"And here I thought the two of you were inseparable," Dr. Taylor laughed disbelievingly. "But given that she asked for a new partner, I suppose she was much more offended by the incidents regarding the Gitano case than you thought?"

"She probably would have stuck around if I had apologized," Elliot said. He mentally kicked himself. Why hadn't he done that in the first place? But it dawned on him that no matter what words he had spoken to hear that day, she was bound to leave him. He hadn't the courage nor the stamina to look her in the eye and say he was sorry because that would mean Elliot Stabler finally would admit defeat.

"Could it be because you're just too damn stubborn?" Dr. Taylor asked with a certain twinkle in his eyes.

Elliot scoffed as he pressed his back to the pillowy fabric of the chair he currently occupied. "That seems to be the general consensus."

"Well, let's see if we can remedy that a bit, shall we?" Dr. Taylor asked, eyeing the folder open in his lap with beady eyes. "It says here your partner decided that a new companion would be out of the question and that a new department all together was what was best for all involved."

"Olivia decided on her own, without my input, that computer crimes was where she belonged," Elliot's voice was lilting with sarcasm as he let the words roll off his tongue.

"You say that as if the unit she chose was somehow inferior to yours?" Dr. Taylor quirked an eyebrow.

"It's not that I think that what they do is unimportant," Elliot replied. "I just know it isn't where Olivia belongs."

"Are you trying to tell me that you don't condone your partner being anywhere else but at your side at all times? That if she so chooses to leave you for another position elsewhere, you simply cannot handle her being out of your reach?"

Elliot gritted his teeth in response to Dr. Taylor's blatant accusation. He didn't need Olivia to be the law abiding officer he had been for so many years. He'd survived the perils of the job long before she had waltzed into his life. But then why was it that every time she picked the chance to run away from the place she felt the most at ease, away from him, instead of a chance to mend their broken partnership, he became a wreck? "Olivia is dedicated to our unit because she is motivated by her past," he said. "That's why she belongs in Special Victims."

"But is it not true that your temporary partners seem to be threatened by you and your inability to work cooperatively with someone who is not Olivia Benson?"

"It's not that I can't work with them," Elliot said. "I just find it difficult when my partner skipped out on me and these morons are sticking their noses in my business where they don't belong."

"Which triggered your fist connecting with Lucius Blaine's nose and your lips connecting with Dani Beck's?" Dr. Taylor said demurely. He was toying with his patient's emotions, using any means possible to wriggle a confession out of a man who had worked so hard to build up a wall that was too strong for anyone to break down.

"How the hell do you even know about that?" Elliot's mouth opened wide, his jaw dangerously close to hitting the floor.

"A magician never reveals his tricks," Dr. Taylor said, the faintest trace of amusement in his voice. "Answer the question, Detective Stabler."

"Lucius Blaine was a pompous ass who just decided that he could sidle his way into my unit and do whatever the hell he wanted while simultaneously trashing my partner in the process," Elliot answered angrily.

"Sounds like the two of you were separated at birth," Dr. Taylor muttered. "And what seemed to be the issue with Dani Beck?"

"Olivia was undercover at some environmentalist facade and at the time I knew nothing about it because she couldn't have contact with me for fear of blowing her cover. I wasn't aware that she was even up in Oregon, let alone even gone in the first place," he said quietly. "She didn't even say goodbye."

"I bet that must have made you very upset."

"Of course I was!" Elliot scowled, shooting him a reproachful look. "Everyone else had left me in the dust and I thought maybe Olivia had finally come to her senses and left before I had really destroyed her. But I figured I at least deserved a goodbye. If not, then maybe a nice little 'fuck you' would have sufficed."

Dr. Taylor placed a finger to his lips in contemplation. "But as it turns out she didn't leave you by choice. She had successfully infiltrated a prominent government operation and there was no turning back."

Elliot snorted into the palm of his hand. "I doubt she would have even said anything to me if she had been able to. It was probably a relief for her to be thousands of miles away from the one person she couldn't stand."

"Is this why you fell so haphazardly into the arms of Dani Beck?"

Elliot's mouth open and closed several times but no words seemed to leave his lips. A series of strangled noises caught in his throat and his nostrils flared with fury as he tried to find an adequate explanation to Dr. Taylor's inquisition. He wasn't accustomed to being subjected to topics he had fought to bury deep in the ground. But now the most sensitive of topics was about to be dug up with a shovel he thought was far too sharp for its own good.

Elliot swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat but it didn't keep his nerves at bay. "I thought... I was looking for something that wasn't really supposed to be found. I was fresh off a twenty year marriage I was in denial for so many years would actually work and a partnership I thought I could fix even though it clearly needed some thorough evaluation. My relationships with the two women who mean the most had crumbled. Dani came along and for once, someone actually needed me. It wasn't that I was attracted to her. She's a beautiful woman, but..." he trailed off, letting the doctor make his own inference.

"But she's no Olivia Benson?"

Elliot's head snapped up so quickly Dr. Taylor thought it might as well have come clean off his neck. "Well, I... obviously, Dani would never be what Olivia is to me but that isn't why I knew a relationship between the two us would have never worked."

"And what precisely is the reason you knew you could not have a relationship with Dani Beck? Seeing as how she was only your temporary partner and she was working within another unit, there was nothing to stand in your way of attaining a beautiful, smart and humorous woman. Why didn't you get involved with her?"

"I told you I wasn't attracted to her," Elliot replied quickly. "I only kissed her because I had a screwed up perception of what it meant to have someone need me."

Dr. Taylor pursed his lips and stayed silent for a period of time that made Elliot feel uneasy. This man was entirely too insightful and knew entirely too much about a patient he had met only hours ago.

Finally, he smiled brightly at Elliot who eyed him curiously. "You felt an overwhelming guilt because kissing one woman was a betrayal of another."

"There was no one to betray!" Elliot bellowed. "I kissed Dani on a whim and Olivia never crossed my mind while we were playing tonsil hockey. Even is she had popped into my head at that moment, it wouldn't have been anything but platonic. "

"Did you ever tell your partner about your affair with her replacement?"

Elliot looked at the carpeted floor below him, hands folded precariously across his lap. "I never told her but I have a feeling she knew."

"How could she possibly know if she was miles away from you?" Dr. Taylor asked.

"When Olivia got back from Oregon and we became partners again after Dani left because she couldn't handle the severity of the cases we take on, Olivia asked me what happened to Dani. I told her Dani went back to her old department without even thinking about how Olivia would even know to ask specifically about Dani. She knew I had a temporary partner but I never breathed a name," Elliot said. "I don't know how she knew but she must have talked to Cragen or found out some other way. And I slipped up a few times; called a victim named Danielle the nickname Dani and Olivia would just smile it away but I'm certain she knew there was more to Dani Beck than I had initially told her."

"So you don't feel that your close knit relationship with a woman you had only known for a short time degraded in some way your relationship with your partner of much longer?"

Elliot laughed in a way that told Dr. Taylor what he was about to say wasn't particularly amusing. "Ask Olivia about her relationship with FBI Agent Dean Porter and then you can decide if what I did constitutes a betrayal."

"Well now. Who might this Dean Porter be and why is he such a nuisance to you, Detective Stabler?" Dr. Taylor asked curiously, leaning forward in his chair as if his patient were telling a compelling story. And that was exactly what made him listen; everything that came out of Detective Stabler's mouth was as fascinating as one of those trashy soap operas with a train wreck of a storyline. He just wanted to see which of the integral characters would suffer the wrath first.

"Olivia worked with him when she was undercover in Oregon," Elliot said with an air of disdain. "They were partners."

"I see that this bothers you," Dr. Taylor said. "Olivia Benson leaves behind a mountain of a molehill of problems and finds solace with someone who is none the wiser to her partner back home."

"Damn straight," Elliot said as the knuckles on his left hand turned white from his tight grip on the arm. "She leaves New York to work for the FBI in some operation that could easily get her killed when she never even asked to be a part of the stint in the first place. She gets paired up with Dean Porter who may be easy on the eyes but knows virtually nothing about Olivia. His only role in this whole undercover job was to touch base with her but he managed to do a whole hell of a lot more."

The doctor's eyebrows dipped in confusion. "They became friends which displeased you?"

Elliot's removed his hand from its place on the arm of the chair and slowly balled it into a tight fist. His eyes flashed with an emotion that easily betrayed the confidence of what thought was brewing in his mind. Dr. Taylor could see the detective's form tense and his jaw lock up. Whatever he was about to reveal, it clearly had a massive hold over him. He paused for moments on end to consider the appropriate response and when he finally found sufficient words, he uttered them in a voice that spoke volumes of malevolence. "She's actually dating him."

I figured that if Olivia can't have Elliot she at least needs someone. And what better of a suitor than a man Elliot Stabler absolutely despises? Olivia will be making her grand entrance in this story very shortly in such a way that will spark an interest for both Elliot and his shrink. But I guess that's the point, right? :)