AN: As somebody observed, yes, it was a weird place to leave it in the last chapter. And that's cause I had a fight with my computer. The last bit should have been the first bit here and is reproduced at the beginning of this chapter to improve flow.

Olivia's throbbing hangover headache had left her nearly crippled at her desk all morning. The rest of the squad had mostly steered clear of her, but Elliot continued to shoot her glances that alternated between disapproving and concerned throughout the morning. Munch and Fin had volunteered to take the day's only call earlier, and left before either could say anything clever about the situation. She was leaning her forehead against a stack of paperwork on her desk, appreciating how cool it felt, and clutching a Styrofoam cup of stale coffee also resting on her desk in one hand when Alex glided into the precinct the morning after the disastrous Policeman's Ball. Her heels clicked smartly against the tile, alerting Olivia to her presence without forcing her to lift her throbbing head. She rolled her head to the side and opened her eyes, affording herself a view of the right side of her desk which was quickly obscured by the appearance of an Armani-clad hip as Alex leaned against it. It was black, back-slit skirt suit day, Olivia observed but her headache disallowed her from enjoying it in the same visceral way she usually did.

"Are you alright, Olivia?" Alex's melodious voice miraculously did not send shooting pain through Olivia's head like most of the noises that morning had. The alcohol could not have been the only thing that made Alex resemble an angel, Olivia suddenly realized. She had a healing voice too. If she wasn't still in serious pain, the thought would have made Olivia laugh. "I missed you at the Ball last night." Alex's statement seemed almost sad, but Olivia wrote it off as wishful thinking on her part. Alex's date might have been her cousin, but there was simply no evidence she was gay. Her sour musing was broken abruptly by the realization that a graceless silence was developing. It was her turn to talk.

"I was there." Her tongue felt big and thick and covered in fur. She gestured vaguely toward Fin's empty desk. "Luckily, you missed Detective Tutuola and I cutting a rug." Alex's perfectly sculpted eyebrow shot up in surprise. Oh great, Olivia felt like smacking herself, hangovers didn't make her suave and the last thing she wanted was Alex stuck with a mental image of her and Fin getting down on the dance floor. She turned her forehead back to the desk. Alex was too pretty to look at with a headache like Olivia's.

"Well…" Alex shifted away from the desk, running a hand down her thigh to straighten her skirt. The entire conversation, such as it was, had been the most awkward interaction she had ever had with the striking detective. "I better go talk to Cragen."

Olivia lifted her head just enough to watch Alex's swaying hips as she walked away. The slit in the back of her tight skirt moved with each step, revealing and concealing the backs of mouthwatering alabaster thighs. Olivia couldn't help but stare, jaw slack.

A crumpled DD-5 pegged Olivia in the back of her head, breaking her reverie suddenly. She snapped around, just fast enough to make herself nauseous, and glared at Elliot who broke out laughing. "Liv, you are a total loser," he said with a snort.

She waited until she heard Cragen's office door close firmly before she replied. "It's not my fault. Cabot has bewitched me, I'm helplessly under her spell. But, she's probably totally and unequivocally straight, so really, she is just tormenting me for laughs!" Olivia sighed dramatically. Elliot just turned back to his paperwork. Much to her annoyance, his expression was unreadable.

***

"I think it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Cabot is rich enough that she could paid a chemist to invent a love potion and accidentally spiked Benson's coffee when she was try to dose Captain Cragen," Munch offered, doing his best to be the opposite of helpful. He had suggested a number of outrageous scenarios, but this was his best and he looked decidedly proud of it.

Fin reached over to take Munch's empty beer glass from his grasp, sighing exaggeratedly. Elliot slapped his forehead. They were seated at a small table sporting a couple of empty beer pitches in the corner of a dingy cop bar around the corner from the one-six. Elliot had made sure that Olivia took a cab home, partly because she still looked like shit but mostly so she couldn't decide to get a drink and walk in on their plotting which she would not have appreciated.

"I don't think it matters how or why Liv has it so bad. What matters is how we're going to figure out if Cabot is gay," Elliot tapped his forefinger on the dirty tabletop to emphasize his point.

"We could just ask her?" Fin offered.

"And get slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit faster than you can say 'special victims'. That woman is so cold she's an icicle." Munch knew a thing or two about sexual harassment after his long line of wives.

"We're detectives. What we need to do is gather some evidence, do some detecting." The gears in Elliot's mind began to turn, lubricated by beer. Alexandra Cabot would be an open book to him soon.

***

A crisp knock at her office door interrupted Alex in the middle of prepping a closing argument. She tossed the legal pad covered in half-finished sentences and useless points onto her desk, followed by her pen. She had been oddly distracted since her trip to the precinct the morning before. Not to flatter herself, but she was pretty sure that Olivia had checked her out. It stuck in the back of her brain – the idea of Olivia's eyes on her – wanting her. It snuck up on her in the shower, while she was making dinner, on the cab to work in the morning. A flood of warmth inundated her lower belly every time the idea pushed its way to the front. A distraction of the non-sexual type was almost welcome to Alex by that point.

"Come in."

The door opened part of the way, and Elliot slipped his wide shoulders inside, closing it softly behind him. The Detective's arrival was a surprise. She hadn't made any appointments for the day since she had court in the afternoon she desperately needed to prepare for. "Is there something I can do to help you, Detective Stabler?" She leaned back in her chair and crossed her long legs at the knees.

He sat down in the visitor's chair across the desk from her and leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. His gaze was intent, like he was studying a perp, which was unnerving since he had locked it on Alex. He rubbed his hands together contemplatively. "Do you own any comfortable shoes?" he finally asked.

Like his presence, the question caught her off guard. She arched her eyebrow and paused for a moment considering how to respond. Somehow this must be a trap, or a joke. "My heels aren't really that uncomfortable. Once you get used to them," she offered, because really the answer was no. She owned a closetful of three hundred dollar heels, a single pair of running shoes. Alexandra Cabot didn't schlep around, even on the weekend.

With a frown Elliot put a tick mark in the straight column. He had spent an hour on the phone the night before talking to Munch while he surfed the internet for information that might help him identify a potential lesbian. After he had explained what he was doing to Kathy, she had laughed and left him to it with a knowing look he figured he should ask her about later.

"That's too bad." He said, as if the words actually meant anything. "What about softball? Do you like to play softball?" Olivia really owed him one for this.

Something was definitely up and Alex's first instinct was to shut Elliot down with a razor-sharp quip and go back to doing her work. But the conversation had to be going somewhere and she was just curious enough to find out where. "I played a little in college, on the law school co-ed team," she offered.

All the websites said that was a definite gay give-away. Elliot checked off the gay column. "Ever listen to the Indigo Girls?"

The picture finally became clear for Alex, but the reason for it just didn't make sense. Knowing now the direction that Elliot was going, Alex absolutely refused to admit that she owned several of their CDs. "I'm not sure where you're going with this or why," Alex asked icily.

He was backed into a corner, and he knew it. But he still had no conclusive proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Time to throw out his last gambit before she kicked him out of her office. "Well, I don't really care. But Olivia wanted to know."

At the sound of the female detective's name, a bright blush blossomed on Alex's ivory cheeks. Now that was the nail in the coffin, Elliot concluded. The lawyer was left speechless, for the first time since she'd passed the bar. What the hell could she say to that? And the idea that had plagued her for the last twenty-four hours, Olivia's eyes on her, elbowed its way to the front of her brain. She was pretty much going to die, at her desk, in front of Elliot Stabler, without being able to utter a single other word.

Elliot saved her by tapping his hand on her desk, as if to signal the end of her interview, and then headed out the door without another word.