Hello guys! The spooky season has begun, and here I am, inspired by it.
This story is going to be a little different, but I hope you enjoy it regardless. And why season 12? Because it's the best season, prove me wrong.

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It was raining.

It had already been raining for weeks - or at least it felt that way. When you got out, there was not one place, not one tiny square centimeter that had remained dry. People were trudging along the soaking wet streets, tried to dodge water droplets without success, and filled buses, taxis and subways as they fled the rain. The sky was grey, the environment was grey, and so were people's minds.

And because the endless rain alone wasn't enough, a strong wind had also been swirling between the building jungle of New York, tearing the umbrellas and causing the rain to reach places where it normally couldn't extend its wet tentacles. It caused a sharp, unpleasant damp coldness to penetrate inside the coat, spread with the blood circulation to the body, to the bone marrow, which is why it felt that the shitty weather followed you inside.

The unusually cold and downright miserable October weather was also reflected in people's mood. Although New York was the city that never sleeps, now it felt slowed down, sleepy. At times, the clouds were hanging so heavy that they wrapped the tops of the skyscrapers in their gray embrace, hid the Empire State Building from view, and created the impression of a closed box that the city had become.

Gray and heavy was Olivia Benson's mind as well, as she was sitting in her office chair, engrossed in her case file, trying to make some sort of sense of what had happened to the 15-year-old girl. The fake ID, the night at the bar, the helpful bartender, the fire department, the trip home alone, the concerned neighbor, and finally the body found in the park near home flashed through her eyes, the red thread was missing, her normally fast-acting brain was asleep, and she leaned back in her chair and squeezed the corners of her eyes with her thumbs.

A cup of coffee placed in front of her made her open her eyes, and she was met with bright blue eyes looking at her inquisitively. They were the first thing all day that caused a warmth to ignite inside her, the same warmth she had felt countless times before but had purposely ignored time and time again.

"You looked like you needed this," her partner lifted the other corner of his mouth, and she put her hands back on the table.

"Thanks."

"Have you figured out anything new?" Elliot asked as he sat down in his own chair across from Olivia, and she shook her head, raising the cup of coffee to her lips gratefully. The hot, bitter (that is, probably made by Munch) coffee warmed her stomach, and she sighed.

"You wish. This case is a mess. My brain is not working, the only thing I would like is a warm bath and clean sheets, and this endless rain is melting the rest of the energy I have left. So yeah, this perp is lucky because this way we'll never catch him," she huffed, folding her arms. Elliot watched her, a hint of amusement on his face, and something in his blue eyes suddenly made butterflies flutter in Olivia's stomach so she had to look away. Fin was sitting at his own desk on the other side of the office, seemingly engrossed in his work, but on closer inspection his eyes were glassy, staring blankly, he was swirling a spoon in his coffee cup, and Olivia could have sworn his brain had gone into hibernation.

It was as if Elliot had read her mind, as she heard a snort next to her.

"We need a vacation."

"Yes," Olivia turned her gaze back to him, took the bundle of papers from the table in her hand and lifted it pointedly. "And Victoria Wilson and her family need us. Too bad you can't have everything," she dropped the papers back on her desk and grabbed her coffee cup. Elliot rolled his eyes, took a long swig of his coffee, then set it down on the table with a grimace.

"Only Munch can make coffee this bad," he looked disgustedly at his cup and then turned to look at the table in front of Fin, who was still in a paused state. "Where is he even?"

Olivia shrugged. "Don't know. I saw him in the morning, at some point he disappeared".

Elliot pursed his lips in displeasure but said nothing. Olivia dropped her eyes back at her papers, tried to make sense of them once again, but she felt that someone or something had sucked all her imagination, ability to reason and creativity out of her, leaving only a brain capable of simple thinking. Its rusted screws were screeching, the friction made the slowly moving cogwheels wail, and at regular intervals the bird of a cuckoo clock cuckooed inside her head to mark the end of another wasted quarter hour.

She needed to get her thoughts moving, oil to the gears of her brain, something to push her forward. The coffee had helped a little, but not enough, she needed something else. Something…

Adrenaline.

She raised her head, looked at her partner who seemed engrossed in his papers and bit the inside of her cheek. This was a dangerous game, she knew it, but even so, something, maybe curiosity, maybe something she didn't want to admit, made her go on.

"How's Kathy?"

Elliot looked up, but only for half a second, before dropping it back to his papers. Olivia, on the other hand, couldn't back down any more, so to hide her uncertainty, she bored her gaze more tightly into her partner.

"She's fine. I think she's happier than before the divorce."

"Glad to hear."

A moment of silence fell between them, Elliot had his eyes firmly fixed on the papers, but Olivia knew him well enough to know that he wasn't actually reading them. His shoulders were tensed, he was sitting suspiciously still, and Olivia waited because his body language revealed that he wasn't finished yet.

"I think she's seeing someone."

The sentence sounded like he had been holding his breath and let the air out of his lungs the moment he opened his mouth. Olivia, on the other hand, had not expected such an answer; her eyebrows automatically raised, and she dropped the pen from her hand to the table.

"Really?"

Elliot and Kathy had divorced about a year ago, this time for good. Olivia wasn't sure what had finally broken the camel's back, but that night her partner had shown up at her door, soaking wet from the rain, asked permission to sleep on her sofa and gone silent. They hadn't talked all evening, they hadn't needed to, because she had known without telling her what had happened. They'd been staring at the TV, she'd gone to bed, and the next morning Elliot was gone. He hadn't come to work for a couple of days, and when had he sat down at his desk one morning, it was as if nothing had happened. It had stung Olivia a little then, a little more the next sleepless, dark night, and as she had stared at the shadows dancing on the walls, an evil voice inside her head had whispered to her how her partner only needed her when he needed something from her.

"Eli told me that "mommy's new friend" had taken him to the park to play soccer."

Elliot still didn't look up, but his shoulders had sagged a little. Olivia bit her lip.

"How does that make you feel?"

"It's fine," he waved his hand, leaned back in his chair and raised his hand to his forehead. "It's been a year already; she has every right to move on. I want her to be happy," he sighed and looked back at the papers. "Besides, I've dated others too, so why shouldn't she?"

Olivia didn't answer. Instead she felt as if someone had just poured a bucket of cold water on her, suddenly she saw Dani Beck sitting in a chair, his partner rubbing her shoulders. A lump rose in her throat, she didn't know why the announcement made her feel so bad, she hated, hated the reaction it caused in her, and at the same time she knew she had to say something, anything, so that her exterior wouldn't betray her.

"Oh."

Shit.

Panic began to build inside her, panic that she would expose herself, and Elliot seemed to sense it as he looked directly up at her for the first time since the conversation had begun. His blue eyes looked at her piercingly, they seemed to see right into her, and Olivia had to look down, still trying to salvage the situation, even though it was too late. Elliot frowned.

"What?"

"I didn't say anything."

"Not out loud."

Damn Elliot and his ability to read her without words.

"What should I have said?"

"I don't know, maybe why you look like I murdered someone."

Olivia felt like she was between a rock and a hard place, time was running out, the attempt to save her face became more difficult by the second, and the panic began to turn into a bubbling anger. An anger which was mainly caused by herself.

"I thought we were supposed to be partners."

"How does that relate to this?" Elliot's voice began to tighten as her anger began to wake his as well.

Always so in sync.

"I thought partners talk to each other."

"Why is this suddenly so important? You don't tell me about your countless one-night stands either."

Anger bubbled up inside Olivia. "My relationships are none of your business."

"No? So why are my relationships so important to you?"

You're screwing this up, Benson.

"You're the one whose life situation has changed, so it would also be nice to know what's going on in your life if something's going to affect to your job!"

"Affect to my job?" Elliot frowned. "Why is it..."

But then Munch walked in, strode over to their table, interrupted their conversation, and saved Olivia from inevitable defeat. They looked up, Munch looked at them appraisingly and raised one eyebrow.

"Did I interrupt something?"

"No," Olivia answered before Elliot could even open his mouth, she felt her partner's gaze on her skin, but avoided looking at him. Munch looked at them for a moment longer, but then let it go.

"Okay then. Fin, could you come here," he called out his partner, who seemed to wake up from some kind of hibernation, raised his eyebrows questioningly, and then walked over to them.

"What's up?"

An uncharacteristic, excited glow was flickering in Munch's eyes as he thrust his hands into his jacket pockets. Olivia's interest grew.

"As you may know, I subscribed to a science magazine in the summer."

Fin snorted. "Nobody knows that, John. Because no one cares what magazine you read in your spare time."

However, Munch ignored his partner's biting comment and continued:

"By subscribing to the magazine, you participated in a raffle, where the main prize was a weekend vacation in a cabin for 10 people by the lake. I had forgotten about the whole thing, but today they called and announced that I had won. At first I thought I couldn't drag my old bones all the way there for the weekend, but then I thought…" He grinned. "Why don't we all go there? This squad, maybe Cassidy and Monique too? Because honestly, you've all been looking like you need at least a month off."

"All of us away for the weekend?" Fin looked at his partner suspiciously. "Are you sure Cragen will agree to that?"

"I have already talked to him," Munch answered with a grin. "He said it's okay. He plans to come himself, if work permits."

The detectives glanced at each other in surprise, but then Elliot shrugged.

"I'm in if it's up to me. I really need the change of scenery."

"Me too," Fin huffed. Munch nodded, and then everyone's eyes turned to Olivia. She hesitated for a moment, weighed her options, saw a flash in her mind of Elliot kissing an unknown woman, pushed the thought out of her mind and sighed.

What the hell.

"What do I pack?"