Summary: Elliot and Olivia find themselves in an awkward situation while chasing a suspect. EO.
Rating: T, for language
Disclaimer: The show and characters aren't mine. Trust me; you'd know if they were.
Pairing: Olivia/Elliot
A/N: I apologize for taking this long to update. The last few weeks have been extremely chaotic. Anyways, I hope you guys like this chapter as much as the others and that you continue with the reviews. They're great motivators!

Caught

Chapter 3

Frank Anderson was on the roof having his afternoon smoke, letting his worries escape bit by bit with every exhale. He was walking around aimlessly when he heard the door violently crash open. He was near the large vent enclosure and instinctively hid on the opposite end. Frank heard someone muttering angrily under their breath but could not discern who the voice belonged to or exactly what they were saying. He carefully sidled towards the edge of the smooth, metal surface and stole a glance. Great. It was Elliot fucking Stabler. Frank had some anger management issues, not uncommon for a cop. But unlike Stabler, who rose through the ranks and was constantly praised, all Frank ever got was a jacket full of complaints. He'd barely made it past uniform duties but was still often stuck doing the dirty work and paper pushing. It was sure proof that Cragen played favorites. Yeah, Frank was pretty bitter.

Frank wasn't one to suck up to anyone, especially to Stabler, so that wasn't why he considered saying 'hello'. No, evidently Stabler was in the bad mood and it would have made Frank's day a hell of a lot better if he could rile the idiot up enough to do something stupid. He didn't think it would be too difficult to accomplish since it was a common enough occurrence. He took one last, long drag of his cigarette before putting it out with his shoe and was about to take a step when the sound of the door opening for the second time stopped him. Surprise, surprise, he thought to himself. Of course it would be Benson. Anywhere Stabler went, she was surely close behind. He wondered about her too, about how a woman with less experience in the force than him became a detective before him. She was probably sleeping with someone over at 1 P.P.

Frank was stuck in his hiding spot; there was only one entrance and he wouldn't be able to get past them undetected. He could see that it was going to be a long wait; something had obviously taken place because they looked angry and were obviously in the middle of a heated discussion. He watched the pair closely, trying to figure out what it is they were saying but he couldn't hear anything. He mentally cursed them for choosing that particular moment to have one of their lover's quarrels. Just when he was starting to get really frustrated at having to wait he saw Stabler put his hands on Benson's face. Knowing it might be something he'd need to capture, he took out his cell phone just in time to snap a picture of the two detectives caught in a passionate kiss. Frank smiled wickedly to himself. He didn't know what he was going to do with the picture just yet, but it could only serve him well. Thank God for these camera phones.

Olivia was worried. What the hell did Elliot mean when he said he "wasn't going to let her take the fall for this"? What was he going to do? Was he going to IAB to tell them he was responsible? That was definitely not a good idea in his current state of mind. Sgt. Tucker already had a personal vendetta against Elliot and she knew Tucker would use what little information he could to bring Elliot down and tarnish his reputation. She felt as if she was frozen to the spot for the past hour. Looking at her watch she saw that it had only been a minute and perhaps she could still catch up to Elliot. Forcing her body into action, she entered the building and ran down the stairs, heading for the locker room. She hoped that he was still in there gathering his things and as she approached the door she heard a loud thud. A wave of panic coursed through her body and for a moment she feared that instead of heading to IAB, Elliot was going to try and beat Brown into a silent pulp. Not that she didn't want the satisfaction of doing so herself, but she knew it would only make the situation that much worse. But when she walked in she realized that Elliot was alone, and instead of beating up Brown he was taking out all of his frustrations on a defenseless locker. Judging from the sizable dent, the locker didn't stand a fighting chance.

"Elliot," she tried to get his attention but to no avail; he was too engrossed in what he was doing. She tried again, louder this time, and he turned around, his eyes dilated and wild. For a minute she pictured him breathing fire, but she shook the image away. Olivia found it slightly disturbing that his anger stirred something inside of her and made her that much more attracted to him. Elliot said nothing, he merely continued to look at her, and that worried her. What was wrong with him? "What were you planning on doing?"

"It doesn't matter, Liv. All you need to know is that I'll take care of everything."

"How? You storming into Tucker's office all red-eyed and seething is only going to make things worse. It's going to look like we're actually guilty of something, which we're not. The best thing right now is to keep our heads down and keep doing our job. We'll figure something out when the time comes. Together." She'd walked closer to him and cautiously put her hand on his arm. She knew he wouldn't hurt her, but there was no harm in being careful.

"You know my history with the IAB and you know that they'll do whatever they can to take my badge away. They're not going to care that you'll be dragged down into the dirt with me."

"Let them do it, and I'll fight with you. But there's no reason to give them any more ammunition than they already have, which probably amounts to nothing. There's no one to corroborate Brown's story, so it's basically our word against that of a drug dealer."

"Yeah, well, we all know how much Tucker values my word," Elliot retorted sarcastically, but he knew Olivia was right. He took a deep breath in let it out, his anger ebbing away slowly and gradually. That was one of the many reasons why they worked so well together. She had this calming influence over him and could talk him down from any ledge no matter how angry he was. He nodded and let her take his bleeding fists to examine and clean up. "But what do we do about everyone else? I'm pretty sure they all think that we're…" Elliot stopped mid-sentence, unable to verbalize the thought.

"We'll just have to convince them that there's nothing going on between us." Olivia looked down and focused on scrubbing and disinfecting his wounded knuckles more than was necessary.

What confused her most was not knowing whether they'd be lying to everyone or telling the truth. It scared her that she didn't know which one she wanted it to be.

"Right," Elliot replied absently and grimaced as the iodine came into contact with his raw wound.

Cragen was having a exceptionally awful day. Between the seemingly botched Brown case, the pressure he was under from the Chief of Detectives, and what was sure to turn into a scandal with Olivia and Elliot, he couldn't even leave the station for five minutes to get a decent cup of coffee. He took a sip from his mug and immediately spat it out; he'd forgotten how long that particular cup had been sitting neglected on his desk. Contrary to popular opinion, their brand of squad room coffee could indeed get worse. "Shit!" Cragen exclaimed, as he looked down at his desk and realized he'd spat all over the reports, which he'd now have to redo. To make matters worse he'd forgotten to save his work in his aggravated haste. This was going to be a start-from-scratch job. Cragen wondered how he was still sober or how he hadn't quit yet. Out of frustration, Cragen laughed to himself. The more he thought about his day, hell, the whole past month, the harder he laughed and soon the chuckling fit developed into what could only be accurately described as a spastic attack to any potential and unaware onlookers. Coincidentally, that's what Munch and Fin thought was happening to him upon entering the office.

"Uh… Cap? You been makin' trips down to the narcotics evidence room?" Fin asked, only half-joking.

That only made him laugh harder. "Good… idea…"

He tried to say something else but he couldn't stop laughing long enough to do so. Instead he used his hand to motion them fully inside and close the door behind them. Cragen laughed on, Munch's raised eyebrow and Fin's furrowed forehead only served to fuel the hilarity.

"I think he's having a nervous breakdown. I'll call Huang," Munch said solemnly and turned to leave the office.

Cragen was finally starting to calm down. He wiped a tear with one hand and waved for Munch to stop with the other. "No, no, I'm alright. God, I haven't laughed that hard since…" Cragen paused and thought hard. "Since… well, never." Cragen took a couple of deep breaths and his usual serious expression slowly returned. "Please tell me you have good news."

Munch and Fin glanced at each other ominously. What now? Cragen thought.

"Brown lawyered up before we could get a damn word out of him. Between what I think he's got on Olivia and Elliot and Elliot's little maneuver… we're in trouble. We need to move fast on the rape-murder charges."

Cragen thought as much. Just then Olivia and Elliot walked back into the bullpen and towards them.

"So you two kiss and make up?" John asked. He thought it would alleviate some of the tension, but apparently no one else agreed. Elliot flared his nostrils and towered over Munch threateningly but Cragen stepped between them. "Stop it. Both of you. Of all things I don't need grown-up men to act like preschoolers."

Cragen's tired voice did the trick and everyone relaxed. Fin uttered the question on everyone's mind, "So what do we do now?"

Cragen thought for a moment and said, "We'll let Greylek work on the drug charges, which should buy us time… but not too much. His lawyer will probably get him a deal. In the meantime, we'll go back to the victim and bring her in for a lineup."

"I don't know how well that's going to go. It was dark and she didn't get a very good look at his face…" Elliot expressed his doubt.

"Well, without forensics, there's not much else left. Unless there's a chance of getting a confession…?" Cragen gave him a pointed look.

Elliot had no argument. He merely cleared his throat and said, "Alright, let's bring Ashley in for that lineup."

The lineup was, unsurprisingly, disastrous. Everyone knew Brown was guilty but their victim couldn't confirm their suspicions. She didn't recognize Brown or any of the other men from previous instances. Without a positive ID, all their evidence was circumstantial and even a shoddy defense attorney would be able to convince a judge to dismiss the case entirely. Their only consolation was that Brown would be held in custody overnight as he waited for his arraignment hearing come morning on the drug trafficking charges. The consolation, however, was largely overshadowed by the fact that they'd had to explain and reassure the victim that the case was not doomed because of her inability to point Brown out.

Everyone was frustrated, exhausted, and running out of patience. They had no new leads to follow, short of him attacking someone else. Elliot and Olivia were feeling the pressure more than anyone else, though. They couldn't believe that a brutal rapist like Brown might go free because his lawyer could potentially argue that their incompetence led to his arrest. The only thing that alleviated their guilt was that it was at least shared between the two of them.

It was late and they were all still at the precinct having reworked the case from every possible angle. "Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll be dumb enough to brag about what he thinks he's getting away with," Olivia said to herself.

"Hey, who's that talking to Frank over there?" Fin asked, pointing to the hallway.

"That's Natalie Dunne, Brown's girlfriend. She was his alibi, but her story didn't fully convince me," Elliot said, standing up and heading over to the pair. "Thanks, Anderson, I can take it from here." He started leading Natalie away, wanting to talk to her in one of the interview rooms. He was extremely curious as to what she was doing here and why she appeared so distressed.

"Don't worry, Stabler, I'm doing just fine here. I can take Ms. Dunne's statement."

"Anything Ms. Dunne has to say is pertinent to my case. Besides, I'm sure you have far more… um… pressing matters to attend to." Elliot smiled condescendingly at Frank and led Natalie away, leaving behind an incensed Frank.