Law and Order: SVU is the intellectual property of Dick Wolf. CSI is the intellectual property of Anthony E. Zuiker. The use of the characters, settings, and plotlines is not malicious. This is a work of fiction.

"Please," Olivia Benson mumbled through half-closed lips, "Shut up." She pushed her dark sunglasses up higher on her nose, and swept her long, mahogany-colored hair out of her face.

"Just saying," Fin Tutuola said with a short chuckle, "I never saw you drink like that. In fact, Liv, you did a lot of things I never saw you do, last night. A whole side of you I didn't know you had came out to play."

"Drop it," she snapped, opening the trunk of the black Ford Explorer they'd just gotten out of, and she grabbed a black duffel bag. Slamming the trunk shut, she shook her head a bit and said, "That girl...you're never gonna see her again."

"Pity," Elliot Stabler said as he stepped in front of her, having gotten out of the other side of the vehicle. "She was a fuck load of fun." He smoothed out his tie, smirking and kicking his lips, and behind his own tinted shades, he wagged his eyebrows at her.

She glared at him, her dark round lenses blocking the harsh look, and she stepped aside and around him, shooting up a middle finger as she walked away.

"She okay?" Fin asked, raising one eyebrow at Elliot.

"Hangover from Hell," he replied, shoving his hands into the pockets of his light gray pants. "I have a killer one myself, but, I guess, I handle them better than she does." He took a breath and started walking in the same direction Olivia had, grinning as, from behind his sunglasses, he stared at her perfect ass.

"Olivia!" An older man, tall with a shortly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, ran down the steps of the building in front of them, smiling and stretching out his arms.

Both Fin and Elliot looked on, confused, as Olivia embraced him, just as happy and as eager as he was.

"Grissom," she said, sighing. She pulled back and looked at the man, the smile still on her face. "It's so...good...to see you."

"Likewise," he told her, his hands still half around her waist. He looked to her left and her right, pulling away from her as she became flanked by Elliot and Fin. "Boys," he said, nodding at each of them. "Gil Grissom, Las Vegas PD crime lab..."

"And world-renowned forensic science expert, acclaimed etymological genius, and best professor of pathology I've ever had," Olivia added, smiling. "Am I forgetting anything?"

Grissom and Olivia shared a laugh, and she held her right hand out, gesturing to Elliot. "Gil, this is..."

"Elliot Stabler," Grissom said, shaking his hand. "As much as she talks about you, I knew right away it was you." He looked over toward Fin. "And, you are?" He held out his hand.

"Odafin Tutuola," Fin said, shaking Grissom's hand. "Why are we here, exactly?"

Grissom took his hand back and gave Fin a slightly less cheerful expression. "Actually, my request was just for Olivia." He jerked his head toward her. "And Elliot, of course. But to answer the question, you're here because my lab seems to have inherited one of your old cases."

"Lead the way," Olivia said, waving a hand out and upward, toward the building.

Grissom smiled at her and shook his head again. "You really do look great," he said. "Happy." He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Married?"

Olivia's smile faded, and she suddenly looked quite sick. "Just, um, can we..." she pointed to the building again.

"Same old Olivia," Grissom laughed, and he turned and led the trio into the building. "Dal," he said, bringing them toward a security guard near a large metal detector. "Detectives Benson, Stabler, and um..." he turned.

"Tutuola," Fin said, slightly annoyed.

"In from the NYPD," Grissom continued. "They need visitor passes, give them the 'green' ones. They're armed, guns and badges, so take them through one-by-one."

Dal, the guard, nodded, unlocking and opening a drawer to his left. He pulled out three lanyards, green in color, and signaled Olivia through the detector's wide arch. He gave her a quick frisk as it beeped, nodding when he saw the gun and badge on her hip. "Take those off, please, Detective?" he said, pointing to her sunglasses.

Slowly, she removed her shades, instantly wincing in the bright light of the lobby. She put the sunglasses in her pocket and shot Dal a hard glare.

The guard gave her a crooked look, shook his head, and took a picture of her with a digital camera. He turned and hit a few buttons on a computer keyboard and a printer whirred. He reached over a long table and grabbed the photo pass that had come out of the machine, slipped it into the plastic sleeve at the end of the lanyard, and then looped in around her neck. He looked away from her and crooked his finger, now starting the process over again with Elliot.

She looked down at the pass, smirked, and then looked up at Grissom. "A three-year pass?"

"Wishful thinking," he said innocently. "So tell me why you almost lost your breakfast when I asked if you were married."

"I didn't eat breakfast," she said, gripping the duffel bag a bit harder. "How's Catherine?"

Grissom tilted his head along with his smile, pointing coyly at her. "You haven't changed at all. Always deflecting the personal questions with ones of your own."

"It's one of her more endearing qualities," Elliot said, stepping up behind her. "So what case is this? I mean, Vegas...it's a long way from New York. I'm sure there were plenty of other detectives you could have..."

"I know Olivia," Grissom interrupted. "She needs to see her cases through to the very end. All of them. Besides, if I had to request someone from New York, I wanted the best."

"Hey, three years?" Fin yelled, looking down at his pass. "We being kidnapped or something?"

Olivia laughed and rolled her eyes. "No, think of it more like...an open invitation." She looked back at Grissom. "So back to Elliot's question..."

Grissom walked, knowing they'd follow, down the hallway. He led them around the left-side corner, as he said, "We were called to a partial body dump. Behind a bookstore on the strip." He pushed through a set of glass doors and continued. "It was't everything, just an arm, and a hand, so one of my guys ran the prints. When a criminal record came up, and I saw the name on the docs, well..." he shrugged proudly. He tugged gently on the hem of his knit vest, pushed open another glass door, and said, "I called you in on this, because I think you could help us find out who would want him dead. You would know any known connections, living members of victims' families...anything that would lead us to...finding out why and how he got here." He flicked a switch, turning on the light in the small lab.

A metal table sat in the middle of the room. On it, a glass case containing a severed human arm, badly bruised and mangled, with curled and broken fingers.

"Griss," Olivia said, kneeling to get a good view of the arm, "Who's is it?" Her eyes whipped toward Grissom.

Grissom folded his arms, flattened his smile, and leaned back against a work station. "Say hello to the left ulna, radius, humerus, and phalanges of one Richard White." He saw Olivia shoot up, her color drain, and he noticed Elliot immediately reach for her hand, take it, and squeeze it, hard. He heard Olivia's duffel bag drop to the marble floor. "Now, do you understand why I called you in on this?"

Olivia nodded, taking a deep breath. She pulled her hand away from Elliot, brushed both palms over her thighs, and looked around the lab as she took off her dark blue suit jacket, revealing a thick-strapped crew-neck tank. "It is hot in here," she complained.

"It's cold for Vegas," Grissom told her.

All of the heads turned, the swoosh of the opening glass door getting undivided attention. "I thought I saw you walking through my lab!" a younger man with a chiseled jaw and deep-set eyes said, a very think Texan accent dripping from each word. He grinned smugly as he pulled Olivia toward him, hugged her tight, and lifted her off the ground. "Dang, Benson, you are a sight for sore eyes!"

"Nick," Olivia laughed, "Down." She rolled her eyes as the man dropped her to the floor. "Nick Stokes, this is Elliot Stabler, my partner," she dropped a hand to Elliot's shoulder and squeezed, a silent warning to play nice. "El, Nick was one of the TA's working with Grissom, at Sienna." She smiled again at Nick.

"Oh, that wounds me, Benson," Nick said, clutching his heart dramatically. His biceps put a great deal of strain on his short-sleeved black tee shirt as his arms bent, and he shook his head and whimpered a bit. "We have more history than that."

Olivia cleared her throat, ignoring Nick's comment, and called over to Fin. "Fin, uh, meet Nick." She turned back to Nick. "This is Fin Tutuola, another detective we work with. Is this...is this your case?" she asked, pointing to the encased arm.

"Yeah, well," Nick looked at Grissom. "It is now." He looked back at Olivia, his eyes traveling up and down her body, taking in the curves and angles that the fabric of her pants hugged and her heeled boots accentuated. "How long you here for, Benson?"

"A few days," Olivia answered. She cleared her throat and shivered slightly, feeling the heat radiating off of Elliot's body as he stood beside her, inching closer, almost defensively. "A week, tops, you know...just staying until this murder is solved." She took a step between Elliot and Nick, suppressing a yelp when she felt Elliot's hands move to grab her hips. She swatted them away fast, smiled as naturally as she could force, and said, "We'll need to see where you found the arm."

"Of course," Grissom said, nodding and straightening up. "Nicky, show them where they can put their things." He looked at Fin and Elliot. "You might want to change. I don't think either of you are appropriately dressed for a Vegas April." He looked at Olivia and said, "Catherine will take you to the bookstore."

Olivia smiled, gave Grissom another short hug, and followed Nick out of the lab. Fin followed her, and Elliot moved to follow him, when Grissom's voice stopped him.

Elliot turned. There was an uncertainty and confusion in his eyes as he silently asked Grissom what he wanted.

"If you're going to act like a possessive mate, Detective Stabler, you'd better have a reason," Grissom said."And a right." He had a placating smile on his face, but his words and demeanor were that of a protective father. "Olivia knows how to handle herself, and she gets very agitated if anyone else tries to take care of her. She also does what she wants, when she wants, and won't ever do anything she isn't one-hundred-percent invested in. I'm sure, after being her partner for so long, that you are aware of that." He looked up at Elliot, resting one hand on the door handle as the other pointed at him. "Bit of advice," he said, "If you had any reason to doubt her, you'd know it."

Elliot's eyes flickered and squinted quickly, and he grinned back at Grissom smugly. "You think you know her better than I do?"

Grissom shot him a look, his head tilted and his eyes glinting knowingly, his smile one that seemed to say, Oh, come on, of course I do. "Elliot," he said, "I know things about her...and you...that I'm sure you don't think anyone else does."

"Do you?" Elliot asked, a challenge, as he crossed his arms. "You said...you said she told you about me?"

Grissom laughed. "Every time we talk, Elliot, somehow, you always come up." He tapped his right temple, that same condescending look on his face. "I'm sure she told you all about me," he said, "And you're holding back on making a good impression for the sake of...what is his name again? Fin?"

Elliot nodded.

"Let me guess," Grissom pushed the door open, and then walked with Elliot back through the halls toward the lobby. "Your captain, for some strange and probably asinine reason, didn't want you and Olivia out here alone. He couldn't get the time away, so he sent another member of your team, one just gruff enough to keep the two of you from doing something stupid." He stopped, and he pulled on Elliot's arm, gently, but enough to stop him. "Something you probably wouldn't think is stupid at all."

Elliot swallowed hard, turned slowly, and licked his lips. "Maybe," he said.

"Like I said," Grissom told him with a sigh, "She would never do anything..."

"I know," Elliot said, stopping the older and obviously wiser man. "She did, uh, tell me about you. But what she told me...she made it sound like you were..."

Grissom held up a hand, picking up his pace again. "That'll come later," he said, knowing what Elliot was going to say. He swiveled quickly as they walked, grabbing a few things off of a cart in the hall. "Here," he said, handing Elliot a folded cotton tee. "That'll be much more comfortable."

They came to a stop near the front doors, turning when they heard voices and footsteps. Olivia was in the middle of an animated conversation with a woman about her height, but older, with strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. Fin and Nick, silent and sort of glaring at each other, walked behind the women.

Elliot's breath hitched. Olivia, too, had changed. Her hair was now pulled back in a clip, her silk top replaced by a tee shirt identical to the ones Nick, and Fin, were wearing. The same one was being twisted in his hands. "Liv," he said, his eyes softening as she came up beside him. "Everything okay?"

She smiled at him, nodded, and said, "Ready to go?"

Elliot nodded back at her, letting his hand slide down her bare arm. "Yeah," he said, and his fingers itched with the desire to grab her hand. Her left hand. Hold it. But he knew that he couldn't, for several reasons. "You might want to put your sunglasses back on," he told her, jutting a thumb over his shoulder toward the bright Vegas afternoon beyond the doors. He leaned closer to her. "How are you feeling, by the way?"

"Awful," she said, digging her sunglasses out of her pocket. She put them on, her shoulders relaxing a bit, and said, "Not about...I mean I'm...good...with that."

"Yeah, me, too," Elliot said, smiling at her. "Are you coming, Mister Grissom?"

Grissom grinned but shook his head. "Like I said, Catherine will take you. I've got a couple of guys out that way, trying to find the rest of the body. When you come back, Olivia, I'd like to talk to you and Elliot about your history with this case, in my office. I'll make coffee." He rested a hand on Elliot's shoulder. "And drop the 'mister,' Olivia's family so...you're family."

Elliot narrowed his eyes as he watched Grissom turn and walk away, and then turned to look quizzically at Olivia. There was something she wasn't telling him, and he had a feeling it was going to change things. Well, more than they already had.

Peace and Love

Jo