I push the door closed behind me, gently and pocket my keys, rather than drop them. The last thing I want to do is wake her. There's no point in both of us being up at this hour.

As I shed my coat, the flickering blue glow of a television screen catches my tired eyes. If she's awake and waiting up for me, she would have acknowledged me by now. She knows the hours and the job and on the odd time she's home and awake when I come in late, she doesn't throw a tantrum reminiscent of my former wives about the hour and how it isn't going to work if I'm never home, because she keeps the same hours.

There she is, curled up on her couch wrapped in a blanket, sound asleep, her hair falling into her eyes. So she fell asleep waiting up for me. I step around the coffee table, prepared to wake her. I don't want to, but she hates the couch and hates sleeping on it even more.

"Liv..." I push her hair out of her eyes and stop, seeing her cell phone and the cordless resting on the table. Tonight was her night off – she wasn't on call. She didn't have a reason to keep either phone that close.

There's a faint expression of worry, even on her sleeping face. Olivia squirms, mumbles something in her sleep and then seems to sense that I'm looking at her. "John?"

"Who else?"

She yawns and sits up, letting the blanket fall away. "You didn't call," she mumbles, sleepily.

Damn it. I told her – promised her – I'd call, earlier and I didn't... She told me she usually avoided dating cops because she knew the risks of the job. Knew what might have happened, when there was no phone call home. She said it made it that much easier to worry. It's not that she's clinging to me or that she worries easily, really. I told her I'd call her and she knew what I might have run into.

So, because of some stupid memory lapse, I made her wait up for me. "Blame it on an old man's memory, Liv," I tell her, quietly. "And a back-up or two at Central Booking."

She yawns, hugely, and rubs her eyes. "...was going to call you, but I didn't..." another yawn cuts her off, but I know what she was going to say. She didn't want to seem too clingy. Too worried.

I kiss her on the forehead, softly. "I'm not carrying you, so you'd better stay awake long enough to get yourself into bed."

"Bed?" Olivia blinks at me, drowsily.

"Yeah – you know that thing down the hall that normal people sleep on, instead of a couch?"

"You're going back out?" She asks, beginning to lever herself up from the depths of the sofa, her voice a little less sleepy, now.

"No. We booked the guy and what's left of the paperwork can wait until tomorrow."

I don't get an answer from her, to that, but I really wasn't expecting one. How long of a conversation can two exhausted people have at three in the morning?

Her face actually looks peaceful, when I step into the bedroom, after taking a quick shower. Olivia lifts her head from the pillow and looks at me, apparently still fighting sleep.

I join her in bed, settling in. She's got her back to me, but this is comfortable. She shifts closer to me, until I'm forced to hold her, letting my head rest on her shoulder. I guess that's what she wanted, all along.