Author's Note: Continued by popular demand. ;) Not promising more continuation at present because I have commitment issues. Thank you for your kind reviews and all the love! This fic takes place in the same universe as "Exit Route" and "Life Interrupted", just in case anyone is looking to fill in the blanks.

He came home to find her tidying up furiously, a plastic basket perched on her hip as she was dropping Noah's toys into it while simultaneously brushing some crumbs off the table and onto the floor. That struck him as counterproductive. "Oh! There you are!" She didn't stop whatever she was doing here, which looked a hell of a lot like rushing from one thing to the next without knowing where to start.

"Yeah, I replied to your text an hour ago. Took me longer than expected." He was supposed to return from a three day trip to Pittsburgh that morning, but of course, morning had turned into late afternoon after he had been made to "come along for a quick stop by the office" before they all went home. He hadn't actually been working for three days straight, but sleeping somewhere foreign was always harder, working somewhere else, holding meetings with departments that weren't always friendly to outsiders. Eventually, it had all become a blur of meetings, business lunches and business dinners and other set-ups that were basically designed to make you work more by integrating the necessary survival stuff like food into work. He dropped his bag onto the floor.

"Hm, I noticed." She said it pointedly, in that passive aggressive way he hated when she was trying to make him feel guilty about something.

"Sorry, didn't exactly get a chance to tell you earlier." He couldn't hide the annoyance from his voice, that aggressive exasperation she hated. He hadn't exactly asked for an assignment that took him away the one time she actually had some time off after working the holidays. They had spent some of Christmas morning together with Noah, but that had been it in terms of downtime. He had meant to come home early today, and they were supposed to spend the day together and make up for lost time. Instead, what he managed was annoyance, and what he got wasn't a warm welcome. It was all they had left to give at this point. "What's…this?" he asked, trying to keep it from turning into one more "you should have called!" conversation.

"What does it look like?" She tossed a stuffed elephant into the basket, which was filling up rapidly. There wasn't enough room for all this baby stuff here; there wasn't enough room for any of their three person household. How could such a small person have so much stuff? It was pretty much impossible to clean up, because there was nowhere to put everything. You just ended up shifting the mess around a little. "Oh, and by the way…" She reached into her jeans pocket and dramatically held up a shiny lighter. "Found this up on the shelf there. Why in the world would you leave it lying around? It's dangerous."

He almost laughed. "Not unless Noah's learned to climb shelves in the past three days."

"Try explaining that to the caseworker." She obviously didn't find any of this particularly funny. "You don't even smoke!"

"Not anymore."

"You used to smoke?"

Jesus Christ. Yes, he used to smoke, and he had also lost his virginity at 15. Not exactly dark secrets. "You try being UC for three years without smoking." He reached for the lighter, tucking it away in the inside pocket of his jacket. "But if it means so much to you, I'll keep it locked away with the candles or something."

"Thanks" she replied gruffly.

He half-heartedly picked up the play table that usually had Noah pressing the button that mooed a hundred times in a row and carried it over to its improvised storing space underneath the shelf in the corner. It wouldn't fit, and he accidentally ended up pressing the annoying donkey button in the process, making the toy bray at him. How could this thing not have an off switch? "Where's Noah?" He was eager to say hi, in part because he had missed the little guy, and partly because it would be an escape from whatever had soured the mood here.

"Asleep" she sighed. "Lucy couldn't get him down for his nap earlier, so now it's all delayed and he'll probably be up at 2am again."

"Great. Is he okay?"

"Yeah, he's good." Her lips curled in a fleeting smile. "Thanks to Nick, he now knows the taste of sugar, which I was trying to avoid, but…"

"Impossible."

"Pretty much."

He leaned against the wall, because sitting down on the sofa while she was cleaning up seemed too daring. "So what's up? Why…all this?"

"The caseworker called. She'll be coming for a visit tomorrow."

"Again?" That explained this new need to have a spotless living room when it would only return to its messy state five minutes later. "She doesn't really get the concept of surprise visits, does she, if she's telling you the day before?"

"You'd have to take that up with her." 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' went into the box to join other books about animals in various states.

"I'd leave that one out, it's a classic, it'll look good. Doesn't hurt to show that you're doing smart things with him."

"I don't think me doing smart things is the part she has issues with…"

"No, her issue is that she has an attitude problem. That woman has a major chip on her shoulder." It felt good be united against a common enemy.

"It's like she's just waiting for the next mistake to happen. She wants to catch me at it."

He walked over to the open kitchen, grabbing a glass of tap water while continuing to talk. What he wanted was to get out of his suit, put on lazy pants and chill, but that plan had just been put off. "Not that I'm an expert, but I thought they were short on resources, don't they have any real problem families to check up on? You know, parents who actually abuse their kids?"

"I wish they'd been this diligent with the first few foster homes. Now, suddenly, they want a stay at home mom?"

"Crazy. So what's the plan here, when is she coming over?"

"Early, around eight."

"Wow, 6am wasn't available?" He returned, crouching down on the floor to return the colourful soft blocks to their bucket.

"I know, as soon as Noah is up, I have to do laundry, vacuum-"

"There's plenty of time. And what's she gonna do, count every speck of dust she finds?"

"Who knows, she loves counting every minute I spend at work."

Her tense reply gave him pause. He approached her slowly, wanting to put his hands on her shoulders. "The judge was on your side. And Noah was fine at his last exam, right? Hey, maybe we should take a break for a moment, figure this out and-" Talk.

She moved away before he could finish, setting down the basket on the floor to fold up the baby blanket that was bunched up on the sofa. "There's no time."

It was pointless to argue that they would do better after a break and some time to relax and get some perspective, that he just wanted to sit with her for a moment. He could see that from the distracted look on her face. All she could think about right now was tomorrow's appointment. He understood that, but she was acting as if he didn't, like being away for three days suddenly meant that he wasn't in this with her. He was the outsider here. "At least we have tomorrow off."

She grimaced. "About that-"

"No. Seriously?"

"It's a big case, there's nothing I can do about it. It happened at that conference." She stopped cleaning up for a moment, rubbing her shiny forehead.

"What happened?"

"A detective got raped."

"What?"

"Her boss did it, who also happens to be Rollins' old boss and there's a whole other story there. And he'll probably get away with it."

This was the sort of messed up shit that made him want to work IA, sometimes at least. "Damn. Sounds bad."

"Yeah." She scanned the papers on the table for a moment before continuing in a flat voice. "The victim, she doesn't want us to pursue it because she's afraid of the consequences, because this guy has a lot of power down in Atlanta, and even if it goes to court, she'll have to testify against him in front of everyone and they'll just argue she liked it rough and she wanted it and…" She turned away from him, interrupting the stream of information. "Anyway, it'll get messy."

"You…uh…are you okay working this case?" He assessed her body language, the tension in her hunched shoulders, her inability to stay still.

"Jesus, Bri…" she groaned, bending down to rearrange the items in the basket. "I just said it's a sensitive case, not that I can't work it."

"Right. But it makes sense that it would be upsetting." He clearly wasn't allowed to bring up how it had been exactly one year now since court, or that she could be identifying with the victim because she was a detective, too, and how awfully familiar "she liked it rough" sounded. So he didn't.

"Thanks for the observation." She regarded him coolly. "Anyway, how did your thing go?"

His thing, also known as "the convenient change of subject", was a string of pointless meetings he hadn't wanted to take home with him. He didn't even want to think about it anymore, least of all the local department's insistence that there was no link between the Pittsburgh and the NYPD arrests that had quietly gone away, because there was in fact no such problem in Pittsburgh, duh. So he would officially not think about it. If you asked him, Olivia's problem was that she always took her work issues home with her. But you couldn't get that stuff stuck in your head without going crazy. Although sometimes, it seemed like you didn't have a choice. "Fine."

"So things are okay there?"

"Yep. It's just…Pittsburgh."

She didn't press the matter, although she gave him a sort of questioning look that he didn't quite know the meaning of. What was he supposed to tell her? It was work. This was a new year, a year that was still young and held a whiff of change.

He sinks down on the wooden step beside her as she loosens the straps, kicks off her sandals and begins to rub the outside of her foot, flexing her toes. "Just for a minute…" He feels out of breath, warm despite the wind and like his vision is about 50% restricted. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion and he is the observer watching it through a screen with black edges. Behind him, the music and lights are pounding and blurring in that steady rhythm of generic awfulness, and he can actually feel the music in the floorboards as well.

"I feel old" she blurts out, and although it's not exactly a party for college kids but for loud American couples in their 30s and 40s who can afford a fancy vacation, he gets the point. This isn't the sort of thing they do. Nothing about this party screams "Brian" or "Olivia" to him.

"You are old."

"So are you. Old and drunk."

"I'm not the one who drank from a glass rimmed with sugar. Hello, headache. You're drunker…more drunk…more drunker?"

She chuckles, hooking her arm through his. "Case closed." In truth, neither of them is really super drunk –as far as he can judge that in his current state- just very, very tipsy.

"We need that guy to decide, what's-his-face, Barba, he looks like he really knows his grammar."

"He does. Why are we talking about Barba on a beach?"

"I bet he loves the beach" he says, and oh, he can just picture it.

"Stop it." She tries to hold back her hair, but the ocean breeze is too strong by now, so it only ends up flying everywhere, hopelessly tangled and impractical. Her cheeks are flushed, and she is in a rare, non-serious, almost giddy mood. This shouldn't be amusing, but it is, what with how she has completely given up on taming her hair, how their feet are bare and they are surrounded by people who usually wear suits but now their clothes are fluttering in the wind as they stiffly try to sway to the music of a 25-year-old DJ. They are sitting on the steps of this gorgeous white open veranda decorated with a garland of colourful lanterns, overlooking a dark beach and oh God, he just accidentally spotted a couple with grey hair making out on one of the beanbags that have been set down on the sand for the party. It's too damn funny. "What?" she asks, because she apparently can't see the obvious.

"I like vacation Olivia." He smiles at her, and somewhere at the back of his alcohol-soaked brain, a little voice shouts "stop being touchy-feely drunk".

"Don't get used to her."

Suddenly, they hear cheering behind them, shouts of "happynewyeeear", clinking glasses and singing. A woman in a blue dress staggers past them, rushing down the length of stairs to hug someone on the beach. Further down on another stretch of beach, the fireworks are starting up with flashes of green, purple and orange in the sky, the howling and crackling of volcanoes, crackers and whatnot. "Aw, we missed it!" They are drink-less, champagne-less, unprepared.

"Oh…happy new year!" She leans in to kiss him. He draws her closer, and he can actually feel her hair tickling his face as it blows around them. She pulls back as the kiss is about to turn up the heat a little, and that's okay, as he has just resolved never to become an old couple making out in public on a beanbag. The colourful lights from behind them are dancing on her face, her eyes sparkling.

"Happy new year" he mutters, putting his arm around her and glancing up at the fireworks. Are they actually moving closer, or is that just an illusion?

"I gotta admit the Bahamas were a pretty great idea" she concedes, smiling contentedly.

"Thank you, I'll remind you of that forever and ever." He can't help gloating at his victory. Ha. Take that, skeptics. Take that, destiny.

"I had no doubt."

"Any new year's resolutions?"

She shakes her head slowly, watching a small gathering of people who are lighting gigantic sparklers down on the beach. The woman in the blue dress is twirling hers around wildly. "I don't do that."

"So the blender you just bought and the smoothies with spinach and crap in them are just a coincidence?"

"Circumstantial evidence."

"The good news is that we closed that case today, so I won't have to go away for a while." He had pictured himself telling her this under different circumstances, the way they would both be happy, relaxing with Noah and the stuffed reindeer he had bought him before realizing that the kid was really too young to "get" Christmas. Lately, Brian often got this picture in his head of what things should be like, what they could be like. They were mostly visions of ordinary situations that looked like cheesy illustrations from gift books with inspiring quotes in them that you bought for people you didn't know too well. It was a lot like things had felt when he had moved in with Olivia the first time, that time when they had both been hopeful and going through so many changes, so it had all seemed pretty fragile and amazing and fresh at once. But more often than not, it didn't work out the way he imagined it. "At least there's nothing that should take me away in the near future."

"That's good." She didn't sound convinced. He knew he kept promising that things would change, and they had, with fewer trips away, fewer undercover assignments that he couldn't return home for, but the unpredictability of life was the same as always. Only it was more complicated now, if, for instance, he got called away while Noah was in hospital. "Can you be here tomorrow for the caseworker's visit?"

"The caseworker?" Oh. He hadn't been prepared for that.

"Yeah, she wants to meet you."

The visit suddenly made more sense. They had submitted a change of household notification a couple of months ago, before all the drama and the caseworker's hostility. It had been kind of a big deal for both of them, and Olivia had insisted on establishing a million rules and boundaries before doing it. No reaction had followed, and his living here as her boyfriend, her roomie, her whatever, had never come up despite the fact that any added person to the household was supposed to be evaluated. That detail had slipped somehow. "Um…yeah. Right. I'll be there. What do you think she'll ask me?"

"I don't know. You're not applying to be a carer, so I guess she'll ask about your role in Noah's life, probably about our relationship. It could get pretty personal."

He didn't feel any more comfortable with this than she sounded. Having a deadline of about 15 or 16 hours to figure out what exactly the story and his role in it was seemed inadequate. He was being evaluated as just "another person over 18 residing in the home", which was fine with him. That was what he was to Noah, he supposed, another undefined person. "Okay."

"Just stay calm and answer her questions. Don't tell her it's none of her business, or get defensive and argue-"

"I'm not an idiot."

"Don't overplay it, either."

"Come again?"

"You know, the bigger your role, the stricter the standards."

"Ah. So it's okay for me to watch Noah when you need me to, it's just not okay for me to tell her about it."

"No, just don't make it harder than it has to be."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Something about this really rubbed him the wrong way. He started pacing up and down. The living room table stood between them like a block. "Are you actually afraid I'll make you look bad in some way?"

"That's not true. I just don't want you to give her cause."

"Well, okay, what is my role? Maybe if you give me a script, it'll be easier for me to remember my lines."

She rolled her eyes. "Wow, I knew you'd react like this, turn it into this big deal-"

"I'm not cause or a risk factor, I'm just an extra person who's there when things get tough."

"Are you, though?"

"Whenever I can be, yes! You know I'm trying to get out of IAB, what do you want me to do, tell Tucker to piss off if he gives me an order?"

"Shh, lower your voice, Noah's sleeping!" she hissed in the least effective whisper ever. Good thing that little boy could sleep through pretty much anything. "What do you think I do, with the squad chaos and Dodds breathing down my neck?"

He couldn't argue with that, because of course, she had the bigger job, saving special victims and being the boss while also being supermom, and she knew just when to bring that up. "You usually say no when I offer to babysit and then when you do want me to be there, you tell me about thirty seconds before. And then when I can't just drop everything, it's proof to you of how I'm never there. It doesn't work that way."

Her jaw dropped. "That's the best twist of the truth that I've heard in a while."

"Whatever, it's your call. It would just be helpful if you could make up your mind."

"Noah is my responsibility; it's not your job to take care of him."

"So then what, exactly, am I not doing?"

"It's not what you're not doing, it's just…" She sat down on the couch, stooped forward, running one hand through her hair. "It's counting on you and on this whole thing to work. It's all happening so fast and Noah needs stability."

"Noah…"

"And you weren't the one who chose this, it all just kind of happened and it's all undefined, and I'm making you a part of Noah's life."

"Don't you get it? I want to be a part." He just didn't know which part. He was okay with playing "another person over 18 residing in the home" if that meant "mom's seriously awesome boyfriend", but he didn't know what exactly that entailed. She was so protective of her foster son.

"I know." She regarded him sadly, and it felt like she was looking at him for the first time today.

He couldn't hold her gaze, so he sat down beside her on the sofa, leaning forward. His hands opened and closed again. "I just don't know how after all this time, after everything that-" He stopped himself short because he didn't quite know how to complete that sentence. "How you can still not trust me. Do you not want me here?"

"I do" she said quietly, but what he heard more than that was the fact that she didn't deny the statement before the question.

"So then…?"

"It's just not gonna be easy."

"No shit. We need a better plan."

She shook her head. "I thought we were starting to get into a routine here."

"Yeah, me too." Since he had moved back in, things actually hadn't been going so badly. There was less time than ever for anything besides day to day juggling of responsibilities, but the fact that things revolved around Noah also meant that they had needed to get their shit together.

"But I'm worried about tomorrow."

It was a relief when she finally stated the obvious. It was as if the problem were lying in a box in front of him now, and he could poke and prod at it and go into fixing mode, better than with all this vague future uncertainty trust stuff. "So I guess I'll try to make a good impression. We'll tell her I'm involved in a…supporting capacity because I live here and we're in a relationship, but I'm not a carer because I'm often away for work."

She nodded. "She won't like that you're in law enforcement, too."

"No, but it doesn't make me a threat to be living with, either."

"Not that. But…"

"But?"

"You've been accused of a sexual offence" she said awkwardly, not meeting his gaze.

The words burned, although he couldn't even get angry about them. It was the truth, and he had been waiting for this to come back and bite him in the ass from the start. He generally tried not to think about the past, and particularly not about anything relating to his time with Ganzel, but this one was hard to forget. "The charges were dropped. I was framed; that's public record."

"You know that's not the question they ask."

"No. It's not." Once you ticked yes on that box, you could pretty much leave out the "explain the circumstances" lines underneath. It was an absolute no go that would come up on every application for the rest of his life. He might not be guilty, but people would always wonder. The disgust the words alone elicited ran deeper than reason.

"She might not ask. But if she does, you'll need to explain."

"Right. Right." He rubbed his dry eyes. "Gotta get my story straight."

"Yeah." Her knuckles brushed against the outside of his hand before she curled her fingers around it. "I'm on your side."

The reason she said it remained the big elephant in the room. "Listen, Liv, if tomorrow doesn't go so well-"

"Let's cross that bridge when we get to it."

"You can't take any risks. I get that."

"Not before the adoption, I won't." She looked at him, and her expression betrayed that she knew as well as him that this could mean goodbye once more, at least for now.

It wouldn't be so bad, he told himself, it would be just for a while. We'll be fine. But being considered a potential negative influence to Noah by anyone was bitter. If there was one thing he couldn't comprehend at all, it was people who wanted to hurt children. "Okay" he mumbled. "So I'm gonna go take a shower and think about my answers."

"All right. I should get Noah up soon, anyway, or he really won't go to sleep tonight at all."

"I'll check on him." He got up from the sofa, heading towards the bedroom. Suddenly, it truly seemed like an eternity since he had last seen him. The kid was at that age where the world was full of mysteries and he learned something new every day. As a consequence, every day he missed was a pretty big deal.

"Brian" she called after him as his hand was already on the doorknob.

"What?" He half turned around.

She looked at him with a conflicted frown, like she was trying to pick the right thing to say out of a hundred options. "You're, um, you're not a risk. You are a supporting factor."

This was probably supposed to give him some warm, fuzzy feeling, but today, it didn't. His mind was already on tomorrow, at least until the second he opened the door and was greeted by a joyful "Mama!" and a momentarily startled look when it wasn't, in fact, Mama. Noah was already sitting up in his crib, and seemed to be perfectly happy squishing a soft toy cube against the bars. It was pretty cool when he could occupy himself like that.

"Hey there, buddy! Ooh, you're up! Did you have a nice nap?"

The boy's face lit up, and he immediately stretched out his arms to be picked up. "Bobo!" Bobo was, apparently, an acceptable abbreviation of Brian, and the only other word he used besides "Mama". Then again, it was also the word Noah used for his stuffed animals, as well as any solid food (but not drinks), making it a dubious honour. Brian wasn't sure how exactly he had ended up in the food and toy category, but given how high in esteem both food and stuffed animals were held, he had decided to see it as an expression of love. Either that, or, as Liv had suggested, he looked like a piece of bread.

"Good to see you, too!" He smiled and lifted Noah up high into the air a few times, making him laugh, before planting a kiss against his soft infant hair. "Let's go see what Mama's up to."