Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Liv,” Rafael says, laughing in joy and disbelief as she settles herself into his lap. The arm of her couch is pressing against his shoulders awkwardly, but there’s not a chance he’s going to complain about that while Olivia is kissing him. But he knows he needs to explain before she sees the bruises.

He’d planned on telling her during dinner. That had seemed better than trying to explain what had happened over the phone when he was going to see her in person in a few days anyway, and telling her while they sat across from each other at a restaurant had seemed simple and safe.

Except they’d never actually gotten to the restaurant.

They’d made a plan, picked out the restaurant, been ready to leave. And then two steps from the door, Olivia had stopped him, first with her fingers on his arm, then with both hands fisted in the lapels of his jacket and her mouth against his. Now his jacket is… somewhere, and Olivia’s tongue is in his mouth as she pushes his suspenders off his shoulders. Rafael isn’t complaining, he’s as far from complaining as a person can get, but the current situation really puts a damper on the whole ‘telling her at dinner’ plan.

“Liv,” he tries again as she pulls his tie loose and drapes it over the back of the couch.

“Rafa,” she replies, laughing and then sighing against his mouth when he slides his hands up her thighs to rest them at her hips. He knows that the second he asked Olivia to wait she would, but he can’t get his brain and his mouth and his body to all want that at the same time, even when she starts to unbutton his shirt.

Maybe it’ll be fine. Maybe she won’t notice, or she will notice and they’ll laugh about it, because it is almost kind of funny, in retrospect. Everything will be fine.

Olivia presses herself even closer to him, hands fisted in his shirt, and her knee, wedged between his side and the back of the couch, presses against the tender bruise at his hip. He can’t help his wince, and she pulls back, chest heaving.

“Are you-?” she starts, breathless, and then he can see the exact moment she registers the dark bruise stretching across his chest from his right shoulder to his left hip, just at the worst stage for bruises, still purple but beginning to go yellow and green at the edges. He knows he doesn’t need to explain to Olivia what had caused it, but he definitely needs to explain in a more general sense, because she’s stopped moving above him to the point where he isn’t entirely sure she’s breathing, chest still and eyes wide, hands still twisted in his shirt and-

God , everything had been going so well, maybe as well as things had ever been going for him, and now-

“So,” he starts, trying to catch his own breath and managing half a smile, trying to put her at ease even though he’s pretty sure she isn’t looking at anything besides the bruise, “Failing to mention this right away was definitely a mistake on my part, but… I got caught in a car accident last week.”

Four days ago, actually, but that was technically in the previous week and he can go into more detail later, when both of them have calmed down and had a chance to process everything.

“... An accident?” Olivia says, her voice hollow, and Rafael’s heart clenches painfully in his chest. She’s still holding on to his mostly open shirt like she’s worried he’s going to disappear.

“And I’m not going to pretend it was nothing since…” He trails off, thinking of the moment of impact, and worse, the moments in the immediate aftermath of the crash, when he hadn’t been sure that he and the two other people in the car with him were alright, when any number of terrible things could have been true, and then he shakes himself out of it because none of the terrible things had been true at all. Only one of them is allowed to be freaking out in this moment, and the way Olivia is starting to gasp for breath makes it clear it can’t be him, even if he hadn’t already had his chance.

“But look!” he says, rallying, resting his hand on hers, rubbing his thumb over her fingers, “I’m fine, I’m here. You don’t have to wo-”

Olivia moves herself away from him all at once, which considering their positions might have been impressive, if Rafael had any room in his brain for anything but desperate shock at the sudden loss of her heat.

“Liv. Liv, wait!” he says, rushing to sit up and catch her wrist, even though it makes his chest ache along the long line of the seatbelt bruise. They stay like that for a few moments, Rafael trying to catch his breath and Olivia standing in front of him, tense and still looking like she wants to flee. And then his chest hurts so much worse than any bruise, because she turns back towards him and she’s crying. Not sobbing or anything like that, but there are tears clearly visible on her face even in the dimmed light of her living room.

“I can’t- I need to go.”

“I- This is your apartment,” he says stupidly, the whiplash of the last thirty seconds catching up with him. He can feel Olivia’s pulse at her wrist underneath his fingers, too fast and too heavy, and he lets go, trying not to let the hurt show on his face when she immediately takes several steps back from him. Only one of us is allowed to freak out right now, he reminds himself, but his resolve only lasts for a few seconds because Olivia turns away from him again and all but sprints into her bedroom. The sound of the door closing is almost deafening in Rafael’s ears.

He doesn’t realize his hands are shaking until he tries to button his shirt, but he’s thankful for the extra time it gives him to pull himself together as best he can. After a few minutes, he stands and makes his way to the door she’d disappeared through, unable to resist the temptation to rest his forehead against the dark wood.

“Liv? Olivia?” he says, struggling to raise his voice over the lump in his throat, “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I was going to, I swear. I had a plan, and then-”

He startles back as the door in front of him opens, and Olivia is suddenly standing in front of him. Her eyes are red, but she doesn’t seem to be crying anymore.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course, the door jus-” he answers, but she’s shaking her head.

“No, I mean after the crash. You’re not bleeding internally or have some trauma-related injury that’s going to kill you by the end of this week or anything like that?”

“No, nothing like that. Aches and bruises, that’s it. The accident wasn’t…” He trails off before he can say a big deal . Olivia is staring at his chest now instead of meeting his eyes.

“Good. That’s good. I think- I need-”

Rafael realizes what she’s trying to say and that she can’t actually bring herself to say it at the same moment, and he reaches out a hand towards her wrist, although he stops himself before he actually touches her.

“Yeah, I’ll go,” he says, because he’s caused her enough pain this evening, he can do this one thing for her, “I’m going to go home, and you can call me… later?” And he hates saying that, because this was supposed to be the end of that, Skype calls whenever they had a few minutes and were lucky enough to catch each other, middle of the night text conversations full of typos because they were both exhausted, not quite sure when they’d get to talk next. He was supposed to be home , and instead… “I’ll go. Give Noah my love?”

She winces, and that’s worse than any car crash could ever be, he’s pretty sure. He just barely manages to keep himself from actually stumbling from the impact, but then Olivia reaches out and squeezes his hand, just for a moment.

“I will. And I’ll call you.” She manages a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes, but he’ll take what he can get right now.

“Good. Good. I’ll, uh, let myself out,” he says, and she nods.

Rafael picks up his jacket from the floor of the entryway, where Olivia had pushed it off his shoulders as she whispered I don’t want to wait anymore against his mouth, and once he’s outside her apartment he has to lean back against the door, the heels of his palms pressed against his burning eyes. Fifteen minutes ago everything was full of possibilities and now everything is completely fucked, and all he’d really done in that time was kiss Olivia Benson. Been kissed by Olivia Benson, her warm weight crowding into his lap and her hands in his hair.

“Fuck,” he says out loud, and it doesn’t make him feel any better at all.

--------------

“Mom, where’s Uncle Rafa at?”

She closes her eyes, bracing herself against the counter. It wasn’t like she hadn’t known the question was coming; among all the other things she’d tried and mostly failed to work through the night before was the thought that she was going to have to tell Noah that Rafael wasn’t here.

He’d been on the verge of throwing a fit the previous evening, insisting that he didn’t want to go to his sleepover because then he would miss his Uncle Rafa, who he hadn’t seen in forever -- his word, but it was a feeling she could relate to--, and, giddy at the thought that Rafael was coming home and the possibility of him spending the night in her bed, she’d told him that if he was good at his sleepover, his Uncle Rafa might be there in the morning when he got home.

Now he’s looking at her over the back of the couch, bouncing on his knees with excitement, and she has to let him down.

“Honey, I’m sorry, he couldn’t stay.”

She hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask him to leave, and she hadn’t had to. He’d understood what she’d needed, even though she could barely look at him, and that had made everything both better and worse.

Noah tilts his head at her, but the whine she’s expecting never comes.

“But his tie is here,” he says, and she realizes that the striped tie Rafael had been wearing last night is still draped over the back of the couch where she’d left it last night.

She has to close her eyes again, this time against the flood of memories. Rafael saying her name against her mouth as she’d worked the tie loose, the shiver she hadn’t been able to fight as he’d run his palms up her legs, the feeling of finally finally finally thrumming underneath her skin like a warm current. Rafael standing in the doorway of her bedroom, hair falling across his forehead where her hands had disheveled it, his shirt misbuttoned and the gold chain of his crucifix visible where it was still open at his neck.

“Mom.” Olivia looks down to find that Noah has joined her in the kitchen, holding up the tie. She takes it from him with a smile, smoothing the silk out. “Can we call him? And tell him he needs to come get it?”

“He’s got lots of other ties, buddy,” she says, crouching down to his level, “But I promise I’ll text him soon, and we’ll figure out some time when he can come over and see you.”

Noah narrows his eyes at her for a few seconds, and then they go wide.

“He didn’t come home, did he? You said he was coming, and he said- he told me he was gonna be here! He said he was gonna be home now!”

“Noah, Noah,” she says, reaching out to grab his arms and keep him still in front of her, “He came home, I promise. I saw him last night. He wanted me to tell you he loves you and he’ll see you soon.”

“Okay,” he responds, calming down but still sullen, and Olivia can’t really blame him. He’s spent the past couple years having his mother pass Rafael’s love on to him or having the man himself tell him from the other side of a phone or a screen, so it’s certainly not anything new or exciting.

But it had meant a lot to Olivia the night before, when Rafael, stunned and upset, had still wanted to make sure that he told Noah he loved him. She rubs her hands up and down her son’s arms and manages a small smile.

“I’ll call him soon, okay?”

Noah nods, and when he holds out his hand, she only hesitates for a few seconds before handling the tie over. She tells herself that it’s because she’s worried he’ll make a mess of it and not because she selfishly wants to hold on to some piece of Rafael for herself, but it’s absolutely worth it for warm burst in her chest when Noah slings the tie around his own neck and nods in satisfaction before returning to the living room.

She decides to clean the kitchen for a while, to keep an eye on him and to distract herself, except cleaning the kitchen requires so little of her actual attention that what she mostly ends up doing is wiping down the counters with a damp rag and thinking about the night before.

She’d tried to be angry at him, last night. Around midnight, after the terrified shaking and the random, ridiculous crying jags had finally tapered off, Olivia had really settled into trying to be pissed at him for not telling her, for acting like a car accident was nothing to worry about. At best, she’d managed quick sparks of annoyance, momentarily comforting in their familiarity, but couldn’t work up any real anger when she was well aware whose fault everything that had happened last night was.

There’s no doubt in her mind that Rafael really did have a plan to tell her face-to-face, and it wasn’t his fault that she’d decided literally as they were on their way out the door that she couldn’t bear to wait another few hours to get her hands on him. And despite the heavy feeling in her stomach as she remembers it, it was just a bruise, one that apparently hadn’t slowed him down one bit even though it had brought her to a crashing halt. She knows that.

But in the moment, all she’d been able to think about was Tucker and Simon and all the other people who had left her life and then come back only to end up in pieces in one way or another. And there was Rafael, her best friend, who had now spent several years mostly places that were very much not with her , doing good and growing and healing, and the moment he’d so much as gestured in the direction of being with her instead of anywhere else, the universe had hit him with a car.

She knows perfectly well that that’s ridiculous, not to mention incredibly self-centered, to think that the universe was so set on making her miserable as often as possible that it was causing car crashes in Iowa, but even now the memory of I got caught in a car accident last week runs cold all the way through her, panic crowding any and all logic out of her brain.

Her plan right now was to give herself time, to let herself have the space that Rafael had granted her even though she could tell how much it had hurt him, and figure out a way to edge around the panic until she was clear of it. Right now, that mostly consists of thinking about things that she knows to be true even though her brain is trying to convince her they aren’t-- that he was home, that he was fine because he had told he was and she believed him, that he’d been here last night, warm and solid and eager, and he’d be here again just as soon as she asked him to come.

She’d text him-- no, she’d call him, for the pleasure of hearing his voice and to make sure there was no miscommunication-- the moment she felt able to talk about all of this, because she sure as hell wasn’t going to put the both of them through this again.

------------

It takes him a few seconds after he blinks his eyes open to realize the buzzing sound is his phone, and he only reaches over to check who it is so that he can go straight back to sleep and wake up mad at whoever is calling him at 2:17 in the morning.

When he sees Olivia’s name on the screen, he scrambles to sit up, pressing the phone against his ear so hard that it starts to hurt.

“Liv?” He can hear her breathing on the other end, shuddering and too fast. It’s been two days since what had happened at her apartment.

“Rafa?” she replies, and the questioning tone at the end drops his heart through the floorboards.

“I’m here,” he says, realizing he’s looking for his shoes in case he needs to go, “I’m fine. I’m in bed at my apartment, and I’m absolutely fine.”

“Right. Right, of course you are.” Rafael can see her in his mind’s eye, sitting up in her own bed, hand pressed against her forehead. “Of course you are. I’m sorry, I’m being ridiculous.”

“You’re not, Liv, you’re fine. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not even a little bit. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“You didn’t,” he says, way too fast, and he smiles when Olivia laughs.

“Liar.”

“No, really,” he insists just to hear her laugh again.

“Alright, I believe you.” A few seconds of silence. “Since you already weren’t sleeping, do you mind…?”

“Of course not.” He shifts to lie back against his pillow again, puts the phone on speaker next to his head. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Tell me about Iowa.”

“What?”

“Tell me about Iowa. I’ve never been.”

“It was… different. But not bad, really. I spent most of the time in Des Moines, so I never- What?” he asks, because Olivia is laughing.

“Did you just pronounce the s’s in that?”

Rafael groans. “It’s something Devine does, to annoy people from Iowa, and it must have stuck with me, I guess. Please don’t ask me to explain Midwestern state rivalries, the passive-aggressiveness will make my nose bleed.”

Another laugh. “It was good though?”

“It was busy, which was mostly just depressing, but the bits in between the busyness weren’t so bad. You always think nobody lives out there, but there are plenty of people. It’s just that there’s so much more space than anything else, it’s kind of incredible. And I thought Des Moines was wide open,” he says, carefully leaving off the s’ s this time, “but then I stayed with Devine’s parents in Nebraska for a few days, and…”

He doesn’t really know why he’s talking about this, except that Olivia had asked him to talk because she didn’t want to talk about what is bothering her but she hadn’t wanted to hang up, and he’s only mostly awake, and this had been the first thing that popped into his head when she’d asked about Iowa.

“One day I got up before the sun had really risen, and I walked outside and there was just… miles and miles of sky and fields. I don’t know why I’d never really noticed before, I’ve visited Devine out there a few times. Maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention, but I was that day. Sat out on their back deck for an hour, probably, just… Since I was a kid, I’ve always tried to make myself bigger, but it was nice to sit there for a while and feel… I felt small, but not like I was any less. It was good, just me and the cold and all that sky.”

He can still hear her breathing on the other end of the line, but it’s slow and deep now. It eases some of the clawing worry in his chest, and he can feel his shoulders relaxing into the bed, even as he wishes that Olivia would just talk to him. Rafael can count the number of times they’ve refused to talk to each other since they met on one hand, and he regrets them all, hates every single one of them; usually when they weren’t talking, it was because they didn’t feel the need to, because they understood each other.

But this was different from all the other times, and he can’t quite shake the worry that his absence and the kiss have changed things, that the reason she won’t talk to him is that he had been gone too long and then they had moved too fast. He can’t help wondering if she won’t talk about it not because she doesn’t know what to say but because she doesn’t want to say it to him.

Olivia had called him though, and even if he’d done most of the talking, it was because she’d asked him too. If it was all just one big avoidance tactic, it’s a very involved one. He’s not about to complain about her calling him, no matter what time she does it at. So he’ll keep picking up the phone, until things are back to normal and the two of them can talk, just like they always have.

He whispers, “Good night, Liv,” and ends the call.

-----------

Noah is talking to Rafael on the phone, although Olivia can only guess what they’re talking about. Whatever it is seems to require a lot of gesturing on her son’s part.

This is the third night in a row she’s called Rafael, although after the first one she’d made sure to do it much earlier in the evening. Tonight, she’s let Noah stay up a half hour past his bedtime to talk to him, which has soothed some of her guilt about the other morning. She can see him yawning now, leaning onto one hand even as he continues gesturing with the other, and decides that one Benson falling asleep on Rafael is probably enough for one week.

“Sweet boy,” she says, resting her hand on his curls for a second, “I think it’s probably time to tell Uncle Rafa goodnight and head to bed.”

“Okay. Mom says I have to go to bed,” he says into the phone, and Olivia can hear Rafael’s laugh on the other end.

“Dulces sueños, buddy.”

“Night. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

“Pajamas and teeth,” she says as he hands her the phone, and she can’t help her smile as she lifts it to her ear, “Hey. You must be magic, he’s off to bed without a single complaint.”

Rafael laughs. “He’s a good kid. He made me promise to show him how to tie a tie.”

“Oh. Yeah. You left yours here. The other night.” It’s the first time either of them have brought it up, and she continues mostly to avoid the silence. “He’s been wearing it around the apartment.”

“Right. I’ll see if there’s a good video to send him, so he ca-”

Olivia sighs, turning to lean against the table. Noah still hasn’t emerged from his room to brush his teeth, and keeping him from falling asleep in his clothes would be a good excuse to escape this conversation.

Except that suddenly that’s the absolute last thing she wants, because the only thing outweighing the terror and shame in her mind is her desire to see him, to be able to reach out and touch him and have him here. Home. Surely this would all be easier if she could just see him.

“I hate this.”

“Oh. I’ll, uh-”

“No, I just mean- You’re here, and I’m still talking to you on the phone like you’re halfway across the country, and I don’t need to be. You’re here. ”

The silence on the other end of the line goes on for so long that she worries the call has dropped, and she’s just lifted the phone away from her ear to check when she hears him say “Are Wednesdays still spaghetti nights?”

“They are,” she replies, scolding herself for the lump in her throat caused by the fact that he’d remembered and the possibilities in that question.

“Think you might have enough for a guest tomorrow night?”

“Definitely. Noah’s gonna hit the ceiling when I tell him.”

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow then,” he says, affection clear in his voice, “Good night, Liv.”

“Night, Rafa,” she says, hoping the panic edging into her chest doesn’t come through in her voice.

The realness of tomorrow shakes her though, because if Rafael Barba says he’ll be here tomorrow he absolutely will. Olivia presses her phone against her chest, takes a deep breath, and tells herself firmly that this is a good thing, an important thing, a thing she is allowed to have. She wants him here, and Noah will almost certainly talk a mile a minute from the moment Rafael walks in until he goes to bed, which will buy her time before she needs to dive into the deep end. She can just enjoy him being here, eating spaghetti and playing with her son and smiling across the table at her, and she’ll have time to work out what she needs to say while being able to look over to see him right there next to her.

She’s had time and space, and now she just wants him.

-------------

Rafael is walking Noah through the steps for the fifth time, and he’s pretty sure Olivia is laughing at him for being such a pushover from the other end of the couch, trying to hide it behind her glass of wine. It’s more than worth it for the look of concentration and pride on Noah’s face as he adjusts the knot into place as best he can while wearing his pajama shirt.

“Looks good, amigo.”

“Can you show me again?”

“Oh, no,” Olivia says, and Noah is already pouting as he turns towards her, “No, the deal was one more time instead of a story. Maybe if you ask nicely, Uncle Rafa will agree to show you again next time he’s here.”

“Please?” Noah says, and Rafael can’t help smiling at how big he’s managed to make his eyes.

“Of course. Any time.”

Noah considers this. “Will you tuck me in?”

“If it’s alright with your mom.” Olivia just smiles, not even bothering to look up from the book she’d picked up during Rafael and Noah’s third time through the process. “Okay, let’s go.”

Noah wants to wear the tie to bed, but Rafael talks him out of it, worried about it pulling tighter or getting wrapped around his neck as he sleeps. He hangs it on one of the knobs of his dresser, still tied.

“Are you gonna take it home?” Noah asks, already having trouble keeping his eyes open.

“How about I leave it here with you for a while? I’ve got lots of them.”

“That’s what Mom says. Uncle Rafa?”

“Yeah, buddy?”

“Mom says you’re home.”

“I am.”

“That’s good. Missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” Rafael says, leaning down to kiss his forehead, “Love you, buddy.”

“Love you.”

Olivia is still reading when he returns to the living room, although there’s now a tumbler of scotch sitting on the coffee table in front of her. He murmurs his thanks as he grabs the glass, sliding past her to return to his corner of the couch. Olivia laughs when he drops his head back with a sigh after taking a long sip.

“He tire you out?”

Rafael hums. “In a good way.”

“Yeah.” She closes her book, setting it and her reading glasses on the table in front of her and retrieving her wine glass. He watches as she makes her way into the kitchen to refill it, feeling tired and fond. He’d worried, pretty much from the moment they’d hung up last night, that things would be awkward or worse, but everything had been fine. Everything had been good . Noah had carried most of the conversation, but Olivia hadn’t been silent, hadn’t avoided his eyes or his occasional questions.

She settles back into her seat with her drink, stretching her legs out into the space between them. Rafael drops a hand to curl his fingers around one foot, stroking the warm skin at the curve of her ankle above the hem of her sock. Olivia shifts into the touch, pressing her feet against his thigh.

“You shaved,” she says, after a few minutes of comfortable silence, and Rafael rubs at his jawline, aware of Olivia’s eyes following the movement.

“Didn’t need the disguise anymore.”

“Did it really work in the first place?”

“A little bit. Better than me trying to pretend I knew anything about crop rotation. You liked it?”

She shrugs. “I like your face, beard or no beard.”

That shouldn’t embarrass him, because he’s not fifteen, but there’s no denying the heat in his cheeks. He ducks his head to finish off his drink.

“More?”

Rafael shakes his head, sinking more deeply into the couch, and they settle into a comfortable silence until he realizes that the only reason he’s managing to keep his eyes open is so he can keep watching her.

“I should go before I fall asleep here.”

Olivia is still just looking at him, blinking slowly, and it’s the exact opposite feeling of when you know someone is looking right through you, eyes on you but not really seeing you. Right now it feels like absolutely every bit of her attention is focused on him, and it’s a heady feeling, even with the edges softened by his tiredness.

“I don’t mind if you fall asleep here.”

“Liv.” He sits up, setting his glass on the coffee table. “We should… there are probably things that we should talk about before… that.”

Olivia doesn’t move, and when she speaks it is slow but not halting, as if she has carefully chosen each word.

“I don’t have the words. I don’t know how to talk about it yet, not even with you. But I know that I need someone to stay, and I want it to be you, and I want you to be here.”

Her voice shakes, just a little right at the very tail end of her sentence, and it hits Rafael like a blow. He’s never been any good at denying her outside of work, and whatever resolve he’d managed to build up crumbles when she glances away from him for just a moment, biting her lip. All she’s asking is that he stay, and it doesn’t have to be anything more than that until they’re ready, until they’ve had a chance to talk. He can do that.

“Of course I’ll stay. If that’s what you want.”

“I do.” She doesn’t look away from him again, although he can tell she wants to. “You know I’m not offering you a spot on the couch, right?”

He swallows, the tension thrumming between them making his throat tight, but he manages a smile.

“It seems rude to make someone sleep on the floor after asking them to stay.” Olivia laughs, looking surprised, and his smile grows. “I know, Liv. It’s alright, as long as you’ve got something I can borrow for pajamas?”

She lends him a pair of sweatpants, and he strips down to the grey t-shirt he has on under his sweater and changes into them. The only light on in Olivia’s bedroom is the lamp beside her bed, and Rafael stops in the doorway before he even realizes he’s done it, staring at her where she sits on the bed, marking her place in her book.

“What?” she asks, and he realizes he doesn’t actually know how long he’s been staring at her.

“Nothing. It’s just nice to be home.”

“Home?” Olivia raises her eyebrows at him, and he rolls his eyes in response as he makes his way around to what he supposes is ‘his side,’ at least for the night, willing his heart rate not to kick up several notches.

“You know what I mean,” he says, sliding under the covers and stretching out with a sigh. He really is tired. “I’m glad I’m here.”

“Yeah.” She shuts off the light and he shifts onto his side to mirror her position as she lies down. It takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but Olivia is still watching him when he can finally see more of her than her outline, one hand resting on top of the covers in the space between them.

“Me too,” she adds, and Rafael thinks of the phone call the other night, listening to her fall asleep on the other end of the line. He reaches over to rest his hand on hers, deciding that this is better to a degree that he can’t really fathom.

“Good night, Liv.”

“Good night, Rafa.”

-------------

Rafael ducks his head to press a line of hot kisses down her throat, and Olivia gasps, trying and failing to catch her breath as he runs his hands up her sides. She doesn’t know where her shirt is, hadn’t paid attention to where she was tossing it after she’d managed to get it off because Rafael had already been kissing her again the moment she’d gotten it over her head.

He nips at her collarbone, soothing the sting with his tongue, and she shifts against the thigh he has between her legs, wanting more pressure. Without lifting his head, Rafael obliges, bending his knee just enough to make her moan, and her fingers tighten in his hair.

“Rafa,” she sighs, and he’s grinning when he looks up at her.

His shirt is open, one of the buttons missing where she’d been too eager to get it off him, and underneath it his chest is entirely unmarked by bruises. He shifts again, stretching up to press a kiss against the hollow of her throat, and she suddenly aches with the desire to kiss along the stretch of his jaw he’d rubbed last night when she’d asked about his beard. She tries to tug him upward, but he just smirks at her and presses a line of kisses down the center of her chest. His crucifix, warm from resting against his skin all night, trails across her stomach, making her shiver.

“Liv,” he answers as he presses his mouth against her stomach, swiping his tongue across the skin beneath her belly button. His fingers are tucked into the waistband of her pants, and she arches against him again. She’s desperate to be as close to him as she can get, and-

Olivia wakes up, breathing hard, and is infinitely glad that the room is still dark, because she can feel the flush all the way down her face and chest. She looks over at Rafael, but he’s still asleep, peacefully curled up into himself. One arm is splayed out towards her, the backs of his fingertips just barely touching her hip. She watches the easy rise and fall of his chest for a few minutes, trying to get her own breathing under control.

“Get it together, Benson,” she tells herself, swinging her legs out of the bed. The covers behind her rustle, and she turns to find Rafael watching her with one eye half open, most of his face still buried in his pillow.

“Liv? S’morning?” he asks, his voice rough from sleep, and Olivia does her best to ignore the way it makes her knees a little weak.

“It is, but you can go back to sleep,” she says, and he considers this for a few seconds before he nods, curling more securely into the blankets. She’s almost overcome by a wave of fondness, wants to crawl back into the bed and slip underneath his arm so she can tangle their legs together and rest her forehead against his.

But her dream still lingers, on top of everything else, and it all feels like it would be too simple to break the easiness they’d managed last night. So she goes out to the living room to find something to keep her occupied for a while before she can reasonably start breakfast. She picks up the toys Noah had hastily abandoned the moment Rafael had arrived the previous evening, starts the coffee machine, and transfers all the dishes they’d used for dinner from the dishwasher to their appropriate cupboards, checking for stubborn bits of spaghetti sauce as she stacks them carefully.

Eventually, she decides that she’ll just keep the food warm for however long it takes for Rafael and Noah to get up. As she’s getting out the ingredients for pancakes, Rafael emerges from her room, rubbing at his face with both hands. He’s got a truly spectacular case of bedhead, and her eyes jump from that to the stretch of collarbone exposed by his t-shirt to the line of his left calf where the elastic at the bottom of one leg of her sweatpants is caught up around his knee.

“Morning. Couldn’t get back to sleep?”

“I did, for a bit. Smell of coffee woke me up.”

“Figures. Help yourself,” she says, even though he’s already moved to grab a mug from the drying rack next to the sink.

“You sleep well?” he asks, once he’s settled back against the counter with his drink.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“Hm. I slept fine. No nightmares?” he asks, undeterred, and she has to pretend to be struggling to find the measuring cups in their drawer so she can hide her blush from him.

“No nightmares,” she says, once she can trust her voice again, “Thank you, for staying.”

“Of course,” he responds with a shrug, setting his already empty mug on the counter, like it was just some small favor he had done for her.

Olivia is aware she’s staring, but every time she tries to stop, something new catches her eye: the fading pillow lines on his cheek, the faint shape of his crucifix under his shirt, a dozen other things about Rafael Barba standing barefoot and bedheaded in her kitchen before the sun is even really up. She’s crossing the floor before she realizes it, and she might have echoed his sound of surprise when she reaches up to catch his face between her hands if she wasn’t so busy kissing him.

He freezes for a few moments, caught between her body and the counter, and then he relaxes against her with a small, soft sound, hands coming up to grasp at her hips. The relief that floods her entire body makes her a little dizzy, and she leans even more of her weight against him. Rafael tilts his head to get a better angle as he opens his mouth to her, and she sweeps her hands down his chest, slipping them underneath his t-shirt and delighting in the way the muscles in his stomach jump under her touch.

Olivia wants to go back to her room, to pull him down into the mussed sheets, probably still warm, and-

His hands catch her wrists gently, and she pulls back, but she doesn’t open her eyes until Rafael says her name softly.

“This isn’t going to make you feel better.”

“You don’t know that,” she says, trying not to think about the fact that he can definitely feel her hands shaking.

“I know you,” he replies, unbearably gentle. It would be better if he was angry with her, upset that she was unwilling to talk but once again willing to skip directly to this. But he’s looking at her softly, thumbs tracing the tendons in her wrists.

“I’m going to go,” he says after a few minutes, and she nods, missing the heat of his body immediately as she steps back.

“I’m going to check on Noah.” It’s the only thing that she can think to do that would get her out of his way.

Noah, of course, is just fine, totally unaware of anything happening in the apartment and sleeping peacefully. She straightens out some of his shelves and pointedly ignores the tie hanging on his dresser, the door cracked open so she can hear Rafael moving around. There’s a too long pause between the opening of the door to her own room and the opening of the front door, and Olivia knows he’s waiting for her. She considers trying to wait him out, but she knows better than anyone how stubborn he is.

He’s standing in the kitchen, wearing his clothes from last night and having made an attempt at straightening his hair.

“You have everything?”

“Yeah. I’ll, uh- You’ll call when… You’ll call?”

She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen him this unsure in all the time they’ve known each other, and she wishes she could say something that might reassure him even a little, but her heart is so thoroughly in her throat that all she can do is nod. Rafael steps forward, and for one truly terrifying second, Olivia thinks he’s going to kiss her forehead, and while she doesn’t know exactly what her reaction to that would be, she doesn’t think she can be held responsible for whatever it is.

But he presses his lips to her cheek instead, just at the corner of her mouth, and she lifts a hand to squeeze his elbow. They linger there in each other’s space for a few moments, and then he steps back and she lets go of him, and she stares at the floor as he leaves.

--------------

She’d meant to text him that afternoon, to tell him that she was alright and that she was sorry. And she’d meant to text him that evening, to apologize and to ask how he was. Then she’d spent significant stretches of yesterday trying and failing to convince herself to pick up the phone.

About thirty minutes ago, she’d actually managed to call him, and then she’d hung up before he answered. Now she’s standing in her kitchen alternating between staring at her phone on the counter and watching Noah work on his homework. He’s wearing Rafael’s tie again, which he’s been doing for as much of the past few days as he could get away with, even though by now the knot is starting to come loose.

Olivia presses the call button before she can lose her nerve again, tightening her grip on the phone until her hand stops shaking. Her breath catches when he picks up.

“Hey, Liv.”

“Hey.”

“I’m glad you called.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me too,” she says, trying to keep her voice from wavering, glancing over at Noah, “Can you give a minute?”

“Oh. Of course.”

“Noah,” she says, lowering the phone to her shoulder, and he looks up from his spelling list, “I’m just going to be in my bedroom if you need me, okay?” He nods, and she ducks into her room, leaving the door cracked behind her.

“Sorry about that.”

“No problem. Did you want to… talk?”

She takes a deep breath to steady herself, and then another, and another.

“Tell me about the crash.”

“Liv.”

“No, I’ve thought about this, I promise. I need you to tell me about it so it’s something real that happened, something that happens every day to all sorts of people, and not something the universe did to you specifically because I let myself want you.”

She can hear his shaky exhale before he says, “Okay. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. It was the Thursday before I was leaving. I was sorting through my office, packing everything up, and a couple of my coworkers dragged me out for dinner. On our way back, a pickup ran a red light, hit us in the intersection.” Breathe, she reminds herself, keep breathing. “There was about three seconds in the immediate aftermath where I was worried that something terrible had happened, and then there were just bruises and a busted headlight. Neither of the cars were going very fast, and the passenger door got the worst of it.”

“That’s it.”

“That’s it. None of the bruises were nearly as bad as watching my co-worker and the driver of the pickup trying to out-polite each other while we waited for the police.”

Olivia wants to laugh, but all she manages is a sharp huff of air, her chest tight. She’s glad she had him tell her, feels more grounded in the reality of what had happened and less lost in her imagined catastrophes. But talking about it just makes her want to see him, to be able to reach out and touch him, to feel him solid and warm under her hands.

“You still owe me dinner, you know,” she says, once she can actually speak.

Rafael does laugh, and it sounds relieved.

“What?”

“We never actually got around to dinner the other night. We got… distracted.”

Another laugh. “You’re saying we need to try again?”

“Absolutely. Tomorrow?” she asks, and then winces at her own eagerness, “Or whenever you’re free.”

“No, tomorrow’s good. I want to see you.”

“Yeah? I haven’t scared you off yet?”

“Never,” he says in such an earnest tone that all she can manage to say in response is “Don’t hang up yet.”

So he doesn’t, and they sit there on the phone for a while, not talking but together, until eventually they have to hang up so that she can go check on Noah and he can get back to whatever he’d dropped when she called.

------------

He had known Olivia would invite him back to her apartment for a drink after they finished with dinner, but that doesn’t stop the little thrill in his stomach when she actually does it. They’d talked a lot while they ate, but they’d carefully skirted around anything too serious, so they still need to actually talk . He gets the feeling neither of them had wanted to do it somewhere as exposed as the restaurant, and he’s thankful for both the decision itself and that they’d come to it without actually talking about it. It’s reassuring to know that under all the current… everything, they’re still them.

Noah is waiting for them, which Olivia had warned him was likely, and he makes the same deal he had made the other night, forgoing his bedtime story so Rafael will walk him through the process of tying the tie he’s still holding onto. He drifts off in the middle of the third repetition, but Rafael finishes it anyway and leaves it hanging on his dresser again.

Olivia is standing in the kitchen when he comes out. There’s a bottle of wine in front of her, but the glass next to it is empty, and when she turns towards him, the look on her face says she’s thinking about bolting again. He starts talking before she gets the chance.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call and tell you right away when it happened. It really did seem like the kind of news that would be better delivered in person, but mostly I think it was just that I was so excited about finally getting to see you again, everything else, good or bad, paled in comparison. A couple of my coworkers suggested that maybe I wanted to put off leaving for a few days until I felt better, and I told them it was going to take more than a fender bender to keep me from going home.

“But I know what the last few months have been like for you, and I should have thought more about that in trying to figure out what to do. Maybe there was no good answer, but I still should have done something-- anything-- to make sure you didn’t get blindsided like that.”

“If you had called me, I think there’s a good chance I would have ended up on a plane to Iowa in the middle of the night,” she says, turning to lean back against the counter, and he mirrors her across the kitchen, “I don’t know if I would have been able to convince myself you really were fine until I saw you for myself, so it was probably better that it happened like it did. That you were here and I could touch you and…” She trails off, not able to meet his eyes, and nods towards Noah’s room. “I’m going to go say good night to him.”

Rafael nods and looks around the kitchen as she ducks past him. After a minute or so, he turns to the sink and washes what he assumes are the dishes from Noah’s dinner, just for something to do. He’s drying his hands when Olivia speaks again, and he only jumps a little.

“Sometimes I think the universe must really want me to be miserable. Not all the time, not a constant unending stream of horribleness or anything, but sometimes it feels like there really must be a higher power out there just looking for the next opportunity to kick me in the teeth.” She returns to her place against the counter, still not looking at him. “That’s what was going through my mind that night, even when you were telling me that you were fine. All I could think about was what had happened to Simon and to Ed, how just as you were coming back to me this had happened, and now someone else I cared about was suffering just because I cared about them.

“And then of course I feel ridiculous, I feel ridiculous telling you about it right now, because the universe doesn’t care enough about me to screw with me like that, and exactly how self-centered do I have to be to think that it does? Except the next step in that thought process leaves me feeling helpless and- and- and small, like there’s absolutely nothing I can do to keep people from getting hurt. So I either end up feeling responsible and ridiculous at the same time, or I feel small and helpless, and I don’t know how to fix that. I can’t fix it.”

“You don’t have to, Liv.”

“Yes, I do,” she says, frustration clear in her voice, and she finally looks at him, “I do have to fix it, because you’re finally home, and we finally… and now we’re stuck again because I can’t get it together.”

Rafael shakes his head, straightening up and taking a step towards her.

“No, I mean,” he says, and then he shakes his head again, because it’s suddenly so easy. All this time and all this heartache, and in one moment he knows what to say, which is just the things he’s been wanting to say for years now and held back for the most part.

“You’re breathtaking, you know that?” Olivia laughs, a wet sound, and rolls her eyes at him. “Not just because you’re beautiful. It’s because… You love this world, even in its hard places. You believe in fighting more than anyone I’ve ever met. You think the fight is worth it even if it only helps one person for one day, and I don’t know if you really understand how rare that is because you make other people believe it too. It’s like you believe enough for five people and then four other people actually start believing right alongside you. You fight, and you keep fighting, and people follow you. I followed you, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t take much convincing,” she says, moving away from the counter to step cautiously into his space.

“I was an easy mark.  Much easier than I thought I was before I met you.” He raises a hand to cup her cheek in his palm. “You’re not a curse, Olivia Benson. You’re a revelation.”

“Rafa,” she starts, voice rough, but he shakes his head, smoothing his thumb over her cheekbone.

“You’re incredible, but you’re only human. You’re allowed to need people, and you’re absolutely allowed to not know how to fix everything, and you don’t have to figure it out on your own. That’s what I mean when I say you don’t have to fix it, that you don’t have to do it on your own. That’s why I want to be here, so you have someone to lean on, on the good days and bad days and all the days in between. And if it’s just as your friend then that’s-”

Olivia kisses him, wrapping her arms around his waist to pull his body in against hers, and he sinks into it easily. Despite the fact that she’d interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, he’s not actually surprised that she’d done it, not like he had been the first two times she’d kissed him. It’s soft and slow and deep, and it feels like they’ve already been kissing for hours when her hands finally slide underneath his jacket.

He manages to hang it on one of the kitchen chairs this time, draping his tie over it when she pulls it loose. Noah will probably steal it the first chance he gets tomorrow morning, but Rafael can’t find it in himself to mind, especially not as Olivia tugs him towards her bedroom with her hands around his suspenders. She pushes them off his shoulders as Rafael sits on the edge of her bed, kissing him again, but he can feel her hands shaking as she reaches for the buttons on his shirt.

He covers them with his own, and she sighs, resting her forehead against his.

“Liv.”

“I’m fine. Just…” She presses both hands against his chest hard enough to nearly push him onto his back, and he wraps one arm around her waist again, considering his options as he looks up at her. After a few seconds, he shifts to sit back against the headboard, tugging her with him until she’s straddling his lap, crowded in against his body.

“It’s okay. We can just sit for awhile.”

“Don’t you remember me saying that I didn’t want to wait anymore?” she says, even as she tucks her face in against his neck, trying to pull herself even closer.

“We’re not waiting, we’re basking in the moment. It’s different.”

He can feel her short, soft laugh against his skin, but she doesn’t move for a few minutes. Her hands are still shaking when she finally sits back, but there’s a determined set to her jaw as she slips the first button at his collar free. Whenever she falters, he leans forward to kiss her jaw or her neck or her chest until she presses him back gently against the headboard so she can continue her work. Once she’s finished with the last button, they work together to pull the shirt out of his waistband and untangle his arms from his suspenders.

Rafael sits up so he can finish pulling it off, but Olivia’s hand on his shoulder stops him. His breath catches in his throat as she trails her fingers across his chest from shoulder to hip along the line of the now faded bruise. He waits to speak until she looks up at him.

“I’m fine.” He slips his hands underneath her shirt, spreading his fingers across the warm skin of 

her back. “I’m here.”

Olivia nods, tangling her hands in his hair and tilting his face up so she can kiss him, and they stop waiting.

---------------

Something like this had seemed likely to happen, so Rafael just leans in the doorway, not wanting to startle Olivia. When she finally turns and notices him standing there, she looks sheepish.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I figured,” he says, moving to stand with her in the kitchen, losing a fight with a yawn.

“I thought I’d do the dishes.”

“There aren’t any.”

“What?”

“There aren’t any,” he repeats, nodding at the sink, “I washed them while you were saying good night to Noah.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“Not a problem.”

She glances around the kitchen, clearly looking for something else to do. “Maybe I’ll just get started on breakfast.”

“Liv, it’s two in the morning. I know Noah is an early riser, but you could make and eat breakfast ten times before he’ll be up.”

Olivia sighs, stepping forward to bury her face in his chest, and he wraps his arms around her, pressing a kiss against her hair.

“I couldn’t get back to sleep and I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“I don’t mind.”

“ I mind.”

“If I promise to fall back asleep regardless of whether or not you do, will you come back to bed?”

“Rafa.”

“No, I like your plan of standing in the kitchen and making up chores for yourself, but I think my plan of coming back to bed and letting me hold you probably has a better chance of actually helping you get back to sleep. And, as an added bonus, if it doesn’t work, there’ll still be plenty of time for you to come try your plan again.”

Olivia pinches his side where she has slipped her hands underneath his shirt, but she lets him tug her back into her bedroom. Once they’re in bed, it’s her turn to pull at him, pressing herself closer underneath the covers until they’re entirely tangled up in each other. It isn’t exactly the most comfortable position and he’s sure they’ll drift apart sooner rather than later, but for now Rafael is more than happy to let Olivia wrap herself around him and to return the favor, especially since he can already feel her breathing going slow and deep.

“So, good plan?”

“Go to sleep,” she says, all the words slurring together.

He laughs and does as he’s told.

------------

When Olivia wakes up, the bed is empty, but the door is open just enough that she can hear Rafael and Noah in the kitchen. She feels ridiculous for being touched that he’d thought to do that whenever he’d gotten up, but she decides that she’s allowed to lean into it, to luxuriate in the fact that the whole bed smells like Rafael in a way she hadn’t been able to the last time he’d spent the night.

You’re allowed to need people , she thinks, and it’s not like she doesn’t know that, not like no one has ever said it to her before, but there’s something about Rafael saying it, solid and present there in her kitchen. Rafael, who knows her as well as anyone ever has, who sees her in a way that still catches her off guard sometimes, the depth of it, saying it while he looked at her like it had never even occurred to him that she was anything less than worthy of that. Like he wasn’t concerned at all that she would claim a place in his life and then leave it a wreck.

She lingers for a few more minutes and then gets up to go make sure they’re not in danger of burning anything down. They’re not, of course, and she smiles at the scene that greets her: Noah, now wearing two of Rafael’s ties, thrown over his shoulder so they won’t get dirty, squinting at a measuring cup as he shakes flour into it, with Rafael himself standing behind him, holding the measuring cup steady.

“Mom, Uncle Rafa is here!” Noah says, after he’s dumped the flour into the mixing bowl in front of him and noticed her standing there.

“I know, sweet boy.” Behind him, Rafael smiles into his mug, and Olviia’s heart gives a tremendous thump in her chest. All the days in between , he’d said last night, and she can see it, in a way she’s only been able to so clearly see her own future a few times before in her entire life. Nights with Rafael in her bed and mornings with him in her kitchen and afternoons at the park with Noah.

When she’d tried to picture it before, in the weeks between the Skype call in her office and this moment, it had always felt overwhelming and dangerous to think about, like if she lingered too long on the thought or wanted it too much, the universe would sense it and deny her all of this. But now he’s here, standing in her kitchen drinking coffee out of one of her mugs, and maybe it should make everything feel even more dangerous, now that there’s something concrete to be snatched from her, but it doesn’t.

Olivia rounds the counter to hug him, tucking her face in against his neck as she wraps her arms around his waist, and he laughs as he returns the embrace with his free arm.

“Morning?”

“Morning. I’m glad you’re here,” she says, wondering if she should try to explain more, but before she gets the chance, Rafael goes soft against her, setting his mug down so he can hug her with both arms, and she knows without even seeing his face that he understands.

“I’m glad to be here.”

They only get a few more seconds before Noah says “Uhhhh,” in a way that indicates he’s made a mess of some pancake ingredient, but that’s alright. There’ll be time for it later.

There’ll be time for everything, good and bad and in between.