A/N: A new, unexpected take on things - inspired by friends, true events, and some pretty epic dreams. R & R? Thanks.

DISCLAIMER: SVU and all related plot/characters originally belong to Dick Wolf. This story, words, and dialogue are mine. © TStabler

"Okay," he rolls his eyes, the phone barely pressed to his ear, and he shuffles the keys, his coffee, and a manilla folder around in his hand as he tries to free a finger to open the glass door. "Yeah, Ma, I know. Okay, okay, I gotta go. Love you, too." He hangs up, shoves the phone into the pocket of his navy jacket, and heads for his desk, nodding politely to his colleagues.

He takes a sip of his coffee and drags his eyes around the room. Ringing phones with no one moving to answer them, a rolling cork board with the details of the case du jour tacked to it, men in uniform trying to talk to men in suits who are ignoring them, and finally he sees her. That's when he freezes. He looks around, no one seems to be helping the young woman. He clears his throat and drops his coffee to his desk. He moves toward her, his eyes trailing up and down her body, gauging the level of stress she might be under, and the Sienna College hoodie is what makes him gasp. "Hey, uh," he starts, and he narrows his eyes when she looks at him. "I'm Detective Stabler."

She doesn't move, her nerves are on fire. She knows exactly who he is, and she isn't prepared to meet him so suddenly, so soon. "I know who you are," she says, and she opens her mouth to tell him something else, but he speaks first.

"So, uh, did...did Maureen give you my card?" He hooks his arm loosely around her shoulders and leads her to a folding chair at the side of his desk. "You in some kind of trouble, sweetheart?" he asks as he presses his lips together, hoping the story won't be as bad as he fears. Thinking this is one of his daughter's friends is already giving him hives.

"Um," the brunette raises one brow and leans back in her chair. "No?" It comes out like a question and then she darts her eyes to his hand on her shoulder. She shrugs hard, brushing him off of her, and then looks at him again. "Who's Maureen?"

Elliot's brow furrows again. "Sorry, I just…I thought that..."

"Elliot," Captain Cragen calls to him as he steps out of his office, followed by two men in tan suits, ones he instantly recognizes as Internal Affairs. "Oh, uh, good. You met."

"Not exactly," the young woman stands, crosses her arms. "Who the hell is Maureen?"

Cragen shoots Elliot an odd look, watches as he purses his lips and shakes his head sheepishly. "Elliot Stabler," he holds a hand out. "This is Olivia Benson. Rookie out of the Two-Oh," he says.

Elliot's eyes widen as he turns, more mortified than he'd ever been in his life, and he takes the girl's outstretched hand. "Sorry," he says, and he points to her green hoodie. "You, uh...please, don't take this the wrong way. You look...so fucking young, I uh, thought you were a friend of my daughter's. That's who Maureen is...my daughter."

Olivia smirks. "Right," she drops his hand and brushes her hair behind her ears.

Cragen chuckles and finally gives Elliot some recompense. "Stabler, she is young," he says. "That's why we pulled her off the beat, we need a warm body on this one, and she's the only one in the department who can pull it off." He slaps a file into Elliot's chest, lets it go when he is sure it won't fall. "Those prep school sons of bitches hit again last night, video went viral on the dark web, pulled all of the major players out of their holes. They're clamoring for more." He turns to one of the men beside him. "We clear on this, Ed?"

Ed Tucker takes another look at Olivia, and then he nods. "We signed off on this, but if anything happens to her it's your ass, Cragen." He tilts his head and angles his eyes back toward Olivia. "You sure you can handle this? This isn't exactly what you signed up for, Benson."

"Well, I had to reschedule my Shiatzu and move my mani-pedi," Benson jokes, and then her eyes narrow as her lips flatten. "This is exactly what I signed up for, this is literally why I became a cop, Sir. I appreciate the opportunity, and I'll do my job."

Tucker nods, then hits his cohort in the shoulder, and as the two men from IAB leave, Cragen scratches a spot behind his ear and shoves his other hand into the pocket of his black pants. "This is a little unorthodox, I get it," he says, "But this is the best chance we got. Benson, you already have a solid rep, top of your class outta Flushing, high praise from your Captain, I have no doubts that you can do this."

"Thank you," she says with a small, almost embarrassed smile. She isn't used to compliments.

"I want the two of you to go over every fucking detail," Cragen says, pointing at the file Elliot's holding. "I want you half-way to ID'ing the pricks before she steps foot through the doors of that school, tomorrow, hear me?" Before either Elliot or Olivia can answer, he's back in his office with the door closed and locked, beating himself up for bringing a kid into the seventh level of hell before her time.

Elliot swallows hard, and then he lets out a nervous chuckle as he walks around to the front of his desk and sits in his chair. He holds out a hand, gesturing to the seat at the empty desk across from him. "Again, I'm sorry about before," he nods at her sweatshirt as she sits. "My daughter...Maureen, she's a Sophomore at Siena, so I just assumed…"

"No worries, Sir," she says immediately, and she gives him a long glance. "But...you don't look old enough to have a kid my age."

He squints. "Your age?" He runs a hand down his face and shakes his head. "Now, I'm just fucking confused. How old are you, exactly?"

"Twenty-one," she spits out robotically. "In two weeks, anyway." She bites her lip as she pushes her long, dark waves behind her ear again. "I was sort of a bookworm, ya know? Skipped a grade in middle school. Then I took a lot of extra classes my junior year in high school, graduated early, then I double-majored and overloaded at Siena, so what should've taken four years only took two." She sees the look he's giving her, and she licks her chapping lips as she tries not to blush. "I don't...I don't like to bring it up, most people think I'm some sort of prodigy, but honestly, the story is...less impressive than that."

"So," he leans closer. There's something about this girl that is getting under his skin and he has never felt exactly like this before in his life. "What's the story?"

"Oh, no," she chuckles, and she reaches over the empty metal desk to grab the file Cragen had given to him. "You don't know me well enough to hear the story." She flips the folder open, scans the first page, and she knows he's staring at her. She feels the heat of his eyes on her and she hates herself for loving how it washes over her. "I can tell you I, um," she pauses, swallows, and lowers her voice. "I wanted to get as far away from my mother as humanly possible as fast as I could."

Her words hit him and he feels both sick and proud. Sick, because it means someone hurt this precious creature enough to make her give up her entire childhood for the chance to get away. Proud, because he's patting himself on the fucking back for knowing immediately that she's a victim. He hasn't lost his touch at all. "You, uh," he has to lighten the mood, get on this girl's good side before feeding her to the wolves, "You always go on patrol in jeans and a sweatshirt?"

"They pulled me out of the locker room before I started my shift," she tells him, rolling her eyes, and then she flips a page in the file, stares down at the screen-grabs and grainy images. "Ya know, it's bad enough we have to be subjected to amateur singers and wannabe makeup artists clogging the internet with their crazy content," she tosses the file back to him. "There's a whole dark world of depravity underneath it all, where that is considered entertainment."

Elliot drops his gaze, looks through the stills from the distorted and heavily edited videos their perps have posted on an underground website. "Anyone trace the cash?" he asks, seeing the price per view and how many hits each video has. "Account has to be pretty hefty."

"coin," Olivia scoffs. "Relatively untraceable, and your guys up in tech, they can't find where it's all being routed. Every transaction is bounced to three different outlets before being logged on a bogus website, reported as income from the sale of high-top sneakers," she explains. "Someone involved with this whole fucking thing is a computer genius."

He watches her as she sucks her lip into her mouth again, he sees the way the slightly jagged edges of her front teeth dig into the cherry red of her lower lip, and now, he knows exactly what he's feeling. Fuck. He takes a breath and without thinking, he grabs his foam cup and passes it over to her.

She takes it from him and without flinching, she brings it to her lips and tilts her head back, swallowing a long, slow sip. "Thanks," she says, handing it back to him. She grabs the file again and hums. "That's...I can use that. The chances of someone being that great with computers and on the basketball team are pretty slim, no one has enough time in their days to be this damn good at both."

"Um," he smirks when she tosses her head, he sees her hair swish back enough to spot a small tattoo behind her ear. "What is that?" he points.

"What's what?" she asks, looking up from the file to meet his eyes. She stills, letting him reach for her, because as much as she wants to move, her body refuses to obey. She twitches slightly when she feels his fingers graze her ear, and she lets out a trembling breath as he moves his hand away again. "It's a cross." She rolls her eyes and laughs. "Got it when I was sixteen. I had this friend, his brother was an apprentice in a shop. He convinced all of us to let the guy give us free tattoos, so he could practice, and being who I am, I said absofuckinglutely. I asked him to put it someplace my mother would probably never see it." She looks away from Elliot and her smile fades. "She saw it."

"It's…" Tragic, heartbreakingly beautiful. "Cute." He cringes as soon as the word hits the air, and he drags his hand down his face. "So, uh, before, when you said I don't look old enough to have a kid your age…" he cracks his knuckles. "I'm not as old as you're thinking. Maureen was the surprising side effect of Senior Prom gone wrong." He laughs at the look on Olivia's face, but he holds up both hands and angles his head. "I did the right thing, though, so don't look at me like that."

"You're married," she says, and there's a part of her that's suddenly very disappointed. She looks at his hands, wondering if she'd missed something. "How...good for you."

Elliot's eyes widen and droop as he seethes and clicks his tongue. "Was," he nods. "For almost twenty years. Got married right after graduation. Four kids later, we decided it was never the life we wanted, and we figured, ya know, we'd call it a draw while we're both young enough to find what we...do want." He shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee, then holds it out to her. "You're not married." He waits, watches her take the cup, and then he asks, "Are you?"

Her laugh is muffled by her mouthful of coffee, she cups her hand over her lips in case she leaks, and she shakes her head. "No, God," she says after she swallows. "No, uh...I could have been, though. My mother…"

Cragen's door flies open so hard the knob busts a hole in the plaster wall behind it. "Stabler, you need to take Benson upstairs, fit her with a wire. John, run down to Mercy and wait for the bus and our latest vic, her name is Gwen Myers. Cassidy'll meet you there." He walks fast, a duffel bag in his hand, and he holds it out to Olivia. "Uniform, shoes, books, bookbag. I know this wasn't supposed to happen until tomorrow, but…"

"I heard," she nods. She looks at Elliot and says, "Lead the way, Sir."

"Wow," he scoffs as he rests a hand on Olivia's shoulder. He ushers her through the unit doors. "Don't call me that. I'm not…" he pulls on her arm, getting her to stop, and when she looks up at him, he loses his breath. "Just...I'm not...you can call me Elliot," he says with a nod.

She smiles and then lets him walk her toward the elevator. Her heart is racing because in an hour, she will officially be on an undercover assignment with Manhattan Special Victims, something she'd only ever dreamed about. Her pulse is thick and loud in her ears because in an hour, she will be in the middle of a career-making case with a detective she's idolized for years. Her heartbeat is throbbing in every single part of her body because Detective Elliot Stabler has the bluest fucking eyes she's ever seen, he has the body of Adonis under that suit, he is a lot nicer than the stories on the street make him out to be, and she doesn't know how something so wrong could feel so fucking right.

They step into the elevator, he presses the button he needs, and as the doors slide shut, he leans into her. "They tell you who your handler on this is?"

"Yeah," she says, and then she smirks. "You."

A/N: ? Is there more to this? Review?