Hey everyone! Thank you sooo much for all the alerts and reviews I got! It made me very happy to open up my email and see them. :) Since I could not get back to you by replying to your reviews, I would also like to thank **jake** and **famwb** for those reviews! Much appreciated!

Now, we are 2/3 done with this short-story. Hope you all enjoy and leave those reviews to get another smile! =^D

Disclaimer: I own nothing. You own everything. Yeah. Right. In my dreams. ;D Enjoy!

It's a Gamble

It'd been two solid weeks and Elliot still hadn't called. Olivia may have thought that Elliot made the wrong choice, but she still cared about him. She was worried. Did something happen to him? Was he still gambling? Was he…No. Olivia didn't want to think of that. But…he couldn't be. Could he?

So yes, one could say that Olivia was starting to worry. She wanted to make sure that he was okay…and her instincts and her strong friendship to Elliot made her do the thing she did next.

•••SVU•••

Olivia pulled into the driveway of Elliot's house. She turned the key in the ignition, killing the engine. For a moment, she just stared at the house in front of her, having not seen it or visited it for the past five and a half months. She missed the old place where she would visit her used-to-be detective partner, in good times or bad. She wondered what it looked like inside the house, whether it was the same or if it had changed because of what was happening in Elliot's life.

She walked up to the front door. Knocked. No answer. Knocked again. No one answered the social call.

"Elliot," she called. "It's Olivia. I…haven't heard from you in a while. I came by to make sure that you were alright." She paused and said quietly enough so that only she could hear, "Even though I'm not your partner anymore, I'm still going to watch out for you."

She waited a few more seconds, standing anxiously on his front porch. Finally, she tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. She turned and pushed the door open.

It didn't creak when it opened like in the horror movies where a pretty and popular girl is dumb enough to go into the creepy, dark, old and abandoned house only to have her limbs torn apart by a flesh-eating monster with razor-hands. When Olivia opened the door, it sounded creepy enough in its way of opening silently and no one was standing behind it. It was an empty house.

Slowly, she walked in, closed the door, and began peeking into every room before she went further inside. She checked the living room, but no one was sleeping on the couch. Next, she went to his bedroom, hoping to find him in there, not drunk, just exhausted. No such luck. She walked up this bed, noticing that the sheets were still wrinkled from the night before. She walked around to the other side of the bed and found a pair of Elliot's pants. Inside a pocket, she saw a piece of paper sticking out, begging to be noticed. She carefully took out the little piece of paper and unfolded it.

It had messy scribbling on it. It was a name of a house that had been abandoned for a couple months. Olivia wondered what Elliot would be doing at this address. Olivia was going to check it out. She walked back outside to her car, looked at the house for a short moment, and drove.

•••SVU•••

Olivia pulled up to the address written on the small piece of paper. She looked up at the abandoned house, its paint chipping off, and its shutters no longer able to stay closed on their own. Now this was creepy.

She slowly walked up to the house, put her ear to the door, and listened for voices or noises that would detect suspicion. She heard nothing. Maybe she should go further inside. People could be in a basement and she wouldn't be able to hear them from outside. She checked the doorknob and discovered that the door was unlocked. Slowly, Olivia opened the door inch by inch until she could see inside the room. The furniture looked like it was in the right place, but it was not very clean. The people visiting this place must not have cared for cleanliness. They were probably just here for the gambling and money.

She walked slowly in, also watching the floor so she didn't step on anything and alert the men downstairs. Around her, it was dark and musty and had a smell of something that had been dead for quite a while. As she proceeded further into the room, she started to hear soft mumblings of men's voices coming from somewhere else in the abandoned house. She took her gun out of its holster and held it up in aim, but not cocking it. As she made her way into the house and down a short flight of stairs, besides the sounds of voices, there was a slight stench of booze. They seemed like they were both coming from the same place. In her mind, Olivia was imagining a group of eight or so men around a table, drunk, some sleeping, some still gambling, all the while oblivious to anything that wasn't happening on the table.

Olivia slinked down the small, dim hallway leading downstairs and into another hallway. That hallway was narrow and dim, too, but with a strong smell of booze. Silently, she made her way into the hallway, all the while debating with herself is she could call for back-up, but shooing the thought away each time, thinking of Elliot. She passed a closed door that smelled like crap and barf; she assumed it was the toilet.

She was almost to the edge of the hallway when she saw the backs of two men, fortunately facing away from her. Flattening herself against the wall, she started listening to the men who were speaking. They were talking about their failing love-lives – or none at all. Olivia could hear a total of 4 men's voices.

"Hand me another bottle, Jon," one said, followed by the sound of clanking bottles.

"My girls seem to leave me all the time," another announced. "They dump me by text messaging. I find it rude."

From not far behind her, Olivia heard a rushing of water. She made it out to be a toilet flush. She looked behind her to see a man around his forties in age coming out of the crudely-scented room ad turn towards her. She couldn't run and there was nowhere to hide. The next thing she knew, her gun was flung out of her hand, landing on the ground, and she was being pushed backwards into the gambling room and up against the wall.

"Look what we got," the one named Jon said, slurred and in sick pleasure.

"Hey! Don't you touch me! I am going to kick your sorry ass, bud," she said, inserting bitterness into her speech.

Now that she was looking at the room, she saw that there were five men, all laughing cruelly and drunkenly, but one of them Olivia was silently begging to: Elliot was at that table. He seemed oblivious to what was happening, though. He looked drunk, well beyond the legal limit. He was holding two beer bottles in his hand, taking swigs from each every couple seconds. Olivia desperately wanted him to look up and recognize the woman standing in front of him, and come to rescue her from these bastards, but no such thing happened. Elliot just sat there like it wasn't his business and he wasn't going to butt in. He didn't pay attention except to the cards in his hand.

Damn it, Elliot, she thought.

By now, the men crowded around Olivia were laughing and teasing her by playing with her hair. They were touching her mostly above the waist, but some were sneaking peeks below, making Olivia sick to her stomach.

For a split second, the men glanced about looking for another bottle to glug down. Thinking quickly and swiftly, Olivia reached for an available chair for the taking. She hoisted it in front of her, holding it like a shield, the four legs pointing toward the men. One of them rolled their eyes like he saw this every day and was bored by the survival tactics. And so, as he got closer, he didn't show any hesitation, and got close enough to snatch the chair away without being jabbed by a wooden leg. The other men laughed, amused at the failed attempt of Olivia's to survive. Olivia just glared. She hated their guts.

As they got closer, their breaths reeking the air, Olivia spotted a beer bottle lying near her feet. In a fast movement, she bent down, grabbed the bottle, and smashed the bottom end of it against the wall, shattering it and creating sharp, jagged edges. She thrust it into the air toward a man when they tried to advance on her. As she intended, it made him retreat, but only a little distance and not for long.

Think Liv, think, she told herself. She knew that this lone beer bottle wouldn't be able to hold these men off for too much longer. She looked toward Elliot again, whom had stopped drinking, but was still unreachable. She had to think fast, something that would demand Elliot's attention, whether he wanted it or not. She breathed deeply, still holding the bottle, and said, loud enough for Elliot to hear clearly:

"I love you, Elliot."

Right as she finished the sentence, the harassing men around her started mocking her with "boo hoos" and fake "aws". The one named Jon said, "Oh, poor baby. Let's cheer her up." He walked forward faster than she expected and she cut him on his arm. He held it and cursed at the gash and at Olivia. She inched herself backwards until she hit the wall, wanting to stay as far away from these drunks as she could.

Then she realized that someone was lifting a chair behind the group. The chair was raised high above their heads, and then came down hard onto one guy's head. The man collapsed onto the floor.

The man with the chair was Elliot. He had heard her.

Olivia breathed out a sigh of relief, but quickly took an intake for there were still three men harassing her.

"Get away from her!" Elliot shouted fiercely. He brought the chair up again and swung down, but missed the one he was aiming for. While two of the men sagged away – they were less drunk, therefore had more sense – Jon was more or less chicken and rushed Olivia, who was temporarily distracted, snatched away the broken bottle, and held it up to Olivia's neck, who was now being held like a shield from the chair-wielding Elliot.

"Move and you see blood," the man threatened. Elliot froze in his tracks, gripping the chair above him.

He looked at the woman who had just said she loved him. "Olivia. What are you doing here?"

"I was worried about you, Elliot," she said.

Jon shook her and touched the broken glass to her neck. "Aw. How sweet. But you made a wrong move coming here. Now shut up."

Olivia ignored him, being her stubborn self. "Elliot. We were partners for over ten years. Do you really think that I would let you hang around money-cheating scumbags?"

"Shut up, girlie," Jon said more forcefully, shaking Olivia again and pressing the sharp edges harder on her neck, enough to make her wince.

Elliot's heart was in his throat. Olivia came here because she was worried about him. He got her into this. And he was going to get her out of it. Alive.

It's a Gamble

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