Chapter Text
"Squabbling with you?"
The question was casual, a gentle parry to his own rhetorical melancholy, meant to soothe the edges of the guilt he’d just confessed. But for Rafael, the words landed like a lead balloon to the chest, knocking the air from his lungs. In the space of a single, stuttering heartbeat, an entire lifetime spooled out behind his eyes—two ridiculously old people, gray-haired and softer around the edges, still bickering over a chess board or the morning paper in an apartment filled with sunlight and decades of shared history. The image was so vivid, so profoundly right , that the response slipped past his defenses before he could stop it, stripped of all irony, all artifice.
"Wouldn't that be nice?"
The words hung in the quiet air of her office, far too honest, far too raw. For a terrifying second, the fortified mask of Counselor Barba fell away completely, his features softening into an expression of such open, aching longing that it would have stolen her breath had she seen it. The careful distance, the professional guard, all of it evaporated, leaving only the man who saw a heaven in her offhand remark.
But she didn't see it. Her gaze had drifted down to a file on her desk, her thumb tracing the edge of a staple as if it were the most interesting object in the world.
He watched her miss it. The relief was a cold wave, immediately followed by the familiar, dull ache of disappointment. He had laid his entire heart bare in four simple words, and she hadn't even noticed. It was both a reprieve and a confirmation of the chasm between them. He had a precious, agonizing second to rebuild his walls, to smooth the longing from his face and replace it with the wry, familiar fondness she expected to see when she finally looked up.
When her eyes, warm and full of a concern that was both profound and profoundly platonic, finally lifted to meet his, he was ready. The fondness was in place, the wry twist of his lips just so.
"She knows you love her, Rafael," Olivia said softly, her voice the familiar balm he both craved and cursed.
"What you're doing… it's the right thing. The responsible thing."
The right thing. The responsible thing. She was talking about his abuelita , of course. But the words echoed in the space he’d just vacated in his own head, the one where he had imagined a lifetime with her. This was the right thing, too, wasn't it? This silence. This deliberate friendship. The unspoken truth buried so deep it barely remembered the light. He offered her a smile that felt brittle enough to shatter. "I should let you get home to Noah," he said, the words a shield, a reminder to them both of the life she had that did not —and could not —include him in the way he ached for.
He didn't wait for a reply. He simply gave a slight nod, a final, silent acknowledgment of her kindness, and then stood, turning toward the door. Each step out of her office and into the fluorescent hum of the squad room was a deliberate move away from the man he had almost been just moments before. He had to do better. The mask couldn't just be a reflex; it had to be his skin.
The cool evening air was a welcome shock after the stale, recycled atmosphere of the precinct. He pushed through the heavy doors and onto the sidewalk, the city’s cacophony a familiar score. Here, anonymous in the river of faces flowing past, he could let it go. The control, the curated composure—it all fell away, leaving only the man and the image. A gift, he thought with a wry twist of his lips. She had given him a gift, and it would be a shame not to unwrap it, even if it was only for these few blocks.
So he let himself see it. The squabbling at eighty-five would be about the thermostat, undoubtedly. Or about him leaving his law books on the dining room table. He could almost hear her voice, still with that gentle rasp, complaining that he was obsessive, and he could hear his own retort, something about her collection of mismatched coffee mugs threatening to take over the entire kitchen. He saw them reading the paper on a Sunday morning, feet tangled together on the ottoman, a comfortable silence stretching between them that was more intimate than any conversation. He saw her hand, wrinkled and familiar, resting on his as they watched Noah—a grown man with a family of his own—play with his children on their living room floor.
The vision was so complete, so achingly perfect, that he almost missed his light. A taxi blared its horn, yanking him back to the present, to the cold stone facade of the courthouse looming ahead. His office. His real life. The fantasy began to recede, the vibrant colors fading to sepia. It was a beautiful place to visit, this imaginary future. But he didn't live there. He had to put the gift back in its box, lock it away, and get back to work.
He swiped his access card, the electronic click loud in the stillness of the grand, empty atrium of the courthouse. It was a pattern, he realized, his mind already cataloging evidence with the ruthless efficiency of a prosecutor. She always missed it. The slight tremor in his hand as he passed her a coffee, the fraction of a second too long he held her gaze after a hard-won verdict, the barb meant for a defense attorney that was really born of jealousy. She saw what she expected to see: her friend, her ADA. Her perception was his shield, but lately, it felt increasingly flimsy.
The diligence he'd prided himself on, the iron-clad self-possession that had served him his entire life, was failing him. Or perhaps it wasn't failing him at all. Perhaps it was simply being eroded, worn down by the constant, gentle friction of her presence in his life. Every shared laugh, every late-night case file review, every mention of Noah—they were all tiny, persistent waves against the seawall of his control. Tonight wasn't a fluke; it was a harbinger. A crack in the dam.
He stood before the frosted glass of his office door, his name stenciled in severe, official letters. Rafael Barba, Assistant District Attorney. It looked like another man's name. A man who had his priorities in order. A man who wasn't currently contemplating the long, slow, unwinnable case of his own heart. How was he going to do it? How was he going to walk into her office tomorrow, and the day after that, and sit across from her and pretend that the vision of them at eighty-five wasn't now seared onto the back of his eyelids? The question hung in the empty hallway, offering no plea bargain, no deal. There was no strategy for this. There was only the slow, grinding certainty of the verdict to come.