Work Text:
“I love you.”
Was said into the scratching sounds of Sonny Carisi making grilled cheese in front of the stove. He flipped the sandwich over and listened as it sizzled.
“I love you too, babe.”
Rafael Barba stared at the back of his lover, his partner, his better half, the person he was slowly but surely wanting to make his for the rest of his natural born life.
“You love me too?” Barba asked with a look of disbelief that Sonny couldn’t see because his back was turned. What was the point of being dramatic if no one paid attention to him?
“Yeah, of course.” Sonny answered back. He flipped both sandwiches onto a plate and turned toward Barba with an absentminded smile. “Food's on.”
“Food's on?” Barba repeated like a parrot.
Sonny nodded with a bemused look. He set the plate on the island and turned to grab the wine glasses. “Red or White?”
Barba gaped unattractively as he took the glasses that Sonny offered him, and wasn’t that just Sonny Carisi? Grilled cheese and Red wine.
“Red.” Barba watched Sonny pull a bottle of Merlot from the wine rack. “And you’re just in love with me?”
Sonny smirked at Barba as he poured two glasses of Merlot and set them with the grilled cheese.
“Yup.”
“And I’m just in love with you?” Barba asked, even though it was more of a statement than a question.
“Hope so.” Sonny answered moving smoothly around the kitchen. Rafael had to admit that Sonny was really in his element in the kitchen. The usually gangly, bumbling doofus that he loved was all arms and legs, but in the kitchen Sonny really shone.
“Hope so?” Barba replied incredulously.
“Raf, what’s going on?” Sonny stopped what he was doing and turned to Barba with a confused head tilt.
“What’s going on? I told you I loved you, and you just said ‘I love you too’!” Barba threw his hands in the air and stormed past Sonny to the refrigerator.
Sonny reached out as Raf walked by him and grabbed him by his waist. “Hey, what’s going on?” Sonny asked again, his mouth finding its way behind Barba’s ear.
“Nothing,” Barba snapped, hating that Sonny could do that now; could turn his, ‘I’m livid at you’, into, ‘I’m only kind of angry, please keep doing that with your mouth’.
“Nothin’?” Sonny kept up with his assault on Barba’s sensitive ear. “You seem awfully irritated for it to be ‘Nothin’.”
Barba turned reluctantly and crossed his arms. He could resist Sonny Carisi with his gangly arms, his puppy dog demeanor, and his deceptively smooth moves. “I thought that maybe it would be a little bit of a bigger deal when we said, ‘I love you’, for the first time.”
“What?” Sonny asked and the confused head tilt was back.
“What.” Barba asked, and yeah the inflection was missing again.
“Baby, what are you talking about?” Sonny didn’t let go of Raf’s waist, but he did lean back to look at his face.
“’I love you’, that little thing that people say when they… I don’t know, love each other?” Raf wanted to be angry, but it honestly looked like Sonny had no clue; of course it almost always looked like Sonny had no clue, so that wasn’t exactly telling.
“Sweetheart, of course I love you, but…” Sonny paused as he studied Raf’s face.
“But?” Raf encouraged.
“But, this is not the first time we’ve said, ‘I love you’.” Sonny rubbed the hollows of Barba’s hips and smiled at him with that same goofy grin.
“What.” Raf intoned again.
Sonny looked at Barba like he grew another head. “You said it to me this morning, and last night, and probably after we left the office yesterday. You’ve told me that every day for about three months.”
Barba’s eyes narrowed like he was about to interrogate a hostile witness. “I have not.”
“Okay.” Sonny shrugged. He smacked a kiss to Barba’s forehead and turned to grab the glasses of Merlot.
“Okay? That’s it?” Barba turned with his arms still crossed and his brow furrowed.
“Yeah, I mean, what do you want me to do? Argue with you?” Sonny flipped a smirk back at his boyfriend and set the glasses down on the dinning table.
“Well… yes.” Barba frowned.
“Why?” Sonny quirked an eyebrow at Raf.
“Because, I’ve never said, ‘I love you’, to anyone but my mother and grandmother, and now I’ve said it to you, and you’re telling me that I’ve been saying that three word phrase for three months without noticing?” Barba sounded offended, and he wasn’t just going to let this go in the face of Sonny’s seeming indifference.
“That’s… adorable.” Sonny stopped and leaned against the table.
“Shut up.”
“What? I can’t think my boyfriend is cute?” Sonny shrugged again. He held his hands out for the plate of sandwiches on the island. Raf reluctantly handed Sonny the plate and went to sit down beside him where the detective had taken his seat.
Barba watched Sonny cut their sandwiches into triangles like his mother used to do, and undoubtedly like what Sonny’s mother used to do for him. He placed Raf’s sandwich slices on the extra plates that Barba thought were only there for decoration.
“Of course you can think that.” Barba played with the crust of his sandwich for a second. “I have often had similar thoughts about you.” He can feel himself blushing, but looking up into Sonny’s smiling face was worth the heat in his cheeks.
“I love it when you do that.” Sonny ducked his head to start on his sandwich.
“That!” Raf exclaimed. “When did we start doing that?”
Sonny should look more startled than he did, but the man had been near gunfire for years, it had desensitized him from the wrath of his boyfriend’s often irate temper.
“Doin’ what?” Sonny asked innocently with a mouth full of bread and cheese. Barba watched him with a mixture of disgust and affection on his face. Why did he love this giant goof?
“Using that word.” Barba answered. He grabbed a napkin from the middle of the table and dropped it close to Sonny. “When did you… did I, start saying, ‘love’?”
Sonny infuriatingly responded with another shrug. “Like I said, ‘bout three months ago.”
“When… what was the first one like?” Raf asked almost shyly, he wanted to know, needed to know when he started spouting confessions of love all over the place, without his knowledge.
“Uh, I don’t know, it was nice.” Carisi lopsided smile turned dreamy at the thought. “It was after Liv’s Christmas party, we had the best night. Remember? That was the night Noah spit up all over that tie I got you for Arbor Day.” Sonny paused for Raf’s inevitable, ‘Stupid tie’. “Then we came back here, and exchanged gifts. You gave me the elephant salt and peppah shakers, and I gave you-”
“The Santa cufflinks.” Barba finished, he reached over and linked their fingers together.
“Yeah,” Sonny smiled and brought his and Barba’s conjoined hands to his lips. “Which you love, and will wear every day after Thanksgiving. “
Barba snorted softly and smiled at his Partner. “Uh huh.”
“And then, we went to bed and you gave me a stocking stuffer.” Which was said with an eyebrow bounce, and Barba did not even dignify that with an eye roll. “We were falling asleep and you leaned over to kiss me, like this.” Sonny leaned up and planted a slow kiss on Barba’s lips.
“And when you were closing your eyes you said, ‘I love you, you know?’ and before I could say it back, you were asleep. I said it to your sleepin’ mug, but you were out cold.” Sonny leaned back and watched Barba like a hawk.
Raf will deny to his dying day that he teared up a little. He didn’t know what he did to deserve this perfect, imperfect, goofy, lovable, amazing man, but he would do it again a million times if that meant he ended up where he was today.
“And then I just kept doing it without thinking about it?” Barba worried his lower lip like he was nervous, but Sonny knew better.
“Yeah,” Sonny nodded, “Whenever, all the time. When you were falling asleep, in the morning before your first coffee, when we were leaving the office, after dinner, after sex, all the time.”
“When…” Barba started almost afraid to ask the question.
“When was the first time I really said it back?” Sonny asked in that tone that meant he thought he knew everything, which may have been true, since that was the question that was plaguing Barba’s mind.
Raf nodded.
“The next morning after you said it, when you couldn’t find your briefcase. You were running late, I handed you your coffee and your briefcase that was under the coffee table, you kissed me on your way out the door, and said, ‘I love you’, and I said it back.” Sonny scrunched his nose up adorably. “I thought you hadn’t heard me at first, but you kept saying it after that so…”
Barba watched Sonny with a look of untamed awe on his face, he was usually too put together to show much of any emotion let alone a look of pure love, but there it was.
“I do, you know.” Raf watched Sonny, making sure that Sonny knew, understood what this was, what they were about.
“Of course I know, Sweetheart. You tell me every day.”
-fini-