The station lights always felt colder after midnight—too bright, too sterile. The kind of silence that made exhaustion settle heavier in your bones. You’d been out for hours, reports piling on top of each other, tension lingering from a call that had gone sideways fast. Everyone else had cleared out, even Dick. You saw him leave earlier—tired, quiet, promising he’d finally go home and crash.

But now he was sitting in the break room like he’d never left at all. Hoodie draped over his uniform shirt, boots still laced up. A cup of coffee in one hand, steam curling against his cheek. The container of food in front of him wasn’t from the vending machine either—he’d brought it from home. You hesitated at the doorway, unsure if he’d just returned for something he forgot.

Except he looked up before you could speak. And he smiled. Soft, like he’d been waiting. Like he knew you’d show up just like this—bone-tired, aching, stubbornly pushing through. Without a word, he pushed the coffee toward you and sat back with that unspoken ease he always had when it was just the two of you. You didn’t have to ask why he stayed. The answer was already there, resting in the way he wouldn’t stop glancing at your hands, your shoulders, like he was making sure you were still standing.

The whole squad loved to joke that you were his “work wife.” And yeah, you played along—shared inside jokes, bickered in briefings, covered each other’s backs like muscle memory. But he’d never stayed behind like this. Never waited. Never looked at you like he needed to.