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He should never have gone to the ceremony at 1 Police Plaza.
Weeks had passed, and the agony that had bloomed from his heart that day had yet to lessen. He couldn't chase away the image of the woman who kissed the lips he still remembered kissing, the faces of children beaming up at their father. He couldn't escape the image of Sonny, his breath steaming the winter air, beautiful and smiling, close enough to touch and miles away, all at once.
Time heals all wounds, they said, but whatever sorry progress he was left with after a decade's convalescence was ripped away when he saw Sonny again, after so many years.
Over ten years ago, Rafael Barba had cut Sonny Carisi out of his life. Little by little, day by day, until there was nothing left of him but the memory.
After the last time Sonny left his apartment, Rafael had boxed up everything he had left there and had it delivered to the other man's apartment, and that had made it easier, to not see signs of him in his home. It was easier still when he was promoted to EADA almost immediately after, and no longer worked directly with the detectives at SVU.
It became easier again when Sonny left SVU, and Rafael made a point of not knowing to what unit he'd gone. Olivia mentioned him less, after that. And once Rafael had left the DA's office for the bench, he saw Olivia less and less, dinners and holidays only.
He no longer had any of the gifts that Sonny had given him, all thrown away or donated by now: books and ties, the Fordham t-shirt given as a joke, even the 1932 Cuban peso he had given him on their second anniversary.
Rafael lived in an apartment where Sonny Carisi had never visited, with furniture on which he had never sat, a table at which he had never eaten. He slept in a bed in which they had never made love. Sonny Carisi had never been in his chambers, never sat on the edge of his desk or leaned long and lanky against the frame of his door.
Over ten years ago now, and weeks and months passed when he didn't think of him at all.
On other days, he wondered how long it took to recover from the love of a lifetime.
He told himself that he wanted closure, that seeing Sonny once more would give him what he had been seeking for years. That to see Sonny with his young wife and the children that he clearly adored would smother whatever lingering embers hadn't been destroyed by time, neglect, and absence. He told himself he needed one last goodbye, so he could finally let go.
Instead, all Rafael had done was confirm that even if they never saw one another again, his last thought this side of the grave would be of Sonny Carisi.
"Mr. Barba?"
Rafael turned in his chair, away from the frost and fog of his office window, obscuring the view of the snowy city outside. He wondered how long he had been staring, lost in thought. He glanced at his watch and frowned at the time.
"Carmen, it's past six. What are you still doing here? It's Christmas Eve, you should go home to your family."
"I'm going now," she said, but there was an apprehensive quality in her voice that gave him pause.
"Is everything alright?" he asked, concerned.
"Yes," she said at once, but he thought she looked unsure. She took a breath before she spoke again. "Lieutenant Carisi is here to see you."
Rafael felt all at once as though the air had been knocked from his lungs and the floor had fallen away. It was adrenaline, he knew, that had his blood boiling and his stomach in knots. Even as he gripped the arm of his chair, he told himself he was too old for this, as though he could grow out of the chemical rush of love, of nostalgia, the memories that flooded him whenever he heard that name.
He should never have gone to that ceremony, should never have dug up the past to let it wound him again.
Carmen saw more than he wanted her to.
"Would you like me to tell him you're not available?" she asked, quietly enough to not be overheard in the outer office, and far too gently. Rafael felt seen, and sickened at the thought. An old man paralyzed by the ghost of an old love come to haunt him.
Rafael’s first instinct was to say yes. To tell Carmen to send Sonny away with her talent for cold courtesy that made it clear he wasn’t welcome to return without her having to actually say so. He opened his mouth to say it, but something in her dark eyes stilled his tongue. Was it pity? Or was it judgement at his cowardice?
Or was he projecting?
In the end, it didn’t matter. Stronger than his instincts of self preservation, stronger than his pride, was the ache to see Sonny again. In the two weeks since he had watched the other man jogging back to his family and back out of Rafael’s life (a decade out of Rafael’s life), his spectre had been a constant at the edges of Rafael’s mind. And now he was only a room away. The pull was stronger than he could resist.
“No,” he said, after far too long. “You can send him in. Have a merry Christmas, Carmen.”
He thought she looked sad for him, and he waited until she was gone to smooth a hand down over his tie, adjust his glasses, and turn his eyes to the computer open on his desk. It was a shameful pretense, as though anything else could hold his attention. No words on the screen registered, and he clicked blindly at nothing, feeling like a sham.
"Judge Barba." Sonny’s voice was too warm and too familiar, carrying with it a new flood of memory, echoes of all the other things he’d said over the years; the jokes, the arguments, the confessions of love. The hellos and goodbyes, and all the joy and sorrow that came with them.
All the things he had tried to forget, but never quite been able to.
“Lieutenant Carisi.” Rafael pitched his voice to match Sonny’s, with just enough of an enquiring lilt to ask the question he didn’t want to.
He looked up, finally, and Sonny was leaning against his doorway and smiling at him, and Rafael felt as if the ten previous years had just fallen away, like it was only the two of them, again, spending a late night in Rafael’s office ostensibly going over case files but bickering and flirting all the while.
Nostalgia. Rafael was becoming soft in his old age.
He cleared his throat and finally tore his gaze away from Sonny’s. “If you’re here in hopes that I’ll sign a warrant for you, you’d have better luck with one of my colleagues,” he said, trying to keep his voice light. “My standards are still more exacting than anyone in SVU ever cared for.”
Sonny chuckled. “Not why I’m here, but I’ll keep that in mind in case the opportunity arises.” He paused, and Rafael swallowed his automatic retort that he doubted the opportunity would arise anytime soon; Sonny’s expression was carefully neutral, as he if he was deciding what exactly he wanted to say.
Rafael couldn’t decide what was more pathetic, that he could still read Sonny as easily as if no time had passed, or that Sonny hadn’t yet developed an even passable poker face.
“I wanted to come by and wish you a Merry Christmas.”
Rafael’s eyebrows rose and he gave Sonny a piercing look. “You decided to brave the winter weather and the masses of idiots out on Christmas Eve just to come wish me a Merry Christmas?” he asked, skepticism plain in his voice. “Touched though I may be, Lieutenant, I don’t quite believe you.”
Sonny shrugged unconcernedly, finally straightening from the door and taking his first few steps into the room. He looked easy, comfortable even, standing there in Rafael’s chambers.
As if he always had been there.
As if he always should be.
“It’s the truth,” Sonny told him, something earnest creeping into his voice, and Rafael closed his eyes for a brief moment, wondering if his heart could honestly handle this conversation without breaking for good.
He shook his head. “In that case, a very merry Christmas to yourself and your family as well, Lieutenant Carisi.” He tried not to let any of the bitterness that welled in his chest spill into his voice, fought to keep his tone light. “And if you didn’t need anything else…”
He trailed off, but Sonny made no move to leave. “I mean, I did want to wish you merry Christmas,” he said, his dimples — which had softened into creases more than anything over the past ten years, not that Rafael was looking, not that his heart didn’t still leap at the sight of them — deepening as he smiled. “But it’s not the only reason why I’m here.”
Rafael sat back in his chair and looked at him evenly. “Then why are you here?”
"Honestly? I'm here because I haven't been able to stop thinking about you for the last two weeks."
"I'm sorry," Rafael said and Sonny would never have any idea how much he meant it even if he had managed to make the words sound as close to casual as he could muster. "It wasn't my intention to disrupt your life."
Your happiness, Rafael amended as the gnawing ache in his chest grew.
"That's dramatic," Sonny said, impossibly blue eyes still twinkling as though he thought all this was amusing. "It's been nice, thinking about you. I've missed you, is that so terrible?"
Rafael stared at Sonny, angry at his flippancy, ashamed of the pleasure he felt at his words. "It's Christmas Eve," he said, only barely hiding the accusation in his voice.
"Shouldn't you be home with your children?"
"Nah," Sonny shrugged. "They're at their mom's tonight. I'm gonna go over in the morning and be there when they open presents, though."
“Their mom’s?” Rafael questioned, unable to stop the hope that leapt in his chest at the thought.
Sonny shrugged again, looking a little uncomfortable before holding up his hand. His left hand, pointedly devoid of a wedding ring.
Rafael hadn’t noticed that two weeks ago.
How had Rafael not noticed that two weeks ago?
“Sometimes things don’t work out,” Sonny said, simply and all too vague, though Rafael was suddenly sure that the decision had come with no small amount of agony.
Rafael swallowed his immediate jibes about the Catholic church not believing in divorce and instead shook his head slowly, trying to reconcile what he had seen with what Sonny was alluding to without saying. "She was there at your promotion ceremony, cheering." Rafael managed to avoid mentioning that he had seen them kiss. However he may be feeling, he didn't want to appear to be heartsick and hung up, ten years on.
"Well, sure. She brought the kids, and besides, I've stayed friends with all my exes." There was something too soft and too sad in Sonny's eyes as he looked at Rafael. "Except one."
"I never told you I didn't want to stay friends," Rafael shot back, acid sharp on his tongue.
"No, you didn't," Sonny allowed, shoving his hands in his pockets. "But I sure as hell wasn't on your Christmas card list either. And yeah, I was hurting, but by the time I wasn't you were gone."
Rafael's innate desire to argue, coupled with the years of pain he had been nursing, urged him to fight, to deny it, but in the end Sonny was right. Rafael hadn't wanted anything to do with him, and had made it as clear as he could short of a restraining order. "What did you have in mind back then, weekly lunches? I don't remember you calling."
"You're exactly the same," Sonny laughed, and it was like Rafael's office was full of sunshine. "I mean it, exactly the same, I'm so glad. I love it."
"You have no idea what I'm like," Rafael said, more wistful than venomous. It had been so long, but with Sonny smiling at him, it felt like no time had passed at all. He half expected Sonny to walk around the desk and perch on it, to lean down and kiss him like he so often had, once.
"Maybe not, but I'd sure like to. You should let me take you out for a drink. And if that goes okay, dinner. Then maybe another dinner." Sonny's smile faded a little, a sudden hesitation in his expression. "I've missed you, Rafael."
This shouldn't hurt.
This shouldn't feel like a new wound, like an old and dearly familiar thrill winding through his rib cage.
He was weak.
"You talk like I've been away at summer camp," Rafael breathed, "Not like I've spent every day of the last decade forgetting to breathe when I heard your name."
"We're too old for summer camp," Sonny quipped, or tried. The joke died on his lips, and he shook his head. "Do you think I felt any differently? When you were running, I saw your name everywhere, I was outta my mind."
"It was all to move on. All of it." Rafael cleared his throat, cast his eyes downward. "It took years for me to realize that I wouldn't. That I was incapable. For the first time in my life, I failed at something I put my mind to."
"Maybe I'm projecting, Your Honor," Sonny replied with a wry smirk, gaze earnest and open, "but I don't think it was your mind that was the problem."
"Projecting," Rafael laughed humorlessly and scrubbed his hand over his mouth. "You got married, had a family."
"Not to drag old battles to light here, but you ended things with me, not the other way around. I didn't leave you for Claire, or my kids. You weren't an option." His voice was all soft honesty, gentler than Rafael probably deserved.
When he looked up again, Sonny hadn't looked away. He looked sad, but hopefully too, as sweet and optimistic as he had ever been. That same eager young detective Rafael had fallen in love with years ago, and never recovered.
"And I am now?"
Rafael hated the tremble in his voice.
The silence seemed to stretch forever before Sonny replied.
"You tell me, Rafael. I never left you."
"I didn't leave you. You have to know that." He thought about the children he'd seen two weeks before, clinging to Sonny with love in their eyes. "I gave you away. You were meant for better things, Dominick Carisi. Things better than me."
"Don't do that." Sonny shook his head, and then he was crossing the room, walking around Rafael's desk and perching on it, too close, and too intimate. "Self depreciation doesn't suit you, you're too good for it. And I'm not going to argue about what we should or shouldn't have done ten years ago, because there are things about my life now I wouldn't change for anything. Things that are part of the total package with me, by the way, if that's still a deal breaker for you."
He'd long realized that nothing about Sonny would ever be enough to drive him away.
"No," he said, meeting his eyes. "They're not. They're a part of the man I love and just as welcome as the man himself."
"Not 'loved'?" Sonny asked pointedly.
Rafael stared.
"I know what I said."
Sonny looked at Rafael for so long, quiet and inscrutable, that Rafael began to get nervous that he had said too much, been too honest.
"That's a lot to commit to up front. We haven't talked in ten years."
It would have felt more like a rejection if Sonny hadn't reached out and brushed his fingers against Rafael's hand where it rested on his desk.
"Do you need to talk?" Rafael asked quietly.
"No," Sonny sighed, "But it doesn't mean I don't want to."
Rafael turned his hand palm up, hesitated only a moment, and laced his fingers with Sonny's. The touch of the other man's hand was like electricity, and for the first time in so long, the painful ache in his chest was sweet.
"This doesn't feel real," he whispered.
"This feels more real than every dream I've ever had. Sleeping or otherwise," Sonny admitted. "This is what I thought about every morning when I opened my eyes. Even in the good times, when Claire and I were happy. What I found with her was what I wanted. What we made was what I wanted and I'll never regret it so long as I live. I like where I am now.”
He paused, considering his next words carefully.
“But I'd be lying if I didn't say I was always thinking about this. About touching you again, hearing your voice. When you showed up two weeks ago, out of nowhere, I... I felt like it was meant to be. That maybe I'd worked my way back around to you, just like I was always supposed to."
Rafael had never wanted Sonny to hurt. It was the reason he'd ended things the first time, to give Sonny the chance to have everything he ever wanted, more than Rafael could give him. And on nights when his pain was the worst, when he had longed for Sonny the most, knowing he was happy had made it bearable.
But knowing that Sonny wanted him too, has missed him, had ached for Rafael the same way Rafael had ached for him, gave him a pleasure he didn't want to admit.
He had regrets. He regretted every day he had missed, the years wasted when they could have been together. But having seen Sonny with his children, even his face when he spoke about them here, he wouldn't want to steal that from him, even if his jealous heart wanted back the years he had thrown away.
"I wanted this too," he said instead. "I thought about it every day, from the day you left. Nothing ever changed for me."
Sonny beamed.
Bright, happy.
Relieved.
As though Rafael would have thrown him from his chambers, forbidden him from walking over the threshold in the first place. It baffled him to think that Sonny wouldn't have known what this was for him. What Sonny was to him. And while he might stay bitter over their lost years, while he might still burn with jealousy at the thought of the woman who'd shared Sonny's heart for so long, he would never again dare to assume that he knew better than Sonny himself what Sonny wanted or needed. It was the first step Rafael could take in winning back the heart he'd so deeply bruised all those years ago - he would let Sonny choose for himself.
"I'm older now," Rafael reminded him, even if the word themselves tempted him to flinch. "I'm probably meaner, I have less patience than I ever had. My back hurts sometimes and my glasses aren't just to turn you on anymore. But I'm yours, Sonny. All of me, if that's what you want."
Sonny grinned.
"I'm a father co-parenting three horrible, wonderful children with mouths and accents. I've recently found myself cursing 'the music nowadays' and the gadgets I don't understand anymore," Sonny told him happily, holding Rafael's hand a little tighter. "My knees pop when I get out of bed and I haven't seen a new movie in pretty close to five years now. I still let my coffee sit a little too long in the morning, I still work long hours, and there's not a single part of me that doesn't want all of you."
Sonny's eyes crinkled as he smiled. "But I still think we should start with a drink before you move in."
Rafael blinked, and laughed. It bubbled up out of him with a giddiness he hadn't felt in years, a mix of delight and disbelief and love that he didn't know he could still feel. "Wait, before I move in?"
"Oh yeah, I got a house out in Queens." Sonny was openly grinning now, and still holding Rafael's hand. "You're probably still in some one bedroom on the Upper West side, right? I've got three kids, man."
It was a sentence he'd never heard from Sonny, one that would have been out of place in the man he'd grown to love those years ago, but it still sounded like him. It still felt like it fit.
Somehow, inexplicably, it felt like Rafael could fit too.
"Do you have a minivan too?" Rafael quipped, not quite able to wipe the smile from his face. "Do you argue with the other moms at the bake sales?"
"No, actually. I arrest them because all the blonde bobs in the world can't convince me their half-assed bundt cakes are better than my made-from-scratch cannoli."
"What are their names?" he asked, both because he had to and because he wanted to know. Sonny's children, who were part of him, and who would be part of Rafael's life too, if this wasn't all some kind of hallucination born of too much longing.
Sonny looked pleased at the question, scooted a little closer.
"Evie - Evelyn - is the oldest, then Leo. The baby is Veronica."
"No Dominick the third?" he asked, only partly seriously because he knew that Sonny wouldn't have named a child after himself no matter how much he loved the father that had given it to him.
"Nah. He deserves his own name."
"Evie, Leo, and Veronica." Rafael tried the names out, watching Sonny's face and how it shone when he spoke about his children. "And what do they call you?"
"Dad, Daddy. Nothing too exciting."
"Nothing too ridiculous, I'm impressed." Rafael smirked, and Sonny rolled his eyes even has he grinned. Rafael squeezed his hand. "Alright. Now tell me everything else."
"Yeah, I can definitely do that." Sonny smiled, and leaned in just a little closer. "There's just one thing I gotta do first."
Rafael had dreamed of this moment for ten years, of the way Sonny’s hand would again reach out to cradle his cheek, the way he’d lean in, their noses just brushing, sharing the same breath and the same space and the same moment before their lips finally met again.
Of course, he had imagined it differently, depending on the year, depending on how bitter or heartbroken or hopeful he was at any given time. But even his favorite fantasies, of chasing after Sonny, or striding across the squadroom to claim him as his own, or even just never being stupid enough to let him go in the first place, none of them could possibly compare to this moment here.
Sonny’s fingers brushed lightly over his cheek, and his eyes were even more impossibly blue up close, and when finally he closed the space between them, Rafael felt as if his heart had grown so full that it might just burst.
It wouldn’t matter if it did. Sonny Carisi was here in front of him, touching him, holding him, and Rafael could die a happy man after believing for so long that he’d never know what it meant to be happy again.
But he’d much rather stay right here in this moment, his hands again finding their place against Sonny’s hips, his lips opening against his as he drank in the sweet taste he had never again hoped to savor. For several long seconds the rest of the world fell away. The years, the heartbreak. The mistakes Rafael would forever answer for and the happiness that Sonny managed to carve out for himself anyway. There was only the two of them, the tentative press of skin and the soft sighs of Sonny’s breathing as Rafael teased at the seam of his lips.
It was Sonny who broke the kiss, when it finally did end. It had to be, as Rafael never could be the one to pull himself away from the lips he had spent over a decade longing to kiss, the love he had never let go.
Sonny looked down at him, the same blue eyes bright, and smiled.
“Merry Christmas, Rafael.” He stoked his thumb over Rafael's cheek, gently. “Let's start with that drink.”