I've been to my partner's house before, out in what he calls 'the ass end of Queens.' Why the hell does it suddenly feel awkward? Like I'm stepping in where I shouldn't? I kill the engine and slam the door behind me, bag in hand. Right. I know why. It isn't my place.

But if he's divorced, now, why do I feel like the other woman? God. I'm gonna give myself a headache before I even get in the door. I ring the doorbell, standing on the front doorstep. If only this piece of stone could talk. It's seen us fight and seen me shed tears. It's seen me threaten to get another partner. I shake my head, as the door opens.

"Hey. Get your ass in here - it's freezing." Elliot ushers me in and shuts the door.

I shed my coat and shoes. I definitely feel like a trespasser. He had a wife. I feel like I'm in her place. Her house. I feel like I shouldn't even be here. Not as his lover.

He reads the look on my face. "Liv, I'm sorry. I just"-

I silence him. "It's okay. Really." My eyes fall on a framed photo, on the wall. Elliot, Kathy, and the kids, on a beach. He's got a family. Nothing's going to change that. "I kinda feel like the other woman, like I shouldn't be here with you. But it's just me. You gotta give me some time to get used to things." I stretch up to kiss his head, softly.

"So you feel like an intruder?" He takes my bag from me and guides me into the kitchen.

"Yeah, a little." I take a chair around the table. "I mean - I don't know. I feel like I shouldn't be here with you. A marriage is still a sacred thing, in my mind, even though the rest of the world will disagree with me. I feel like I'm intruding on that. I don't want to ruin it, if you two have a chance at working it out."

"We don't." He kisses the top of my head. "I told you that. Liv - it's done."

I sigh. It'll take some time, but I can adjust to this. "Solitaire?" I raise an eyebrow, seeing the cards on the table.

"Yeah." He sits across from me. "You seemed like you were having some sort of an internal debate there with yourself on the doorstep - what was going on?"

I grin. "Oh, nothing. Just wondering what might happen if that doorstep of yours could talk."

He chuckles. "You have the weirdest imagination, sometimes, Olivia. So you wanna play a hand of poker?"

"Nah." I shake my head, slowly.

"Scared to lose?" He raises an eyebrow back at me.

I lean back and cross my arms over my chest. "No. I'm scared that I'm gonna take everything you got. When I was down at the 2-2, one of the guys used to have a poker game in his basement, one Saturday a month. I was the only lady they ever invited around and I wiped 'em out."

"Yeah. Right." He says, skeptical.

"Yeah. I did. Wiped 'em out every time. You call my old boss and ask him. He used to hear 'em whining about it on Monday."

"Who taught you how to play poker, little girl?" He grins at me.

"One of my mother's boyfriends, when I was fifteen. He cleaned me out for four months straight, till I beat him."

He shuffles the cards back into a deck. "Can I get you anything? Beer?"

"Mm. You read my mind. After today, I need a drink." I lounge in the chair as he goes to the fridge.

"See, I told you juries were smart." He grins at me. "I told you they were gonna nail him."

"Um-hm. But that's not the only thing. Langan."

He rolls his eyes. "I can't believe that son of a bitch had the balls to ask you out. What'd you do?"

"I told him to get lost and that I was seeing someone. And to be honest, he didn't seem all that heartbroken."

"I'd've slugged him one." Elliot hands me a bottle. It's cold, in my hands and chills my skin.

I grin up at him. "Ah, I thought about that. But I wanted to play nice with the defense attorney for Casey - sentencing starts next week."

"I still would've slugged him one." He murmurs, as I take a pull from the bottle. He twists the cap off his own beer. "C'mere."

I get up and let him lead me to the couch. "We can watch a movie or something." He comments, as I settle myself.

"Why am I suddenly reminded of a million stupid, humiliating teenage dates?" I give him a look. He laughs. "Only thing missing is the popcorn bowl, huh?"

We laugh at that and he settles beside me on the couch. "C'mere." Elliot leans back and pulls me , till I'm laying there, stretched out with my head in his lap. He runs his fingers through my hair and I sigh. "If you put me to sleep, I'm not moving." I warn him, quietly and sit up to take a drink.

He browses through the channels, like the typical guy, until he comes across some channel running the only musical I could ever stand: Grease.

"You like this one?"

"Love it." I smile. "It's the only musical I ever actually liked."

He touches my cheek. "Really?"

"Yeah." I settle in to watch the old movie with him. "You know, I was like twelve, when this was first released. I went to see it with a couple of friends."

"Makes you feel old, doesn't it?"

"Un-hm."

Halfway through the story of teenagers in the '50's, I feel myself start to doze. John Travolta - is there a female of my generation who wasn't in love with him?

"Liv." Someone's gently nudging me. "Wake up, sunshine."

I blink, looking up into warm blue eyes. "C'mon. Let's get you to bed, huh?"

I slowly lever myself up. "We're not gonna sleep in the same bed, are we?"

"Why not?" Elliot gets up off the couch.

"El, you've got kids in the house. Imagine if they come in to wake you in the morning or come into the room in the middle of the night and find Dad and Olivia in the same bed. If we're not gonna tell 'em about us just yet, that's not smart." I want to sleep in his arms and be close to him, but I'm more worried about his kids. "It's not that I don't want to be a part of this, but I don't want 'em to feel like you're trying to replace Kathy with me. It's so soon."

He brushes the hair off my forehead. "Tell you what? I'll take the couch and you"-

"Nuh-uh. Couch is mine." I reply, stubbornly. "You mind if I go get changed?"

Elliot points me in the direction of the bathroom and I go, shedding my clothes and pulling on a tank top and sweats. I brush my teeth and wash the makeup off my face, wearily. When I emerge, he's got a pillow and blanket. "I'll stay down here with you and go up to bed later." He murmurs, dressed only in his boxers and a dark t-shirt.

"And if you fall asleep and don't?" I raise an eyebrow.

"We'll tell 'em we fell asleep on the couch."

He's got an answer for everything. But I can't resist. I want to be close to him. We settle in on the couch, together, lying on our sides. After a brief tussle with the blanket and our positions, we make ourselves comfortable, with his arm draped around me and my head tucked under his chin. "'Night." I murmur, yawning.

He kisses my hair. "'Night, Liv." I feel his hand cupping my chin and his thumb gently rubbing my cheek, as I fall asleep again.

In the morning, I wake up to sunlight falling across the living room and over my body. I look up into two pairs of identical blue eyes that are staring right back at me. "Hey, guys." I sit up to greet my partner's fraternal twins. Their eyes are so much like their father's it's a little scary.

Lizzie hugs me in greeting and her brother just offers me a wave. "What's going on?" I shed the blanket and get up.

"Dad's cooking." Dickie explains. I grin. "What's your Dad like as a cook?"

"Not bad. But this morning I think he burned something."

I shake my head, smelling the scent of burned food in the air. "C'mon - I'm gonna make you guys eat burned food." I follow the kids back into the kitchen, stretching.

Elliot turns from the stove, looks at his kids, then at me. "Morning, Liv."

"Morning. You need a hand with something in here?"

He shakes his head, then looks at the twins. "What'd you two tell her?"

"Nothing. I could smell it." I reply.

"Liv, I've tasted what you call cooking"- he begins, grinning at me. He's joking with me.

"Shut up. My grandmother and my aunts taught me how to cook, okay? Insult my cooking, you're insulting them. What's on for breakfast?"

We do get a decent breakfast cooked - eggs, toast and bacon. The twins talk a mile a minute, in between bites. I don't know how they can eat and talk like this, at the same time, but they do. Lizzie and I load the dishwasher and find the guys in the living room with the newspaper. "Anything interesting?" I question, dropping onto the couch beside Elliot.

I glance over to see what they're reading. It's just two sections - comics and sports. I roll my eyes at Lizzie. She laughs.

Later, in the afternoon, we take the kids out to the park to play a game of basketball. "Boys versus girls?" I question. "Wanna show 'em what we're made of, kid?" I gently tug on Lizzie's ponytail. She grins at me and nods.

Us girls go back to the house, triumphant. We beat the boys, four to two. We agreed, out on the court, that the losers would have to cook dinner and clean up.

After everyone gets a drink and a snack, Lizzie takes me upstairs, to her room. It's the average bedroom of a preteen girl - stuffed animals and glitter. "Olivia?" She asks me, as I look through her collection of teddy bears.

"Yeah, honey?"

"Will you paint my toes for me?" She produces a bottle of pink nail polish. I grin. "Yeah. Sure. Sit down." I sit on the floor, with her on the bed above me and take her feet into my lap. When I'm done, she's happy with the result. "Mom and I used to do this, together, but now she's so busy. . . . " The tears fill those eyes.

I gently tug on her messy ponytail again. "Your Mom's busy, huh?"

"Yeah. Maureen used to do it for me, but she's got a boyfriend now."

"What about Kathleen?" I question, wondering if Elliot knows about the guy in his oldest daughter's life.

"She doesn't like it when I come near her." The little girl wipes her eyes. "I'm a little, annoying brat. That's what she says."

"No, you're not." I know a simple thing like having her toes painted isn't the only thing upsetting her. She's scared and she's confused. She's not sure what's going on between her parents. "Honey, you know, maybe you should talk to your Mom and Dad, huh?" Everything's kinda scary right now, huh?"

She nods. I smile. "So you know what? Find a time when it's just you and Mom or you and Dad and talk to them. About anything. Hey. Why don't we switch places and I'll let you paint my toes?"

She laughs, as I shed my socks and switch places with her.

Dinner's just as loud as breakfast was. I wonder how parents ever stay sane, like this. Then, we wind up watching a movie for the rest of the night, until they fall asleep, curled up at opposite ends of the couch, Lizzie with me, Dickie with Elliot.

We tuck them into bed, together and then go back downstairs. "Liv, I think they like you." Elliot comments, softly. "Lizzie does, definitely. Dickie's even warming up to you a bit."

I nod. "Are they always like that?"

"Un-huh. You should hear 'em when they fight. They fight like cats and dogs, sometimes, but if someone's picking on their twin, watch out." He glances down at my bare feet and sees the pink enamel on my nails. "Lizzie snag you into that?"

"Yeah. Girl thing." I grin. "You know, El, maybe you and Kathy should talk to these kids. They're kinda confused, right now. It's a scary thing, when Mom and Dad don't live in the same house, anymore."

He nods. "You're great with 'em, you know that? You'd make a good mother."

I shake my head. "But having kids is out of the question, for me."

"Why? Why would you do that to yourself?"

I rub my eyes. "I don't know what's gonna come flying out of left field, someday, El. I don't know what half of me is. I have no idea of what half my family medical history is like. My aunt, Sandy, was a nurse, down at St. Luke's, for years. She once saw a mother come in with her son - the kid had some sort of genetic disease that the mother was a carrier of. A mother can carry a disease like that and pass it on to her kids, without knowing it. Everything's fine, till the kid starts getting sick. I can't take the risk of putting a child through pain like that. And Sandy told me that Mom was a wreck, in the hall, because she'd given her child that disease - he was dying from something she'd given him. We see kids going through hell every day, and it hurts. I don't know what I'd do, if it was my kid in pain."

"Liv." He says, softly.

I sigh. "And I'm passing on a rapist's genes. I can't"-

He cuts me off. "Genes don't mean a thing. Trust me, Liv. If your genes meant anything as to the type of person you are, God, half of the people in the world would be screwed up. You're nothing like your father, Olivia. How many times do I have to tell you that before you get it?"

"I don't know."

Elliot kisses the top of my head. "You'd make a good mother. I know you would. I just know it. And any kid you had would be gorgeous. Just like Mom."

I shake my head. "You think?"

"Un-huh." He leans in and kisses me. "Any kid of yours would be gorgeous."

"So you really think I'd be a good mother?"

"Olivia, I've seen you with kids that aren't even yours. I can imagine what you'd be like with one of your own. Trust me. You'd make a good mother."

I do trust him. So I believe him. I look up, as a cell phone rings. I close my eyes and cross my fingers, praying it's not Cragen calling Elliot.

He picks up. "Stabler. Hey, Princess. What's going on? Un-hm. Okay. So when do I get to meet this Jeff? Okay. All right. I'll see you tomorrow." He ends the call.

"What's up?" I question.

"Maureen. She just got home from her date. She's gonna bring the boyfriend around for dinner tomorrow."

I laugh. I can just imagine what the poor guy's gonna go through. "So you really think"-

He cuts me off. "Liv, you'd make a damn good mother, no two ways around it. I can see it, just watching you with my kids."

I smile. I believe him. "I always worried, where I didn't come from the greatest background myself"-

"Hey. I know you'd make a good parent. With some people you can always tell."

And I trust him enough to know that he wouldn't lie to me about something like this. So maybe it's time I changed my mind about having kids.