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This was a bad idea. Sonny knew that. He’d known it when he’d gotten off of the subway thirty blocks before his stop, and he knew it now as he approached the corner of 76th and Columbus. The familiar stone building loomed in front of him. A building that he’d only been to once, years before, but would forever be seared in his memory.
There was no guarantee that he’d even be home. At the bar he’d begged out early, mentioning something about his mother, but Sonny supposed that an unanswered door was nowhere near the worst thing that could come of this.
Things had gone fairly well this week considering that Sonny had felt like he’d been punched in the gut when he’d looked up to find Rafael Barba standing in the conference room doorway, a feeling that never truly went away despite the bottles of Pepto he drank.
During the trial it had been difficult to keep his focus, watching Barba as he expertly worked the courtroom, reminding him of when Sonny used to sit in the gallery, drinking in everything the counselor did, but he’d somehow managed to pull off the win.
But then Rafael had left the bar this afternoon and Sonny felt a pang of panic in his chest. Worry that the counselor was walking out of his life again just as easily as he’d waltzed back into it. It was the last thing he wanted.
So here he was, his hand hovering over the buzzer for 5E. He could turn around and go home. No harm, no foul. No one would ever know that he’d had this lapse in judgement. Except he would know, and he would know that he had a chance to get answers and backed out.
“Carisi?” Rafael was climbing from the back of a cab wearing the same dark suit and burgundy tie he’d worn in court that day. Surprise showed in his eyes over the black cloth mask he wore.
Sonny supposed the decision had been made for him.
“You used to care, you know?” He said before he had a chance to truly think about it.
“About what?”
“The big picture.”
“You came all the way up here to rehash last night’s conversation?” When Sonny didn’t say anything, Rafael sighed and pulled his mask off of one ear. “I still care. It’s just not my responsibility anymore.”
He came to a stop in front of Sonny, but that could have just been because he stood between him and the door. “Now, why are you really here?”
“I just…” Sonny took a breath. He could lie, make up something about the case that he still wanted to discuss, but what would be the point? “I didn’t want three years to go by before I saw you again.”
He expected Rafael to react with at least a modicum of shame, but instead a smirk played across the other man’s lips. “Want to come up for a drink? It’s freezing out here.”
The last time Sonny had ridden in this elevator and walked this hallway to Rafael’s apartment, he hadn’t exactly had his wits about him, but this time he took it all in. Mostly to avoid looking at Rafael since he was still kind of embarrassed that he’d showed up here.
Inside, Rafael stuffed his mask in his coat pocket and hung the coat on a rack by the door, and Sonny followed suit.
“Have a seat,” Rafael told him, continuing on toward the kitchen. “I think I have some beer in here somewhere. Or do you want something stronger?”
“Um, beer’s fine.” He genuinely couldn’t care less about what there was to drink. It was just a prop anyway, something to focus on so they could avoid an actual discussion.
As he sat, he looked over the coffee table, which was covered in legal volumes and paperwork. Curious, he lifted the edge of one of the books, reading a few of the scribbled notes on the corner of a legal pad. He supposed he’d found Rafael’s staff. “You did this whole case yourself?” He asked when Rafael walked in, carrying a bottle of beer and a rocks glass a quarter full of scotch.
“I didn’t really have anyone else to do it for me.” Rafael settled into the opposite end of the couch, his body angled slightly toward Sonny’s. “The Innocence Project has paralegals and volunteers on staff to help with my cases there, but they kind of frown on us using them for things like this.”
“So you don’t— You’re not—” Sonny shook his head. “I knew Liv called you in on this, but I thought you’d started a practice. I didn’t realize it was just a one off for you to mess with me.”
“This had nothing to do with you. It was a situation that spiraled a little faster than any of us expected it to. And give me a little credit. I have enough respect for the system, for you, than to gamble with a man’s life just for kicks.”
Sonny knew he was right. He didn’t have to admit it though.
“I was impressed though,” Rafael said after a moment. “Liv told me you were starting to get the hang of things, but you really gave me a run for my money. If it hadn’t screwed me, I’d say your cross of Mickey was a thing of beauty.”
Those words should mean everything. Sonny had waited years to hear such praise from Barba, but right now they weren’t enough. Or at least they weren’t the ones he longed to hear.
“Why didn’t you call?”
Rafael sighed, biding time over a sip of scotch. “Come on, Sonny. Do we have to do this?”
“Yes, we do. We slept together, had what I thought was a great night, and then you disappeared. I had to find out from Liv that you’d quit.”
“It was a great night, but did you see my life back then? It was a total shit show. I’d just been acquitted of murder for God’s sake. My career was over. I wasn’t exactly in a place to be starting anything. I thought you knew that.”
“I’d waited years for—I mean, I would have been there for you. Helped you.”
Rafael tilted his head at him and Sonny felt annoyed at the condescension. “Now you’re just being naive.”
“You don’t get to patronize me just to make yourself feel better.” Sonny put his beer, untouched, on the coffee table and stood. He couldn’t sit when he was feeling this way.
“I have nothing to make myself feel better for. We were two consenting adults who spent one night together. I didn’t realize that in your mind that meant I had to propose.”
“You’re not a stupid man, Rafael. You knew how I felt about you and you took advantage of that to provide yourself with a night’s worth of distraction. The least you could do is acknowledge that.”
“Is that why you came here? To get an apology?”
“No, I came here because I loved you.” The words were out before Sonny could stop them, but then he realized he didn’t want to. “For years I loved you and then you disappeared and I thought I’d gotten over it, but then you showed up at my office the other day and it all came back. And I just had to know. I had to know if there was even the smallest part of you that felt the same. That missed me these past few years the way that I missed you.”
Rafael didn’t say anything and Sonny felt his jolt of courage waning. It had felt good to finally get all of that off of his chest, but now, in the silence, he was starting to regret it. He never should have come here.
Calmly setting his glass on the coffee table, Rafael stood, crossing the small expanse of floor to stand in front of Sonny. Still, he said nothing, just looked up at him, green eyes searching for something that Sonny wasn’t privy to.
“Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any—”
His words were cut off by Rafael’s lips on his, soft and eager.
Sonny knew logically that he should stop him, that they needed to talk. The answers he would find in Rafael’s kisses were too ambiguous, evasive and vague, and apt to leave Sonny as uncertain as he had been when he decided to come here. However, logic felt cold and distant when Rafael’s lips were warm against his, parting invitingly and impossible to resist. It didn’t matter if it was just another way for Rafael to prevaricate; Sonny had left all his defenses in the courtroom. He kissed him, softly, but with a quiet desperation he had struggled to put aside for three years.
The exact details of how they ended up in Rafael’s bedroom were unclear to him, lost in a tenebrous blend of reality and memory of the last and only other time this had happened. Pieces of clothing shed along the way, buttons undone and shoes kicked away, until Rafael was pulling Sonny down into his bed and threading his fingers into his hair, drawing him close to kiss him again, and again.
It had been like this then, with Rafael’s knees drawn up on either side of his hips, and Sonny’s heart bursting with the feeling that finally it was happening, they were both there, done dancing and denying and skirting the edges of what they both knew was happening. And maybe Rafael was right and he was naive, because even knowing what had happened before, he felt no different now as he drank kisses from the other man’s mouth.
Rafael’s hands were skimming up Sonny’s body, under his undershirt, pulling it away and tossing it to the side. He pulled back to look down at him, his hair mussed and lips kiss-bruised, and looking as beautiful as he ever had.
“Raf,” he said, his voice raw in a way he hadn’t expected.
“Shh,” Rafael said, touching his face and cutting him off before he could say anything else. “Just kiss me.”
Sonny did. How could he not?
He was still kissing him as they stripped away their last bits of clothing; still kissing him as Rafael’s hands roamed his body, and when one of those hands reached between them, palming them together and stroking them both in a moment of white-hot pleasure that made Sonny groan against his lips. His touch was light, his fingers around them loose, but Sonny shivered all the same and rolled his hips, thrusting loosely into Rafael’s hand.
Rafael’s lips against his were the only thing stopping him from babbling more words of love, long suppressed and shifting from the past to present tense.
It was Rafael who broke this kiss to speak - to moan. “I want you.”
“Yes,” Sonny kissed his jaw, his neck. “Yes.”
“Please, I want you to fuck me.”
Sonny had never heard a vulgar word sound so sweet.
The snap of a bottle cap and cold lube warmed between his fingers, and he began to work Rafael open. One finger, then two, and then three as the other man sighed, then moaned, and then whined.
He bent low to kiss him again when he finally pushed inside him, tight and hot and so perfect that Sonny could cry.
Rafael’s fingers dug into his shoulders as Sonny began to roll his hips, slow and deep, wanting Rafael to feel every inch of him, every part of him. If Rafael could use this to deflect and dissemble, Sonny could use it to be sincere, to rip away all the games and double talk and lay his heart open.
If it was the last time he saw him for another three years, if he was never alone with him again, Rafael Barba would know that Sonny Carisi had loved him.
Every time their lips parted, to gasp, to breathe, to moan, it was Rafael who pulled them back together, arching up and lifting his chin, drawing Sonny back down to breath into his mouth once again.
It was only when the swell was too great, the pleasure building as their pace increased, the roll of his hips having become a snap that had Rafael gasping, did Sonny break the kiss. He drew back only a few inches, snaking a hand between their bodies and taking hold of Rafael, stroking him in time with the thrust of his hips.
“Call my name when you come,” he breathed.
“Sonny,” Rafael said, at once, his voice wrecked and wanton yet soft as a whisper. “Sonny, Sonny, oh, god, Sonny.”
He spilled through Sonny’s fingers in pearl streaks across their bellies as Sonny claimed his lips in another searing kiss, and came buried inside him, the sound of his name on Rafael’s lips still echoing in his ears.
“I can’t make that meeting, I have a motion hearing at two o’clock.” Sonny balanced his cell phone between his ear and shoulder as he carried a mountain of files toward his office, the top few threatening to slide off of the stack and onto the floor.
Today was yet another hellish day in a long line of hellish days. The courts were still severely backed up, and everyone in the DA’s office was overworked and irritable, especially those like him who were at the bottom of the totem pole.
He managed to nudge his office door open with his foot without scattering paperwork to the wind, but nearly dropped it all when he saw that someone was sitting in his visitor chair. Rafael looked rather comfortable in a pair of jeans and light button down under a dark blazer, scrolling through his phone with one hand, the other running absentmindedly over the beard that had grown back in.
“Just reschedule the meeting. Please.” Sonny dropped the stack of files onto his desk, letting his phone fall on top of it, before folding himself into his chair, exhausted. “This is a surprise.”
“The last place the realtor showed me wasn’t far from here so I thought I’d bring you this.” Rafael produced a paper bag that smelled of grease and pastrami, and had Sonny’s mouth watering.
“I love you.”
“So you say,” Rafael said, but the smile that tugged at his lips betrayed his words.
It had taken them some time to get here. It would have taken less time if most of their early conversations hadn’t ended up with them naked, but they’d worked things out eventually. And Sonny found himself grateful on a daily basis that he’d had the courage to go up to Rafael’s apartment that night.
In the end, it seemed like he and Rafael had been trying to say the same thing all along.
“Did you find a good space?” Sonny asked, tearing into the bag.
“I’m deciding between two. One used to belong to a travel agent and one was already a law office. So, basically it’s just determining if I want a constant reminder of how easy it is to become obsolete or how easy it is to fail.”
“Come on,” Sonny said around a mouthful of sandwich, swallowing before he continued. “You’re not gonna fail.” He was endlessly proud of Rafael for starting his own practice. He’d mostly be focusing on those without a lot of resources. Sort of a middle ground between legal aid and the more pricey attorneys.
“Anyway,” Rafael continued, “I’ll probably choose the law office. Less work to be done to get it up and running, and God knows I could use any help on cutting costs. And besides, Carmen has already put in her notice here so I need to get going as soon as possible.”
“I’m surprised you were even allowed in the building, by the way. Everyone on your old floor is still out for blood over you poaching Carmen.”
“You know very well that she came to me.”
“Even so.”
Rafael just shrugged. No need to be ungracious in victory. “I know you’re busy, so I’ll get out of here. I just wanted to make sure you ate something.” He rounded the desk to place a kiss on Sonny’s lips.
“Thank you. I’m not sure what time I’ll be home tonight, so don’t wait on me for dinner.”
Rafael made it almost to the door before turning around. “Oh, I did have one more thing.” He pulled a blueback from his breast pocket and left it on top of the stack of files. “Motion to dismiss in the Marcus Silva case.”
Sonny’s eyes narrowed. “You asshole. This wasn’t a love sandwich, it was a diversion sandwich!”
Rafael grinned. “See you at home,” he said before slipping out the door.