It was an old tale, a story of boys who upset the apple cart and girls forgotten along the way. It was expected, inevitable even, but that didn't make it hurt any less. She knew that tomorrow would see an empty chair and solo coffees, knew that a whispered 'always' would haunt her. And she was already forgetting that smile.

So when he showed up at her door with a bottle of gin, she fell into him. Solid, sturdy, safe. She wrapped herself in him like a winter sweater and let her cheeks burn with liquid because she didn't have to be strong tonight. His whispered Spanish comforts reminded her of a home, of how family can be more than just DNA.

They sat, a hush of ice-cubes clinking against glass and stifled hearts fracturing. And she knew that she should be stronger than this, knew that she should wipe away her leaked mascara and really should change into something a little less broken-hearted-teen-in-the-80's than her oversized t-shirt and bicycle shorts. But she didn't need to tonight. Without her badge, her gun, her mother's ring, her heels, her father's watch, she burrowed into his side; tonight she wasn't an NYPD cop, she wasn't a shell who'd lost both parents to entirely different enemies, she wasn't trying to prove herself, she was just a girl who had leapt too late.

Placing a quiet kiss on her temple, he slipped from her. Anyone else may have lost a kidney to her elbow or been slapped into cuffs for such an action – well, almost anyone else – but he wasn't just anyone. This was the man who took her home to family Christmas that first year at the 12th, the man who places flowers at her mother's grave every year, who always has her back.

She leans on the doorframe, watching him scour her hollow cupboards and is reminded of a time when she was all sharp edges and he was all smooth lines. A time when he swayed to Christmas carols in a crowded kitchen, when they drunk mulled wine under party lights, when his brothers had whistled and his sisters had threatened and they had just laughed it off. That was before he learnt that she understood Spanish, before preppy writers and fictional alter egos, before…

"I'll be alright." He turned to her, cup of tea in his outstretched hand (as he'd told her, you're not friends until you know each other's coffee order).
"I know."

She didn't question the overnight bag in his car, and he didn't buy her take-away coffee in the morning, but he squeezed her hand in the elevator and she called in a favor from an old friend.

"Hey! Oatmeal and Raisin cookies! And a thermos?… of mulled wine!"
"Yo, hands off." He smacked his partner's hand away from the box.
"Ow. Since when did you get home-baked care-packages anyway?" searching for a gift tag or note, he asked "So, who's it from? A special lady-friend I don't know about?"
He glanced at her across the bullpen, private smile bouncing from his eyes. "Yeah, bro, I guess you could say that."

Six days later she arrived to a chair no longer vacant but rather absent and a Lisa Gardner book on her desk. 'Thought maybe it was time for someone else's words to keep you awake at night. – J'.

And maybe it was. But they all knew it wouldn't be that easy. So he copied her key and put a trace on the writer because he was the closest thing she had to a knight, even if he was just a boy in Kevlar.