Disclaimer: I don't own 'em…

When the elevator arrived at her floor, the doors opened with a ding and I froze. I waited so long that the doors began to shut, prompting me to lunge out and into the hallway. I stood fixed to the spot, trying to remember why I had decided to show up unannounced & unexpected. Only when my cell started to vibrate on my hip did I realize I still hadn't moved. I pulled it free and looked at the caller—Alex. I accepted the call and slowly began to walk to the end of the hall toward her door.

"Benson."

"Liv. Hey, it's me."

I can't help the smile that tugs at my lips.

"Hey, look, I'm about to knock on someone's door. Can I call you back in a bit?"

I was now standing immediately outside her door. As soon as she responded, I would knock on the door.

"Paying Miss Stabler another visit, Detective?" I didn't take the bait and she continued, "Whatever Liv. Just don't call too late. The kids are already down for the evening."

With that, I knocked lightly on her door.

"Sounds like you have company."

I could picture her eyebrow rising in confusion because there was no way I'd hear that knock through her phone.

The door swung open and there stood Alex wearing yoga pants and a Harvard t-shirt that had seen better days.

I closed my phone and shoved my hands in my pockets, rethinking my decision for the second time in as many minutes. A slow smile crept across her face, making her appear years younger and, if possible, even more beautiful.

She reached out for my hand and I gave it to her. Tugging gently, she pulled me into her apartment and shut the door behind me.

I shrugged my jacket off and tossed it across a nearby chair. I had been in this very apartment a number of times before, but now it was different. Gone was the white carpet and obtrusive white furniture. The large, bold paintings that once hung on her white walls were no longer there. Now, family photos adorned nearly ever surface and forgiving wooden floors sat underneath well-worn furniture. It no longer felt utilitarian—cold—uninhabited. Now, there was warmth and a lived-in quality it had previously not possessed.

"Different from the last time you were, isn't it?"

"What happened to the horrible furniture and all of those paintings that, how did you put it, beg to be hung in a home by someone who would appreciate them the way they were meant to be appreciated?"

She smiled sadly before looking at me expectantly.

"Oh, shit. I'm sorry, Al. I guess almost everything you had was sold, given away or trashed by your mother when you entered the program."

She pulled her arms around herself and nodded in the affirmative. "Only the apartment remained. It was part of the estate and luckily the executor hadn't yet disposed of it since it was being leased to someone. Although I could have moved back to the Cabot Manor, this just felt more like home to me. There were so many good memories in this place. It felt right to keep adding to them. Know what I mean?"

"So are the crayon drawings from the waist down on your walls your attempt to support a local starving artist?" I needed to lighten the mood after my little faux pas about the furniture and paintings.

"I'd hardly call Ben or Allie starving. Those little imps would eat me out of house and home if they were given the opportunity. I can't tell you how many times I scrubbed the walls clean of crayons before I finally gave in. I hope it's a phase they outgrow. If not, well, hmmm, I hadn't really considered what to do yet if this is something that continues for much longer."

I just nodded because I had no idea what to say to that. The extent of my mothering abilities was what I had learned on the job. And I seriously doubted Al's kids needed that sort of mothering.

She motioned for me to take a seat on the couch and followed, sitting at the end opposite me and using the arm to support her back as she brought her legs up on the couch. I mimicked her. "So you're a mom?"

Quiet hung in the air like an unwelcome specter.

"Do you have any…" "Would you like some…"

"…wine?" We both said at the same time and laughed together.

She jumped up from her seat and walked into the kitchen, quickly grabbing a bottle, corkscrew and two glasses. My eyes were glued to the swaying motion of her hips as she left and slowly work up to her face on her way back.

She uncorked the wine and left it on the table in front of us.

"You were watching me, weren't you?"

I chuckled and nodded. "Your spidey-sense tell you that, Counselor?

"I could always feel when your eyes were on me, Liv. Your eyes were..are..like an extra pair of hands. If my back was to you, I could feel them move over my body. Of course, usually they rested on my ass."

"Guilty as charged. But it's your fault. If you didn't have such a nice ass there wouldn't be anything for me to look at," I pleaded in my defense.

She reached forward and poured each of a glass of wine before taking up her previous position on the couch.

"So, I want to start from the beginning. Well, not the beginning, you obviously know the beginning. But the beginning you don't know," she rambled before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath and a huge gulp of her wine. "Get it together, Cabot. I think I need to start from the last night we spent together."

I sipped my wine and listened as she went over how she had been involved with that claims adjuster, Patrick, while she was in Wisconsin.

"When I left to come here for the trial, I never told him goodbye. And after it was over, the marshals had to move me again. Emily was killed in a car accident. He never knew I was pregnant. I didn't even know I was pregnant until I was five months along."

Suddenly, some things began to make sense and I sat up a bit straighter and put my empty glass down.

"So that night….when we….you were?" I couldn't even piece together complete sentences but I knew Alex would understand.

She furrowed her brow and that line between her eyebrows that had become so prominent from years of concentration seemed even deeper in the subtle lighting of her living room.

"You know how all over the place my cycle was. It was nothing for me to go two or three months without a period. I didn't think anything of it. I chalked the little bit of morning sickness I had up to the stress of being moved again and having to protect Antonio and myself."

I could only nod.

"It was until I felt them move. That was when I knew. God, Liv, I was so scared. I didn't know how I'd do it alone. And it wasn't just going to be me and the babies. There was Antonio. How was he going to deal with his new 'mom' being a mom to her own babies? And to know that they'd never know their father. I mean, it would have been one thing had we decided and used a donor," she blushed deeply at her admission and paused, looking up at me. "I had a lot of time on my hands. I romanticized our relationship quite a bit in my head to help me survive, Liv. I know the one time we briefly mentioned kids we were both opposed to it—you more adamantly than I and I knew that was your fear of being like your mom or your father than what you felt in your heart. In my dreams, we always picked someone who looked a little like you so that our babies would look like us."

I slid over to her and pulled her closer to me. I didn't need the distance between us to hear what she had been through. My arm around her shoulders, she continued.

"I can't believe I just told you that. You must think I'm a total head-case," she pulled away long enough to refill her glass and empty it again before settling back against me. "They were premature. So tiny. Ben had a headful of hair, but he was so weak. I think that's why he gives Allie such a hard time now—she must have hassled him in the womb. He spent two weeks in the hospital and she was home in under a week. Do you have any idea how many diapers newborns go through?"

"I imagine you went through twice as many with twins." I gave her a gentle squeeze and her hand fell on my thigh familiarly.

"It wasn't so bad. Definitely not as bad as I thought it would be. Antonio was amazing. He helped feed, change, wash—everything. Oh Liv, he's such a gentle soul. He's still so quiet. It troubles me sometimes that he's not a rambunctious, loud, troublesome pre-teen. But at the same time, I'm so thankful for it."

"He's been through a lot. He probably modeled how he deals with it based on how you've dealt with it—with strength and grace and dignity."

I kissed her temple and put my hand over hers on my thigh, lacing our fingers together. She leaned her head on my shoulder and I felt her relax.

"I wish you had been there."

"For three a.m. feedings and diaper detail? You're kidding, right? Do you really think I could have managed?"

She lifted her head slightly to look me in the eyes, "I think you would have managed for me. Or you would have at least tried. And that would have made all the difference. Seriously though, I wish you had been there with me for first steps, first words, potty training. I didn't have anyone I could share that with. And I love those memories—but there's no one that shares them with me."

"Then why didn't you call me when you came back?" I was hurt that she had invested so much time thinking about what it would have been like to have me there and how hollow she felt that I wasn't, yet when the opportunity did exist, she never seized it.

"What if you hadn't wanted it? The family? No doubt ever existed in my heart that you'd want me. I knew your love had never waned. I didn't hope it hadn't. I didn't pray it hadn't. I knew it hadn't. And I hoped you wouldn't reject the idea of me coming home with someone else's children—my children. And I know how ridiculous this sounds now, but I was so scared of the possibility that you wouldn't be able to deal with a ready-made family, that I couldn't stand the idea of finding out if you could or not."

We sat in silence for a while, our fingers still laced together and her head still on my shoulder. Our breathing was in sync, something that I had always found great comfort in when we were together. I knew she was giving me time to process all that she had told me.

"I wish you had called—given me a chance to react." She started to pull away but I still her movements, holding her tighter. "But you didn't and I..we..can't go back and change that. You're a mom, Al. And I…"

She managed to pull away from me and turn to look me in the eyes, "And you're what, Liv? You can't deal with that?"

Tears were brimming in my eyes and I blinked rapidly to hold them back, shaking my head. "No," before I could say anything else she was moving further away from me.

"I see," she stated calmly, coolly.

"No, you don't. I wasn't done," I reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her back to me. "You're a mom, Al. And I…I'm still as deeply in love with you as the last time we were together. You being a mom didn't change anything. It never could."

Her blue eyes twinkled and before I could register what was happening, she was straddling me, her hands in my hair and our mouths locked in oral combat. I hadn't felt this alive in years and the woman I loved was making those barely there, subtle moaning noises that drove me up a wall. They were muffled by our mouths, still firmly fastened to each other.

I slipped my hands under her shirt and as soon as my fingers glanced over her skin, she shuddered and whimpered my name, "Oh, Liv."

My hands slid slowly over her rubs, higher until I palmed her breasts, weighing them carefully in my hands before bringing my thumbs up to brush up and down over her already hardened nipples.

Our kisses became even more fevered as she moved slowly against my lap, seeking firmer contact in the area that I could feel emanating warm, moist heat already.

She pulled away from my mouth and placed her hands on the back of the couch. Her movements against me were more fevered and her hair now cascaded around her face. Her eyes were blackened by lust and then closed as she concentrated on her breathing and on the sensations my hands were creating and the friction between us was causing.

I was so caught up in watching her and listening to her, that I hadn't heard the shuffle of little feet coming down the hallway.

"Mommy?"

The soft, sleep-heavy voice of a little boy broke through the hormone haze and as quickly as Alex had found herself in my lap, she was out of it.

"You, stay," she commanded as she hustled around the couch and picked up the little boy and walked down the hallway.

A few minutes later, she came back. Her lips were still swollen and her hair was a mess.

"I was wrong."

She froze and looked up at me like a deer caught in headlights. She didn't bother asking what I was wrong about, but I knew she was afraid of what my answer would be. Her shoulders began to sag and she began to physically transform in front of my eyes.

"You being a mom changes a lot. We definitely can't do anything unless it's behind a locked door because I do not want to explain to the kids what sex is. That's your job."