(Disclaimer: D'you really think they're mine, guys? No. No way. I don't think Dick would let me have them, after what I've done to them - and he can keep them, anyway.)

(A/n: This is a one-shot. It will not be updated and asking me is useless, 'k?)

Maybe she was right, all along. I can't help but shake my head at myself. Who ever though I'd admit to myself that a woman – infuriating, spoiled creatures they normally are – could be right about me? Could stop thinking about herself for a second and get to know me well enough for me to admit that she was right?

No. She wasn't like that. She was the opposite of the exes I left behind in Baltimore. Intelligent where most of them weren't. She wasn't spoiled, either. She didn't ask for expensive gifts and didn't want them, either. But she was so damn infuriating, at times. She was stubborn, to the bone. It might have been a good trait; might have made her a good investigator. But it made it a pain-in-the-ass to argue with her, because she just wouldn't give up.

Then there was the way she looked at herself. I don't think she ever sees the positives, in herself. She can point them out in everyone else, even me, but she can't see them in herself. Nothing she does is good enough. On the outside, before you really get to know her, she projects confidence – a woman who's happy with herself. But on the inside, she's so negative. Hard on herself.

As she once pointed out, I'm the same way. So maybe we were matched. But apparently not now. She's not picking up her phone, not returning any messages I leave and she's barely polite at work. I don't know what happened. Maybe she was tired of two negative attitudes colliding. I could very well be a 'miserable old man', as she yelled at me, during our last fight. She's probably right on that one.

It's raining. How appropriate. As I step out of the cab, stopping to pay the driver, I look up at the building in front of me and up three floors to her window. There she is in the front window, watching the sky let go. She, crazy woman, loves the rain. Loves watching it. Once made me walk in it.

She looks down and sees me standing there on the curb, in the rain. And then she leaves the window. Damn it. I might as well go try to buzz her apartment. Then she can scream at me over the intercom and I won't have to risk her throwing things at me. Women have surprisingly good aim when they're pissed off.

I press the button for her apartment and wait. Her voice crackles over the old speaker. "Yeah?"

"Liv, it's me."

"John? C'mon up." She buzzes me past the security door and I blink, startled. If this is all it would have taken, I would have done this a week or two ago.

She answers the door, in sweatpants and a t-shirt, no makeup, her hair a tousled mess. "Long night?" I question, knowingly. If I remember the roster correctly, she's just come off a long shift.

She smiles, crookedly. "Yeah." Olivia jerks her head to the interior of her apartment. "Wanna come in? I just got up and I've got coffee on."

I offer her the flowers I bought on a whim, on my way over. It's seldom I buy a woman flowers, but this was something I felt I needed to do.

She smiles. Even with the dark circles around her eyes, she looks radiant. "John, I"... she blinks at me. "So maybe you're not such a miserable old man, after all."

I let her take my coat. "You think so? Taking it back?"

Her cheeks turn barely-there, faint pink. "Yeah. I am."

"Next time we'll talk it out?"

She nods, rubbing her eyes. "I'm sorry – I just"...

"Hey. You didn't throw anything at me, when you were screaming at me. That was an improvement."

Olivia laughs, softly. I love that sound, even though I don't get to hear it as often as I should. "Was it really?"

"Hey – next time we fight, I'll throw a shoe at you. Then you'll see."

She smiles, again. "Let's hope that's not for a while, huh?"