Disclaimer: Nope…don't own them. But if Dick Wolf is offering….
Author's note: As usual, this can be blamed on Jamie for asking a gorram question during my vulnerable "I wanna write a story" stage.
Olivia was in a mood. You know…one of those moods.
Elliot knew better than to push her buttons on that fateful second week of every month. He knew better.
Today, he must've had a death wish. Or maybe he just forgot to check his calendar. Perhaps he didn't recognize her mood. He probably hadn't seen the half-eaten Hershey bar on her desk.
Actually, he thought, I'm just in the mood tease her today, PMS be damned.
Olivia was bent over a file, trying to make out her own handwriting, when a paper clip landed a few inches from the top of the file. She ignored it. The next one overshot its target, flying harmlessly to her right and on the floor. Olivia took a deep breath, but continued to read.
The third time, as the saying goes, was the charm. It clipped her ear and bounced lightly onto her hand. She smacked her palms on her desk and shot him a glare.
"Do you have a problem, Elliot?"
"Not one that I can pronounce," he replied immediately, as though he had been expecting that very question. She narrowed her eyes not only at the glib remark, but also at the grin that matched it.
Olivia reached down to her belt and unclipped her gun, still in its holster, and slapped it menacingly on the desk, not saying a word as she went back to her paperwork.
He seemed to take the hint, going back to his own paperwork. After about fifteen minutes, Elliot got up and refilled his coffee mug. He pulled a sour face at the taste and put the cup down on his desk and sat down backwards on the chair.
He was bored. He looked up at Olivia, still fully engaged in her reports, the chocolate bar long gone. Elliot didn't really understand the power of chocolate on a woman, but he figured he could risk a little more mischief now that she had some in her system.
He rolled his chair all the way around to her side of their joined desks. She followed his movement in her peripheral vision, but didn't otherwise indicate she was paying any attention….
Until he rolled right up alongside her, his left knee nudging her right thigh. Her voice was even as she asked, "Did you need something?"
He looked at her still diverted face before answering uninterestedly, "No."
She turned her focus back to reading, trying to ignore the rhythmic tapping of his leg against hers. Finally, she said threateningly, "I still have my gun."
To her relief and satisfaction, the tapping stopped immediately.
She was a little distracted by him reading over her shoulder, but not to the extent of asking him to stop. So she continued her work.
A few minutes passed before she felt a tap on her shoulder, coming from the side Elliot was not sitting on. She looked behind her instinctively, but when she found nobody, she released an exasperated breath and looked irritably at her partner.
He looked up at her as though nothing had happened. He had the practiced look of innocence on his face, but his devilish motive still danced in his eyes.
"Elliot, I'm only gonna say this once. Stop touching me."
He let out a burst of laughter. "'Stop touching me?' What are we, five?"
She rolled her eyes in response and once again returned to the monotony of file-reading.
Another five minutes passed before he resumed his torment of Olivia, this time blowing softly on her hair and neck. He could see that she was trying really hard not to rise to the bait. Her left hand was clenched in frustration and her eyes had stopped moving over the page.
"I'm not to-o-o-u-u-u-uching yo-o-o-o-u-u-u-u…," he declared in a sing-song voice.
Her self-control was astounding. He could tell that her attention was diverting back to her work. He increased his efforts.
Elliot tucked her hair behind the ear that was facing him and continued to breathe softly on her skin. Not only did this not garner the anger he was expecting, but she seemed to be relaxing into this latest childish act to get noticed.
So he kept on. Hey, attention is attention, right? And her paperwork was once again forgotten as all her awareness was back on him. He continued to blow softly along her skin.
He blew invisible lines across the back of her neck and around to her jawbone. He then traced the ultra-sensitive contours of her ear. At this, her eyes fluttered closed and she tilted her head slightly, opening up a greater area of skin for him to explore.
Elliot couldn't resist. He brought his lips millimeters from her exposed neck, his warm breath leaving a tingling trail everywhere it went.
Her palms were flat on her desk, her fingertips turning white from the pressure they exerted on the hard wooden surface. His lips continued their exploration, occasionally making contact by accident. He moved back up to her ear, the second most sensitive exposed area of the body, and breathed a whisper.
"I'm sti-i-i-i-l-l-l-l not t-o-o-o-u-u-uching y-o-o-o-u-u-u-u."
She moaned in the back of her throat as he finally did bring his lips intentionally into contact with her ear lobe and trailed feather-light kisses around the outside curve of her ear.
The sound of Cragen's office door opening broke the two apart. He feigned reading over her shoulder as their boss walked past with his coat and briefcase in hand, obviously heading out for the night.
"Stabler, quit bothering Benson," he barked. "You have your own paperwork to attend to."
"Sure thing, Dad," Elliot responded smartly, wheeling his chair back around to his own pile of folders, which he could swear had doubled.
Olivia was no longer annoyed, and Elliot seemed to have shaken his boredom. They both worked diligently on their paperwork. The squad room was quiet, save for the soft rustling of papers and the occasional scratching of a pen.
The silence was broken only by the hollow clink of a paper clip skipping across a desk and landing on the floor.
END
I don't know about schnitzel with noodles, but reviews are some of my favorite things!