be closer to Wall Street, closer to his investments, or so he said. Alex rolled her eyes at the thought. She didn't leave behind much, she had long since lost her down-to-earth friends who didn't care about money, only about sports and music and regular things. She thought of those friends quite often. One friend in particular she thought of the most.

She grew up with a group of girls from her neighborhood. They did everything together. Until they got to junior high that is.
She and one of the girls in their group, Quen, began in about 7th grade, to hang out without the rest of the girls. Alex never knew if it was a mutual attraction or just a phase they were both going through, but they grew more and more affectionate towards each other. Neither of them had kissed a boy yet; naturally they giggled about it with the other girls, made bets about who would be first to get their first kiss.

About midway through their eighth grade year, it happened.

Neither of them planned on what happened one afternoon, alone in Quen's bedroom. They were laughing, both sitting on the floor, looking at embarrassing old pictures when one of them initiated a wrestling match.
Tension was building between them. Alex couldn't remember who started it, but she did vividly remember Quen climbing on top of her, pinning her arms to the ground. Alex's blue eyes met Quen's light brown ones and they stared at each other for a split second, breathing hard from the exertion. Alex, before she could stop herself, spoke first.

'Do it.'

Quen raised any eyebrow at her, knowing what she meant, but unsure of herself. She must have found courage somewhere, though because she leaned down slowly and pressed her soft lips against Alex's.

Alex's stomach lurched at the thought of this moment, all of those memories she worked hard to forget flooded back to her.

After that first kiss, their relationship grew in secret. They learned from each other, exploring, discovering. There was no way either girl could tell their parents. Such strict parents who mainly cared about outward appearances would never allow a relationship like this one to continue.

Before the end of that year, however, something happened. Alex didn't know what it was, but she and Quen started drifting apart. Maybe Quen grew tired of hiding, tired of their fights. They were young and in love, or so Alex believed at the time, and they were jealous. Jealous of the time spent away from one another, jealous of any person the other one spoke to. Alex understood now why Quen wanted out, they were immature and not ready for that type of relationship, but she was heartbroken nonetheless.

She spent her freshman year pretty much alone. After she and Quen had alienated themselves from their group, the rest of the girls had had enough of being ditched and ignored. Alex had burned her bridges and now that Quen had moved on, she had no one.

So when her father informed her that they would be moving to New York City, she didn't object. She was happy, actually. Excited for a fresh start.

As she sat in her first class, not paying attention to lessons about the geography of Africa, she realized that she had matured quite a bit in the two years since her first relationship ended. She kept her emotions and heart carefully guarded now, weary of letting anyone in close.

Alex thought about the mandatory church services St. John's required every student to attend each day. Back in Connecticut, her family only attended church on the big holidays, Christmas and Easter usually.

Now that she went to mass every day, she listened closely to the sermons about sex before marriage and homosexuality. She felt guilty about the things she had done, believing that it wasn't what God had in mind for her life. But even through that guilt, she had doubts about the things the nuns taught. Trying to research for herself what was right and what was wrong in the Bible, she wasn't satisfied with an Old Testament view of what she had experienced. If this thing is written and translated by men..humans, then it can have mistakes, can't it? She learned then how to research things for herself and to develop an opinion about what she had found. Still, the guilt for some reason was hard to shake off.

She tried to suppress the feelings she had, struggled to tell herself not to stare too long at girls walking past her. It was difficult to hide this part of herself. How could she be normal and try to flirt with boys when she identified more with them? She was nervous around girls and couldn't help but think about what it would feel like to touch their hands, to taste their lips. She missed Quen and kept a picture that they had taken of themselves secretly kissing behind one of the huge pine trees in Alex's backyard. It was December and the background was snowy and beautiful. Alex pulled it out to look at it when she was alone.

And she cried herself to sleep sometimes.

Pulling herself back to the present, she tried to focus on the geography lesson. She was too riled up though, so she sat back and daydreamed about the basketball game. She was glad she had something as stable as basketball to take her mind off of everything wrong in her life.

Olivia-5:20 pm

Olivia walked into the gym that evening, she breathed in the smell of the hardwood. This gym was her safe haven, her escape from her poor excuse for a home life. The competition was what she thrived on, looked forward to. Looking up at the banners on the wall, she closed her eyes, seeing herself holding a state championship trophy. As competitive as any player he'd ever seen, Olivia's coach, Coach Fisher, was impressed by her dedication and leadership.

She walked across the court and opened the door to the locker room to put on her jersey.

Alex - 5:30 pm

Alex followed her teammates in the front door of Cathedral's gymnasium.

She was excited. She was also nervous, being a young member of the team put a lot of pressure on her.

Alex rolled her eyes when she heard her teammates laughing at the run down entryway. The school's gym did look like it hadn't been updated since the 1950s.

She had heard enough from the snotty girls walking behind her. Turning around, she snapped at them.
'Maybe their gym looks bad, but what matters is that they have tradition. 15 state championships speak for themselves. That's more than our school can say. '

The girls went quiet, glaring at Alex.

Great, she thought. So much for team bonding.

Warm-up did not go well for her, everyone threw her bad passes and sometimes stepped in front of her in line. She tried her best not to think about it, but it made her upset not to have anyone on her side.

Alex looked over at Cathedral, warming up at the opposite goal. It was difficult, she knew, to decide who were the best players in warm up, but that never stopped her from trying. This time, one girl caught her eye.

She was tall, but not so tall that she wasn't athletic. Her hair was dark brown and short, but just long enough to be pulled back in a small ponytail.

Her deltoid muscles were defined and they rippled when she shot the ball. Her calves weren't bad either, they were the only part of the girl's legs she could see. But the one thing that Alex couldn't take her eyes off of were the girls' hands. They were big hands with long, deft fingers. Those fingers looked strong.

WHOOMPH

'Shit!' she exclaimed quietly. One of her teammates, Sarah, had thrown her the ball, knowing Alex wasn't looking. It hit her full in the stomach and brought her back to reality, away from admiring, no! checking out.. no! scoping out, yes that's better, #40 on the other team.

Olivia – 6:28 pm

Before the game, and before they sang the national anthem, the announcer called out every player's name and number. Olivia listened carefully for the new sophomore's name.

"Sophomore, #21, Alexandra Cabot," the announcer said. Olivia tuned out the rest of the player's names as she focused on the girl. Her coach called their team together, and they talked a bit of strategy before tip-off.

The game began, and Olivia naturally was guarding their best player.

Olivia sized her up as she dribbled down the court, lithe and blonde, she was deceptively athletic. She was graceful but quick, and Olivia found herself trailing behind the girl when she blew past her into the lane. Olivia watched as the girl made an easy layup.

Coach Fisher stomped his feet on the sideline.

'Benson! What are you doing? Play some defense!'

Olivia took the ball out and passed it in to Jessica. Jessica passed it back to her when she got inbounds and she brought the ball up the court. Their plan was to run their motion offense with cutters running towards the basket. Things didn't go their way, however when St. John's got into a 2-3 zone and they had no way to penetrate in the lane.

The St. John's girls were quick, and a surefire way to beat a zone is to reverse the ball quickly, beat the defense's rotation. So cathedral reversed the ball, but Alex Cabot, Olivia thought to herself, where did she come from? She's so fast!

Cathedral needed to score, so Olivia pulled up for a jump-shot right in Alex's face.

SWISH

Olivia smiled in satisfaction. The game continued on like that, with both teams scoring back and forth on one another, neither really pulling ahead. Olivia did notice that Alex played tight defense. She was physical and obviously wasn't afraid to be up close and personal. Olivia found herself playing harder against this girl. She didn't want another sophomore like herself to have the upper hand.

When she posted up down low, Olivia pressed her backside into Alex's front, pinning her to get position. The feel of the thin, muscular girl wasn't unpleasant, she thought vaguely to herself. Alex's hands pushed back against her as she fought to stay in front of the stronger brunette. Olivia got the ball, spun around and gave a shot-fake before dribbling around a surprised Alex to the basket. Before she could get her shot off, though, Alex reached up and slapped at the ball, making contact with Olivia's hand. The force of the foul knocked Olivia to the ground and she slid to the wall.

Alex reached down and held a hand out to the fallen player.

'Sorry about that,' she said. 'You okay?'

Their eyes met and Olivia couldn't speak. For some reason, she couldn't think of anything at all to say.

She just nodded her head and walked to the foul line to shoot her free throws. She never had thoughts about girls before that; her brow furrowed at what she had just experienced.

The ref bounced her the ball, and she dribbled twice at the foul line. She tried to clear her head, but she couldn't focus. Her shot deflected off the rim.

Damn, she thought. She rarely missed free throws, but her focus had been shot to hell. She shook her head, trying to rid it of thoughts not pertaining to basketball. The next shot was closer, but she still missed.

Alex – 7:20 pm

By the fourth quarter, they were tied, 52-52. One of Alex's teammates had the ball and was hesitating. She and the other three girls tried to avoid passing Alex the ball. They hated that she could score and was a much better ball player than themselves. But Alex was the only one open, so she had no choice.

Olivia – 7:20 pm

Olivia was guarding Alex as the seconds ticked down. 32 seconds left in the game. She was giving Alex space after having been burned several times playing too closely to the quick guard.

Coach Fisher was jumping up and down screaming. 'Benson! You want to win this game! Get in her shorts!'

Olivia knew he was talking about defense, but the sudden image of her hand down the blonde girl's shorts as she pushed her up against the wall in the locker room, fusing their lips together, shocked her and she froze.

Alex took advantage of Olivia's momentary lack of focus and drove the lane again with 5 seconds left. Just as Olivia caught up to guard her, Alex pulled up for a jump shot. The ball sank through the hoop. The seconds ticked down and Cathedral couldn't get the ball down the court.

The buzzer sounded and St. Johns had finally beat cathedral 54-52.

Olivia was perplexed at her own performance and was shocked that they had actually lost. Now they would be playing a tougher team first round in the playoffs.

_
Alex – 7:35 pm

Alex was ecstatic. She had scored the game winning points. Hell, she had scored the majority of the points anyway. Her teammates acted happy, but Alex could tell that their celebrations were half-hearted. They liked to win, but not at the hands of the social outcast, Alex Cabot.

Changing out of her uniform, Alex's good mood didn't last long as she remembered that she had no one to celebrate the end of the game with: her parents hadn't come. They would be at that damned gala, and she would be home by herself.