Chapter one :

Confessions :

Detective Amanda Rollins never understood why people made such a fuss about monday mornings. While most people she knew were reluctant to go back to work after spending a candid week end free of any preoccupations or responsibilities, she was actually looking forward to returning to her new position as a special victims unit Detective. Granted she did not miss listening to countless victims describing their sexual assaults in excruciating details, she actually appreciated her job. When she first arrived in the big city, she was naive enough to think that her five year experience as a Detective in Atlanta investigating sexual offenses had prepared to face the brutal cases she knew she was going to encounter in New-York. Unfortunately, nothing could have had prepared her to the extreme violence of the crimes she soon found herself investigating.

When she first arrived at SVU, she immediately sensed how tensed the atmosphere was and despite hearing rumours about the incident that had lead Detective Stabler to retire she had decided not to bring it up and to just do her job, hoping she would gain the trust and respect of her colleagues.

The first Detective that warmed up to her presence was Fin. She had no clue how close he and Stabler were and knew better than to probe for information. All she knew was that working in New-York-City was more overwhelming than anything she had envisioned and she was grateful to have a partner she could trust and who knew the city and its criminals the way he did.

Fin was a good cop and a good man that had more respect for victims and women in general than the men she was accustomed to work with, not to mention she had helped her getting rid of her bookie and had allowed her to talk about her gambling addiction without ever judging her.

Unfortunately despite Fin, Munch or even Cragen's support and efforts to make her feel at home, Amanda only had eye for one Detective, one Detective in particular whose career she had been following for years. For years she had read articles about Olivia's work with rapes victim and she considered being transfered to SVU as a once in a life time opportunity. Working with her, learning from her experience and perhaps absorb some of that legendary compassion and sense of justice that had made Olivia one of New-York's finest Detective was almost a dream coming true for the younger Detective.

Unfortunately, when she arrived at SVU, she realized just how close Olivia and Eliot were and that it would probably take her a while for her to allow herself to get close to anyone else and determined to respect her privacy and need to mourn her long term partnership, she had decided to take a step back and observe her rather than bothering her with questions. She knew that if she ever wanted to earn Olivia's respect she would have to prove herself to her, to prove that she was a good cop, deserving of being her partner. And so she did, for months she worked alongside Olivia, observing her bonding the victims, especially the children for whom she seemed to have a soft spot.

Slowly though, the observation became contemplation and before she could do anything to stop it she had developed feelings for Olivia. How could she not? Not only she was gorgeous, smart, extremely devoted to give justice to her victims but there seemed to be something about her, something she could not grasp yet, but that had definitely caught her attention. What she could tell just by observing her interacting with the victims was that behind the apparent confidence and fearlessness, Olivia was carefully hiding a very sensitive even troubled personality and she was determined to crack the armour she knew her new colleague had probably spent years building around her heart.

"Where in hell is everyone? It's almost nine am." Sitting at desk that morning, Amanda took a quick look around and noticed that Olivia was the only one at her desk, which wasn't unusual as she seemed to live at the station but Fin, Munch and Amaro were usually reporting for duty around half past eight.

"Fin is in court, Munch is with Cragen out on a budget meeting and Amaro is in DC for another day." With the end of Amaro's marriage, SVU had claimed yet another family. Was this unit cursed? Was the satisfaction of putting perverts behind bars worth sacrificing their personal lives? Liv had stopped asking herself those questions years ago and had accepted her fate, or so she tried to convince herself.

"Oh right, glad he could spend the week end with his daughter. At least one of us enjoyed their week end." Appart from her disastrous date on saturday, Amanda's week end had been relatively enjoyable but those two hours had been enough to leave a bitter taste in her mouth and to make her regret accepting going out on a blind date with a complete stranger.

"That bad?" Truth be told, Olivia knew nothing about Amanda's life outside of work. Their social interactions were limited to a few drinks here and there with the rest of the team and after almost a year of working alongside the younger blonde the only thing she knew was that she had been assaulted in Atlanta and that she had a sister.

"Yeah, that's the risk you take when to agree to go on a blind date." The simple thought of her date were enough to give her hives and she had sworn never to go on a blind date again.

"Let me guess. He was bold, fat and still lived with his mother." As mean as it was, Olivia found Amanda's misfortune amusing and she felt almost relived that being young and attractive did not preclude you from struggling to get a descent date.

"Actually she was very attractive, smart, driven and very successful in her field. Coming to think of it, she's actually quite my type, it's just..." It's just that as perfect as she might be, she is not you. Those were the words Amanda was craving to finally allow to slip through her lips, but she couldn't, wouldn't allow herself to make such a confession.

"It's just..." Slightly tilting her head, Olivia immediately understood that something was bothering her. Was she prying by encouraging her to tell her more about what was bothering her about her date? Amanda barely knew her after all and even if she found herself curious about her recent misfortune, she knew better than to expect Amanda to confide in her.

"She was just...too young, foolish and inappropriately excited about everything you know?" Saying those words Amanda realized that she had never mentioned her sexual orientation to anyone in her team, not even to Fin after he told her his son was gay. She wasn't the kind of woman to be ashamed of who she was and she had always been very open about her sexuality and proud of her life choices, she was just a very private person. Unfortunately, she knew that to get Liv to open up about herself she had to be willing to share as well.

"Oh I see. She started talking about her job and things that she's passionate about and wouldn't shut up?" A bit disconcerted by the discovery that Amanda was a lesbian, Olivia sat up straight into her chair and mechanically crossed her arms on her desk. Was Amanda looking for a confident or was she trying to tighten their partnership by sharing about her personal life?

"Exactly! Don't get me wrong, I like ambitious women who are passionate about what they do, it's just that she was talking so fast, agitating her hands in the air that I could barely follow her or let alone establish eye contact. Call me old school or even boring but I like quiet, calm women I can look in the eyes while talking." Without realizing it Amanda had described the brunette sitting in front of her, but she knew that Olivia had to remain a fantasy, something that was so far from her reach that she had to forget about it, at least for now. To her own admission, Amanda had had a very intense dating life when she was in Atlanta and going after an older and more experienced woman never scared her but when it came to Detective Benson her gaydar was failing her. She knew that Olivia had been involved with men in the past but she could not for the love of God tell if she was into women as well and she was not willing to compromise her position at SVU until she had received clear signals from Liv's part that she was indeed playing for both team or at least open to the idea.

"Not a puppy you'd have to train to canalize its energy. I get it. So I take it that you won't see her again?" Despite not knowing Amanda as well as she should after a year of working together, Liv could feel that she was keen on sharing, which in a way was a blessing.

After having worked with men for the past 14 years Liv had accustomed herself to hear about sports, women or any other topic that interested Munch, Fin and Eliot. Now that Amanda had joined the team she was hoping to finally develop a friendship with someone that didn't have a penis.

Thinking about it, Liv had not shared a real friendship with another woman since joining SVU. Not only she did not have the time to make friends outside of work but she found it extremely hard to find a woman that would not judge her for choosing to work at SVU. Women could understand why a man could want to work sex crimes, but for most of them, for a female to choose to investigate rapes she had to be seriously deranged.

Sure, she was friendly with Melinda and Casey but she considered them as work acquaintances not friends, confidents she could turn to in a time of need.

Then there was Alex, with whom she had actually tried to develop a true friendship, unfortunately in vain. Sure they had shared many meals and drinks together and shared anecdotes about their miserable dating lives but despite Liv's best efforts, Alex had remained true to her reputation of a cold, career oriented woman who did not embarrass herself with friendships that could not help her political ambitions.

So when Alex came back from her two year assignment in Africa, Liv didn't try to get in touch with her to rekindle their so called friendship, simply because there was nothing to rekindle in the first place, not since Alex had declined answering her phone calls after coming back from the witness protection program.

Despite her sympathising with Alex's need to rebuild her life, to find herself again, Liv had moved on from both Alex and Eliot, who had also decided that having her in his life was not what he needed to recover from that shooting that had cost him his career and faith in himself.

Far from being discouraged by those two misfortunes, Liv had decided she had to stop wondering what she had done wrong to make both Alex and Eliot push her away and to look towards the future and to start treating Amanda with the consideration she deserved. They were the only women in the entire unit and they needed to stick together, to have each other's backs.

"Probably not. My friend who arranged the date told me I should at least keep her as a booty call but that's not what I'm looking for. I mean, casual sex is great when you're twenty but when you reach a certain age you start to feel compelled to look something more, something sincere and durable." Why was Amanda trying to appear more mature than she actually was? The truth was that she had several fuck buddies back in Atlanta but facing Olivia, looking into her big brown eyes, she simply didn't have the heart to reveal that side of her yet, not that she was ashamed of the choices she had made in the past but part of her wanted Olivia to see her as more than a hot blonde/player. She knew that being her forties Olivia's internal clock had probably been ticking for years and that she probably had had enough of meaningless relationships.

"I know what you mean and wanting something more is perfectly honourable but when the opportunity presents itself, don't shy away from enjoying yourself. God knows between the long hours and the horrors we see on daily basis such opportunities can turn out to be rare if not inexistent." That was an understatement. Either the men she was dating were disgusted by her choice of career or they were excited about it and fancied her as a sexual freak with eccentric tastes. Good times and descent companionships were rare and after spending years hoping to meet that very special person that would not only accept her with her flaws, darknesses and contradictions, Olivia had slowly learned to enjoy her single life and make the most of it and not to wait for a man to make her complete. Unfortunately as much as she enjoyed her independence, the loneliness that came with it had started to print its mark deep into the Detective's soul.

"I agree." Nodding as she finally reached out for the gigantic pile of paper work she knew she was going to have to go through today, Amanda smiled, satisfied by the brief conversation she had shared with Olivia. Though Olivia had not shared anything about herself, she finally seemed open to get to know her better and that's all she wanted.

Alright guys...That's a first chapter. For those who follow my stories you know that I usually write Rizzles fictions but my first story was actually an A/O fiction!

This time I decided to write a Rolivia fiction. Because we know little about Amanda I feel that I'm going blind and though I know exactly how I'm going to write Liv and her "dark side", I have yet to figure out who Amanda Rollins is going to be in this story and as scary as it is, it's also exciting.

I hope you enjoyed this first chapter, I'm already working on the second chapter but I'm open to ideas :).

PS : I have been struggling with the biggest writer's block since the first week of september when I posted "dreams" last chapter and I'm well aware that my english is rusty if not mediocre, but please indulge a native french speaker and bare with me. I know that the more I'm gonna write the more likely I am to improve my english.