A/N: This chapter takes place around the episode 'Fat' (7x20).

Song: I Still Belong to You by Imaginary Future.

Chapter 15- Olivia

Computer Crimes

"Your partner over at sex crimes was Elliot Stabler, right," her new co-worker asked as he entered their shared office. She was sitting in front of her computer going over virus detection training. She found the new work interesting but not invigorating. At the mention of Elliot's name, she looked up to Mark. Mark was drier than a piece of stale toast. She was hoping Vickie would start working more hours because at least she enjoyed gossiping with her.

"Yeah, why?" she asked as she felt her body tense. A few days had passed since he'd gotten the news of her departure from Cragen. She'd been trying not to think about him, about how his fingers felt between her legs, how he'd felt in her mouth. She knew he must be furious with her. He'd asked her to promise she wouldn't run, and little did he know, she already had. Even as he finally touched her, he had already lost his grasp on her. She knew if things had been flipped, she'd be broken. She didn't know what to do to fix it. She'd already made the decision for them, before she knew he'd come to her door and do what she'd been wanting for months. She wasn't going to break the kiss to tell him she'd thrown away their partnership because she was angry that he hadn't kissed her sooner.

"I was just downstairs going over some reports, and I saw him assault some guy in the hallway," Mark said as he sat down across from her. He expelled the tidbit like it was hot gossip. He shook his head as he started picking at his BLT sandwich. "What a hot head, is that why you left the guy?" he laughed, through bites of his sandwich, in a tone that made it seem like he felt sympathy for her.

"No," she said with no humor, and he set his sandwich down at her tone shift. "Elliot's a good cop," she said as she started to stand.

"So what gave?" he asked, and it unnerved her that he thought he could ask. She and Elliot were apparently hot gossip units away, great.

"Just needed a change," she said. Before he could respond to her vague answer she said, "I'm going to go grab some lunch," and then she hurried as fast as she could to her partner.

"I liked that shirt," she said as she leaned in the doorway as she watched him take off his ripped dress shirt.

"What are you doing here?" he asked as he looked at her. There was so much pain in his eyes, and she hated that she was the cause of it.

"I heard what happened between you and Blaine," she said as she tried to put as much understanding into her tone as she could. She'd come to make sure he was okay, not give him more grief for whatever had happened with him and his new partner. His new partner.

"What can I tell ya, he's a prick," he said as his eyes flicked over her. The weight in the distance between them felt crushing. His words echoed in her ears, It will change our partnership. He was right. As she watched him undress all she could think about were those moments they'd shared in her doorway. She wanted him like that again, but she wanted him as her partner too, it was crushing to know that she couldn't have both. She'd lost her place in his life by thinking she could handle more of him. He seemed to be running the same thoughts through his mind, as he watched her stand there and look at him like he was at the top of her long list of regrets. Regret, that was why he hadn't kissed her sooner. Fuck.

He inhaled as he moved towards her and for a split second, she swore he was going to kiss her like he had a few nights prior. Instead, he stilled a few inches in front of her and said,

"Why didn't you tell me?" why didn't you tell me when I first stepped inside, why didn't you tell me when I kissed your mouth, why didn't you tell me when I held your body against the door, why didn't you tell me as you sank to your knees. She'd had so many opportunities, and the truth was she'd been selfish. She wanted the moment, and she didn't want reality crashing through it. The worst of all of it was that she wanted to hurt him. She wanted the blow to hit him when Cragen told him the next day, even after he'd had her in that way. She was sick. When did she begin plotting to hurt him, her best friend? God, she was furious with herself. She didn't want to hurt him.

"Elliot, we've been partners for longer than anybody else here. I, we needed a change…. I'm sorry, I should have talked to you, it's just, it's…. too complicated," her words burned her throat as she spoke them. His eyes shone back her pain, and she knew now why it was warned to never mix business with pleasure. I broke a personal rule. But Elliot had stopped being business a long time ago, perhaps when she told him about her father; or the first time she used lethal force to save his life, and their eyes connected, cementing their bond; or maybe it was when he cried about the pressure of being an underpaid detective raising a family of four; or when she laid awake all night with fear that he could have been exposed to HIV; or maybe it was when he said it's not all about the genes, Liv, and she knew she wanted to have his babies. Fuck.

"Thanks for dropping by," he said as he left her standing there to drown in their history.

As she was leaving her precinct to return to computer crimes, Fin caught her arm.

"What are you doing here?" he asked as he smiled at her. She opened her mouth to explain, but realization seemed to crash upon him at that moment.

"Ya heard about Elliot," he nodded in his own understanding, and she was thankful she didn't have to speak the words.

"Liv, you wanna grab some lunch? Munch is in court, and I'm trying to put off some paperwork," he said with some caution. She was surprised at his offer. Fin was her friend, of course, but not the kind of friend she grabbed lunch with.

"Sure, do I get to ride in you and Munch's sedan?" she said with the raise of her eyebrow.

"Hey hey, easy, we keep it nicer than you and Elliot's'," he laughed as he hit the elevator button. Hers and Elliot's. All they shared was an old sedan that was marked with his disposable coffee cups and her emergency deodorant in the center console. Her mind skipped through all the stakeouts where they'd cranked the heat, busted out the speaker, spilled sauces and drinks in the cupholders. He kept a picture of his family on the sun visor, and she always had her latest romance novel shoved in the glove box. She only had time to read while they sat in traffic between boroughs. He picked on her for reading that garbage, but she knew that he secretly liked listening to her turn the pages.

Fin didn't seem bothered that she had gotten lost in her thoughts. She took the passenger seat and examined their car. Their car didn't have the personal touches, or maybe she was just blind to them. Like how everyone was blind to how sacred the time she'd spent in that beat-up sedan had become to her.

"Where you wanna go? I could go for a slice," Fin said, and she agreed. Pizza, deli sandwiches, and hot dogs were their go-tos. She'd tried to turn Elliot onto the finer things, like sushi, Thai, Indian, and any kind of Greek fusion. He'd amuse her maybe once a week, but soon he'd be asking for his staples again, and she'd agree, knowing she'd have to put in extra hours at the gym so she could justify eating on his horrible diet. She was so damn worried about him getting taken out on the job, but it was probably heart disease that would get him one day.

Fin talked her ear off about his current case, and she nodded along at the details. Hearing about an SVU case made her want to be involved. She felt like she was looking in at her own life, and she hated it. She wondered briefly if that was how Elliot had been feeling since Kathy left him.

"I feel like I'm an outsider looking in at my own life." She thought back to how she held him in his bathroom doorway and the depths of her betrayal to him stung the wounds she had given herself, by hurting him.

They sat at a booth at the pizza joint, and Fin was busy dumping parmesan cheese on his over-the-counter slice. Olivia picked at her salad and breadstick as she thought about how strange this was. She'd sat at this booth with Elliot more times than she could count, and somehow it felt like another betrayal coming here with Fin. She knew Fin had motive in asking her to lunch, and she was waiting for it to become apparent. He'd been acting casual, more casual than normal, but she could sense the question brewing between the large bites he was taking of his pizza.

"How's computer crimes?"

"I like it," she said and then filled her unconvincing answer with a large bite of breadstick. Fin scoffed loudly as he looked at her with patronizing eyes.

"Why do you laugh?" she said as she sipped her water.

"SVU is who you are, Liv. You're really trying to tell me you are satisfied sitting behind a desk with a bunch of schmucks too dense to hit the streets?"

"It's only been three days, Fin," she sighed as his words hit a little too close to home.

"Three days too many of listening to Stabler bitch and moan," he said as he shot his eyes in her direction. There it was.

"Give him a few days; he'll get over it," she lied, and Fin scoffed again.

"Your partner is a piece of work," he added as he shook his head. The corners of her mouth couldn't help but turn. Fin and Elliot had always butt heads a little, but they managed to keep it friendly on most occasions. She suspected that Fin mostly tolerated Elliot for her sake. Her smile quickly deflated when she realized he wasn't her partner anymore.

"Not my partner anymore," she said, as if speaking the words out in the open would make it easier to accept.

"It's been three days," Fin said with a slight eye-roll, as he parroted her words back at her.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she said, but she knew what it meant. They all expected her to be crawling back to SVU, and Elliot, in a few weeks.

"What happened with you and Elliot?" Fin asked as he wiped grease from his fingers onto a napkin. Olivia felt her stomach twist at the question. She could hardly believe Fin even cared to ask. She didn't want to discuss it.

"Just needed a change from the unit; that's it, Fin," she said as she trained her eyes on him. She tried to keep a crackless demeanor, but she could feel him pointing out every flaw in her facade.

"I know I give the guy a lot of shit, but he's hurting without you. The unit is," he added, so he didn't seem so obvious.

"You ask me to this," she asked, as she gestured around their table, "on behalf of Elliot?" she rolled her eyes as she looked out the window that the booth was against. She didn't feel like going there with Fin. She wasn't in the mood for confessing.

"Nah Liv, just wanted to get a straight story."

"I needed a change from the unit; end of story," she said as her jaw clenched. It took a lot to put her on edge; Elliot usually covered that part of their routine.

"I was there that day too," he said, and his words confused her.

"What are you talking about?"

"Gitano," he said as he cracked his knuckles. They'd both finished eating, and they'd paid at the counter so she could walk away from the conversation, but she knew that would make her look more guilty.

"I don't know what you're trying to imply, but it has nothing to do with my transfer from the unit."

"Bullshit, Liv," he said as he shook his head. She looked at him, and she wasn't sure why he was being so insistent. She always assumed he would applaud her the day she decided she was sick of Elliot Stabler's bullshit.

"We needed a change," she said in a low voice, and then she gulped once the confession escaped her throat. The weight of her words sat on the messy tabletop alongside crumpled napkins and receipts of this unlikely meeting. She decided that was the last she was going to speak on the matter. Fin nodded in understanding.

"Have you talked to him?"

"Why are you pressing this so hard," she said as she leaned into the table. She didn't care for being interrogated like she was a suspect in a crime.

"If Munch walked out on me after eight years, I'd have an axe to grind," Fin shrugged.

"So you're on his side with this? You know, I always assumed I'd get you in a split," she chuckled dryly as she thought about the break-up of her and Elliot's partnership, and how the fallout seemed to be extending to their co-workers. She never anticipated that.

"I'm on your side," he laughed, and she laughed as she took some bites of her salad. Moments passed, and she could feel him watching her.

"Are you guys involved?" he asked, and it might have been the most serious she'd ever heard Fin sound. She almost spit out her salad as she tried to figure out how to respond. Her initial reaction was to be infuriated that he thought he could ask her that, but then she was overcome with the reality that everyone saw it. It was so damn obvious that her co-worker was grilling her on it, over one of the spots where it had slowly become more than a partnership.

"I don't know, Fin; are you and Munch involved?" she shot back as she gave him an angry glare.

"Stop deflecting."

"Why would you ask me that?"

"Because we both know Cragen doesn't have the guts to do it."

"Well it doesn't matter; I transferred," she said, as she realized her admission a moment too late.

"So that's a yes?" Fin said, as his eyes widened.

"No! We're not involved, and screw you for even suggesting it," she said. "Elliot will kill you, so I'd suggest you not mention something like that ever again," she warned as she rubbed the moisture in her palms on her pant legs.

"Whatever you say," Fin sighed, and she didn't know how to get them out of this awkward corner. She left the unit, and suddenly her boundaries with all her co-workers seemed to have gone out the window. She couldn't believe Fin had asked her that.

"We're not," she insisted, as her mind flashed to how Elliot's blue eyes darkened as he made her come against his hand.

"Alright," Fin nodded.

"Let's get going," she said, but she couldn't bring herself to look up at Fin. She watched him consider his next words. Finally, he broke the silence by saying,

"You guys are Benson and Stabler; you gotta work this out, and if not for him, do it for yourself, Liv," Fin said as he tapped two fingers on the edge of the table as he stood to leave, signaling the end of his infuriating questioning.

Do it for yourself.