Link 1/2
Jezyk
Spoilers: Anything current
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine.
AN: Although I've written untold numbers of stories for other fandoms, this is my second SVU fic. Comments welcome, but please be gentle!
AN2: Personally, I kind of felt the writers totally glossed over everything that had been going on with Olivia and Elliot, especially with the seemingly out of place friendship in Scheherezade. So I'm pretending they weren't all buddy-buddy again. It's not that I want them to not get along (although it sure is fun when they fight); it's that I want to see how they patched their relationship back up.
O/E - consider yourself warned!

Chapter One

They weren't really a group that hung out much, although whether due to the horrors of the cases they worked together or the unmentioned, pervasive lack of self-esteem that united the four, none could have said. Yet one night, after a case no one wanted to remember, the four detectives wound up gathered around a table in a bar.

Elliot hadn't had much to say in general since Olivia's return, but when she thought about it, she couldn't remember the last time he'd really talked before she'd left either. He sat nursing his beer, doing such a good impression of not wanting to be there that Olivia wondered why he'd bothered coming with them. Olivia sat across from him, deliberately checking herself on how much she drank for fear of the loose lips that accompanied intoxication. Her conscious mind honestly had no idea, not even a clue, of what she'd say to him if she were drunk, but still knew enough to fear it. Unfortunately she was concentrating so heavily on not getting drunk that she too had lapsed into a miserable silence.

Munch had thankfully been talking more or less nonstop since they'd left the precinct. Fin was listening, interjecting the occasional reality check when he could, but Munch in a rant about big brother was not to be dissuaded by one lone voice of reason.

Fin cast a sidelong glance at Olivia, nudging her with his elbow. "Feel free to jump in anytime." Of all of them, Olivia was usually the only one who could stop Munch, which was due primarily to the stunning smile she would flash that stopped most men, including the paranoid detective, dead in their tracks.

By the time she looked up, however, Fin had already given up on getting an answer. Olivia immediately went back to staring at her beer.

Munch shook his head at Fin, actually cutting his diatribe short in an effort to prove that he was paying attention to something besides the sound of his own voice. "Why bother trying to interact with them? They only pretend to get along when Cragen's looking."

It may have been the mention of the captain's name or perhaps the unnatural pause in the conversation, but something caught Elliot's attention. His head jerked up as he looked between Munch and Fin. "What?"

More out of habit than real interest, Olivia unconsciously mirrored Elliot's movement, her question coming out at the same time as his. "Huh?"

Fin chuckled at the twin reactions of the two who would undoubtedly be particularly offended at the idea they were so much alike, but otherwise ignored them both. "And yet they still spend too much time together."

Elliot stared at his friends for a moment. He didn't like that his friends were talking about him. He didn't like that they were evidently making fun of him. He really didn't like, his eyes finding Olivia's confused face, that he wasn't even sure he could count her as one his friends anymore. "I'm getting another beer." He stood up, abandoning the almost full, lukewarm beer he already had, and crossed over to the crowded bar.

With Elliot gone, Olivia's beer ceased to be so fascinating and she looked up to join in whatever conversation Munch and Fin were having. But rather than talking, they were looking up, their faces a mixture of vague apprehension and uncertainty. She turned to see what they were looking at and immediately regretted it. She snapped her eyes back to her bottle, wishing she'd never looked up. But it was too late; the image was already burned into her brain.

The bad thing about cop bars was that cops tended to congregate in cop bars and the bad thing about cops congregating in cop bars was that cops were always welcome. Even, Olivia though with a grimace, the ones she really didn't want to welcome.

Olivia took a sip of her beer and realized, as a wave of nausea rolled over her, she'd be better off with water since having to deal with Dani Beck, or worse, Elliot and Dani together, was liable to make her toss her cookies. She stared at her beer, willing it to magically turn into a bottle of Evian. She felt eyes on her and instinct told her to look up. Munch and Fin were staring at her, far too interested in her expression for her liking. "What?"

Fin groaned and looked down. Munch smiled at her, a suspicious expression for him. "Olivia," he motioned past her, "this is Dani Beck."

She kicked Fin under the table for not warning her that Dani and Elliot were coming over. She bit back the bile that rose up at the thought of the woman who'd replaced her so quickly and so effortlessly. She hoped she was smiling when she finally looked up. "Yeah, we've met."

There was a momentary crack in Dani's obnoxiously friendly smile. "I don't recall you mentioning your name."

Olivia took a long swallow of her beer, suddenly wishing it were stronger. "I heard yours." It could have been the completely flat tone of her voice or her not particularly friendly words, but either way, Dani's gaze shifted sideways, looking to Elliot in doubt. Elliot smiled back at her like an idiot, apparently unaware he was witnessing a female pissing contest.

Dani's smile was in place when she turned back, although she pointedly didn't look in Olivia's direction. "Mind if I join you?"

Elliot slid into his seat across from Olivia, the distance between them seeming to Olivia to be an endless abyss. "Sure, pull up a chair."

Olivia stood up, almost knocking Dani over in her haste to get away. "Why don't you sit here?" She motioned toward the dark back of the bar. "I saw someone I want to go talk to." She hadn't, of course, but she wasn't about to sit there and watch Elliot stare at Dani and smile like a simp. He'd never smiled like a simp at her. Shed always figured it was because he wasn't a simp, but she was stating to wonder if it was really because she wasn't a blonde.

If anyone noticed or cared that she was leaving, Olivia didn't want to know. She wasn't even sure if she wanted anyone, especially Elliot, to notice because she sure as hell didn't want to have to explain what she couldn't quite understand - why she was mad at Elliot in the first place. Fortunately for the effectiveness of her unplanned, last minute escape attempt, she did spy a guy she knew. Although she usually made a practice of not dating cops, Nick had been one of the few exceptions. He was handsome and friendly and, if she remembered correctly, far more interested in her than she had been in him. She couldn't remember why she hadn't liked him and so, joining him made her little lie all the more believable.

And although she hadn't been seeking attention from Elliot - or anyone else - she reveled in the huge smile and warm hug Nick gave her. She had never gotten such a welcome from Elliot, not that she'd really expected one, but after having been away for so long, it would have been nice. Olivia tried to focus on Nick's words, if for no other reason than to keep her attention off the table she'd abandoned, but her mind kept wondering if Elliot was looking. She laughed at her own stupidity, telling herself that it didn't matter. She wanted to know if he felt guilty watching someone who was actually happy to see her. She wanted to know if maybe he would realize just how unwelcome he'd made her feel. She wanted to know if he had even noticed her departure or if he was still staring at Dani with a doe-eyed love-struck face better suited for a teenage girl.

Nick asked her to dance, and judging from the tone in his voice, she knew he'd asked more than once before she finally noticed. There weren't a lot of people dancing, more than she typically expected to be in a cop bar, and she actually remembered having no desire to pursue a relationship with Nick, although she still couldn't remember why, but she agreed anymore. He served a purpose. She told herself it was because she still wasn't ready to go home and because she wanted to feel wanted and she swore to herself that it had absolutely nothing to do with the irrational idea that it might make Elliot as jealous as she was, which was particularly irrational since she was absolutely not jealous of Dani Beck.

Which left her at a loss as to why she was amused to see Elliot alone at the table when she and Nick brushed by. She felt like she'd won a contest when Nick put his arms around her because she knew Elliot was watching her the whole time. It really hadn't been her intent, but she found herself feigning even greater interest in Nick, dancing much closer than she wanted to, even allowing his hands to roam over her.

Eventually it was the roaming hands that reminded her precisely why she hadn't wanted to see Nick again. It took more than one attempt, including a threat, before Nick finally took the hint. Olivia stopped at the bar for a fresh beer before returning to the table. She was prepared to see Elliot gloating, since her pathetic, ill-fated endeavor to make him jealous or angry or whatever she'd intended unconsciously had resulted in her even more pathetic return to Elliot's side to keep Nick away. But as she slid into the booth, she noticed Elliot's eyes were dark and his expression hardly victorious. Everything in her said to take the victory and run with it, to let her point be made silently. But then she started to think his anger was really over Dani's departure rather than her own and she couldn't let it go. There was just something about Elliot that brought out the immature, catty side of her personality.

She looked around for the other woman even though she knew Dani wasn't there. "So where's your girlfriend?"

His expression didn't change much, except for a moment when he flashed between confusion and guilt. "She's just a friend." The simple fact that he denied it, that she'd made him deny it, made him sound like a liar.

Olivia tried to not care. "Sure. Whatever you say." She told herself that people had mistaken her as being Elliot's wife countless times over the years, but somehow that always made her think it was because even strangers saw the emotional connection between them. And that thought made her feel even worse for saying that Dani was his girlfriend because by the same logic, it implied that he now shared that bond with Dani instead.

He narrowed his eyes and leaned on his forearms. "Is there something you want to say to me?"

She sat back, wanting to smirk that she was maintaining a sense of detachment - or at least making him think she was. After a long swallow of beer, she shrugged. "No, not really."

Elliot mirrored her, sitting back and crossing his arms over his chest. "Then why are you here?" Angry or not, he wasn't about to give up the fight. For a moment, she felt very much like a perp, facing a controlled, yet nearly not, angry detective across a table that wouldn't provide her with much protection if that thin veil of control was to tear.

"The other tables are full." She looked away from Elliot's intense stare and unhappily discovered that Nick had been waiting for her to do just that.

He appeared at the table a second later, smiling a little too broadly at Olivia. "Change your mind already, babe?"

Olivia grimaced, revealing her disinterest to Elliot and completely ruining any pretense that she'd been enjoying her time with Nick. "No, Nick, thanks."

He sized Elliot up and shrugged. "I'm over here when you do."

She waited until he'd walked away before she responded. "Not in this lifetime." Realizing what she'd said, she looked up to catch Elliot's smirk. "What?"

"Nothing." He seemed far too pleased with himself for a man who'd sat alone and stared while she was dancing.

"What are you laughing at?"

He swirled his beer around in the bottle with such an air of authority that Olivia wanted to slap him. "You can hardly blame the guy for thinking he's getting lucky."

"Why? Because I danced with him?" She tried to tell herself that his chauvinistic interpretation was a good sign, proof she was really getting to him since the remark was so terribly not like Elliot at all - but her goal, the ever elusive one she couldn't even identify, was clearly not to make him mad. Clearly, of course, because she'd succeeded in making him mad and she wasn't satisfied.

"Dancing? Is that what you call it?"

She met his eyes, wondering when she'd completely lost the ability to read him. "What do you call it?"

"Having sex with your clothes on." He didn't seem happy or smug anymore. "Which inevitably leads men to think they're getting lucky."

"Right, and you know this because of your vast sexual experience?" It was a low blow and she knew it, especially when his faithfulness to his wife had always been one of the things she found the most attractive about him. But she hardly had time to feel guilty before he fired back.

"I'm sure everyone looks like a vestalvirgin compared to you."

She refused to let his words hurt her; she refused to allow herself to believe he'd called her a slut. "We can't all be prudes, Elliot, because then you wouldn't be able to lord your vast superiority over us."

He didn't respond and the fire in his eyes told her it was taking all of his strength to keep his composure. His eyes dropped down to his hands, clutched around his beer. The heat from his hands and their death grip on his drink caused condensation to drip, one tiny bit at a time.

It struck her then that those drops were like blood, a miniscule injury from the barbs they continuously hurled at one another. They weren't much, nothing devastating, but when she followed the drop down, it collected into a sizable puddle. And then the meaningless jabs stopped seeming so meaningless. Bits at a time or not, they were still hurting each other. She wanted it to stop before it was too late to fix it.