Thanks for the reviews everybody! sprchick123-I guess I did go a little over board on the Simple Plan lyrics in the other story. I just got their new CD while I was writing it so the lyrics just kinda got stuck in my head. ;) Same with Avril. I love music of all kinds! I know each and every song whose lyrics I put up. Katydidit-Okay, last line sucked, I know. It sounded good at like one in the morning when I wrote it though. Don't even ask me what I was thinking. anon.-Writing of some sort is definately in my future. And I love that everyone else thinks so too! Makes me so happy... :)
Okay, fair warning before I start. All day I've been in bed nursing a box of tissues and a bottle of Allegra. My damn allergies have been acting up all day and they bug the crap out of me! Anyway, upside is I finally managed to write another chapter. I think my frustration inspired this, so that probably explains it. But I was drifting in and out of consciousness when I was writing, so let me know if anything is way off and I'll try to fix it. And I made this a Munch chapter just because I know a bunch of you guys like him. ;) Enjoy.
Warning! Munch: Not To Be Used As A Mediator
"Hey Liv, what are you still doing here?" Munch entered the squad room with a cup of coffee in hand. He'd long since been discouraged to touch the squad's coffee maker with his own 'special recipe,' so he frequently went out. The clock was starting to push towards the nine o'clock mark and Olivia had made a point of saying she planned to leave around eight. Yet there she was, slumped over her desk, though it was clear of any paperwork.
"Hm?" At his rough voice, she raised her head from her folded arms and tried to stifle a yawn as she rubbed her eyes to clear her vision. She'd been about five seconds away from total unconsciousness. She turned to John with half-closed and exhausted eyes as she automatically pushed her fingers through her tangled hair.
"I asked what you were still doing here." John held up the hand containing the coffee cup and stuck his forefinger towards her spotless desk. "You seem like you managed to take a bite out of your cases." He spoke somewhat bitterly as the toppling stacks on his desk wavered threateningly.
"Yeah…" Her voice was distant as she stared out a window a few feet from John, her eyes settling on some invisible object a few yards away.
"What's up?" He downed a gulp of the coffee, feeling the familiar comfort of the bitter black taste splashing on his tongue.
"Just thinking," she shrugged, twisting her face like she'd just got a bad taste in her mouth.
"Anything an old soul could enlighten you on?" He offered, pulling a smile and soft chuckle from Olivia.
Her distant gaze returned as she contemplated revealing some of her thoughts to John. Through his cynical jokes, she knew there was probably something he could help her work out. That and dumping some of her problems on him might clear her mind enough to work her own feelings out. "Men," was her simple response.
"Oh hey! I'm one of those!" He pointed out with a feigning exuberance as a mischievous grin landed on his face.
"Thank you for the informative headline," she snapped with a sarcastically elated tone. Her frustration with Elliot was beginning to creep into her relationships with everyone else. Noting her mistake, she began apologizing when John spoke up first.
"Oh, okay." He spoke with a sudden realization and began nodding his head understandingly. "So who is he?"
"Who's who?" Olivia sat against the back of her chair as she swung one leg on top of the other.
"Whatever guy you're having problems with."
"It's not really a problem, but- Hey, wait." Olivia started answering before she remembered that she'd never said anything to lead him to believe that. "Who said I'm having problems with someone?"
"Anyone who's ever lived with a woman longer than a minute," he smiled slyly before elucidating. "With women, they generalize things. Meaning if they have a problem with one man," he held his forefinger out, "then all men are scum," he opened the rest of his hand out and made a sweeping motion with his palm down. He answered the question on Olivia's face before she even configured it in her own mind. "With four ex-wives, I was frequently the 'bad-guy' 'scum of the earth,' my fault or not."
Olivia just shook her head and released a dry scoff, settling her rolling eyes on her partner's desk. She relished in the silence before breaking it with a telling sigh. No point in hiding it anymore. "It's Elliot." Her eyes never moved from the empty swivel chair as she continued. "He's been acting strange lately, but he refuses to talk to me. He just keeps insisting that nothing's wrong."
"And how do you know it's not?" Munch reacted like his normal argumentative self.
"Woman's intuition, mister expert." More seriously, she continued. "I know he's hiding something from me, but I can't figure out what."
"And you want me to talk to him?" John speculated the obvious, striking his narrow brown eyes in a glare over his glasses.
"I'll think about letting that 'woman' comment slide if you do," she bartered, sending him her own glare.
Smirking, Munch retorted with a simple, "Consider it done."
--XXX--
Indiscreetly poking his head through the squad room door, Elliot scanned the room to make sure Olivia wasn't there. Rather bittersweet, he found it empty of anyone but Munch, who was poking random buttons on his computer keyboard with only one hand, the other holding up his head.
Hearing a shuffling across the room, John's eyes shot towards it, the rest of him motionless. "Hey, how's it going?"
Wonderful! He wanted to lash out and scream. It's barely been twenty-four hours since I realized I fell in love with my partner, and in that time I've come seconds away from admitting it on numerous occasions. Even better, she's a few steps away from figuring it out anyway. Instead of answering with that, he came back with a half-hearted, "fine."
"And you sound it," he commented satirically, stealing his stare back to the glowing screen in front of him.
"Whatever," Elliot grumbled under his breath, pulling his swivel chair beneath him.
Unbeknownst to Elliot, Munch was still watching him from the corner of his eye, recalling his 'deal' with Olivia. He'd sworn to talk with him, and he'd be true to his word, if he could just figure out where to start. All his life he'd been shrinked by one person or another, by rabbis, marriage counselors, and psychiatrists, yet he'd never attempted such a feat himself. Besides, he'd simply tuned most of them out with the understanding that he knew more about himself and life than they could ever hope to. Getting under Olivia's skin wasn't overly difficult, though he'd been purely guessing when he hit the nail on the head with her.
Maybe he should just start with incredibly invasive questions until something pulled a reaction from him, the typical 'Munch' way.
"How have you been lately?" Oh yeah, that sounds like something I'd casually ask just to start up conversation, John chided himself as he flicked the computer monitor off, the glare beginning to burn his eyes.
"In seventh heaven," Elliot sighed resentfully, scratching a pencil against a loose piece of paper.
"How are your kids doing?" Munch knew his personal questions would arouse suspicion, but subtlety was largely over-rated in his opinion.
"Fine." Just as Olivia was, Elliot appeared much too distracted to spare any in-depth concentration or attention to the game of twenty questions. The detective's sight never left the paper he was so busily concerning himself with.
"Maureen started college this year, right?"
"Yep." Elliot's eyebrows furrowed in thought as his eyes scanned over his desk, shoving the paper to the side. "Do you have the file for the suspect on the Granger case?"
"Yeah," John replied somewhat hesitantly, spinning himself around to gaze at the piles of folders that somehow had appeared to multiply while his back had been turned. "Pick a file, any file," he muttered under his breath, feeling like the old cliché, 'finding a needle in a hay stack', could really apply here.
Elliot turned to watch John randomly start flipping through the off-white folders, obviously having no clue. "On second thought, never mind." He pulled a different case from the numerous ones he had to pick from.
"I'll find it!" He insisted, quickening his searching pace. "You staying 'til you finish all those?" Munch wondered inquisitively.
"Probably-" Elliot's voice was caught off with a sudden yawn. He held his hand to his mouth, leaning his elbow against the desk.
"You'll be here all night, what about your social life?"
He was met with a dry, sardonic laugh that normally John would have expected to come from his own mouth. "Good one. Me. A social life. Right."
"Oh come on." John stopped shuffling through the papers atop his desk and focused back to Elliot, finally getting the type of reaction he'd been waiting for. He quickly set his mind to pushing the subject to see if he could get him to crack. "No special someone you like?" Elliot flashed him a cursory glance, an irritated hostility in his eyes, not speaking a word.
Ding ding ding! I think we have a winner! John refused to be put off by a mere gaze as he realized he'd touched on a sensitive area. He was a man on a mission.
"You do!" He allowed the smallest smirk to cross his face as Elliot hung his head back down. "Who is it?"
"No I don't," he shot back warningly, "so nobody." He bent down to the side and pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk, making a squeaking metallic noise as it slid out. Casually sifting his hand through it, Elliot tried to ignore John's stares.
"Anyone I know?" John leaned back on his chair, folding his arms in marked amusement.
Elliot brought his head up eye level with John's, mustering up the most threatening, 'back-off' stare possible. "I doubt it, because I don't even know her!"
"Denial," Munch clucked his tongue disapprovingly and shook his head back and forth once. "You should ask her out. I would if I were you."
Elliot suddenly released an immense gush of air from his lungs, failing to previously realize that he'd been holding his breath. He felt the frustration from today start to build up in his chest, morphing into a lump of pure anger.
"Why would I want your opinion?" He snarled, gritting his teeth together until he felt a stabbing paw in his jaw. "Relationship advice coming from a guy who's been divorced four times, wonderful." Biting sarcasm stung his every word, almost knocking John back in his chair.
Munch's face was mix of hurt and betrayal for only a second before his defensiveness kicked in, over-riding his previous thoughts.
"Yeah," he matched Elliot's tone, his facial features hardening. "Because you and your holier-than-thou attitude are so much better with only one divorce under your belt!"
At the mention of Kathy, Elliot shot to his feet, kicking back the chair. The scraping of the wheels against the linoleum was the only audible noise as the two men stared at each other in fury as John rose to his feet as well.
"What in the hell is that supposed to mean?" He stressed each word and syllable, deliberately and irately.
"You brought it up!" John shouted back and jabbed his finger accusingly, raising his voice higher and higher to match with Elliot's. "I may have been divorced four times, but at least I never abandoned them after they gave birth to my four kids!"
Throwing his kids into the war, John might as well have taken out his gun and shot Elliot point blank. Though caught off guard, Elliot quickly recovered and came back with more malevolence than ever before.
"I didn't abandon them or Kathy!" He shrieked in outrage, moving a few steps closer towards the figure he was directing all his hatred towards. "She left me!"
That declaration came as a sudden surprise to John. He knew Elliot and Kathy were getting a divorce, but he'd been foggy with the details. A tiny ounce of guilt started to rise in his chest, but it evaporated as he replayed Elliot's words in his head.
"And I was the one that broke up all my marriages!" John yelled sarcastically, also closing in the gap between them with a few steps of his own.
"You and your stupid government conspiracy theories! Maybe if you paid as much attention to your wives as you did to them, you wouldn't be spending your nights writing out alimony checks!" Elliot spat his words like venom, looking only to inflict emotional damage now.
"Maybe if you spent more time with your kids and wife instead of here, she wouldn't have left you!" John's face was a crimson red as his chest heaved and he screamed in a rage.
Elliot's final footstep forward brought his face only inches from John's. "I was-!"
"Hey!"
Before he could finish, Elliot was interrupted by Cragen's voice coming from the squad room doors. He was flanked by Fin and Olivia. Neither man batted an eye as they continued their showdown, ignoring the yell.
Fin quickly appeared next to Elliot and Munch. In a second, he had placed a hand on each of the detectives' shoulders and shoved them back. He moved both hands to his partner and pushed him back farther while Cragen did the same with Elliot. Fin searched John's infuriated face before craning his neck to see Elliot's.
"What the hell's going on?" Olivia spoke what everyone was thinking, a bewildered daze in her eyes as they traveled back and forth between the two men.
"Nothing!" Elliot growled, spinning around on his heels and storming out the nearest exit.
"I 'talked' to him," Munch snapped at her, taking off towards the opposite exit. Fin gave Olivia a perplexed glance before he ran after his partner.
Olivia merely stared at the empty doorway, the expression of a lost child upon her face as her mind tried to figure out what had just happened. Tediously, she turned to see her captain watching her with a confused look as well.
"Do you know what that was about?" He wondered softly, studying her.
"I have no idea." In a defeated attitude, she shook her head and ripped her coat from the back of her chair. It wasn't until she had stuffed both arms through the sleeves that Cragen spoke again.
"Are you going to go talk to Elliot?" He pointed his thumb over his shoulder, towards the door.
"No." She shook her head, releasing a rueful smile as a fed-up look covered her face. "I give up." She threw her hands out to the side and let them fall against her hips as her eyes explored the floor. "I try to care, try to work things out, but it never works. So you know what?" Olivia finally met Don's stare as she folded her arms. "I give up." She shrugged her shoulders. "I just give up. Elliot can do whatever the hell he wants and I'm not going to even bother anymore. Forget it." Shaking her head with a beaten expression, Olivia began walking towards the door, the words 'I give up' still lingering on her lips.
--XXX--
"Now, let's do a right hook, left hook, then right jab." Billy Blank's voice instructed as it floated from the speakers of Olivia's television set. She was dressed in a pair of black Capri leggings and a light blue sports bra as she rhythmically jabbed her fists into the air, following the instructor's count. Olivia was working out to her Tae-Bo tape for the second time that night.
When the 'Tae-Bo craze' had first hit, Olivia found it just as ridiculous as everyone else did. Then a friend convinced her to try it for the first time a couple years ago. She'd been hooked ever since. Normally, it was such a huge stress reliever and helped to clear her mind. It was like her own form of meditation.
As of lately though, not even it could help her shove the thoughts from her mind. Honestly, she didn't know what to think about what had happened between Elliot and John. After leaving the station house, she hadn't heard a word from anyone, not that she was listening all too closely. As far as she was concerned, she just didn't care anymore. Something was obviously going on with Elliot, but he was behaving like he'd take it to the grave before telling anyone, especially Olivia. And that was perfectly fine with her, or so she kept telling herself.
Watching the screen flicker to black, Olivia released a sigh and wiped the sweat from her forehead. Just as she was about to rewind the tape again, she heard the ringing of her cell phone. Grabbing her coat and fumbling through the pocket, her hand emerged with the phone. She flipped it open and brought it to her ear.
"Benson."
"Hey Olivia." She was somewhat surprised to hear the gruff voice of Fin on the other end.
"Hey Fin." She shoved her wet, matted hair behind her ears and adjusted the phone against her shoulder. "What's up?"
"Just calling to see how you're doing. You left pretty quick and the Cap seemed worried."
"Yeah," Olivia subconsciously nodded. "I'm fine."
"'Kay." There was a hesitance in his voice as he paused.
"Something else?"
"I was just wondering, d'you know what Elliot said to Munch before we got there?"
"No, why would I?" Olivia picked up the phone with her left hand as she brought her right arm across her chest.
"John was yelling something about talking to Elliot just 'cause you asked him to. I figured you might know."
"I just asked him to see if he could find out if anything was wrong with Elliot. Why? Is he okay?"
"He's all right." Olivia could almost sense Fin shrugging on the other end of the phone. "But whatever Elliot said really got to him. I've never seen him so upset."
"Oh…" She was at a loss of words for an explanation to her partner's behavior.
"Yeah, well, I guess I'll let you go."
"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," he confirmed. "And Olivia?"
"Yeah?"
"You know my number, if you ever want to talk or anything."
"Thanks Fin." Olivia gave a small smile at Fin's rare offer. "Night."
"Night."
Olivia brought the phone down a flipped it shut, staring at it intently as she pondered her next move. Catching sight of the clock on her wall and how late as it was, she decided to take a quick shower and hop into bed. Besides, didn't they say things always looked better after a good night's rest? As doubtful a cliché as it was, it couldn't hurt.