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“Oh, does that hurt? Come on, get up!”
Sonny staggers to his feet, bracing his hands against the concrete. His palms are scraped raw, and they leave faint bloody handprints behind. He swipes a hand under his nose, feels the blood smear across his face. His vision is blurry, eyes refusing to fully focus - he’d taken a hit to the head at some point, he knows, though he doesn’t know when. His ears are ringing, enough to be disorienting but not enough to drown out the taunts of his tormentors.
“You ready to give up yet?” one of them asks.
In response, he launches himself at the guy, swinging wildly. All he gets for his trouble is a punch to the stomach that knocks all the air out of his lungs. He doubles over just in time for a knee - presumably also aimed at his stomach - to instead connect with his forehead. He stumbles backwards, barely remaining on his feet. He readies another punch, steps forward, and -
And then an intense dizziness hits him, all at once, and he’s falling before he has time to realize what’s happening. He hits the ground hard, smacking his chin and forehead, scraping up his palms again. Everything starts to bleed, it feels like, the blood warm and sticky between his skin and the concrete. Black spots dance in his vision, and he shuts his eyes against them. He can’t think, barely conscious, and he hasn’t got a prayer of moving.
Someone pokes him with a foot, curious rather than violent. He groans weakly, tries to get himself up to face another barrage of punches. His hands slip out from under him and he sinks back to the ground, scarcely having moved at all.
There’s voices above him, but they’re not talking to him. They’re quiet and hard to make out over the now-overwhelming ringing in his ears, but he hears words like stop and not kill him and police and then the voices stop and the pain stops coming and simply sits there on top of him and then he passes out.
--
He wakes up disoriented and cold. He comes back into possession of his senses slowly - at first all he feels is the cold, and then he can feel the hard ground beneath him, and then he opens his eyes, which take too long to focus, and then, suddenly, the pain returns.
There does not seem to be a single part of his body that doesn’t hurt. His head is pounding and when he raises his face up from where it’d been pressed to the ground, it sticks slightly, leaving behind a small pool of blood. His torso is battered, the pain centered on his stomach, but the uncomfortable feeling on his lungs when he breathes tells him his ribs haven’t been spared either.
When he finally manages to get to his feet, his legs shake beneath him, knees aching from their impact with the ground. For just a moment he considers sitting back down, but he knows if he does that he may not ever get back up. And so he forces himself to keep standing despite the pain, despite the dizziness, despite everything. He walks out of the abandoned warehouse on his own two feet, finds his car mercifully still there and undamaged, slides behind the wheel, and drives to the nearest emergency room.
By some miracle, he makes it to the ER in one piece, having been scarcely aware of his surroundings on the drive there. By another miracle, this ER is not terribly busy, and as soon as he stumbles through the doors, barely able to see straight, someone is grabbing his arm and leading him immediately to an exam room. Whether this is concerning or comforting, he can’t say.
Half an hour and several “does that hurt?”’s later (his answer nearly ever time had been yes), he’s been diagnosed with a moderate concussion, three bruised ribs, two fractured ribs, a sprained wrist (which he hadn’t even been conscious of before), and a litany of assorted cuts, scrapes, and bruises. He’s been poked, prodded, bandaged, and stitched, and he is absolutely exhausted.
“Can I go home now?” he asks the doctor, sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed back in his dirty, bloody, and torn-up clothes.
“Yes, but you’ll need someone to pick you up and keep an eye on you for 24 hours.”
“Any chance you’ll let me go if I promise to keep an eye on myself?”
The doctor shakes her head. “It’s hospital policy, I’m afraid. If you’ve got a head injury, you need a chaperone.”
He’d sigh if that wouldn’t make his ribs hurt. Instead, he thinks. It’s close to midnight now. He’s not about to bother Liv or Amanda when they - and their kids - are surely asleep. Fin’s covering for a member of the night shift, and Sonny can’t pull him away from that. He doesn’t want to drag one of his family members all the way to Manhattan…this leaves him with exactly one choice. When he realizes what he’s going to have to do, he can’t stop himself from groaning in despair.
“Would you like something else for the pain?”
“What? Oh, nah, I’m okay. I just…I’ll call someone.”
He reaches into his jacket pocket for his phone, which of course isn’t there. Neither is his wallet. He doesn’t remember the guys who’d attacked him taking either item, but it doesn’t surprise him. “Could I borrow your phone?”
The doctor nods, unlocks her phone and hands it to him. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she says, and steps out into the hallway.
Sonny stares at the phone for a long moment, simultaneously trying to talk himself into and out of dialing the number that he hadn’t even realized he’d memorized until now.
The practicality and necessity of calling eventually wins out over his fears of being hung up on, ignored, or yelled at. He takes a steadying breath, dials the number, puts the phone to his ear, and waits.
“Hello?” Barba’s voice is clear and thankfully, he doesn’t sound like he’s just been woken up.
“Hey, um, it’s -”
“Carisi? Where are you calling from? This isn’t your number.”
For some reason, Sonny’s concussed brain decides to focus on the least important part of Barba’s response. “You know my number?”
“What? Yes, I know your number. Did something happen to you? You sound…”
“Yeah,” Sonny agrees, though Barba hadn’t specified what he sounds like. “‘M at the hospital and they won’t let me go without someone to bring me home. I didn’t know who else to call,” he says apologetically.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
Barba doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, “which hospital?”
Sonny tells him.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Barba hangs up just as the doctor comes back in. Sonny gives her her phone back.
“Is someone coming?”
“Yeah,” Sonny says, slightly incredulous. “I wasn’t sure he would.”
“Well, I’m glad he is. You can wait in the lobby until he gets here, if you’d like.”
Sonny thanks her and then makes his way out to the lobby, sinking heavily into a hard plastic chair. He stares at the ground and tries to keep himself awake and not focused on the pain that’s still making itself known beneath the drugs.
Exactly fifteen minutes later, one ADA Rafael Barba is striding through the sliding glass doors of the emergency room, his usual suit replaced by jeans and a coat that probably still cost as much as a suit. He looks around the room until his eyes land on Sonny.
Within a breath, Barba is across the room, standing in front of Sonny with a rather disconcerting look of concern on his face. “What happened to you?”
“‘S nothing.”
Barba laughs, sharp and humorless. “Have you seen yourself?” he asks. “You look like hell.”
“I figured,” Sonny mumbles. “Can it wait? I don’t really wanna talk about it now.”
Barba softens. “It can wait,” he agrees. “But you will be telling me eventually.”
“Okay.”
Barba reaches a hand out, and it takes Sonny an embarrassingly long time to figure out what he’s supposed to do with it. Eventually, he grabs the proffered hand and lets Barba help him to his feet. He sways for a second, leaning heavily on Barba, who, surprisingly, doesn’t push him away.
The receptionist waves them over and Sonny signs some sort of paper - he has no idea what it’s for, and his hand is barely able to hold onto the pen at all.
“And you’ll be keeping an eye on him for the next 24 hours, right?”
Shit. He’d forgotten about that part. “You don’t gotta -”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re all set to go, then.”
As soon as they’re out the doors, Sonny starts to say, “you don’t have to watch me, I’ll be fine,” but Barba interrupts him before he gets two words out.
“You’re coming to my place, and there is no room for argument.”
He sounds so serious that Sonny doesn’t bother trying to fight him off. (Not that he particularly wants to, anyway).
It’s not until they’re in the back of an Uber and pulling out of the hospital parking lot that Sonny recalls he’d driven here.
“My car,” is how he chooses to convey this information.
“Hm?”
“My car. It’s still there.”
“Where?”
“The parking lot.”
Barba’s eyes widen. “You drove here like this?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have any idea how irresponsible and dangerous that was?”
“Yeah.” He barely remembers having driven at all, to be honest. This information in and of itself makes him suppose it must have been dangerous.
Barba sighs. “Someone can pick it up for you in the morning.”
“Okay.”
The rest of the ride back to Barba’s place passes in silence. It’s a little strained, a little awkward, but Sonny is too out of it to pay much attention. Mostly, his thoughts center around the fact that Barba had come here. Sonny had called him in the middle of the night, and he had picked up, and he had come to get him. This is absolutely astonishing, Sonny thinks.
They arrive back at Barba’s place a moment or two later. Sonny struggles out of the backseat with a good deal of pain and general grumbling, and somehow manages to end up on his feet on the sidewalk.
He’s not on his feet for very long before he starts to feel like he might fall, but he’s saved from a certainly painful impact with the sidewalk by Barba, who slips an arm around his waist and yanks him back upright.
They walk inside, Barba’s arm still around his waist and Sonny hyperaware of this fact. They ride the elevator up, and then they’re standing outside Barba’s door, and his arm is still around Sonny’s waist even as he reaches into his pocket for the key.
In the apartment, Barba immediately drags Sonny to the couch. It’s white and soft-looking and makes Sonny stop in his tracks.
“I’m gonna get your couch dirty,” he protests. The people at the hospital had cleaned him up, but he’d had to get dressed in his same dirty, bloody clothes. He can’t ruin Barba’s couch.
“I’ll cover it with a blanket,” Barba suggests.
“Then I’m gonna get your blanket dirty.”
“Blankets can be washed.”
He has to admit that Barba has a point there. He lets go of Sonny, which is most disappointing, but then he covers the couch in a black blanket and gestures for Sonny to sit down and he quickly forgets his disappointment because this couch is the most comfortable couch in the world.
He tells Barba as much. The other man raises his eyebrows. “I’m glad to hear it,” he says drily. “Do you need anything? Medicine, or water, or…?”
He sounds a bit out of his element. Sonny kind of loves it - the notion that Barba has limits. Medical caretaking is apparently one of them.
“I’m alright,” Sonny says. He does kind of think some water might be nice, but he’s not sure he’s willing to trade Barba’s presence for it.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
This settles it, but it leaves Barba with nothing to do. He stands in front of the couch a bit awkwardly, glancing around the room but not letting his eyes land on Sonny. (Sonny knows this because his eyes are focused only on Barba).
“Do you wanna sit down?” Sonny asks, after several seconds have gone by in this way.
Barba looks a little surprised, as though he hadn’t considered that this was something he could do. He recovers quickly, though, and sinks down onto the couch beside Sonny, not terribly close but not all the way at the other end, either.
“How is it?”
Sonny shrugs, which is not a great move. It makes his whole upper body hurt, and he sucks in a sharp breath, which also hurts. He settles for a low groan of pain, which thankfully doesn’t set anything else off. “Not so bad.”
“Is that really the answer you’re going with?”
There’s overwhelming evidence against him. But he doesn’t exactly want to dump all his pains onto Barba, who has already done so much for him when he didn’t have to do a thing. He plans on saying, I don’t wanna put all that on you, but only gets as far as “I don’t wanna” before he loses his train of thought and stops speaking.
“You don’t want to what?”
“I dunno.”
Barba sighs again. “I do actually care, you know,” he says. “About…” he waves a hand, indicating Sonny’s entire body. “This.”
“You do?”
“No, I just decided to go to the hospital and pick you up and bring you to my home for the hell of it.”
He thinks this might be sarcasm, but honestly, he’s too concussed to tell. He must look confused, because Barba grumbles, “yes, I care,” like he can’t quite believe he’s admitting it aloud.
“I care about you, too,” Sonny replies, because this seems like the correct response and also because it’s completely true. “A lot,” he adds, in the spirit of the truth.
Barba…doesn’t look displeased. In fact, there might be the barest hint of a smile on his face. Not that Sonny would stake too much on that, his vision still being sort of blurry.
At this point, his throat has started to hurt from all the talking, and he remembers his earlier desire for a glass of water. He’s reasonably sure, now, that Barba will return if he gets up, so he asks, “actually, d’you think I could get some water?”
Barba nods and stands. Sonny watches him until he disappears into the kitchen, then immediately closes his eyes. He really is exhausted. He wonders whether Barba will be mad that he’s gone and fallen asleep in the short amount of time it takes to get a glass of water.
He hears Barba return but doesn’t open his eyes. He’s on the edge of sleep and the pain has gone dull and -
And then there’s a blanket being draped over him. It’s incredibly soft and warm and only pushes him further along the path to sleep. He hears a faint scuffing noise, an exhalation, and feels a quick, gentle kiss on his forehead.
For a second, this, too, makes him more tired, and then something clicks in his brain and his eyes fly open. He shoots up, making himself horribly dizzy. His vision blurs completely and he thinks he might pass out.
He doesn’t. The dizziness slowly recedes and the world comes back into the soft focus it had been in before. Barba is supporting him, one hand on his arm and the other on his back. He’s so close, and he’d kissed him, and sure, it’s not exactly a real kiss, but it’s damn sure something and Sonny so wants him to do it again but it feels so unreal that he’s not entirely sure he didn’t dream it and -
“I’m sorry. That was…unprofessional of me,” Barba says, and Sonny finds himself being leaned back against the couch, and then Barba’s hands go away. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
He’s way too out of it to be following this. He cannot fathom what on Earth Barba has to be sorry about. “Stay,” he says, and then thinks to add, “why’re you sorry?”
Barba stays, though he remains at a distance. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“Oh.” Barba regrets it - he doesn’t want to kiss Sonny. That’s disappointing. “Oh. Okay.”
“Why do you sound disappointed?”
“‘Cause I am.”
“Why?”
He can’t believe he has to spell this out when he can barely even see straight. “‘Cause I want to kiss you, but you don’t wanna kiss me, and that’s fine, it’s okay, but -”
“You want to kiss me?”
“Yeah, but if you -”
“Are you sure you’re thinking straight right now?” Barba interrupts.
“Straight enough,” Sonny says, and smiles a little. “Anyway, I don’t think a concussion can make you wanna kiss somebody. Pretty sure that comes from something else.”
“Like what?” Barba asks, and he moves in a little closer again.
“Like me liking you.”
“And if I like you too?”
“Maybe you should kiss me again?”
“You’re sure you want this?”
“Of course.”
Barba kisses him - on the lips this time. It’s soft and uncharacteristically hesitant and he really likes it. And then he leans forward a little and something pulls unpleasantly in his torso. He makes a small noise of pain, muffled into the kiss, and Barba pulls away.
“Does that hurt?”
“A little,” he admits.
“We’ll stop, then. Until you’re feeling better.”
This sounds quite agreeable to Sonny, who is starting to feel incredibly tired again. He stops himself from yawning by thinking of how painful it’s likely to be, but Barba notices anyway.
“Why don’t you get some sleep? I can wake you every couple of hours.”
“You don’t…” Sonny starts, but can’t find the energy to continue.
“I was going to do some trial prep anyway. I don’t mind staying up.”
He sounds so sincere, and Sonny is so tired, that he doesn’t try to argue any further. He just closes his eyes and lets sleep take him at last.