Chapter Text
He isn’t sure how long he’s been here. He isn’t sure how long he’ll be kept here. That’s what it feels like, as necessary as it may be, it feels like they’re forcing him to stay, to give them everything he simultaneously wants to get rid of and keep to himself, even though he’d agreed to it. He’d agreed to do this, to see this through, to do what he knows is the right thing and what he would’ve encouraged anyone else in his position to do.
That doesn’t make it any easier. Opening his eyes to unfamiliar faces hovering above him, strange hands probing at him and making him involuntarily cry out in pain, had been traumatic, he’d thought, but this is somehow worse. The waiting almost always seems to be worse.
They've been professional, respectful, but of course they have, what other option is there? What else could he have expected?
They’d recognized his name, if not his face, that much had been clear from the start, though he's never personally met a single one of them. It's something he's wondered about before, though: do they think about the people they see day to day? Do they remember the names and the fear and the pain, or is it so heartbreakingly commonplace that once a victim is out the door, those brief few hours of shared history disappears, too? Will they remember this night, the hours spent with him, once he’s left the hospital? Some of his own memories of the cases he's taken on over the years have faded, though he hates to admit it. The simple truth is he can't afford to keep every single one fresh, it'd drive him straight to madness. Still, he wonders if he should feel guilty about forgetting those names and faces, or if those victims, those people, would be glad for it.
"Mr. Barba?"
Rafael's mind had drifted but now he refocuses on the woman standing in front of him. She's Jasmine, she's his nurse, she's here to help. Her hair is long and inky black, it shines under the too bright lights that give him a headache even with the morphine flowing through him, and the way it’s tied back in a simple ponytail reminds him of the way Yelina would wear her hair back in high school. Jasmine's eyes are darker but kinder than Yelina's, at least the Yelina he'd last met. That Yelina had seemed more like a stranger than anything else, just like Alex. Two of the people he’d loved most as a young man had turned out to be two people he never wants to have to speak to again. It hurts to think of them. It hurts to think at all.
"Everything happens for a reason, Rafi, God has a plan for us all."
Rafael wonders if his abuelita would still be saying that if she could see him now. He thinks of her rosary, safely tucked away in the drawer of the nightstand on his side of the bed. Should he pray when he gets home? He knows what answer he'd get from the only other person he'd ask.
"Mr. Barba?"
Jasmine's asked the same question twice now, and Rafael blinks at her, finally offering a cautious and barely perceptible shake of his head.
"Not right now.” The words come slowly. Heat colors his cheeks. “After, maybe. Probably."
"You're sure? The process can be--"
"I know," he says flatly. "I'm familiar with the process."
There's a flash of guilt in Jasmine's eyes. It makes Rafael regret his tone, but she powers through his attitude. It's what she's trained to do, she doesn't waver. Her kind, understanding smile isn't something Rafael will soon forget and neither is her patience.
They go through most of it in silence, save for the occasional directions and explanations Jasmine gently offers to Rafael and the answers he returns to her.
She swabs around his mouth and gums and tongue then brushes underneath his fingernails where he knows there's evidence. Rafael had thought to scratch. She has to help him undress over a stark, white towel, in case traces of evidence might still be attached to his clothes, but keeps him modest by giving him a horrifically ugly hospital gown to cover himself. They’d taken his lavender dress shirt, a gift from his mother, while working on him in the ER because of the injuries to his abdomen, but Rafael tries to keep his nausea at bay as he watches how carefully Jasmine handles his pants (an expensive pair, damn it, Cucinelli) because there's no doubt of the DNA left there. He imagines his suit jacket is in a bag somewhere in the hospital, along with the rest of his belongings, handed off to a nurse by an EMT upon their arrival in the ambulance bay. His phone will be in that bag and the fingers of his one good hand twitch at the thought.
Normally, he'd feel more naked without his phone than his clothes. For the moment, though, the absence of any means of communication seems like a blessing.
There'd been no penetration, Rafael had told Jasmine bluntly, it hadn’t gotten that far, so he's spared additional swabbing but is still subjected to the black light. She finds what they'd both expected on his thigh and gently scrapes a sample that will surely match what's found on his pants. He's to provide a urine sample to test for STIs, as a precautionary measure, but for now, Rafael grudgingly takes the prophylaxis provided. He agrees, too, to let Jasmine take photos of his injuries.
There's a sizable list:
A spiral fracture to his right wrist. He’s to come back for follow-up x-rays to determine whether he’ll need surgery to fix it.
A gash at the back of his head. It’d required stitches, he definitely has a concussion and needs to be woken up every two hours over a twenty-four hour period to make sure his responses remain normal.
A split lip, bruises already visible on his right cheekbone, jawline, and temple, a nondisplaced nasal fracture. These will heal on their own, he’s assured. By tomorrow, he'll have a black eye.
Three fractured ribs on his right side. They make it hard to take deep breaths but hadn't punctured any major organs.
He can't remember bits and pieces of what had happened, but the doctor seems to think that's normal. It's part of the concussion, it isn't uncommon, it may come back to him with time. A part of Rafael quietly hopes none of it ever will.
It takes a couple hours overall, the clock reads midnight when Jasmine wheels him to a private room and tells him he can rest and is there anyone he'd like called for him now?
"Your emergency contact, maybe?" she asks, almost pointedly.
Rafael's eyes narrow. "No. No, not him." Not now, he needs time to process everything first, and he doesn't think he can do that with puppy dog eyes dutifully watching him, willing him to be okay when really, Rafael is anything but. "You're familiar with Lieutenant Olivia Benson?"
"Oh, yes," Jasmine says. "As I'm sure you’re well aware, SVU hears from us too often."
Rafael nods. "I'd appreciate if someone could call her for me. Don't-- Don't tell her everything. Just let her know I'm asking for her and that I'd prefer it if she didn't mention it to anyone else."
If Jasmine thinks that's odd, she doesn't make a show of it. Instead, she says, "Of course" and "if you need anything at all, just push that button," then leaves the room.
When she shuts the door behind her, she shuts Rafael in with the silence and his thoughts and the vague but ever-present smell of antiseptic.
--
Liv gets the call ten past midnight. The caller ID reads Mercy General.
For a brief, awful second, she almost considers letting it got to voicemail because technically, she’s not supposed to be at the precinct at all. The only reason she’d come in was to catch up on paperwork on the one night this week Lucy had been able to work the extra hours to watch Noah. What a godsend Lucy is, Liv thinks to herself as she taps the answer button on her phone.
“This is Benson,” she greets, absently flipping through the still far too high pile of case reports awaiting her review.
“Hi, Lieutenant Benson,” a tinny voice says from the other line, “this is Rebecca with Mercy General. I’m calling because we have a Rafael Barba here who requested we reach out to you.”
Liv frowns, entirely convinced that she’s heard that all wrong because why the hell would Barba be having someone call for him from the hospital? “I’m sorry, what? Is he there with you right now?”
Had someone Barba knows gotten hurt? That’s the only thought she allows herself to believe because the alternative is--
“No, Lieutenant, I’m sorry. EMS brought Mr. Barba in a few hours ago, he was injured. I’m afraid I can’t go into much more detail than that over the phone.”
“Okay.”
Okay. Paperwork forgotten, she stands from her desk, glancing out her window to the bullpen where she can see Carisi playfully tossing a crumpled piece of paper at Amanda, who expertly manages to knock it off course with her palm. She watches Carisi’s grin grow wider then pictures Barba lying in a hospital bed and her stomach turns.
“He has an emergency contact on file,” Liv says, “nobody’s called him?”
“Mr. Barba asked us not to do that,” Rebecca tells her. “He specifically requested that we contact you. Are you going to be able to make it down here?”
“Yes, yes,” Liv answers hurriedly, reaching for the leather jacket that’s draped on the back of her chair, giving it a shake to ensure she hears the jingle of keys inside. “Of course I can, I’ll be there in the next fifteen to twenty.”
Rebecca promises to get that message relayed to Barba, but Liv barely remembers the walk from her office to Carisi and Amanda’s desks until she’s standing right in front of the two. For too long a beat, her eyes linger on Carisi, who tilts his head at her with a curious expression.
“Everything good, Lieu? Noah’s okay, isn’t he?”
“Noah’s fine, Carisi,” Liv says. She sees Amanda straighten up in her chair just slightly out of the corner of her eye. “I got a call from Mercy General, that’s all. They want me to come down for something.”
“We can go,” Amanda says. Her tone is a little too casual for it to be a genuine offer. It’s closer to a test, she knows something’s wrong, and Liv fixes her with a look that hints at practicing caution. Amanda merely shrugs a shoulder. “You weren’t supposed to be here tonight, anyway.”
“Yeah, Lieu,” Carisi chimes in, “we can handle it, give yourself a break.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Liv tells them. Amanda narrows her eyes, and Liv makes a point of ignoring that. “You two hold down the fort while I’m gone.”
“You got it, boss,” Carisi agrees.
Her detective leans back in his chair with a mildly bored sigh, and Liv is tempted to ask if he has any paperwork left to be working on but manages to stop herself. That’s going to be the least of Carisi’s worries in the very near future.
--
A number of possibilities run through Liv’s mind during her drive to the hospital.
It could be nothing, she tells herself, but she’s also sure that it isn’t. Barba would have called her himself if it was about something minor. At the same time, he’s apparently well enough for the nurses to consider him properly able to actively make decisions about declining to contact his emergency contact and go straight to her instead. By the time she parks her car, Liv has convinced herself that nothing too awful has happened, and Barba probably just doesn’t want to suffer the embarrassment of calling anyone else to come pick him up from his visit to the ER. It’s a slip-and-fall, something ridiculous, maybe he’d dropped a glass and cut his hand. Barba’s just fine.
Whatever small sense of relief she’d provided herself from settling on that scenario immediately leaves her when Jasmine, a SANE she’s known from various cases for a couple years now, is the one to greet her halfway down the hall.
“How bad is it?” Liv asks immediately. She dreads the answer.
Jasmine gives her a tight but reassuring smile, though what she says is nothing near what Liv wants to hear. “I think it’s best if I just take you to him.”
It isn’t too far a walk, just a few rooms down the long stretch of hallway, and Jasmine only stays long enough to make sure Barba’s as comfortable as he can be before leaving the two of them alone.
The silence between them is deafening as Liv takes it all in, and Barba makes no effort to speak as he watches her study him.
There’s swelling and bruising under his eye and alongside his cheek to his jaw, the ugly cut on his lip nearly makes her visibly cringe. Barba's normally healthily tanned skin looks pallid under the fluorescent lights of the hospital room, and the pale blue and white of his gown only serve to give him the appearance of someone much older than he really is. The gray in his messy hair seems to stand out all the more, so do the lines on his face, and that's only what she can see on the surface. There’s an IV needle in his arm indicative of pain bad enough to require a flow of medication and as her eyes travel downward from Barba's face, she takes note of the half cast traveling up his right arm.
She’s afraid to ask the question, the one she knows Barba is waiting for her to ask, so she stalls.
"This isn't your best look, Barba," she says. The joke falls flat but Barba chuckles anyway, to save her from embarrassment. It doesn't work, and Liv regrets saying it enough that she moves to change the subject without much more hesitation. "You know there's someone else at the precinct who should be here instead, right? Please don't tell me you and Carisi are having a lovers’ spat."
Barba rolls his eyes, dramatically enough that it has to hurt, but he manages not to let that show through. "Sonny and I are fine, thanks for your concern. I just thought you might want to hear what happened without my other half around to influence the narrative."
His other half.
This isn’t the first time Liv has heard Barba refer to Carisi using that particular term. He’d shifted the way he’d talked about Carisi over the course of the year since they’d disclosed. They’d both been happy enough to use the word “boyfriend” at first, though she’d heard it more freely from Carisi; but at a certain point, Barba had seemed to turn his nose up at the term. Liv had assumed until this moment that’d only been because he’d found it juvenile.
At forty-seven, Barba is hardly a "boy" and neither is Carisi, never mind the fact that there's an age difference between the two Barba probably doesn't want to draw attention to in the first place. It only occurs to her now that terms like "other half" seem to infer something much more serious, something more permanent. Barba uses carefully selected phrases like "other half" or "better half" or "partner" because, Liv realizes, he's cluing anyone who's listening in on what his relationship with Sonny really means to him. It isn't a fling, not a mid-life crisis or a booty call, all these things people have had the gall to say the relationship is to Barba's face.
It's taken some time for Liv, for the entire squad, to accept that what Barba and Carisi have is real but now that they have, it all seems perfectly natural. It's difficult to ignore how happy they clearly make each other when a dimpled, grinning Carisi returns from lunch with Barba. Even more so, it's frankly impossible to ignore a smiling Barba after he's been on the receiving end of those dimples.
"What do you mean 'influence the narrative'?" Liv asks, returning her mind to the present and far more pressing moment.
Barba hesitates at her quizzical expression, then shrugs a shoulder before he can think better of it, following it with a pained groan. Liv almost reaches out to him, one hand hovering over his prone form, but it's futile. There's nothing she can do, no way to take away his pain. She doesn't need to say anything about it for Barba to know how much she hates that. If she could, Liv would take on all the pain in the world to keep the people she cares about safe. She’d desperately like to get her hands on whoever’s done this to Barba, she can feel a familiar sense of vengefulness bubbling inside her. She buries it, for the time being, swallowing hard as she steps forward and offers a weak smile. Barba doesn't need to be avenged right now, she thinks. He'd called her, specifically, here for a reason, and she doesn’t think it’s just because he’d wanted her to hear what happened first.
"I mean,” Rafael says, “I don't know how forthcoming I'll be about the uglier details if he's right there next to me."
The unspoken admission is that he wants to spare Sonny the facts. Hell, Rafael wants to spare himself the facts, he wants to get a repeat of this entire evening so he can avoid going to that bar and having a run-in with that man and choosing that time to leave. Instead, he's here, lying in a hospital bed with pain that's only been dulled by medication that's starting to wear off, and he doesn't want to have to recount the story at all. Prosecutors make terrible victims, as it turns out.
"He needs to know, too," Liv urges gently. "You can't keep the truth from him and even if you could, he deserves better than that."
"It's not about what he deserves, Liv."
Rafael averts his gaze from his friend's, staring instead down at his flimsy, cotton bedsheet and tugging at a loose thread he finds. Nobody's going to expect him to be on his game after what's happened, Barba is fully aware of that, but that doesn't mean he wants to take advantage of low expectations. He can't let this get to him, there’s too much he’s responsible for, too much to do.
He wants to go home, he'll be fine, it's not even that bad.
These are all arguments he'd tried with the doctors and nurses but none of them would release him without someone to accompany him out of the hospital. He shouldn't be alone, they'd told him, not only because of his head injury but because of the trauma associated with it.
That's why he'd called Liv. If Sonny were here and had gotten wind of the fact that the doctors wanted to keep Rafael overnight to monitor for any signs of a worsening concussion, there'd be no winning that argument.
That's when he'd known how much he really loved Sonny, he thinks tangentially, when he'd finally and willingly let Sonny win an argument. It'd been over something absurdly minor, Italian for dinner again over Thai again, but he'll never forget the look of surprised victory on Sonny's face. This time around, he'd much rather deal with the fallout of Sonny being angry with him at leaving against medical advice rather than be forced to stay.
This is the part he's been dreading, though, the part where he's supposed to talk about why he's here. It’s not as if Liv doesn’t have some semblance of an idea of what’s happened, being escorted into the room by a SANE isn’t exactly a subtle clue. At the very least, he can offer the relatively good news that things hadn’t gone as horribly as they could have tonight. Granted, it’s not even a particularly good consolation for himself so he’s not sure how well that will go over with Liv.
She’s studying him now, and he briefly meets her gaze. She sighs, though it thankfully doesn’t seem to be out of frustration. Maybe it’s just a dose of fear over what she thinks he might tell her. "Rafael," she says softly, carefully reaching for his uninjured hand, “what happened tonight?"
"I wasn't raped," he clarifies immediately, then sighs, his cheeks tinting pink. "Not technically."
Her scoff surprises him, shocks enough sudden irritation out of him that he looks up at her again but finds nothing but the purest form of anguish when he meets her eyes. It's the kind of expression she'd reserve not for a colleague but for a friend, for someone who matters to her, and Rafael isn't sure whether that leaves him warm or cold, considering the circumstances.
"I wasn't," he insists, squeezing her hand, and he can see her shoulders visibly relax. She believes him. He's relieved. "Assaulted, yes, obviously. I stopped by Whiskey Tavern for some dinner and a drink after work. There was a man there." He frowns, his brow creasing with frustration. "I don't remember his name. Some things are still fuzzy, he-- well, he came onto me. I declined, politely." He ignores Liv's arched brow. "He followed me out and forced me into the alleyway next to the bar. I resisted, he grabbed me and turned me around, twisted my arm. I heard the break."
Rafael hears it with a jolt now, too, echoing in his ears, and he feels like he’s back there now. He feels a bit like he's floating, in fact, and it's not due to the low dose of morphine in his system. A part of him feels like he isn't all here, isn't entirely present, like he's watching someone else talk about this awful thing that's happened. Usually, Rafael is on the receiving end of a story like this, that's what he's used to and that's certainly, selfishly, what he prefers.
He swallows hard, wishing away the sheen of sweat on his forehead. "He slammed my head against the wall then forced me to get on my knees,” he continues, mechanically now, like he’s reading a transcript of a trauma that isn’t his own. “He unzipped his pants, he was erect. He told me to open my mouth, I refused, he hit me. Then he hit me again, I hit the ground that time so he started kicking instead."
The doctors have told him there isn’t much to do in the way of treatment for his broken ribs. Nothing had pierced his lungs, there'd been no pneumothorax, no pleural effusion, and it's all supposed to Very Good News. He slips his hand from Liv’s to lift it to the tender spot at his temple where there’s a bump growing, his fingertips grazing over it. That will be one of the first things Sonny sees tonight, and Rafael’s chest constricts at the thought of being the reason his partner's infectious smile disappears.
"Anyway," he continues, weariness weighing him down, creeping into his tone, "that's when someone came out. Apparently. Something like that, I don't really know, I was too out of it at that point to understand what was going on. The guy who attacked me ran. I scraped at him with my nails, the nurse already swabbed." His voice catches in his throat before he manages to finish what he needs to share. "He got off on it, hurting me. The guy came on me, Liv, on my suit." He smiles weakly, hot tears welling in his eyes. "Can't just take it to the dry cleaner's now that it's in an evidence bag."
His stomach churns and he clutches at it because he’s worried he might actually lean over the bed rail and throw up on the floor. Liv’s on her feet, looking at him with the concern he wishes he didn’t have to see, and his eyes find the blinding lights on the ceiling. He stares in silence with unshed tears burning until his vision whites out and he blinks Liv back into focus because she's speaking. Her mouth is moving and Rafael hadn't even realized it until right this second so he does his best to catch up.
"--get him, Rafael. I promise you, I'll get CSU and TARU on it, we'll pull video feeds from everywhere within the vicinity of the bar, we'll interview the person who found you, we'll do it all. We're going to find him."
Rafael hums, a noncommittal sound that bears no real meaning behind it. There’s real exhaustion settling in now that he's told her, now that she has a better understanding of why he's struggling with what he wants Sonny to know. He doesn’t want to lie to Sonny, and he won’t. It’s just that he’d needed a little bit of time before he going into full detail in his partner’s presence. He knows he’ll have to give another statement, a more detailed one, but he’d needed this. Telling Liv the truth makes it impossible for him to even consider keeping it from anyone else, it’s a push he’d had to give himself. Even just that minuscule sense of control is something Rafael is grasping for, and he thinks Liv knows what that’s like. She's been through that and judging by the way she’s looking at him, with that softened expression and hint of sadness in her eyes, Rafael imagines it must be suddenly so clear why he'd wanted to see her first.
"I am here for you," Liv tells him, making sure to hold his gaze, to keep her voice steady but gentle.
"Thank you," Rafael says, and he doesn't know what else to say but he hopes his tone encompasses well enough how much gratitude he really does have for her. She's the closest thing to a best friend he's had since Alex and Eddie, mostly because he'd gone out of his way for years to avoid any real kind of emotional connection with anyone. Rafael has seen the worst of people, the ever deeper bottom of each barrel, and as much as he truly does love his job, there's no way that doesn't eat at a person on a certain level. Not many people have the patience to push past his prickly layers, but Liv does. The rest of the squad does, to an extent. Sonny, by far, is the most patient of them all.
Sonny.
Tugging at the collar of his gown, Rafael wrinkles his nose and his look to Liv turns pleading. "Get me out of you here, will you? They said they didn't see any hemorrhaging in my brain scans, but they're worried about the fuzzy memory. Won't let me out without an adult to hold my hand and make sure I don’t fall asleep more than a couple hours at a time, but I can't stay. I can't. I need to see Sonny."
"Friendly reminder that he could've come to you if you'd called him," Liv tells him, a half-heartedly teasing lecture that Rafael only grimaces at, but she doesn't seem to intend to resist his pleas. "I'll get the paperwork rolling, they'll want you to sign a few things, and they'll need to write you a script for meds." She knows, she remembers. Rafael doesn't comment on it other than to grunt his understanding. "He’s at the precinct. Should I take you home, have him meet us there?”
“No. No, I’m not ready to go home.” He’s not ready to close his eyes, to risk reliving this night yet again in his nightmares. “Just take me to the precinct.”
Liv hesitates but nods. “Do you want me to call him before we head over?”
Rafael considers this for a moment, doing his best to quickly weigh which option would be better: surprise his partner by showing up with a mangled face, stitches, and a newly acquired cast or try to convince Sonny not to come straight to the hospital when they're already meant to be leaving? Neither sounds particularly appealing.
“We'll see him when we get there," Rafael decides, somewhat shamefully. It’ll give him more time to anticipate Sonny’s reaction, anyway, and how best to respond to it. Silver linings.
Liv is quiet for a moment, examining him to the point of mild discomfort on his end over being so closely scrutinized, but then she gets up and heads for the door. "I'll be right back, you'll barely know I was gone."
Rafael leans back against his pillow once she leaves the room, returning his gaze to the ceiling lights and breathing a heavy sigh. The trip to the precinct, as desperately as he wants to be there just for the comforting presence that awaits him, is not going to be a pleasant one. He closes his eyes, his lips pressing into a thin line.
Sonny is going to lose his mind.