A/N: This is a bit different from my other fics. In this one, characters aren't so morally upstanding.

DISCLAIMER: Characters=Dick Wolf All else= mine With love, TStabler©

Today. December 24th. Three months ago. September 24th. We had a rough day, he went home to his family, but then came by my place, more excited and happy then he'd been in a while. We didn't even make it to the bedroom. He threw me up against the wall, and then the kitchen counter, and then we made it to the bedroom, a few times. Was it the wall? Or what? When did this happen? God this is not happening. This can not be happening.

"Liv," Elliot shouted, "Snap out of it." He was holding a cup of coffee over her desk. She looked offended. "Liv, you okay?"

"Yeah, I can't drink that though," she pushed the cup back toward him roughly, causing some of the blackish brown liquid to spill out all over the open file on his desk.

"Christ, Liv," he yelled, backing away.

She flinched, rising suddenly. "Sorry, I'm sorry." She ran over to the coffee counter and grabbed paper towels, immediately running back to Elliot and handing them over with a shaky hand.

He took them from her, more worried about her than the file, and he wiped the coffee up quickly before pulling her into a corner of the squadroom.

"Are you okay, Liv? You're all jumpy, and you've never refused coffee before." He brushed an errant hair out of her eyes and continued, "Did I do something? Are you mad at me?"

She looked into his blue eyes, smiled, brushed a hand against his cheek and shook her head. He closed his eyes for a moment, leaning into her touch and he kissed her palm. She felt the tears filling her eyes as she turned away from him and ran into Cragen's office. A moment later, she returned, her eyes red and puffy, grabbed her coat and left the bullpen, nodding gently at Elliot as she walked past him.

He bolted out of his chair and stormed into his captain's office, demanding to know what had just happened.

As she stood before her large, doorless closet, with the big, black garbage bag in her hands, her mind raced. She didn't plan this, but he hadn't planned Maureen either, and a part of him resented Kathy for it. She couldn't let that happen. She had to find a way to let him off the hook. Heaving a sigh, and vowing to figure it out later, she started pulling the boxes off of the shelf and tossing them into the bag. A photo slipped free from its sleeve, falling out of the album in her hands. She picked it up and she whimpered. The picture had been taken the day their affair had started, at the surprise birthday party that Munch and Fin had planned for Cragen, when Elliot pulled her aside and siad he couldn't keep living a lie.

She didn't know how she'd let it go on for three years, or how she'd let herself believe that she was content with being the other woman, but she surmised that as long as she had him, had some part of Elliot, her world was easier to live in. It wasn't enough anymore. It hadn't been enough in a while, but she wasn't strong enough to end it, because he made her so weak. Now, she had a bigger problem.

She tossed the photo, album and all, into the bag and started pulling the clothes out of the closet, tossing them on her bed. Satisfied that the closet was empty, she stepped into it and held out her arms, spinning around, trying to determine if this was a big enough space to stick a crib and a changing table. Her cell phone rang, pulling her from her calculations and she walked out of the bedroom to answer it, hoping she didn't sound like she'd been crying.

"Benson. No, Dickie, I'm home. I haven't spoken to your father since I left, why? Oh, uh, no, he didn't mention that to me. Thanks, but I think I'm just gonna stay home tonight, sweetie. Christmas Eve cookie baking is a family thing, and your mother isn't my biggest fan, she hardly considers me...what?"

Whatever the youngest Stabler boy had been explaining, he might as well have been saying in Mandarin Chinese, because Olivia had stopped listening after he said "mom's gone." She heard the words "months," "divorce," "finalized," "today," and "present," but she wasn't sure in what order they were supposed to go, or what the words in between them were. Who was divorced? Who was getting a present?

Her door swung open madly, hitting the wall with a crash, but she didn't jump. She sat on the arm of her couch, expressionless, with her cell phone to her ear. Elliot, who was standing before her, grabbed the phone and said harshly, "She'll call you back," as he snapped it shut and threw it on the couch. He knelt down in front of her and searched her eyes for some kind of hint as to what was wrong.

"Liv, Cragen wouldn't tell me shit," he said to her. "Baby, what's wrong? Please, tell me."

"Baby," she said, as the corners of her mouth tried to twist up into a smile. She wanted, so badly, to be happy about this.

"What, honey?" he replied, kissing her sweetly, caressing her, loving her.

"No, El," she said, bringing the hand that was cupping her chin down to her wont-be-flat-for-long belly. "Baby."

"Baby?" he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion. Then, suddenly, as if a light bulb had been turned on in that gorgeous head of his, his jaw dropped and he yelped, "Baby!"

Olivia nodded, holding back a laugh, because goddamn it he looked adorable.

"You and me, we made a tiny person, a b-b-baby?" Elliot looked at her and, fuck all, he was smiling. "We're having a baby!"

Olivia looked confused and tried to process his emotion before emitting one of her own. "You're not mad? You're not upset? You're not going to throw up?"

Elliot kissed her, more passionately than ever, and said, "Are you crazy? Why would I be mad or upset? I'm a little throwy-uppy, but I get that way every time I find out I'm having another kid." He looked at her as the realization set in, and then he felt like such a dumbass. "Oh, Jesus, I wanted this to be a surprise, but I didn't think," he paused. He took a deep breath. "Kathy."

Olivia grimaced at the sound of her name.

"Three months ago, when I told her about us, right before she told me she was having an affair with a surgeon, I filed for divorce. Then I sat the kids down and explained everything, to which they replied a unanimous, resounding 'Duh.' They're all taking it very well by the way, well, except for Maureen, who kind of hates all of us and wants to become a nun."

"Wow," Olivia said on a sharp exhale. "So that's what Dickie was trying to say."

"Uh, no," Elliot said. "What Dickie was trying to say, because he can't keep his big mouth shut, was that this," he said pulling a brown paper package out of his inside coat pocket, "was supposed to be part of your present. It's sort of the reason I had to tell the kids we've been together for three years, which, of course, they'd already figured out."

"El, what is this?"

"Open it," he said, nudging her cheek with his nose.

She pulled open the large envelope and, pulling out a stack of papers, she smiled. They were his signed divorced papers, and something else that Olivia had to read to understand. Her face contorted into a painful scowl and she was crying when she'd finished.

"How is this part of my present? You, you can't do this. El, I can't…you can't be serious…" She looked at him, wanting to yell and scream and hit him, but when her eyes landed on him, kneeling on one knee in front of her, and the ring he was holding out in front of him, she understood why he'd signed the transfer request forms.

"I was supposed to do this tomorrow, under the tree, while the kids unwrapped their presents. I can always ask you again, for their sake, but this moment, right here, seems perfect to me. Liv, I love you, and that tiny life inside of you, more than you could possibly know. You're the one I'm meant to be with, Liv, forever, always. Marry me."

She blinked. And instead of answering him she looked into his eyes and asked, very seriously, "El, when did you say you told them about us?"

Confused, and still holding the ring out to her, he said quickly and quietly, "Three months ago, Liv, why?"

"El, did you come here? After you told them?"

"Yeah, Liv. Remember? I told you. I came in and I…never got to tell you because we…oh wow," he said as his eyes widened. "This whole time, you didn't know."

"No," Olivia said, "And it's been killing me." She wiped the tear that fell down from her left eye as it reached her cheek. "But El, I found out yesterday, I'm three months…"

"What? We…that night?" He peered into her beautiful brown eyes, astonished, and kissed her tenderly. "Well, I guess I was really eager to stake my claim on you, huh?" he asked with a hearty laugh.

Olivia smiled, her eyes settled on the ring in the box. She reached her hand out to touch Elliot's cheek, but found herself cupping his chin and pulling him in for a deep kiss. "Yes," she said.

Elliot sighed, rubbing her leg gently. "Liv, I don't wanna push you here, but I'm dying. You gonna answer me?" He jiggled the black box.

"I just did, El. Yes, I want to marry you and have this baby and I wanna go home with you tonight and bake Christmas Eve cookies and I wanna be everything you've ever wanted," she babbled as he slipped the ring onto her finger.

"Oh, Liv," he said with tears in his eyes. "You already are."

A/N: Probably a bit hard to believe, but it's fiction, after all. =) Click the green button and Dickie will bake you a special cookie.