Awkward doesn't even begin to describe how excruciating this is, watching Elliot locked in a strangely passionate, strangely intimate clinch with a stranger. All four of the detectives - and Tia, too - are eyeing the pair with something akin to horror etched across their faces. Elliot is married - everyone knows this - and the Captain has come to assist on the case - everyone knows this, too - and whatever is happening right now, it shouldn't be.

But it is. Elliot is standing there, with his hand around Olivia's neck, breathing the same air as her, with his eyes closed as if in prayer.

Tia knows this man. She knows his wife. She knows his devotion to his wife, knows the whole story, the five kids and the nearly forty years of marriage and how Elliot never, ever allows his eyes to stray away from Kathy. On occasion he indulges Tia, smiles at her, does something she thinks counts as flirting with her, tries to protect her, gets possessive over her, but it is Kathy he has chosen, Kathy he adores, Kathy he would not betray, not for anything.

But he is standing there, holding on to this woman. This stranger. Who is SVU herself as Elliot was once, and that must be, Tia thinks, that must be how they know one another, but Elliot has been gone from the city a little more than ten years and this woman's son, he's ten years old, and she was texting the boy, not her husband or a partner and Jesus, Tia doesn't want to think about that more than she has to.

Someone needs to do something, she thinks instead. This can't go on; the team is uncomfortable, and Elliot is embarrassing himself, and they have a goddamn job to do. Whatever this is, whatever Elliot is sorry for, whatever made Olivia strike him, it belongs in a soap opera, not in the midst of their trafficking operation. As Tia considers the various ways she could break this up and separate Elliot from his Captain it becomes apparent there is no need; Olivia seems to come out of the fog of shock herself.

With a gasp she wrenches herself away from Elliot, takes a step back and runs her hand over her hair while his hands slide away from her, his expression somehow bereft now that they aren't touching any more.

"I can't do this right now," Olivia tells him in a low voice. "We have a job to do."

"Let's do the job, then," Elliot answers. He doesn't sound too happy about it.

Olivia spins on her heel, surveys the room, the detective's faces, the damage done, and frowns.

"Shit," she murmurs softly, as if she's only just realized they have an audience, as if she had truly forgotten, however briefly, that she and Elliot were not the only people in the room.

"Listen up!" Elliot calls to the team, stepping up to stand beside her. "This is Captain…" he pauses, steals a glance at her, something almost like pride in his face. "Captain," he says again, and now there is no denying it is pride in his voice. Perhaps Olivia was not a Captain when he knew her, but she is now, and he is proud of her, and Tia wants to gag at his sudden display of sentiment.

"Olivia Benson," Elliot continues. "The NYPD has sent her here to work this case with us. She's the senior law enforcement officer in this room, she'll run the show."

"Thank you," Olivia says. In the thirty seconds since she parted from Elliot she has gotten herself fully, completely under control; she is no longer trembling, and her voice is confident and dripping with authority. "I've been out of touch for a few hours now. Someone bring me up to speed."

"Francesco," Elliot barks, and the detective steps forward, begins to fill Olivia in. Tia knows all this already, so she isn't listening to Francesco; she is watching Elliot, who is watching Olivia.

He's never been this intense before, Tia thinks. Never been this focused on someone who wasn't a perp. His eyes are glued to Olivia's face, watching her as she nods and asks questions and absorbs all the information Francesco has to give her. Even parted, no longer touching, there seems to be something binding Elliot to this woman, a chain he cannot - or does not wish to - break, something that makes him lean towards her, something that makes him oblivious to everyone and everything else in the room.

What is this? Tia asks herself. The answer seems obvious; surely, she thinks, surely they had an affair. It would explain Elliot's sudden departure from the force, would explain why Olivia struck him; if he fucked her and left her it would explain the woman's ten year old son and the cataclysmic way they have come together in this place. But an affair isn't Elliot's style, Tia thinks. He bears the image of Christ on his arm because he is a believer - unlike her; Tia only wears a cross around her neck because Leo gave it to her, and she's worn it for so long now that it has become part of her - and he loves Kathy, and besides, if he was interested in having an affair, surely something would have happened between him and Tia by now. She's given him plenty of opportunity, she thinks. If he'd been open to it, he would've done something. Why fuck Olivia, and not Tia? Perhaps because he did fuck Olivia; perhaps having been burned once before he is hesitant to take the risk again. There is a petulant part of Tia that wants to hate Olivia, for being the one he chose when he won't put his hands on Tia.

"How do you want to play it?" Olivia asks Elliot as Francesco finishes his briefing. Elliot catches his hands behind his back, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips, though his eyes are still sad.

"You're the boss," Elliot says.

Olivia considers him a moment, as if she doesn't care for his answer but can't come up with a logical reason to chide him for it.

"All right, then," she says. "Here's the plan."

It works remarkably well, Olivia's plan to snare the bodyguard of the prick they're investigating. A quick foot chase, with Olivia in the lead, ends with Olivia and Elliot cornering the bastard in an alley, and they tackle him together, both of them remarkably agile, given everything, both of them grinning like they've just won gold at the goddamn cop Olympics. When Olivia drags the man to his feet Elliot's hand settles at the small of her back, and stays there until she throws the perp into the waiting car, and Olivia never, not once, tries to shake him off; instead she smiles at him, as if she is pleased. Their delight at working together - and the casual way Elliot touches her when he won't touch Tia at all - sets Tia's teeth on edge, but she doesn't speak. All morning she has held her tongue, waiting for her moment, and it comes when they arrive back at the station. Elliot has ordered the suspect thrown in an interrogation room, and Olivia has asked for a moment to freshen up, and Elliot won't go talk to the prick without her even though he has five perfectly capable officers at his disposal. It's just as well, because the break in the action gives Tia a chance to corner him in his office.

"Elliot, what the fuck is going on?" she hisses as she closes the door behind her. He's sitting at his desk, and he startles a little at the vehemence of her tone, the anger she can no longer contain making itself plain.

"We're about to talk to the prick, and then we'll know more," he says easily. It is a deflection, and they both know it; it isn't the operation Tia wants to know about.

"I'm not talking about him," Tia spits. "I'm talking about her, and you, and whatever the fuck-"

"Keep your voice down, would ya?" Elliot says grumpily. "There's nothing to talk about. We're old friends."

It sounds like a lie. It sounds like he knows it is. And that sends a bolt of righteous fury shooting through her; how dare he lie to her? When he has, as far as she knows, never lied to her at all? Despite her usual reticence Tia has placed her trust in this man, and she doesn't appreciate the way she can feel it all crumbling down around her now.

"And it's just a coincidence that you left the city ten years ago, and her kid is ten?"

"Her what?"

There is a expression of genuine shock on his face; he looks, Tia thinks, like a man who's just been slapped in the face with a fish. He looks, if possible, even more surprised, even more thrown now than he did when Olivia literally slapped him. Tia feels a headache coming on; he didn't know. He didn't know Olivia has a son, because the boy was born after he left, and the news has rocked him to his core, and shit. What if the boy really is his, and he never knew, and now Tia is the one who's gone and told him? Has she done a favor for Olivia, or has she hurt her? It may be childish, but a part of her hopes she's just wrecked them both.

"She has a son," Tia explains, but she gets no further than that, because she has no sooner spoken than there comes a knock upon the door, and Olivia is opening it, leaning through the doorway, looking more beautiful than any woman should, after the things she's been through in the last twenty-four hours.

"El, you ready?"

El. Liv.

These fucking people, Tia thinks. With their little nicknames, and their intense stares, and their shared history, and their secrets. Secrets they are keeping from one another as well as from her, it would seem.

"Let's do it," he says. If he is desperate to learn more about her child, if he is wounded by this news, if it means anything at all to him, he hides it well.

They march back to the interrogation room together, Tia and Olivia and Elliot. There is something brewing between those two, she thinks. The wound has been lanced by their reunion, but it has not been cleaned, and it is in danger of festering. They have both of them swallowed down their emotions and their questions in favor of doing the job at hand, but there is only so much pressure that powderkeg can endure before it explodes. When it does, Tia means to be there to see it; she wants answers. For herself, of course, but for Kathy, too. She considers Kathy a friend - even if she would, gladly and without regret, fuck Kathy's husband at the first available opportunity - and Elliot is supposed to be loyal to Kathy but it is plain that a line has been crossed, somewhere, with Olivia. What would Kathy say, Tia wonders, if she knew Olivia was here?

"We'll take him," Elliot says when they reach the corridor outside the interrogation room where Francesco has been loitering, keeping an eye on their suspect. The instruction is for Tia as much as it is for Francesco, she's sure, and that smarts. She and Elliot have always worked well together in interrogation, and she doesn't like to see another woman taking her place. Once more she is thinking of interlopers; perhaps Olivia feels it is her place, feels Tia is the one who has usurped her position at Elliot's side. Perhaps Olivia is only reclaiming that which always belonged to her.

Through the glass Tia watches as Elliot holds the door open for Olivia, as she enters, as she sits herself down at the table, as Elliot leans back against the wall. It is precisely the same positions they would have taken if it were Tia in there with him. She has always followed his lead, in that regard, and she is wondering now if he has only taught her the steps of a dance that were written for someone else. For Olivia.

The questioning begins; Olivia is gentle, warm, a comforting presence at the table, and Elliot is scowling, uncompromising, asking his questions bluntly where she softens them. It is a masterful game of good cop/bad cop; they each know their roles, and play off one another to perfection. They have done this before. Old friends, Elliot has said, and Tia knows he means colleagues. But perhaps more than that; perhaps they were partnered together. Perhaps they worked a number of cases together, cut their teeth together. It would be something special, she thinks, to work with Elliot every day, and not just on the occasional case. To see him all the time, at his best and at his worst. It is no wonder, really, that Olivia fell for him.

It's an assumption, she knows it is, knows there's a possibility she's misread the situation, but she reckons the odds are in her favor. All signs point to broken hearts and shattered dreams, and that, she thinks, means sex. Maybe even love.

The interrogation goes on, the questions volleying back and forth; Elliot is getting agitated. Olivia must have noticed, because she stands, positions herself between Elliot and the perp. Elliot is circling behind her like a tiger in a too-small cage, but Olivia is holding his leash, tethering him in place. Until she isn't.

"Fine," she says, throwing her hands up in the air, making a show of being at her wit's end with the lack of response they've been getting. She turns away from the table, catches Elliot's eye, gives him the smallest of nods, and he snaps. As if her silent permission was the only thing Elliot was waiting for her he launches himself at the man, Olivia sidestepping neatly out of the way as Elliot and their perp tumble to the floor with a clatter, curses reverberating off the walls.

Elliot has always had a reckless streak in him, has never been afraid to use his strength to his advantage, but Tia had thought Olivia was a little softer. New police, a little more concerned with doing things the right way than the fast way. A little too tender to have the balls to give Elliot his head. She's let him go, now, and surprised Tia. Every time Tia thinks she has the measure of this woman, something happens to prove her wrong.

"You didn't want to talk to me," Olivia tells the man in Italian while Elliot holds him down. "You can talk to him."

She makes as if to leave, walking slowly away, but her hand has no sooner touched the doorknob than the pitiful specimen behind her calls out wait! Please! I'll tell you everything!

Through the two-way glass Tia catches a glimpse of Olivia's expression as she turns; her smile is nothing short of triumphant. The whole scene was staged, Tia realized. It was orchestrated, to perfection, with neither Elliot nor Olivia saying a single word to one another about it.

Damn it, she thinks. They're good.