AN: Okay, I know, I know. I took way too long. But in my typical me fashion, I fell a little behind in school. And by a little I literally mean two essays and a quiz. But in my other truest form, I procrastinated my butt off about it until I couldn't procrastinate anymore. Aka if I didn't turn it in then it wouldn't receive any credit at all. Oh, I'm just such a good example. Anyway, as I mentioned before, this is all whim of my mind, so nothings pre planned, which whereas usually I pre plan at least a little. So bear with me y'all.

But for the most part I'm pretty okay with where it's going. But once again, just keep in minds since I'm just sort of writing these and then posting them all in one night, two at the most, they're not beta-ed and probably won't be. So no chopping my head off for not so obvious mistakes. Or, really let's be honest here, really obvious mistakes. But anyhow, now that I've managed to ramble on excessively, again, here's Chp. two. Enjoy!

R&R Baes, it's always appreciated.

Disclaimer: Yeah right.

Listening to: Ring of Fire- Johnny and June. (Yes I credit June too, she wrote it for him after all.)

They slept together that night. Hot and fast and heavy, everything she always thought it would be. With all the regret just moments after it ended, that she always knew would come.

It didn't happen right way, they both went home, to separate homes first. He kissed her, and he kissed her, and he kissed her in that locker room. But then Fin, of all people, busted in. Quick reflexes saved their asses so big that day, she's never been more thankful. She hauled ass out of there, grabbed her crap and made her way home literally as fast as she could manage. She actually took a cab, which never, ever happens. She always walks or takes the subway, because paying three times the amount to take a cab just seemed stupid. She didn't live that far away. She did have that car, her lovely I'm not even midlife- midlife crisis. But she never drove that damn thing anyway.

But it wasn't long after she got home, changed into her sweats, and cracked open a brand new bottle of wine, that his fist was pounding on her door. She knew, the moment she heard it, it was him. 12 years and one of the loudest, most ridiculously distinct knocks she ever heard, and their absurd, abnormal, always in-sync connection that they've always seemed to have, how could she not?

Her hearts hardly ever raced so fast, but she made sure to keep herself nonchalant. She flung the door open, wine glass still in hand, and turned around to make her way back to the couch. No 'Hi", no 'Hello', no 'Hey partner, here to do that thing we've been trying to avoid for 12 years?'. Just let him in and walked away, like her heart wasn't about to thump right out of her chest and she wasn't about to throw up all over her living room floor.

He didn't waste much time though. At all.

She made it to the couch, sat down, pulled one of her legs up on the couch with her, and was pulled right back up. He pulled her flush against him, took her wine glass out of her hand and set it on her coffee table, all the while his eyes had one of the most lust filled looks she's ever seen in them. Then he kissed her. Hard, leaving no space for misinterpretation, no doubt in her mind, not like much had been there to start with, but anyway.

He backed himself out away from the couch, spun them around, and backed her towards her bedroom. Sometimes, when it's one of those days where she wants to blame just him, she conjures it up in her mind that he never gave her the chance to say no. But of course he did, he's Elliot. She knew what he was doing when he pulled her up off the couch, she could have pulled away then. He stopped them, just before the back of her knees hit the bed, and gave her the most intimate look she's ever seen come out of the man. He just looked like he loved her so, all the adoration seeping out of him, all the while she could still see the lust festering there. She could have told him no, or to wait, and not returned the look then. And then he asked her, "Are you sure, Liv." just before he entered her for the very first time and she knows exactly what came of her mouth, "Yes.".

Her heart still aches when she thinks about the moments following it all. She battled with herself for a while, whether she should let him stay, just for tonight, and then she could really hate herself tomorrow, or if she should just kick him out now, get it over with. Not have to ache when she wakes up to him in the morning, barely conscious, then has to watch him leave.

But ultimately, her panic won out. She turned her head to him, but she wouldn't look him in the eye, and told him just above a whisper, "You should go."

She chances a glance up at him from the spot of his sheet clad thigh she'd been staring at, and she sees his heart break. But she sees the objection come up, too.

He catches her eye, the best she will let him, and he asks her, nice and strong and solid and a little loud too, "Why?"

She tells him that he can't stay, that he just can't stay. That it's best if he just goes. But he's not buying it. They both end up out of bed, she keeps the sheet pulled around her and he pulls his boxers on. She keeps trying to repeat herself, he can't stay, he can't stay, he has to go, he has to go, he has to go now, in the midst of him trying to argue his own point back. That he's not just gonna run out, right after having sex with her. She's his partner and there's no way in hell he's gonna treat her like she's that cheap. But that's what she keeps trying to argue back to him, that he's her partner and that's literally entirely it, and that it doesn't matter, because she's kicking him out, she's making the decision, so it's okay.

He starts to argue back that it's not okay, but then he apparently just catches the end of what she said earlier. "Why now, Liv. Why not tomorrow?"

And she's the most honest with him she thinks she's ever been, "Because my heart can't take it. This is easier."

"Liv…" he tries to whisper, but she can't. She just can't.

"No, El. Just… just… go."

She expected there to be yelling, she expected him to argue back, to object, but he didn't. He just put his clothes on, gave her one last, terrifyingly heartbreaking look, and walked out of her bedroom. He did slam the door though, almost like the last little ending note on this terrible, heart crushing, love soaring, and falling, falling, falling, song of theirs. They weren't ever them again. And she still hates herself for telling him to leave.

She left three days later.

She told Capitan that she needed a change, and wanted to request a transfer. He asked her where and she wasn't surprised in the least when he questioned her about it.

"California." She told him. She knew he had connections over there.

The look on his face gave everything away. And she can't blame him. Her, Olivia Benson, New Yorker to the core whose heart belonged in Manhattan, wanted to take off for not only the West Coast, polar opposite of the East, but California. The most opposite of New York you could find without jetting off to another country. But she realizes too, just how cliché it is. Want to avoid New York? Want to forget all about it? Well then, California really is the perfect choice. The most predictable too.

But of course, she didn't tell him why she was really leaving, so shock was the most logical choice. She thinks now though, that it really probably only took him about three seconds after that to confirm what he probably had in his head when she told him she wanted to leave, anyway. She didn't need a change, she needed to get her heart and her head away from her partner. For her sake, and his.

He asked her if she was sure, about a hundred times. She told him 'yes' and 'that it was what she felt she needed to do' about 60 of those times. The rest of the time she just gave him a look that told him that if he didn't stop asking her she was either going to lose her placidity or have to go running out of that office in an emotional frenzy. He stopped, but hesitantly.

He never asked her not to go, never outright anyway. Just gave her every look he had in him, and pulled out puppy dog eyes that she didn't think Capitan Donald Cragen was capable of. He made sure she knew how he felt, and she still misses him every single day, to this day. After all, that man was her father, the one she leaned on and emotionally let herself rely on, for 12 years. They've kept in touch a lot, because she refused to let herself stray from a man who has done so much and meant so much to her, but still, it's a big loss.

Speaking of emotionally relying on someone, her partner.

She tried to stick it out, she didn't want to go. Not at first anyway, but in the end, every time she looked at him, or heard his voice, or even heard someone say his name, she pictured him in her bed. Next to her, under her, on top of her. She couldn't get the images out of her head. It made her feel so guilty, and it made her want more. But then she'd see his face when she told him to leave, and that look he gave when he finally admitted defeat and was walking out her bedroom door. That one hurt more than anything, and it so profoundly affected her more that the images of them together, that she just couldn't handle it.

She didn't tell him before hand, matter of a fact, she didn't tell him at all. She's sure it was probably Cap., or munch, or Fin the next day. And she knows that was the lowest blow and she feels like a complete jackass for it. She knows that up and leaving is a sore spot for them, especially for him. She's done it too many times, but it's like it's this compulsion that she just can't stop. But maybe she's just a coward and can't face him, because she knows that all he would have to do would be to tell her to stay, and she damn well would. Those icy blues could get her every time.

She didn't stay in California long. She transferred to their SVU because she knew in her heart that was the work she was most meant to do, and she honestly couldn't see herself doing anything else. She didn't want to see herself doing anything else, either.

But it didn't take long, before she realized that without her partner, the job just wasn't the same. No matter how hard she tried to find other coping mechanisms, she just kept realizing that without her partner to lean on, this job was much more draining that ever before. She did have a partner, and don't get her wrong he was great. But that's just it, that's all he was, her partner. Not a friend, not a confidant, not a kindred yet completely opposite soul that save for very rare occasions, she could always count on being there. He wasn't Elliot.

She picked up and moved to Utah six weeks after getting to California. Just packed all of her crap in that damn midlife crisis of hers, paid a moving company to move the big things, again, and left. Of course, she really should have had to put in her two weeks. But, she thinks, when you're former Captain/father figure is Donald Cragen, strings can be pulled. And, she's pretty sure they all saw it coming anyway. She never really did get comfortable there. Hell, she thinks she only unpacked four boxes.

She feels bad about just up and leaving that squad, because they were all good people and her being there was still in that newness period and they didn't deserve to be left hanging and have to be left with whatever new replacement that IAB sent in. But she realized that if she could leave her family back at her old squad hanging like that, people that she worked for at the minimum 11 years, people who a brand new replacement was going to affect much more, than she could do it to people she barely knew. Besides, the sun hurt her eyes. California was just too damn bright. She missed states where it rained more, and where they knew what it was like to have dreary days more than 6 days out of the year. And be damned if she didn't want to admit it, she missed the cold.

Utah was more her, but still far enough from New York that she felt like she was still in her effectively avoiding her partner comfort zone. And it made it easier to guard her heart, and to guard his from her.

She decided that it wasn't going to matter where she went, or what changes she made, being a cop just wasn't going to work anymore. She told herself, all those years ago when she got word from her Captain about moving to SVU that if there ever came a day, where she felt like she couldn't effectively give every bit of her career self to victims and cases and justice, then she'd leave. Move on and find something else to do, something else her heart was content with. What she didn't know then though, was that she'd end up giving all of herself, save for that little part that was reserved for her partner, to victims and cases and justice. Not just the side set aside for her career. She didn't know either that the only thing that her heart was ever going to want her to do, was be a cop. More specifically, one at SVU.

But that's exactly how she felt when she left California, that she couldn't give all of herself to the victims. And being a cop without him, just felt wrong. And she hates herself for that. He wasn't what made her become a cop, and he wasn't what made her enter SVU, but from the moment she met him, everything changed. Her heart included. And too, there were other variables to take into consideration now.

So she retired. Took her pension and ran. Felt strange, gut wrenchingly weird, for about the first... year. Nothing felt right and she felt empty. But she had been a cop for so damn long, and given so damn much of herself, that it only made sense that it did. She did nothing for about a month. She just couldn't bring herself to find a different job, to be something that wasn't a cop just yet. So she lived off her pension in her typical Olivia fashion, not buying much more than she needed but being picky and specific about the things she did buy, and looked around a little, casually, for something else.

Then one day she found it. It's simple and easy and non-committal, compared to being a cop, but it works. She works for an Account money managing firm, she's a consultant. Essentially she helps tell companies accounting departments how to spend and delegate their money if their having trouble doing so. It's boring, and it isn't dangerous in the slightest, but it works and pays well and she's happy. She doesn't mind working with money and she likes getting to work with computers a little more again, and she likes the office she works in and her coworkers. And her boss isn't a jackass, so that's nice. And it's got nine to five, literally, hours. Ridiculously strange to her, still, but fine. She likes getting to have more than four hours of sleep, though admittedly she's still stays up until at least 12 and is usually back up at six, seven at the latest to go run in the park a block over. It's in her system though, she can't shake it. But having the option for eight hours is nice.

She bought a house too, can you say culture shock. She now had over 2,000 square feet to work with. Which, though her apartment was pretty damn big for the city, its huge compared to what she's used to. A New Yorker, always a city girl, trying to adjust to a house, that she owns... hilarious.

She painted and bought furniture and a porch swing and a kitchen table, that's probably the size of her bathroom in New York, and she likes it.

And then, six months into living there, eight and a half months after leaving Manhattan, and just after she bought her nice house and decided that she would after all stay at her job and not have a major freak out and bail back for New York, she met someone.