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Finding him isn’t difficult, considering that he’s in the first place she looks, but she wasn’t expecting to find him sitting on the floor of the small meeting room. The table is crooked, and one of the chairs has been knocked onto its side. Rafael has his back against the wall, his knees pulled up to his chest, and he only glances up at her for a moment when she enters the room.
“I’m fine,” he says, but he’s breathing so hard that the words slur, and she can see him shaking even from across the small room.
Olivia squats down in front of him, in case he tries to make a break for it, but when he looks up at her again, she can see the tears in his eyes and all she wants to do is wrap her arms around him. She doesn’t, at least not yet, because she wants to give him a chance to calm down before she touches him, wants him to stay but doesn’t want him to feel trapped.
“How- how- how did you f-find me so fa-fast?”
“I know you pretty well. And I’ve had some time to think about it, since I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen since Carisi told me you were almost held in contempt during the Davis case. Plus,” she reaches out, taking the fingers of one hand in hers, gently rubbing her thumb across his knuckles, “I knew that courtroom would be trouble.”
This wasn’t even one of her cases, didn’t have anything at all to do with her, but when she had heard which courtroom the trial was going to be in, she’d known she needed to be there, even if the case was one that he’d taken as a favor to Rita and she didn’t really know much about it at all. She had wondered if he’d considered filing a motion to have it moved, but what exactly could he say?
I can’t possibly give my client the best defense because the last time I sat at this table I was the defendant. The last time I was here, the prosecutor that ended up replacing me made me cry on the stand.
“I thou-thought I could handle it.”
“You always do.”
He laughs, something twisting in his chest at her recognition, and he finally manages the first deep breath he’s taken since he’d fled the courtroom.
“That’s it, Rafa. Just breathe.”
There are still tears on his face, but his chest isn’t heaving so badly anymore, and she shifts to sit next to him. He turns to look at her, head now leaned back against the wall.
“It was- I’m losing this case, and being in that room, it just felt familiar in all the worst ways. Like I was back there and everything was slipping through my fingers again. Like I was losing everything again. It caught me off guard and got the better of me, even though it shouldn’t have.”
Maybe it’s the fact that she can still hear the shake in his voice, or that she feels hidden away here with him, protected from the rest of the world, or maybe it’s just that they’ve known each other so long and been through so much, but she feels suddenly brave, at least enough to reach over and intertwine her fingers with his, their now joined hands resting on his thigh when he stretches his legs out in front of him.
“I don’t think you can predict that. I think it can still catch you off guard, being traumatized like that, even if you tell yourself you’re prepared, that you’ve braced yourself against it. I’ve been there, I know what it’s like, and I just don’t think you can know. ”
He smiles softly at her, in a way that makes her ache. That’s what missing him is like, like someone has pried out one of her ribs and left behind a constant, low level ache and a newly vulnerable spot, one people can’t seem to help poking at. When they’d worked together, when he’d always only been a call away and she’d known without a doubt that he would come, they protected those places for each other.
“I miss it,” Rafael says, like he’s read her mind, “Every day, it feels like. The job, the squad. You. Us. I just miss it. And every time I think maybe I’ve come to terms with everything, something comes along and reminds me just how much I haven’t actually done that at all. How I’m just wallpapering over the cracks.”
“I think you’ve done more work than you’re willing to give yourself credit for at the moment.”
“God, Liv, it’s…”
It sits behind his sternum every day, a rotten, writhing mass of a thing that swells at a moment’s notice to press on his lungs until he can’t breathe. This certainly isn’t his first panic attack about this, although it is the most public.
“It is,” she agrees, and he squeezes her hand, thankful for her understanding.
Her courage flickers for a moment, because if she doesn’t say anything, if she doesn’t risk anything, she can just sit here with him until the recess ends, and nothing will really change, for better or worse. But the warmth of his shoulder against hers is bracing.
“You don’t have to feel like that anymore.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help it,” he says, finally lifting his head away from the wall so he can meet her eyes.
“No, I mean… we don’t have to feel like that anymore. Like we lost something and we can’t get it back.”
“But we did lose something. When I left, we lost something. We both know that, and we both know that it’s my fault.”
“I know you wouldn’t have left if you didn’t absolutely need to. If it wasn’t going to absolutely tear you apart to stay. Sometimes… sometimes we just lose things. Lose people. Nothing we can do to stop it. But sometimes we let things go. We choose, in the end, to lose those things, to not fight for them. But you? Us? I’m not losing that, I’m not letting that go. What about you?”
They’re sitting close together, in each other’s space in a way that still feels natural even after all this time, and she can see the moment he registers exactly what she’s asking. His eyes drop to her lips for a few seconds, and when his gaze returns to hers he nods, just once.
Olivia brings her free hand up to cup his cheek as she kisses him, and the soft sound he makes in response has her pressing closer, even with the slightly awkward angle. She wants more, of course she does, wants to touch all of him, wants his hands all over her, but for the moment this is enough; Rafael Barba, real in the here and now, so much better than trying to conjure him from imperfect memories, even the best ones, even with his face still overwarm under her hand from panic and tears.
When they break apart, they’re only separated for a moment before Rafael leans in again, resting his forehead against hers.
“All those times I imagined kissing you, and it never looked like this.”
“Still nice though.”
“Yeah. Very nice.”
They sit for a while, one or the other occasionally leaning in for a kiss, but eventually Olivia sighs, shifting back so she can cradle his cheek in her hand again.
“Okay. Your recess is almost over, and you’ve got to figure out something for this case that doesn’t involve you actually being held in contempt, because I think it’s my turn to get dinner.”
“You’re going to buy me dinner?”
“Actually I thought you might want to come over for spaghetti night.”
“Yeah?” he asks, and when she nods, he leans in to kiss her again.
“Rafa, you have to go,” she says, laughing against his mouth, but her fingers have slipped into the hair at the back of his neck.
“In a minute,” he responds, and then sinks deeper into the kiss.