A/N: Happy Tuesday. I literally wrote and proofed this in less than 2 hour so if it's bad, that's why!

A car horn blaring several floors below burst into the quiet of the dark bedroom, startling Olivia awake. Her eyes snapped open, then squinted shut as her eyelashes became embroiled in … whose blonde hair was this? And why was it surrounding her face? Was that coconut she could smell? Who even had so much hair?

She edged backwards, realisation tumbling into the space in which she had been nestling. Amanda Rollins. Olivia Benson had woken up with her face buried in her tousled locks. The younger detective was still asleep, having avoided being ripped back to consciousness by that obnoxious New York driver. Thank goodness, Olivia thought to herself. That would have been awkward.

Oh, and it still might be, Olivia's mind added as it recognised that her head had not been the only body part to migrate towards Amanda during the night. Slung low over a lithe waist, splayed against warm, smooth, bare skin was Olivia's hand. Awesome, she thought to herself. What treachery her arm had undertaken, creeping itself towards the woman which, Olivia was now ready to admit, she was developing a crush on.

But it wasn't a crush she was planning to act on. Amanda was her subordinate. And they worked together. And it was just a bad idea. Olivia was not ready to become emotionally involved with someone else from work. And she sure as hell wasn't interested in a casual, physical relationship with Amanda. For some reason, Olivia already knew that it would be all or nothing when it came to the blonde.

That said, she didn't think this was the best way to break the news to Amanda that these out of work evenings they'd shared had led to Olivia developing feelings. It was customary to talk about these things, rather than just grope someone when they slept, after all. Well, maybe not groping, Olivia's brain supplied. You're just resting your hand on her … bare stomach. Yeah, ok, it doesn't look great and it's a position you're going to need to extricate yourself from before she wakes up.

Olivia rolled her eyes at her own thought process before setting to work, slowly moving her hand away from the warm body against which they are pressed. As the pads of her fingers break contact, something inside Olivia twinged. She pushed the thought aside and continued to withdraw her arm, back to her side of the bed. With a little sigh of relief, she rolled onto her back but just as she was free and clear, Amanda began to stir then, in quite a spectacularly dramatic movement, flipped herself onto her other side and threw her own arm across Olivia's stomach, pinning her to the bed.

She lay frozen, flat on her back and staring up through the gloom at the ceiling, heart pounding in her chest. Next to her, Amanda snuffled something in her sleep and then fell silent. Olivia didn't dare move. She just lay there, hardly breathing. What now? Did she try and move out of the way? Did she wake Amanda? Did she feign sleep and wait for Amanda to wake up naturally and then, presumably, do exactly what Olivia had done and retreat to pretend like it never happened?

But before she could decide what to do, Amanda's sleeping body made another decision. Olivia let out a little whimper as she felt a small hand slide up her side towards her breast, thumb brushing the underside through her borrowed t-shirt. Olivia's heart hammered against her chest, so hard that she was almost surprised its thundering didn't wake up the woman who was, ok now it was an acceptable word to use, groping her.

Yet Amanda stayed asleep, thumb moving slowly backwards and forwards in a gentle, rhythmic pattern. Now what? Olivia's entire body was tense, on edge. And yet it wasn't tense because the touching was threatening her or in any way unwanted. More, it was tense because the touching was wanted, and somehow that made it even worse.

There was nothing for it, she decided, but to lie there and wait, hoping to fall asleep before Amanda woke up. But she knew, even as she shut her eyes, that there was no way her conscious brain would let her miss a moment of the situation she had found herself in.

Amanda Rollins was a morning person. Always had been. Ever since she was a child, she tended to open her eyes and bound out of bed moments later. It was just the way her body worked. From zero to sixty in seconds. As a child, her parents had groaned the moment they heard her feet hit the floorboards, knowing the day had begun for everyone. It wasn't much better now she was an adult. While she could enjoy lounging around in bed all morning with a lover, when she was on her own, she tended to get up straight away. Not least because Frannie was always pretty keen to get out for her morning pee.

But this morning, Amanda woke up feeling like a snuggle. In fact, she woke up snuggling. It was warm, comforting, the softness pressed against her, the curves beneath her fingers the ... Thanks to Amanda's fast-moving brain, even without caffeine, it took barely five seconds for the blonde to remember the events of the previous night and therefore to piece together the fact that the snuggle in which she was involved was not normal for her relationship with her bedfellow.

She sat up abruptly, all but launching herself to the far side of the bed and then tumbling out of it. At the sound of her owner's entire hitting the floor, Frannie got up too, although with slightly more grace. She stretched as Amanda picked herself up, peering sheepishly over the edge of the bed and internally groaning when she found a familiar, smirking face looking back at her.

"Are you ok?"

"Morning," Amanda said, righting herself and pulling her pyjama top, which suddenly felt very skimpy, back into place. "Um, you're awake."

"Yes, I'm awake," Olivia nodded, her own embarrassment having faded away and been replaced by amusement at Amanda's spectacular overreaction.

"And have you been awake long?"

"A while," Olivia nodded.

"So you, I mean, I guess you were … well, I mean -"

"It's fine, Amanda," Olivia said, putting the poor woman out of her misery. "You were asleep. We all do things when we're asleep that we wouldn't do when we're awake."

"Like snore?"

Olivia laughed, pleased Amanda had found some way to break the awkwardness. "Yes, that's exactly what I meant."

"Right, well, I've gotta take Frannie out. Um…" She cast around until she found a discarded pair of jeans and a sweater. "I'll be back in ten minutes or so. Feel free to make coffee or stay in bed or whatever. Coffee's in the freezer. There's some breakfast bars in the cupboard. Just take a look and see what you can find."

"Thanks," Olivia replied, but the blonde was already disappearing out of the bedroom door, followed by her dog. Amanda was clearly still feeling highly embarrassed about everything that had happened.

Olivia waited until she heard the apartment door shut before she got up herself. Coffee, she decided sounded great. Unlike Amanda, Olivia was far from coherent as soon as she'd woken up. While she'd become used to calls in the middle of the night over the course of her career, she had always had to stop for a coffee on the way to the crime scene, hospital or precinct before her brain was ready to function properly.

Coffee. That was the first order of the day now that the slender arm which had been barricading her into the bed had been removed. That said, Olivia mused as she got up, there had been something comforting about its weight, something which she had missed the moment Amanda had leapt away from her, as if scalded. Olivia tried not to take offence at that; choosing to believe the woman was motivated by the horror of embarrassment at the situation, not with whom the situation had involved.

By the time the apartment door opened and Frannie scampered inside, Olivia was dressed in her clothes from the day before and waiting for the coffee to finish dripping through. She offered a genuine smile to Amanda and asked her how the walk was.

"Fine, we just went around the block. It's been raining all night. Some of the roads are just giant puddles," Amanda said as she toed off her boots. "Did you find everything you needed?"

"Yes, thank you. You may not have much food in this house but you've got four different types of coffee in your freezer. Which is a weird place to keep it by the way."

"I know, I'm a coffee geek. It keeps it fresher. I just love coffee; I consider it my vice."

"I consider it my crutch but I never really learned much about it. How can you drink the battery acid we have at the precinct considering you start each day with this?"

"I know, it's a self-afflicted trauma each day," Amanda laughed, reaching for the full pot now the V60 had finished and pouring the steaming black liquid into the mug beside Olivia and then the other one which she presumed the brunette had got out for herself.

"I'll bet," Olivia said, adding a splash of milk to her drink before offering it to Amanda who shook her head. Olivia had tried drinking black coffee when she was younger, thinking it made her appear more sophisticated but she hated its bitterness. Or maybe she was just drinking bad coffee she mused as she watched the shorter woman before her take a sip of the scalding liquid and sigh with seeming contentedness.

And then Amanda noticed that she was being watched. "What?"

"Nothing," Olivia said, taking a sip of her own coffee. "Sorry."

An awkwardness settled over the pair and Amanda steeled herself for the conversation she knew was needed. "Hey, so, I'm really sorry about, you know, earlier. I'm used to sharing the bed with Frannie and -"

"And you spoon your dog?" Olivia laughed.

"Well, yeah. Frannie gives great hugs. Actually, she always has to be the little spoon. I tried to make her be the big spoon once and she wasn't on board."

Olivia laughed harder at that. "Well, that's just not fair. Everyone knows you have to take turns being the little spoon."

"So it's my turn next time?"

The teasing, light-hearted nature of the conversation dissolved at once. "Ne- next time?" Olivia asked, her face suddenly flush.

"You know what I mean. I mean … it didn't mean anything. It was a joke. I didn't mean …" Too many 'means'. Amanda fell silent, took a deep breath and tried again. "I just wanted to apologise for whatever my sleeping self did. I've not shared a bed with another person in a long time and I guess that some part of me wanted that human contact. It won't happen again because there won't be a next time, I know that. And, I guess we just forget about it and move on as if nothing's changed, right?"

Olivia put her coffee down and looked at the woman before her carefully. Amanda seemed to have resigned herself to what she had said, staring resolutely at the floor now she had stopped speaking. And for the most part, Olivia believed her. She knew the woman hadn't been consciously hugging her. She knew the woman was joking when she'd referenced taking turns to be the little spoon. And she understood the desire to sleep close to someone. But what she wasn't so sure about was whether nothing had changed and whether she could forget. At least, as far as she was concerned, everything had changed and she couldn't forget that feeling she'd felt while lying beside the blonde.

"Amanda," she said quietly, urging the woman to look at her and waiting until those azure eyes rose to meet her own. "You don't have to apologise. I get it, ok? And to tell you the truth, a part of me enjoyed being close to someone too. I've not had that in a long time either. But something has changed between and I can't pretend it hasn't."

Amanda looked crestfallen. "Because of what I told you last night? Because of what Patton did to me? You think I shouldn't be working SVU, don't you? Are you gonna tell Cragen?"

"No, not at all. I think you're great at your job. I would never tell Cragen or anyone else what you told me in confidence. And what's changed has nothing to do with what you told me anyway. Well, maybe it does. Maybe the fact that you opened up and were honest with me helped but that wasn't what I was talking about. Amanda, I … fuck, I like you, ok?" Olivia exclaimed, throwing caution to the wind. "And this morning, well, I guess I started to think about what it might feel like if you liked me too."

There was a long, heavy silence. Amanda just gazed at Olivia, blinking every now and then as she tried to process the information she had heard.

"You … like me?" she asked eventually.

"I do."

"Like, 'like' like me?"

Olivia rolled her eyes. "Yes, Amanda, I 'like' like you. But, if I've just read into things and if you're not interested or not looking for anything … and we work together, so there's that and I don't even know if the department would allow … but I'm getting ahead of myself because you probably don't even -"

The ramble was cut short by pale lips covering her own, a firm, insistent kiss which caught Olivia off-guard and forced her to stumble backwards against the kitchen counter. As her back hit the edge, she finally closed her eyes, allowing herself to feel the woman pressed against her. And at that point, her arms finally wrapped around the compact frame of Amanda Rollins, as her mouth kissed her right back.

A/N: such progress!