DISCLAIMER: Dick owns them. I don't. Never have. Though I'm often convinced he should give up custody.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Takes place at the end of "Burned." It's my take on how it should have gone. Spoilers up to, and including, "Burned." Rated M for language and sexual content. No kiddies, please!

"So tell me what I did; I can't find where the moment went wrong at all. You can be mad in the morning. I'll take back what I said. Just don't leave me alone here. It's cold, baby, come back to bed." -John Mayer, Come Back to Bed

1. Peace Offerings

I already had myself situated on the front steps of his building when I sent the text message. I sat with my body collapsed into itself to preserve heat, with his coffee and my tea perched between my thighs as I keyed the request for him to meet me downstairs. Then I picked up my cup and sipped from the still slightly-too-hot-to-drink beverage, resting my elbow on my leg, my other arm crossed over my stomach to allow me to tuck that hand into the warmth of the space between my drinking arm and ribcage. That's how I sit now, with just his cup of black coffee held between my legs.

The streets are actually fairly quiet—very much so by Manhattan standards, even at this ridiculously early (or late, depending on the severity of one's insomnia) hour of a Saturday morning. I still find it amusing that my partner, a Brooklyn native and Queens resident for most of his adult life, is finally living on the same streets he spends his days protecting. For his part, he always found it amusing that I refused to be anything other than a Manhattan-ite. When we'd first met, I'd never given any indication that settling down and having a family was anywhere near the top of my priority list. In fact, I'm quite certain I told him it wasn't. Queens was too suburban for me to still truly be considered a part of the City. And Brooklyn? Brooklyn was just…Brooklyn.

I need the bustle of Manhattan. I need the blaring horns and wailing sirens to drown out my thoughts at night. Solitude is far more tolerable when you're never truly alone. When there's always someone awake. When life goes on outside your bedroom window as you spread your body at odd angles across your mattress to justify owning a bed traditionally made for two people.

The City is my family.

I don't have to wait long for his reply. Just long enough, in fact, for the heat of his coffee to have seeped through the thick denim of my jeans and warm my skin. My phone hails me from my back pocket and I untuck my left hand, use it to hold my tea and reach behind me with my right hand to retrieve my phone. I flip it open, suddenly unsure what I'll be reading.

He might have been sleeping. Jesus. Wouldn't that just make me the bitch?

He might say no.

He might tell me to go home and go to sleep, taking care to point out that it's a quarter to five and we're not on call again until Sunday night.

Or, he might tell me to leave him the fuck alone after some of the things I said to him over the course of the Sennet case. The thought causes me to shiver involuntarily, despite my being what could be considered slightly over-layered for the somewhat mild November weather.

I take a deep breath, holding it, pressing the button to open the text message, and what it reads causes the breath to squeeze out of my lungs. I stare at it, my mind racing, my only movement the occasional blinking of my eyes. It's only when I realize my tea is about to slip from my weakening grasp that I shake my head clear and slowly close the phone, the LCD screen proclaiming "MEET ME UPSTAIRS" fading to black.

The buzz of the building's door lock disengaging startles me and, for the second time in the past thirty seconds, I nearly spill tea on myself. The annoying hum continues to sound until I pick myself up off the steps and open the door, tea in hand and coffee held between my body and forearm. I step into the foyer, allowing the door to shut behind me, and pause. There is a hallway in front of me, as well as a staircase. My eyes drift to the stairs and it is then that the thought occurs to me that I have no idea where his apartment is. I've never been here before. Any time I've visited him, it's always been at his house—the house now belonging only to his estranged wife and their children. I know the address, sure. Any good partner would. And I know my city well enough to have been able to walk here without needing a cabbie to bring me. The apartment number, 318, I committed to memory the instant he told me. What I don't know is the layout of this building or anything about what his apartment might be like…about how Elliot Stabler, when left to his own devices, would choose to live.

No sooner had this crossed my mind that my phone calls out to me again. I had dropped it into the pocket of my coat after the first message and it was easier to get to this time. The corner of my mouth lifts in a half-smile when I read "TURN LEFT AT TOP OF STAIRS." Replacing the phone and taking his coffee by the lid in my empty hand, I begin the ascent. My climbing slows drastically as I reach the final flight before the third floor, the clarity afforded my mind earlier now clouded as new anxieties flood in. Why does he want me to come up? What if he really is planning to tell me to leave him the fuck alone and he's so emphatic about it he has to tell me to my face?

Christ. I brought coffee. Coffee! What the fuck kind of peace offering is coffee? After what I've said to him I owe him nothing short of eternal apologies, me on the floor hugging his ankles like a child not wanting to say goodbye to a father leaving on a business trip. I owe him pleas for forgiveness, screamed at the top of my lungs. I abruptly stop climbing and turn, my back falling against the wall.

I owe him anything he wants. Even if that means leaving him behind. Again. But this time not by my choice. By his.

I glance briefly at the stairs I've already climbed, then up at the half-dozen or so left to go. I take another deep breath, steeling myself for whatever may happen. I've done enough running. I can't turn back. I owe him.

When I make the left at the top of the stairs, I can see an open doorway several doors down on the right. As I make my way down the hall, a shoulder creeps into my vision. Further, and I can see almost half of him. Just a couple doors away, I see all of him, arms crossed, legs crossed, leaning back against the doorframe. A white tank top covers his chest, just concealing the waistband of a pair of blue-based tartan plaid boxers. My nervousness is temporarily assuaged by the internal remark that my partner is truly an Irishman.

It immediately returns as I approach, pausing at his open door.

"Morning," he greets, though he is neither bright-eyed nor bushy-tailed.

"Hey," I reply, my eyes on his, because if I allow them to drift any lower, him yelling at me—if that's his intention—will be even more painful. I've spent 8 years of my life trying to keep those thoughts about Elliot out of my head. No point in letting them in now, right?

He uncrosses his legs, not his arms, and steps sideways into the hall, my physical cue to cross the threshold.

I brush by him and walk far enough into the living room to allow him to enter behind me and close the door. I stand still, my back to the door, a cup still in each hand, appraising my surroundings. The apartment is mostly darkened; only a single, low-lighted lamp emits a golden glow from a table in the far corner of the living room to my right. The eerie green glow of the digital clock on the microwave is the only light source from the kitchen, separated by a bar top from the living room. Looking straight ahead is akin to peering down a tunnel in a cave, looking for any hint of light that could mean a way out. I detect the slightest hint of light from somewhere down the left side of the hallway.

Just then, I hear the clicking of the lock, and Elliot walks around to stand in front of me, hands low on his hips. His steady gaze is questioning, and mine doesn't have an answer. So instead, I proffer my right hand.

He looks down and takes the coffee cup from my hand. "Thanks." Before I have a chance to say anything, he raises his other hand and gently releases my grip on my tea, taking it from me as well.

My eyes widen and I'm pretty sure my mouth just dropped open. Elliot has already turned from me and begun heading for the kitchen before I verbalize my protest. "Hey!" I didn't say it was a mature protest. I follow him, but even with my long strides, by the time I reach the edge of the bar top, he's removing the lid from my tea, having just poured his coffee into the sink. I scoff, adopting a pissed-off stance—weight shifted onto one leg, arms locked across my chest, lips pursed and eyes leveled at him. He sniffs the tea once and grimaces before pouring it, too, down the drain.

"What is this stuff, Liv?" He peers down into the sink basin. "Is that a flower clogging my drain?"

"It's tea. It was tea."

"Didn't smell like any tea I know of." He opens a cabinet beneath the sink, where the trashcan hides, and pulls the waste bin out by its rim. He tosses the two empty cups and their lids before reaching down into the sink and using a thumb and forefinger to pluck the soggy bloom from my tea out of the drain. He lets it drop into the trashcan before replacing the bin into its cabinet hideaway.

"It was herbal."

He chuckles quietly. "Yeah, I'll say." He places his hands on the countertop behind him, resting his weight.

I'm at a loss here. "So, you mind telling me why you did that?"

"Because," he starts, pushing himself back upright, "I am going back to bed with every intention of sleeping, so I certainly didn't need to drink twelve ounces of caffeine."

Back to bed. He was in bed. Yep, that makes me the bitch. Sometimes, only on occasion, I hate being right.

"Jesus, Elliot." I raise my hands shoulder-level in a gesture of surrender or exasperation, I'm not sure which. "If you were sleeping, why didn't you just tell me to go home?"

He steps forward, putting his elbows on the bar top across from me. "And what would you have done if you'd have gone home?" He has that irritating tone that implies he already knows the answer to the question and just wants to hear me say it. Which, of course, I do.

I sigh, re-crossing my arms. "Probably lie in bed and either bury my face in pillows or stare at the ceiling, kind of wishing I had those little glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to it to make the insomnia more interesting." I can't lie to him. I can't. And he knows it. Damn him.

"That's why I didn't tell you to go home. Besides," he straightens up again and steps to face me, where I avoid his eyes, and he places a hand on each of my upper arms, "I never said I was sleeping before, Liv. I just said I was going back to bed with the intention of sleeping."

My head still downcast toward the carpet to the side of his left foot, I look up at him from the corners of my eyes.

"Come on. You know me better than that."

Well, I at least know him well enough to have made the correct assumption that he'd be awake to get my first message, so perhaps I'm not quite so big a bitch. What I don't know is that voice. The one he just used. It was quiet, with a rich and rolling timbre that I swear I could feel resonate through my body. I've never heard that voice before.

I'd really like to hear it again.

I roll my eyes. "You owe me a tea."

He laughs, releasing my arms. "Yeah, yeah. Whenever you want."

That wasn't the voice I was looking for, but at least he's not mad at me. I don't think. "So if I'm not allowed to go home and you're going to bed, where does that leave me?" I inquire. I didn't stop to think about what I said might imply. Now that it's out of my mouth, I'm thinking about it. Damn.

That's just what Elliot needs right now. He's going through a divorce and I'm saying shit that sounds like I might be flirting with him. And if a realization is supposed to hit like a ton of bricks, then let's just say I feel like Wile E. Coyote huddled beneath his pitiful excuse for an umbrella as boulder upon boulder falls from the canyon walls above.

I just fucking flirted with Elliot.

He doesn't answer. Of course he wouldn't answer. I go and say something like that and he's going to let me obsess about it. When his hands again wrap around my biceps, I go numb. Well, every part of me goes numb except the inches covered by his fingers. Those inches…those inches are on fire. Apparently my body has also rooted to the carpet, because he has difficulty turning me around without my almost falling over my own feet. I stumble through the hundred-eighty degree turn, which is okay, since his hands are in constant contact in some capacity as he guides me in the rotation. When I face the same way as he does, he gently nudges me forward, hands now resting on my shoulders. He walks me through the living room. To the left: the door. To the right: the hallway.

He turns me to the right.