A/N: Sorry guys. Apparently I posted the first chapter again. Thanks for pointing that out! It's probably because I'm exhausted but can't seem to fall asleep. 😕

Chapter 5

"Your honor, at this time it is my recommendation that, in agreement with his case worker and guardian ad litem, Baby Boy Doe remain in the care of Ms. Olivia Benson until the next permanency planning hearing," Olivia heard the attorney say as she held her breath.

She honestly didn't know why she did this to herself. There was nothing that had come up during the hearing that would make her think things would go otherwise. Everyone involved in the case had done nothing but sing her praises throughout. Still, until the judge stated her decision at the end of the hearing, there was always a slight chance that her baby boy would be suddenly ripped away from her. She was reminded by the fact that she had been instructed to bring him to every hearing, just in case they decided not to let her bring him back home with her. He was now currently in the care of the court appointed caretaker for minors, somewhere outside of the actual courtroom. It pained her every time she had to hand him over for these hearings.

"Very well," the judge began. "Baby Boy Doe will remain in the custody of Ms. Benson, pending no unforeseen circumstances, until the next hearing two months from today's date. The attorneys for both parties will receive the exact date and time after it has been set."

She banged her gavel declaring that the case was settled for now and Olivia let out the breath she'd been holding. She turned to her left and smiled at Trevor.

"Thank you," she told him. She always thanked him after these hearings. She wasn't sure just how much time he put into them, but she knew he put in way more hours between these hearings than most lawyers would likely do for their clients. It was evident by the random calls she received asking her questions or updating her on other issues involving the case.

"You are very welcome," he told her, "but if you really want to thank me you can stop digging your nails into my arm." He smiled down at her and her smile dropped as her eyes fell to his forearm. Sure enough, she was gripping him. Tightly enough that he could actually feel it through the expensive fabric of his suit.

She looked back up at him, mouth agape. "I am so sorry," she said seriously, but couldn't help the smile that came to her face.

"Hmmm," he hummed teasingly. "I don't think you are." She laughed in response and he began gathering his things to exit the courtroom

"You know how I get with these things," she told him. "I really am sorry."

"Prove it," he said as he grabbed his bag and stood to his full height. She waited for him to continue. "Grab Noah and come have an early dinner with me."

At this the smile fell, replaced by a look of confusion. It's not that she didn't want to have dinner with him, after all, they'd become friends. She just wasn't sure if there was anything more behind it as it wouldn't have been the first time a guy she had only guessed was interested in her as a friend had tried to move the relationship in a non platonic direction. He must have been reading her mind because he spoke again, after not getting a response from her.

"As a friend," he told her. "A celebration that we don't have to convince these people that you are the best case scenario, by far, for that little boy."

She smiled at him again. She liked Trevor and she found that they'd find themselves flirting with each other every now and again. But she didn't want to complicate her case with Noah by starting any type of new relationship. The whole debacle with Elliot was bad enough, which reminded her. She needed to bring that up to Trevor. She didn't know if or how that would change things with her having custody of Noah. The court would obviously conclude that Elliot's presence in Isabella's life meant another adult that the baby would have frequent contact with. This meant that she would have to disclose the paternity of her daughter to her lawyer friend.

"Trevor, I'd love to," she started. "But I can't. I have to grab Isabella from Lucy. She has a night class on Tuesdays and I only have an hour to get her."

"We can bring her with us," he offered. "She has to eat too."

She tilted her head to the side questioning his judgment. She smiled up at him. "You sure you wanna take a three year old and a eight month old out in a public setting where people are meant to sit and eat and not run around and scream like patient's in an asylum."

At this he laughed, and gently placed his hand on her elbow. "Com'on, it'll be fine," he said guiding her towards the exit of the court room. "I'm not scared of your kids, Liv."

"Yeah, well. You should be," she replied jokingly as she silently agreed to join him for dinner. Maybe it would be a good time to bring up the Elliot situation to him.

"You should spend some time up there," Trevor said as he finished his wine. "It's beautiful. You'd enjoy it."

Olivia gave him a look. "Yeah. Okay," she said dismissively. He laughed at her response.

They were finishing up dinner. After picking up Noah from the court's daycare, they had swung by the park to scoop Isabella from Lucy, and found a kid friendly enough restaurant that was still up to Trevor's expensive taste. The food had been exquisite and way out of Olivia's usual price range she would spend on her own food when dining out, but Trevor had offered to pay for them all. She was no stranger to splurging on expensive things from time to time, being that she'd stashed a nice nest egg during her time as a bachelorette and her mother had actually managed to leave her a more than decent inheritence. But now that she was a single mom of two, hopefully, living in the middle of Manhattan, she tried to be a little more mindful with her spending. And feeding a couple of kids way too expensive fish nuggets and fancy fries was not on her list of things to spend unnecessarily on.

"Why not?" Trevor asked, smiling over at her.

"Trevor, first off, where would I find the time to run away to the mountains with the hours that I work and two kids that I'm pretty sure are capable of single handedly destroying the island of Manhattan if I left them unsupervised for five minutes," she started explaining. He laughed at her claim, causing her to laugh as well, but she continued. "Second, the Catskills are way too expensive. All the best places there are way out of my price range. And a lake house? No."

"Aww com'on Liv," he tried reasoning with her. "You deserve a break sometimes." She gave him a look. "You can stay at my place," he offered. "Take the kids with you."

"Hmm, Isabella can break things just by looking at them. If I take my kids to your mansion in the Catskills, I'd be too anxious they'd destroy something I can't replace."

At finishing her statement, Olivia felt a set of little eyes on her. She looked over at the little girl causing Trevor to do the same. He immediately started laughing as the little girl had stopped coloring and was staring at her mother curiously. Upon hearing her name, she knew she was being accused of something. She just wasn't sure what.

"Finish coloring your picture baby," Olivia laughed as she passed a hand through the girl's hair. She leaned over and placed a kiss on top of the child's head, which seemed to placate her as she went back to coloring. Trevor was still laughing and she freed her other hand to swat at him.

"I'm sorry," he started. He'd always thought that there was more to Olivia Benson and he had been right. The woman was like a mystery box that kept on giving. Sure, everyone knew her as one of the top detectives of the Manhattan SVU. Capable, competent and efficient. And everyone had assumed that it had all transferred over to her personal life. And on the surface, it did, in many ways. But let her tell it, she was barely keeping her shit together and was constantly on the verge of being undone by an infant and a toddler. Not to mention that she actually could hold an interesting conversation and had a sense of humor that kept him wondering what was going to come out of her mouth next. He'd known she was beautiful from the first time he'd laid eyes on her and assumed that's why people tended to swoon in her direction. But while he had appreciated her beauty, he had always been a man that looked for more sustenance in a potential love interest. And while they were currently only friends, he hoped that the love interest option wasn't completely off of the table for the future.

"You got me talking shit about my kid in front of her, Langan," Olivia realized what she had said but it was too late. She saw the little girl's head pop back up, her little eyes lighting up at hearing one of Uncle Fin and and Uncle John's special words. She cut her off before she could even complete the thought. "Dooonnn't say that," she instructed, pointing a finger at Isabella. This caused Trevor to fall into another round of laughter as the child once again stared at her mom, contemplating if she should or shouldn't follow the demand. Once Olivia was sure the message had been received and accepted, she turned back to Trevor who was now smiling at her.

"You're a bad influence, Trevor Langan," she told him as she rested back in her chair. She began running her her fingers through the brown locks of the little boy currently asleep in her lap, his head resting on her chest.

"You seem a little stressed, Benson," he pointed out. "I'm telling you, a stay in the Catskills is just what you need. Here, let me show you some pictures."

He pulled out his phone and slid his chair closer to her. It wasn't long before he was flipping through his photo albums, finding the one he was looking for. He opened it and Olivia gasped at the beautiful lake home with the mountain of trees in the back ground. The leaves on the trees were all different colors, and it was obvious the pictures were taken during the fall.

"Holy sh…" she stopped herself and redirected. "Trevor, that is gorgeous."

He smiled catching her almost repeat slip of the tongue. "I told you," he said as he kept flipping through the pictures. He drew another gasp from the woman when the season in the pictures changed, revealing the beautiful setting during winter.

"This is your place?" she asked.

"Yep, all mine," he gloated, though not annoyingly so. He was just proud of his assets. It was one of his favorite things that he owned, actually.

"Trevor," Olivia laughed some as the pictures began showing the inside of the extremely spacious home. "Do you stay here alone? Why do you need all of this space? What do you do when your up there?"

"What?" he defended. "It's nice to have space, Liv. Not everyone wants to be held up in a Manhattan apartment all the time. We're not all City Girls like you."

"Be quiet," she told him as she turned away from the pictures, smiling up at him briefly. "As if your Manhattan brownstone isn't big enough for a family of five." Her phone began vibrating in her bag that sat in the abandoned high chair next to her.

She grabbed it out of the bag and glanced at the screen. It was Elliot. Again. This was his second time calling her in the last hour. She sighed heavily and unlocked the screen. She began typing, shooting a quick text of 'I'm busy. Will talk to you later.' She tossed the phone back in her bag.

Trevor just watched her. He could tell that whatever had just happened had drastically changed her mood. He remained quiet as she picked up her glass from the table and took a sip. She began biting at the inside of her bottom lip. A tell tale sign she was currently worrying over something.

"Wanna talk about it?" he asked, grabbing for his own glass of water and taking a sip.

Her eyes met his, and she just contemplated it for a while. She had to divulge the information at some point, right?"

"Actually," she started solemnly, "yeah."

Trevor sat his glass down and turned slightly in his seat. He was now facing her more head on, indicating that she had his undivided attention. She continued to stare at him for a little while, wondering how harshly he was going to judge her for what she was about to reveal to him.

"Trevor, I…" she stopped and took a deep breath blowing it out. She didn't know where to begin. But it had to be somewhere, so she just started talking figuring, eventually the full story would come out. "Do you think, if there was someone else in my life that the court would look down on it and reconsider Noah being placed with me permenantly."

This surprised him. It was not what he was expecting. He quickly brushed his shock aside as she was staring at him, anxiously awaiting a response.

"Well, that depends on the person, Liv," he stated. "Do you have someone in your life?"

"No," she said immediately, then backtracked. "Yes. Oh, god," she said as she nervously brought her hand up to her face.

"Olivia, calm down," he said, trying to soothe her from the obvious distress she was feeling. "It's fine. At least it should be. I don't think you're the type to indulge in the company of unsavory characters."

She took her hand from her face and looked at him once more. He offered her a smile, trying to comfort her. She let out a breath and tried to refocus on communicating what she needed to tell him.

Seeing that she wasn't going to freak out any further for the time being, he sat back in his chair. "So, who is this someone? Do I know him?" He raised his eyebrows at her.

She immediatlely felt she needed to clarify. "No, it's not like that, it's just…" she glanced at the child who was still coloring, but in the middle of a huge yawn. She had also stopped talking to herself or her imaginary friends, so Olivia knew she had a short time to get this out before the pre bedtime meltdown started.

"It's her dad," she stated quickly, before she could talk herself out of it again.

"Her," Trevor started, but stopped throwing a quick glance Isabella's way before turning back to Olivia. "Her dad?"

Olivia just nodded. Searching his face for any judgement. Sure the subject had come up before when Noah was initially being placed with her and during some of their talks about making the foster placement into a legal adoption, but her response had always been. 'It's not a problem. He's not in the picture."

"Okay," Trevor said, fearing this may be a little more tricky than he was originally thinking it was going to be. A boyfriend, they could pass off as just a friend that hangs around sometimes, just as he and a bunch of her other friends did. But if Isabella's dad was in the picture, that meant he could possibly be in the home with the infant from time to time, and they couldn't just write his and Olivia's relationship off as just friends.

"I'm assuming he wants back in the picture, since you're bringing it up," he stated. "Anything in his background I should know about." He was slipping out of friend mode and into lawyer mode.

"Well," she smiled tightly, "other than being recommended for anger managment on multiple occassions during his first stent with the NYPD," she flinched and screwed her face up knowing she was giving his identity away, "I don't think so."

Trevor took in the information. And she watched as his face slowly transformed from curious lawyer to a look of disbelief.

"Olivia," he started, but found himself loss for words. He had known enough of Elliot's history with the NYPD to know that the man most likley need some form of anger management and he knew he was recently back into New York after running into him on his way to see her.

"Elliot Stabler?" he asked her, leaning forward in his chair, his casual demeanor now gone. She didn't answer and his eyes drifted back over to her daughter.

"Oh, my god," Olivia said hiding her face with her hand again. "See, I knew. I knew you were going to judge me for this. I can't believe I was so stupid. Sleeping wtih my partner."

"No. Liv, no. No," Treveor tried as he heard her voice crack. He slid his chair closer to her and started rubbing her shoulder with one hand, the other resting on her knee. "Liv, you're not stupid. These things happen."

"Not with me," she said looking up at him briefly, revealing her tear stained face. She'd been a little louder than he would have liked and he looked around as a few people started looking their way. By this point, her face was already being covered by her free hand again.

"Okay. Liv, you gotta calm down," he told her. "People are going to think I'm being mean to my wife in front of our kids." He knew people knew his face. And the waitress had already made enough awkward comments alluding to the fact that she thought they were a cute little family of four out for dinner. The little old lady making eye contact with the both of them while she complemented their 'adorable children' clued them into the fact that she wasn't the only one assuming this.

She sniffed. "I'm sorry," she apologized trying to pull it together. "I forgot. People know your face from the law firm."

This shocked him. "What? Liv, no," he explained. "I was kidding. I was just trying to bring some humor to the situation. I don't really care about that stuff." Well he did care if people thought he was an asshole husband and father, but he didn't care about what other people thought of him as far as his career was concerned. His work spoke for itself. If some idiot wanted to grab a wrong assumption from his outing with his friend and her kids to try to take him down a notch then so be it. He was more concerned with her wellbeing at the moment.

"I'm more worried that you're gonna make your kid cry if you don't stop," he stated and she turned slightly until her daughter was back in her eyesight. The little girl's bottom lip was starting jut out and she could see the crocodile tears brimming in her bright blue eyes.

"Oh, no," she mumbled, before turning completely in her chair. "I'm okay, Baby. It's okay. Don't cry." She wiped one of the tears away that had fallen down the child's face. But it was too late. Tempting a tired three year old with a chance at having an emotional breakdown in the middle of a restaurant, well, that was just too good of an opportunity for the girl to pass up.

"It's okay," Trevor said getting up from his seat as Isabella started to wail, rather loudly. "I got it."

He quickly scooped her up before resuming his seat next to Olivia. He situated the girl on his lap and tried to quiet her, which suprisingly, she did.

"It's past her bedtime," Olivia offered, still wiping at her own tears.

"Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to keep you guys out this late," Trevor said as he started looking for their waiter to get the check brought to the table.

"No, I'm glad we did this. I enjoyed it," she admitted.

Tevor snorted. "Yeah, which is why the night ended with both you and your daughter in tears."

Olivia smiled at his sarcastic joke as she watched the man give the waiter his card, telling her to just cash them out and bring the receipt. He then turned back to the little girl in his arms that had by now quieted down some. She watched as he dipped his head slightly causing the child to look up at him.

"You okay now kiddo?" Isabella nodded briefly before snuggling closer to the man. She let out another yawn and Olivia smiled as she saw the girl's eyes starting to drift close.

"Who knew you were so good with kids," Olivia poked at him.

"Yeah," he stated, grabbing the receipt from the waiter. "I hope she doesn't like me too much or her dad is going to try to murder me."

Olivia turned back to him as they both stood, Isabella wrapping her arms around the man's neck and laying her head on his shoulder. Olivia knew she would be asleep before they made it home.

"Trevor," she sighed, remembering the topic that had bought her to tears. "What am I going to do? Will this effect Noah?"

"You'll be fine," he said putting his hand that wasn't currently holding the child on the small of her back. He began leading them out of the restaurant "Elliot's, a bit of a legend in the NYPD."

Olivia looked back up at him worriedly. "In a good way," he stated trying to reassure her. Olivia knew he was right, mostly. But everyone also knew of Elliot's temper. She just hoped the judge and her case worker didn't gain access to that little tidbit.

A/N: Alright so a little bit of a shorter Chapter since there aren't many reviews coming in, though I still think this is a good length. I'll try to update weekly unless life gets in the way. Let me know your thoughts on the story so far. Hope you like it :)