Finally (!) here is the spin-off of All I Need to Know, that I hinted at after the final chapter of that story! I can't believe it's been almost a year ...

This story will be much shorter than the mother ship, I promise. And naturally, it will have a different outcome. Or rather, they won't lose 5 years first!

! ! ! SPOILER ALERT ! ! !

Please read AT LEAST THE FIRST 6, but preferably the first 53 chapters of that story before reading this! This story starts off with an exact and pretty heated quote from chapter 53, and a small part from chapter 70 to complete the first scene ... Enjoy!

...

Thursday October 20, 2011

"Kathy! Why haven't you invited a single one of the people I got to know through work?"

"Elliot. Keep your voice down!"

"I will not! Just answer the question!"

"Shhhh."

"Don't you shush me!"

"Elliot please."

"No Kathy. Just tell me why you didn't invite them!"

"Well, it's not like you've been keeping in touch anyway," Kathy argued. "I thought you'd left that life behind you. It's time to look at the future, Elliot."

"What future?!" Elliot spat. "Do I just sit around the house like I have been doing these past months? Because you gotta admit Kathy, it's not like things are getting any better between us."

"I wanna keep trying Elliot," Kathy hissed, keeping her voice down and trying again to get him to do the same.

"Why?" he yelled. "It's not going anywhere and you know it!"

"Elliot!"

Elliot stalked closer to his wife, getting in her face while he spoke.

"You gotta face it some time, Kathy. Maybe it wasn't the job all this time. Maybe it was us."

And then Kathy finally snapped.

"Or maybe it was your beloved Olivia!"

"What?!"

"You heard me. I know you were drooling all over her Elliot. You spent more time with her than you did with me!"

"We were working!"

"Blah blah blah. I've heard that one once too many times Elliot. How stupid do you think I am? How many times did you sleep with her?"

"Shut up!"

"No Elliot. Let's do this once and for all. How many times!"

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Elliot hissed.

Their faces were just inches apart and neither of them was backing away.

"I think I know damn well what I'm talking about. Or else, why wouldn't you just answer the question?"

"Never."

"Excuse me?"

"Not. Once. Never."

Kathy scoffed.

"I wouldn't do that to you, or to her. And she wouldn't do that to you. She's a decent person!"

"But you want her. I know you do!" Kathy spat, recovering quickly from her shock at Elliot's answer.

"I know I don't want this anymore, Kathy. Things haven't gotten better at all since I retired. Only worse, and I'm done."

That finally stunned Kathy into silence, but only briefly. She took a small step back to create some distance between her and her husband, and then spoke again.

"You're going to run back to her?"

Elliot took a step towards her, closing the distance once again.

"You really don't get it, do you?" he said, his voice a low, menacing rumble.

Kathy's response was a reflex.

"Looks like she's finally done with you too, doesn't it. Since she stood you up. So where you gonna go now?"

Disbelief flashed across Elliot's face, followed quickly by realization.

"Yeah. She stood me up. But how do you know about that!"

Kathy didn't say a word.

"You followed me?"

"Of course not."

Elliot turned away from her and Kathy took a deep breath, finally free of his suffocating proximity. He glanced around and saw Maureen watching them, her eyes filled with worry. Elliot turned back around slowly to face his wife.

"Did you see the letter?"

The guilt in Kathy's eyes was immediate and something clicked in Elliot's brain.

"Did she even get the letter?!"

He looked like he was ready to explode. He would never lay a hand on a woman, but was pretty sure he would have knocked Kathy out if she'd been a man.

"Screw you Kathy," he hissed. "I never want to see your face again!"

He stormed off then, heading for the door. Richard and Elizabeth were just walking towards him but stopped when they saw the anger on his face. He was swearing under his breath and muttered,

"I have to see Liv. Right now. God, I hope she can forgive me."

"Dad!" Richard said.

"Get outta my way!"

"Where are you going?"

"Ask your mother! I'm done here!"

Elliot Stabler stormed past the children, not bothering to get his coat, and left his own birthday party to find the one person he wanted to see right now. He needed to see right now. He could only hope that he hadn't done any irreparable damage to their relationship ... whatever it was. He needed to fix that. Give what they shared a real name. Call it what it truly was and let the chips fall where they may. The cold night air hit him and it felt good. He was finally leaving behind the suffocation he'd felt for months - no years - and was walking with his head high. There was no going back now, not ever again. He'd go to her place and wouldn't leave until she heard him out. His anger at Kathy was fueling him, and he had no trouble walking straight despite his level of intoxication. His stride was determined. He knew he had drank a lot but he was convinced that he was clearheaded enough to tell her what she needed to know. All he could think about was the injustice of it all, and how they had both been wronged, forgetting for the moment that Olivia might feel wronged in a completely different way right now. He just needed to see her. To talk to her. That was all.

...

Olivia Benson hadn't really been focused all day long. There was a lull in their cases and she and Nick had been doing paperwork mostly while Fin and Rollins were out on a case and Munch was with TARU going through some security footage for them. Although she was getting used to seeing Nick sitting across from her whenever she looked up, it had been a little more painful today. His birthday. It was the first time in thirteen years that she wouldn't congratulate him. Because he was gone. He had disappeared from her life, and had done it so convincingly, that if he were dead she wouldn't know.

She felt silly about what she'd done now, but she had gone out to buy his favorite beer and had ordered 'their' takeout. It didn't taste as good as it used to these days and she hated herself for even wanting to remember him this way. He'd left her. He just walked out of her life and never looked back. She'd called his number until she finally got a message that it had been disconnected. She'd stopped trying to see him at home after Kathy had sent her away a few times. And then last month she got an envelope with his mini badge in it, and a tiny note. Semper Fi. El.

Always faithful. Right.

Wrong.

"Fuck you Elliot," she mumbled, finishing her fourth beer of the night. Or was it her fifth?

She leaned forward to check the two sixpacks on the floor in front of her couch and raised her eyebrows when she saw that the first sixpack was completely gone and she'd already started on the second. Seven beers? God, what had it come to? She was pathetic. She got up and grabbed a few empty bottles, cursing under her breath when she dropped two of them. She had eaten too little and drank too much, and was unsteady on her feet.

"Fuck you Elliot!" she said a little louder, and the sound of her own voice gave her enough strength to stand up straight and walk over to the kitchen to toss the empty bottles in the bin.

She looked at the leftovers of her takeout, and decided to put it all in the fridge. It was almost a complete meal, she'd hardly touched it. When tears welled up in her eyes unexpectedly, she slammed the refrigerator shut, making the contents rattle but she didn't care. She wasn't going to cry over him. Not again. He left her. He didn't deserve it.

"Dad hates me."

"No he doesn't. Trust me. If he did he'd just walk out of your life."

Those words had haunted her for months now. The first few weeks, she had thought he would contact her again soon. She'd still been calling and texting him almost daily by the end of June and she'd been confident that he'd drop by her apartment any moment. And she would have been ready to support him. But after almost two months without a word, she had begun to doubt herself. Or him. Or both of them. Had she done something to chase him away? She hadn't been able to think of anything. They'd been relaxed around each other over the past year. Maybe he just needed a little time away from the job, and then he'd be back. But by August, she'd been an angry mess and it had showed. Then, to top it off, Cragen had told her Elliot had put his papers in. She still couldn't think of any reason why he'd suddenly hate her and cut her out of her life like that. His resignation had felt like a knife to her heart, so one day she had decided that it was on him. All on him. He was just another asshole who walked out on her. He'd only taken a bit longer to realize he could do without her than all the others.

She plopped back down on the couch and wiped at her eyes. She knew she didn't really mean that. He could act like an asshole at times but she'd known the man inside. And she had truly believed that that man had cared for her. But for some reason, suddenly one day he didn't. It was either that, or he'd been too broken to be able to talk to her. And both possibilities still hurt like hell. It was so not like him to just cut her out of his life, that she couldn't deal with it. She didn't want to cry and tried to find something to watch on TV to distract her. She settled on a rerun of a sitcom they used to watch together and grabbed another beer. One more, for old time's sake, she thought. Just before she put the bottle to her lips, she whispered,

"Happy birthday, El."

A firm knock on her door startled her, and she scanned the room immediately, locating her gun. She hoisted herself up from the couch again and groaned, wishing now that she hadn't opened that eighth beer. Or the seventh for that matter. She grabbed her gun and then walked to the door to look through the peephole. Before she could look, her nightly visitor knocked again, even louder than before.

"What the hell," Olivia huffed.

Who could it be at this hour? It was almost midnight. She leaned her left palm against the door, clutching her gun in her right hand, and looked through the peephole. Her stomach dropped when she saw who was standing outside her apartment.

"Elliot."

...

Dun dun!

Can't help wondering if they should be doing this now ... can you? :)

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