Chapter Text
“So, forty-nine. Any big plans, Liv?”
Rafael tunes out of the conversation, despite the nagging feeling that there is something important about Olivia’s 49th birthday that he is just on the edge of remembering.
He’s sure Tucker has planned something nice, because it seems like the kind of thing Tucker would do, and he just… doesn’t particularly want to hear about it. They’re months removed from the St. Fabiola’s case and everything it had torn up between them, and he and Olivia have been back on solid ground for a while, but part of that solid ground is that they don’t talk about Tucker.
They had come to this decision without actually saying a single word about it between the two of them, and while he prefers that to any of the myriad awkward conversations he’s imagined they could have had to arrive at the same decision, none of it really sits quite right with him. Olivia being unwilling to talk to him about Tucker had been what had caused problems before.
Yes, he’d been upset that she was further complicating a case that had been a total mess from the moment it had started, and yes, more than anything else he’d been jealous as hell. But he’d been hurt too, hurt that she had felt like she couldn’t tell him when he thought they were friends, when he knew they were friends and felt that they were finally getting past everything surrounding the Terrence Reynolds shooting. The fact that they apparently hadn’t told anyone else either wasn’t actually particularly comforting, no matter how much he tried to convince himself that it was.
So they don’t talk about Tucker, and Rafael is cordial to him on the rare occasions he runs into him at the precinct, and everything is fine. Everything is good. Except…
“Having second thoughts already, Barba?”
“What?” he asks, pulling himself out of his thoughts to find Olivia looking at him, half worried and half amused, and there it is again, the feeling that there is something vital that he cannot quite remember.
“Having second thoughts about being able to get us the warrant?” she asks, nodding at the folder in his hand, and he shakes his head, in response and in an attempt to realign his thoughts to the matter at hand.
“No, this should be fine. Sorry, I-” Do you remember what it is? Would you tell me, if I asked? Do you think it’s important? “I’ll talk to Barth, should have what you need in a couple hours.”
“Thanks. Talk to you then.” Olivia turns back to her squad, and Rafael fights the urge to stare after her, heading towards the elevators.
Once inside, he tilts his head back against the wall, closing his eyes with a sigh. He concentrates on the tug in his gut, trying to nudge his brain into catching on to whatever it was about that particular sentence of Olivia’s that had almost jogged his memory.
And what about you? Having second thoughts, Rafael?
“Fuck,” he says with feeling as memories come flooding back, like tugging on that one string of familiarity had unraved everything else. All of a sudden, remembering Olivia’s breath against his cheek and her voice very, very close to his ear and the way his arm had fit around her shoulders, he’s not entirely sure that his knees aren’t going to give out. At least he’s alone, so he can lean more of his weight back against the elevator wall and concentrate on his breathing.
Figuring out what he’s going to do once the doors are open is another matter entirely.
-------------
Barba settles onto the stool next to her, but she doesn’t bother looking at him. She doesn’t need to look to know it’s him, and if she was in a slightly different mood, she might dwell on that thought, that she is so aware of Barba, so familiar with the way he moves that she knows it’s him just from the feeling of him next to her.
But she isn’t in that mood, and all she wants to do in her actual mood is to drink this glass of wine and continue drinking glasses of wine until Tony stops bringing them to her. Then she’ll catch a cab home, hopefully just drunk enough that she can pass out in bed and sleep without any nightmares, and hopefully before Brian gets home from his shift so she has an excuse not to talk to him.
Right on cue, Barba asks, “You didn’t want to get home, after the week we’ve had?”
She wants to make a joke that wouldn’t really be a joke about how all their weeks are like this, but again, all her current mood allows for is wine. And because she’s already had a glass and a half on top of the exhaustion of week after week of weeks they’ve had and the lingering horribleness of Lewis’s trial, of having everything she’d gone through splashed out into the open for everyone to stare at on top of having to think about it herself, she answers him more honestly than she otherwise might have.
“Brian has a late shift tonight, and I don’t want to go home to an empty apartment.”
She’s also just drunk-exhausted enough to let herself really simmer in her anger for a few moments about how fucking unfair the universe is being about this, that she can’t bear the thought of going back to an empty apartment without feeling like her heart is about to bust out of her chest, but she also dreads the next time Brian is home, because the next time she sees him they’re going to have to talk, and then she’ll be alone again, because she wants and Brian doesn’t.
But none of that- wanting or Brian or empty apartments- is on the list of things she is going to think about in her current mood. That list consists of wine and nothing else, so she finishes off her current glass and nods at Tony when he brings her another one, then glances sideways at the tumbler of scotch he leaves in front of Barba, even as she feels him settle more solidly onto his stool next to her.
He really needs to stop that, the whole moving in her general vicinity thing, because Barba and all the ways he has felt familiar to her practically since they met is also not on the list of things she is going to think about tonight, and certainly not the curiosity that sometimes tugs at the back of her mind about whether Rafael Barba wants and her own thoughts on that particular subject.
“What are you doing?”
“Drinking with you, which by definition prevents you from having to drink alone. Although I hope you don’t expect me to catch up with you, I’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning that I’d rather not be hungover for.”
Olivia resents his mentioning tomorrow, which is also not on her list. “And if I want to drink alone?” She finally looks at him, just in time to catch the flash of hurt and guilt on his face, but then it’s gone and he just shrugs.
“Then I’ll sit here and drink alone, and you’ll sit there and drink alone, but at least we’ll be drinking alone together.”
Her own laugh surprises her, and if his smirk is anything to go by, he’s pretty pleased with himself about that. She wants to be annoyed again, but she can also see the way his shoulders drop just slightly as the last clinging bits of tension leave him and he fully relaxes next to her, taking a long drink from his scotch.
Olivia holds out her glass towards him, and it’s his turn to laugh as he clinks his against it.
“To drinking alone together, then.”
---------------
“Momma!”
Olivia is pulled out of her thoughts by Noah’s voice, and by the gentle but insistent way he’s attempting to press another Lego block into her hand. She laughs, taking it from him and adding it to the misshapen creation they’ve been working on for the past half hour.
“Sorry, sweet boy, Momma was distracted.” Now that she’s paying attention again, Noah goes back to his own building efforts while she fiddles with the blocks in front of her.
She knows it’s ridiculous that she’s waiting for Rafael to bring it up when she could just as easily do it herself, especially because she isn’t even sure if he actually remembers. He hadn’t been quite as drunk as she had been-- and neither of you was actually drunk enough to do this sort of thing , says a voice in her head that she has been choosing to ignore for the past month or so--, so she feels like it should be his responsibility to start the conversation. Which, again, is ridiculous, and she really thinks that the ridiculousness of the entire situation should make it easier to talk about.
If it’s so ridiculous, then how come you still have the ring?
She’d worn it home that night, and when she’d woken up the next morning, hungover and glad that Brian was still asleep for multiple reasons, she had stashed it in her bedside table. It would have been rude to get rid of it immediately, especially since it was, after all, the only engagement ring she’d ever actually received from someone who cared about her, plastic and garish as it was. And every time she’d opened the drawer and caught sight of it, stuck in a corner or trapped against the side by a book or a file, she’d tell herself that it was a gift from a friend and was thus to be treasured, even if all it really was was a cheap joke they’d made together after too many drinks.
Yesterday, after Ed had stopped by to pick up the last of his things, Olivia had sat on her bed for what must have been a half hour, turning the ring over between her fingers. When they’d bought the rings, her relationship with Brian had been crumbling because she wanted things he didn’t, and now she’s sitting in the ruins of another, despite that fact that she now has some of those things and Ed had seemed ready to offer her at least of few more of them.
Maybe she really was just fundamentally incapable of holding on to anything good when it came to her relationships.
Except for that ring, of course.
She knows she’s been using Ed as an excuse not to say anything, to let Rafael bring it up first. It had been a good excuse up until a week ago, because she didn’t think that it was fair to anyone involved to mention to the man she was in a good, solid, long-term relationship with that a few years ago she’d gotten drunk and made a sort of pact with her co-worker-best-friend-maybe-probably-something-more that if they were both single when she turned forty-nine, they’d get married. And that she’d kept the rinky-dink ring that he’d bought for her from the gashapon outside the bodega down the street from Forlini’s. And that since the last time she’d accidentally reminded herself about the ring, just after Christmas, pretty much all of her very sparse free moments of thought, between Noah and work and Ed, have been spent wondering if Rafael remembers, if he’s going to say anything, if she should say something herself and once again risk the balance that they’ve so recently returned to.
Olivia might genuinely wonder if it would be better for both of them to just leave it alone, except the thought of that sits heavily in her gut, sharp-edged and unpleasant, as intolerable an idea as getting rid of the ring for reasons she cannot quite articulate but feels very deeply rooted in her chest. As she watches Noah remove several pieces from his Lego sculpture so he can move them to other places, and absent-mindedly adds another piece herself, she steels herself into a decision, because she and Rafael are adults and they’re friends and not talking about things has only ever gotten them into bad spots.
Her birthday. It’s in a week, and that was the original deadline anyway, so if Rafael hasn’t said anything by then, she’ll bring it up, even if it’s just to make a joke in passing. She ignores the voice in her head that insists that just deciding to keep waiting isn’t actually a decision, and concentrates on helping Noah click a particularly stubborn block into place.
One week, and then she’ll know… well, at the very least she’ll know what to do with the ring.
---------------
He’d been the one to suggest they move to a booth, because Olivia is steadily working her way through what he’s pretty sure is her fifth glass of wine and it had seemed prudent to move to more stable seating than the bar stools. He’s also now had two tumblers of scotch himself in about thirty minutes on top of an exhausting week-- month? year?--, and despite his joke to Olivia that he hopes she’s not expecting him to catch up with her, he appreciates the fact that he can sink back into the corner of his seat with his own drink now.
Plus, sitting across from her makes it easier to watch her without feeling creepy about darting his eyes over to check on her every few seconds. She’s watching a couple at the bar, two women smiling and flirting, leaning their shoulders against each other, and Rafael can see the rings on their fingers from here. Olivia sighs, staring down into her drink for a few seconds before draining half the glass in one go.
“Must be nice,” she says, glancing at him quickly before returning her gaze to the couple.
“Yeah,” he replies, although it’s more of a breath into the space between them than an actual word, because he suspects there is more she wants to say, and he wants to prompt her without scaring her off.
“To have someone like that, I mean. Someone who loves you and wants to make absolutely sure that the world knows that. Forsaking all others, and all that.”
“Yeah,” he repeats, and then, feeling like he’s stepping on uneven, unfamiliar ground in the dark, “Well, you have Cassidy, don’t you?”
“He’s… I don’t think…” She takes another drink, smaller but still substantial, “I don’t think Brian cares about getting married. And I know he doesn’t want-” She cuts herself off, but Rafael has a pretty good guess as to what she was going to say.
He takes his own drink before he responds. “And you do?” She stares at him blankly for a few seconds, and he berates himself for prying, for not just sitting here silently and drinking with her so she doesn’t have to be alone.
“My mother,” she starts, and he manages not to breathe an actual sigh of relief, “She was- I hardly ever knew what exactly would be waiting for me when I got home, growing up. And, I mean, you know what it’s like for kids who are in those sorts of situations. I spent a lot of time imagining what my life would be like once I was out of there, once I could make my own life, my own home, and one of the things I imagined was…” She trails off, and Rafael realizes there’s color high in her cheeks that he doesn’t think is from the wine.
“Spouse, two and a half kids, a dog, and a big house?”
Olivia laughs, nodding. “The whole package. And now I’m an adult, and some of those dreams came true and plenty of others didn’t. And I know, I know, that there are infinite ways to make a home, to make a family, but… it’s hard, I guess, to just let go of something that you wanted so badly for so long. Even if it’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not. It’s- it’s normal,” he says quickly, and Olivia raises her eyebrows at him. “I just mean that everybody wants something. Someone.”
Her eyes are suddenly a lot clearer than they’d been a moment ago, and Rafael finishes his remaining drink in one go. Tony brings them each another one, but Olivia’s gaze doesn’t leave his face even as she thanks the bartender.
“And you, Barba?” she asks, once they’re alone again, “What do you want?”
He swallows hard, fighting the urge to break eye contact. “My mother wants grandchildren.”
“Is she hoping in vain?”
Even two drinks in, he considers his answer carefully. “Family and fatherhood is… complicated for me.” He traces his finger around the rim of his glass, fighting the urge to down the rest of it. “In a perfect world, I think I want those things.”
“And in this one?”
He smiles, hides the expression behind his drink. She never has let him get away with anything.
“In this one, it always seemed better not to really hope for something that seems unlikely to happen.”
Rafael isn’t nearly drunk enough to admit that, and if it was anyone else sitting across from him, he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t have. Olivia Benson seems to have that effect on him.
“And if something happened that made it more likely?”
He shrugs, figuring that there’s no point in trying to change the direction of the conversation now. “I guess I always assumed if something happened someday, then I could figure it all out. That I would know if it was right for me to be a husband.” He swallows hard. “For me to be a father.”
“Well,” she says, holding her glass out to him like she had earlier at the bar, “Here’s to someone and someday, I guess.”
--------------
He leans against the doorframe of Olivia’s office, trying to look nonchalant. His hand is shoved into his pocket, and he twists the ring around between his fingers. If pressed, he’d say it’s more comforting than terrifying, something solid attached to the memory and their history to carry with him, but it wavers between the two.
Olivia smiles when she looks up and sees him, which settles his stomach a bit but kicks his heart into overdrive.
“Rafa, hey. Did you need something?” she asks, moving to sort through the pile of paperwork beside her, but he shakes his head.
“Actually I wanted to ask you something. Can I-?” He gestures at the door, and when Olivia nods he turns to close it, taking advantage of the few moments he has his back turned to her to take a deep breath.
“Something wrong?”
Rafael laughs as he sits in one of the chairs in front of her desk, hoping it covers his nervousness. “Always assuming the worst. Everything’s fine. I just wanted to ask you if you’d let me take you out to dinner. For your birthday. As a present.” She’s giving him a strange look, and he assumes it’s due to the awkward way he’d worded all of that before he realizes his mistake. “We can do it whenever you want. I’m sure Tucker has something planned for the actual evening, and I wouldn’t want to get in the wa-”
“We broke up. Tucker and I.” A pause. “I broke up with him.”
“Oh.” He isn’t sure what to say to that, because they don’t talk about Tucker. And because they don’t talk about Tucker, he has no idea if this is sudden or it had been coming for a while, what could have been the cause, if he’s supposed to comfort her or commiserate with her or just move past it without comment.
“It was last week. I just haven’t had a chance to tell you.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
She shrugs. “You’re my friend. You should know things about my life.”
“Right. I understand completely if you don’t feel like celebrating or anything.”
“No, no. Actually, dinner with my best friend sounds like the best birthday gift I could get.”
“Great,” he says, unable to help his smile, and it grows when she matches it, “Noah is welcome to come along, if you want. I’m sure we can find somewhere decent that serves a good steak and chicken nuggets and whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want, huh?” she asks, and Rafael presses the heel of his palm down against the shape of the ring in his pocket at the glint in her eye. “I’ll have to give that some thought.”
“You name it. Anything you want.” Including my hand in marriage , he thinks, grinding his hand down against his thigh, relying on the slight ache there to keep him from saying that last bit out loud. Marriage pact or no, he can’t just propose to her.
She did .
He swallows against the thought. This isn’t the place or time to bring any of that up. When they go out to dinner, they can talk, and maybe he’ll show her the ring if it doesn’t feel like too much. Or if Noah comes along, they can have a nightcap once he’s in bed and they can talk about it or laugh about it or something . Away from their offices and their co-workers and all the accompanying associations.
“So dinner Monday?”
“If the stars and our caseload align.”
---------------
Olivia scolds herself for watching his throat as he swallows his drink, but she’s pretty sure she’s already had at least a bottle’s worth of wine herself, and her reasons for not staring are very quickly losing the fight against the reasons she can’t seem to stop.
There’s the hollow of his throat, bared by his unbuttoned collar and loosened tie, and the lines of his forearms where he’s pushed his sleeves up to his elbows. His hair is even starting to lose its styling a bit, falling in a soft swoop across his forehead. She’s had to wrap both hands around her own glass several times just to keep herself from reaching out and brushing it back with her fingers.
It’s a lot to handle all at once, the swoopy hair and the length of his fingers wrapped around his glass and the emotional vulnerability.
“Hey,” she says, “I have an idea.”
This is stupid , says the sober part of her brain. Or reckless. Or something. All of the above, really.
“Yeah?” he responds, pressing the rim of his glass against his bottom lip for a moment before he drinks, and the sober part of her brain doesn’t really stand a chance, not when its stuttering over itself as much as any other part.
“Maybe we should just get married.”
Barba chokes on his drink, and his coughing fit lasts so long that she shifts around the table to sit beside him in the booth so she can rub his back.
“Excuse me?” he asks once he’s finally got his breath back, staring at her with wide eyes, but she’s already too far in to let embarrassment stop her now.
“Not right now. Of course not. But what if we… what if we picked a date, sometime in the future, and if we’re both still single on that date, we’ll get married. To each other, I mean.”
“Why?”
She shrugs, reaching across the table to pull her drink towards her. “Because it’s exhausting, all of it. The looking and the waiting and the wanting . So what if we just decided that we’re friends and we want similar things and we-”
“Settled?”
“Does it really feel like settling?” she asks, raising her eyebrows, and he doesn’t seem to have an answer for that. “I think we’re just making a decision, about the things we want and how we can get them and-and… who we might like to spend the rest of our lives with. Plus, I think we see more of each other than any significant other would, and we work well together. If we got married, I could stop worrying about silly childhood wishes and you’ll get a chance to know what you really want.”
“And if… if I find out I only want some of those things?”
Another shrug. This isn’t about perfect matches or happy ever afters, it’s about compromises and making the best of something good and too much wine.
“Then we’ll both have at least some of the things we want, which is more than either of us has right now.”
He’s still staring at her in shock, and she drains her glass to keep herself from babbling more. She’s said her bit, and now it’s in his hands, so she’s just going to sit here and think about what a person does the next Monday at work when they’ve just proposed to their co-worker. It seems prudent to have a plan, since Barba can’t seem to shake the expression like she’d just slapped him, and-
“What’s the date?”
“Sorry?”
“You said we should pick a date. A deadline. Did you have one in mind?”
“Oh. No, not at all. That seemed like something we should probably decide… together.”
“Right. Together. Okay.” She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him this flustered, and she can’t help smiling a little. “What about your fiftieth birthday? What?” he asks, when her smile falls into a grimace.
“Nothing. It’s not important.”
“Hey,” Barba says, nudging her shoulder with his, “You have to talk to me or this marriage will never work.”
That startles a laugh out of her, and his answering smile is pleased. It’s a good look for him.
“It’s ridiculous. It’s just, if we’re picking a date, I think I’d prefer to be married before I’m 50. I know it’s arbitrary and ridiculous and-”
“It’s not. We’ll do your 49th birthday instead, if you want.”
“Yeah. That sounds… So if we’re both single when I turn 49-”
“-We’ll get married.” He sounds a little breathless, and his saying that probably shouldn’t make her heart beat so quickly.
“Well then, I think we need a drink to celebrate,” she says, catching Tony’s eye, and she can feel Barba laughing next to her.
--------------
Lucy had dropped Noah off a few minutes ago, and Olivia had asked Rollins and Carisi to watch him while she finished a couple of things for the day. So she’s surprised when she walks into her office to find Rafael sitting on her coach, Noah perched on his lap and cheerfully coloring. Rafael has several crayons in one of his hands, and as she watches from the doorway, Noah hands him the one he’s using and grabs another one.
“I seem to have gotten a new babysitter,” she says, and both of them look up with a smile.
“Momma! Uncle Rafa color!”
“I see that, baby. Carisi and Rollins?”
“Witness came in about the Barnwell case. They’re with her in interrogation now, she wanted some privacy. I came up to drop some paperwork off and volunteered for babysitting duty so they could both talk to her.”
“Okay. Right.” She sighs, using one hand to push her hair away from her face, and Rafael laughs.
“Go, talk to her. I can watch mi amigo here for a little while. Right, Noah?”
“Rafa!” he repeats, grinning as he looks up from his coloring book, and Olivia returns to smile.
“Okay, sweet boy, you stay with your Uncle Rafa and Momma’ll be right back.”
The interview ends up taking the better part of an hour, and while Olivia appreciates the witness coming forward, she wishes it had happened a few hours ago. But everything is finished now, and she just needs to gather up her things before she can spend the entire evening at home with Noah.
Who is currently dozing against Rafael’s chest as he quietly reads him a book he has propped open against his leg. Rafael’s head is tipped back against the couch and he looks half-asleep himself, but he smiles softly at her when she sits next to him.
“He got bored with coloring, wanted a book. Wasn’t expecting him to want a nap too.”
“Well, he looks pretty comfortable. Plus you know how exhausting pre-school can be,” she says, and he laughs, “What’s your excuse?”
“The week we’ve had. The past two and a half months we’ve had, really.”
“Yeah,” she says, but she’s smiling a little as she tilts her head against the couch so they’re face-to-face, her son falling asleep on Rafael’s chest and one of his hands smoothing down Noah’s curls.
The past few months, since the beginning of the year really, cases have stacked up one right after another, and things have only really slowed down in the last couple of weeks. They haven’t even gotten a chance to go out for the dinner he’d promised for her birthday. They’ve been out plenty, of course, with the squad or Noah or just the two of them, for drinks and lunch and even a few dinners. Plus he’d spent a significant portion of his recent suspension in her apartment, cooking dinner and playing with Noah and reading on her coach late into the night.
But they’d seemed to agree, without ever actually talking about it, that this one particular dinner is special, and it wouldn’t really be that dinner until they’d both agreed it was, until they had time to do it properly.
“Are you busy Friday night?” she asks, and his brow furrows.
“I don’t think so. Why? Something with the witness?”
“You still owe me dinner for my birthday,” Olivia says, and Rafael’s smile blooms into a full grin.
“I do. Friday night?”
“If you’re sure you’re free.”
“For this? Absolutely. He coming with us?” He nods down at Noah.
“Maybe just the two of us, this time?” She loves that he wants Noah to come with them, but the conversation she’s hoping to have seems like it’s going to be complicated enough as it is.
“Of course. We’ll bring him home some chicken nuggets.”
“Trying to buy his affection, Barba?”
“It’s worth every penny,” he says, and her heart thumps heavily in her chest, “So I’ll see you Friday night?”
“You want to come over for dinner tonight? It’s spaghetti night, and Noah’s gotten used to you being there. If you don’t show up, he’ll be disappointed.”
“Using your son to guilt me into coming to dinner, Lieutenant?”
“Worth it.” She can see the way his breath catches in his throat, the way his chest shakes with his exhale. “You coming?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
--------------
The seat isn’t quite wide enough for two, and Rafael has stretched his arm across the back in an attempt to give them a little more room. He’s not sure at what point it had slipped down around Olivia’s shoulders, or when she had shifted to rest her head against his shoulder, but bringing it up seems like it would make things weird.
Not that things aren’t already weird. Or at least they should be weird.
We’re engaged , he keeps thinking, and then glancing down at the top of Olivia’s head to make sure he hadn’t said it out loud. He’s most of six drinks in now, because they’d decided that one drink wasn’t enough to celebrate their…
We’re engaged.
It’s… a back-up plan, and one that seems unlikely to ever be necessary. After all, what are really the chances that Olivia won’t meet someone who wants the same things as she does? Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to give Olivia Benson everything she asked for and more?
And since it’s basically an impossibility anyway, there’s no harm in indulging, just for a little bit, just inside this small, warm bubble they’ve made.
“When we get married, do we have to move out to a big house in Connecticut?”
Olivia laughs. “No. We can find someplace nice in the city. Where they’ll let us have a dog. Or some cats, I guess.”
“Cats?” he asks, and she gives him a look like he’s not comprehending something simple. After a few seconds though, her expression melts into a smile, and she surprises him when she shifts to press a lingering kiss against his cheek. “What was that for?”
“Indulging me in my ridiculousness.”
“Ridiculousness? Don’t tell me you’re already backing out, Liv.”
She scoffs. “Oh please. I’d marry the hell out of you, Barba. And what about you? Having second thoughts, Rafael?”
“Of course not. I’d marry you right now.”
And that’s… too much, but Olivia just laughs, shifts to press herself more solidly against his side.
“You’re drunk.”
“So are you. And you’re considering about it.”
That gets him an indignant noise and a gentle elbow in his ribs. “I am not!”
“You are. Right at this moment, you’re thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, being married to me. That I’m smart and handsome and probably good with my-”
“There’s no good way for you to finish that sentence,” she says, but she’s still smiling, and he is too, grinning hard enough that his cheeks hurt. Rafael wants to blame the alcohol for how sentimental he’s feeling, but he knows it’s just her, and him, and this moment that he wants to grab in his hands and stretch it out as far as it’ll go.
“Oh! I know what we need.”
“If you say another drink, I’m leaving,” he groans, shifting next to her without actually moving away from her at all.
“No, no.” He’d unbuttoned his vest earlier, sometime between drinks three and four, he thinks, and Olivia slips a hand under it now to grab onto his suspender. Rafael tells himself that he’s imagining the heat of her fingers through his shirt. “We need rings.”
“We’re not engaged,” he says, then carefully reviews what he’d said to make sure there were three words there instead of two. “We’re- We have a pact.”
“Then we need something to commemorate it. Come on,” she responds, tugging first on his suspender and then his hand. “Come on.”
“Liv, it’s-” He glances at his watch- “10:37. Where are we going to find rings?”
“Come on.”
She pulls him out of the bar and down to the bodega on the corner, and he laughs as she crouches down, slightly unsteadily, in front of the row of gashapon machines beside the door.
“I’m a little insulted. There’s no way that’s worth three months of your salary.”
“Obviously you’ve never seen an NYPD paystub. Do you have any quarters?”
“No, I’m an adult.”
Olivia rolls her eyes, and then has to catch herself as she loses her balance. “We need quarters,” she says, once the dizziness has passed, and she gives him a pointed look until he turns back towards Forlini’s with a sigh.
It takes her a couple of tries to get the quarters into the slots once he brings them back to her, but eventually she stands up holding two capsules. After studying them for a few moments, she presses one into his hand, and he laughs when he pops it open to reveal a leopard print plastic ring. The one Olivia pulls out of hers is bright orange and striped.
“It really compliments your eyes,” he jokes, in an attempt to ease the sudden tightness in his throat.
The rings are children’s toys and there’s no way they’ll fit either of them, which is what Rafael tells himself as he lifts his left hand when Olivia reaches out for it, what he keeps telling himself even as she slides the ring into place on the ring finger of his left hand, as the warmth of her fingers catches his breath in his chest as he returns the favor.
“Well, then,” she says, gaze jumping between the two rings and his face, and if he didn’t know better he’d say there was something almost awed in her expression. He has no idea what his own might look like right now.
“Until your forty-ninth birthday do we part, I suppose,” he says.
Olivia leans in to press another kiss against his cheek, and he can feel her smile against his skin.