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The last of the bourbon went down warm, and Rafael set the glass on the edge of the hot tub.
The water was still hot, and Sonny hadn’t turned off the jets, even though the night had settled into the hush that follows a party winding down, everyone drying off and finding their coats and their Ubers in ones and twos until it was only the two of them left on the deck, steam rising around them in the October air.
Amanda, on the drunker side of tipsy, kissed Sonny on the side of the head and murmured that she was going to check on the kids, that she'd probably just pass out, that Sonny should stay out here and enjoy the quiet while it lasted.
All night, Rafael had been watching the easy happiness that settled around Sonny here, in this new life he’d built for himself, and it was a beautiful thing to see.
It was also a little bit like standing on the outside of a greenhouse in winter, peering through the glass at all the green, thriving things. You were glad for them, of course. You were. And your hands were still cold.
Rafael was happy for him. He was.
It was just that watching Sonny in his backyard, surrounded by his people, in a house with a fence and a mortgage and three kids sleeping upstairs, was a reminder of the shape of the life that Rafael had chosen not to have.
Amanda was gone, and Rafael picked up the empty glass, because he didn't know what else to do with his hands.
"I should get out of your hair," he said, looking into the bottom of the glass, at the way the patio light caught the last thin film of bourbon. "I think this is me officially overstaying my welcome."
Sonny waved him off with a small sound of disagreement. "Nah, stay a minute."
Rafael didn't reply, but he didn't move either.
Sonny leaned his head back against the tub's edge, looking up at the slice of Brooklyn sky overhead—not much of one, just orange-gray cloud cover and the suggestion of stars, but he was looking at it like he could see the whole thing.
"I wasn't sure you'd come," Sonny said to the sky.
Rafael finally looked at him with a pathetic little laugh. "I wasn't sure I'd come either."
Sonny, to his credit, didn't press it.
These people, Sonny's people—Olivia, Fin, Phoebe, the whole constellation of names Rafael hadn't known before tonight—were very much a chapter of the story Rafael no longer lived in.
He was a ghost at this feast.
He'd shown up with a nice bottle of wine and a polite, practiced smile and spent the whole evening talking to one of Sonny's sisters about property taxes and the nightmare of a good contractor.
He hadn't talked to Sonny. Not really.
But he’d been watching him.
He’d seen Sonny with Amanda, a hand on the small of her back, a private smile as they navigated the kitchen together. He’d seen him with the kids, gentle and patient, before Amanda had herded them upstairs for bed. He saw him with his friends, easy and open, the center of a warm, bright circle of people who knew him and loved him.
"I'm glad you did," Sonny said, his gaze finally shifting from the sky back to Rafael. He was smiling, but it was a small, sad thing. "It's... it's good to see you, Rafael."
"You too, Sonny. The house is beautiful. The kids are great. Amanda's wonderful." Rafael huffed another laugh that he hoped didn't sound as bitter as it felt. "I say that like I haven't known it longer than I've known you."
"She is," Sonny agreed, his voice warm. "It's weird, right? It's like... there was nothing, and then overnight, there was everything. One day, I was going home to my shitty apartment, and then the next—" He gestured toward the house, sliding a little deeper into the water. "I don't think I've ever been this tired in my life."
Rafael had a thousand witty, self-deprecating, deflective responses on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them all.
"Happy tired?" he asked instead, the question feeling foreign in his mouth. Nobody he knew was happy.
"The happiest tired," Sonny said, and his smile was real, reaching his eyes. "I wouldn't trade it. Not for anything."
"I know," Rafael said, and he did. He looked at Sonny—the fine lines around his eyes, the silver Rafael had watched thread through his hair until it took over completely. He was older. Softer, maybe, in some places, and harder in others.
He was a husband and a father and a homeowner, and Rafael was… Rafael.
"You look good," Sonny said, echoing the thought from across the water. "The private sector suits you."
"It pays the bills," Rafael said with a shrug.
He hated talking about this part of his life, especially with people from his old one. The way the world felt flatter, less immediate, without the constant, humbling urgency of prosecution. He was good at it. He was making more money than he knew what to do with. But sometimes he missed the righteous anger, the clarity of it all.
"Come on, you know what I mean," Sonny pressed gently. "You look... settled."
Rafael almost laughed at that.
Settled.
He was the opposite of settled.
He was a ship with no anchor, listing in the harbor. He’d been on three dates in the last six months, all of them perfectly pleasant, all of them ending with a polite kiss at the door and a quiet, empty apartment.
"I think you've cornered the market on 'settled,'" Rafael said, aiming for light, for teasing. He thought he might have missed.
Sonny just shook his head. "It's not that. It's just... you were always so wound up. So tight, like you were holding your breath. I mean, I'm not around you all the time to know, but you don't seem... that way. Anymore."
Rafael remembered being that way, remembered the constant, low-grade hum of anxiety that was the price of doing business, the pressure that lived behind his sternum. He hadn't realized it was so visible.
"I'm old," Rafael said, a cheap deflection. "I don't have the energy to be that wound up anymore."
"Yeah, well, it's a good look on you," Sonny said, his eyes on Rafael's in the dim light, the water a bubbling current around them. "So is the beard."
Rafael's hand went to it, a self-conscious touch against the coarse, gray-streaked hair on his jaw. It was a concession he'd made after leaving the DA's office, a small surrender to the fact that his murder trial had been on the news. He liked it. It made him feel less recognizable.
"You think so?" he asked, and it was a stupid question, the kind of thing a teenager on a date would say, but the bourbon had loosened his tongue, and the steam, and the quiet, and Sonny's steady gaze.
"I do," Sonny said. "It's… I don't know. Professorial."
"Just a polite way of saying I look old,” Rafael shot back.
"So what? I look old too," Sonny replied, running a hand through his damp hair. "We're old, Raf. We're allowed." That small smile was back. "You still running?"
Rafael huffed another laugh. "Carisi, it was jogging, and does it look like I'm still jogging? I lift weights for twenty minutes six nights a week while I watch nature documentaries. It's much less effort, and it keeps the scrawny old man look at bay."
Sonny's grin was pure 2016, punching Rafael right in the chest with its familiarity. "Yeah, I can tell. The weights are... doing their thing. Like I said, you look good."
"Thanks," Rafael mumbled, suddenly feeling flayed open, pinned to a specimen board under the warm patio lights. He looked away, toward the dark windows of the house. "I should let you get to bed. I'm sure you've got... soccer practice, or PTA meetings, or whatever it is you people do at dawn."
"Tomorrow's Saturday, Rafael. We sleep in 'til six-thirty," Sonny said, shifting to face Rafael more fully, one arm resting along the tub's ledge. "So, your life is what? Lifting weights and making money? No one's putting up with your shit in the evenings?"
Rafael just looked at him for a moment, at the water rippling at his collarbones, at the steam catching the light, turning the space between them into something private, a room with no walls.
"My shit is remarkably manageable these days," Rafael said dryly. "There's very little to put up with."
"I find that hard to believe," Sonny replied. "There's always been a lot to put up with."
The words landed heavy, pushing the air out of Rafael's lungs. He thought of the long hours, the snapped arguments, the constant, grinding friction between them that had been the foundation of whatever they'd been to each other.
All the things Sonny had put up with.
"I mellowed," Rafael replied. "You said it yourself. I don't hold my breath anymore."
"That's... a philosophical non-answer," Sonny said, and he watched Rafael for a long moment, a considering look in his eyes. "So no, then. No one's putting up with your philosophical mellowing."
"No," Rafael admitted quietly. "It's fine. It's not what I'm looking for." The lie sat sour on his tongue, but he couldn't take it back. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he knew it wasn't this quiet, sterile loneliness. "I... do things. I go to the Met. I bought season tickets to the opera. I... read. Rita and I are in each other's back pockets again now that we're not on opposite sides of the aisle. It's... nice."
"So you've got Rita," Sonny said, a small, knowing smile touching his lips. "I haven't run into her in a while. She still terrifying?"
"Effortlessly," Rafael confirmed. "But now it's on my behalf. It's a refreshing change of pace."
"I bet," Sonny laughed, a genuine, warm sound that made the water seem to vibrate with it under the jets. "That's good, Raf. That you have someone."
He said it with such sincerity, with such gentle pity, that Rafael felt a defensive prickle crawl up his spine. "I have people," he corrected sharply. "I have friends. I'm not a hermit."
"I didn't say you were," Sonny backpedaled, raising a placating hand. "I just meant... you know. After everything. It's good that you've got somebody tight in your corner."
The silence that fell was thicker this time, heavy with all the years they'd barely spoken. Rafael could feel the goosebumps rising on his arms where the cool night air met the damp heat of his skin. He crossed them, a juvenile, self-protective gesture.
"I have your number," Sonny said. "I could call. I should call."
"And yet," Rafael said pointedly, then sighed, the anger deflating as quickly as it had risen. "No, it's... I could've called too. It's not on you. Life gets in the way."
"Tell me about it," Sonny said with a profound weariness. "But still... I think about you, you know? I wonder how you are."
Rafael felt a slow, warm knot tighten in his stomach. He thought about Sonny, too. More than he'd ever admit. He thought about him in quiet moments, in the back of cabs, staring at the ceiling of his apartment at three a.m.
"Do you?" Rafael asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer under the answer.
Sonny didn't look away. "All the time."
Rafael nodded slowly. "Wondering how I am."
Sonny's gaze dropped to Rafael's mouth, a fleeting glance before snapping back to his eyes. "Yeah. Wondering if you're happy. If you've found… whatever you were looking for when you left."
The 'whatever' was a placeholder for so much. For peace, for freedom from the weight of it all, for a life where he didn't have to carry so much.
"I don't know that I was looking for anything in particular," Rafael said carefully. "Just... away."
Away from the memories, away from the sight of the courthouse, away from himself. He didn't say that, but he knew Sonny heard it. He'd always had an uncanny knack for hearing what Rafael didn't want to say.
"I get that," Sonny said. He shifted in the water, the movement a slow slide that brought their knees, hidden beneath the churning surface, a fraction closer. "Sometimes I think about just getting in the car and driving. No destination. Just... away."
The words sent a jolt through Rafael, a strange, painful thrill. To hear Sonny of all people, the man who had planted himself so firmly in the good soil, admit to a version of the same restlessness that haunted Rafael's own quiet hours.
"From this?" Rafael asked, a genuine question. He gestured with his chin toward the dark house, full of warmth and sleeping family. "You'd seriously want to get away from this?"
"Not from them. Never from them," Sonny replied firmly. "Just… from the noise. The schedule. Being 'ADA Carisi' and 'Dad,' the guy who has to figure out what's for dinner and remember to pick up milk on the way home, or it's an international crisis the next morning. Sometimes I miss just being... me. I don't even remember what that looks like sometimes."
Rafael knew that feeling. He knew it in his bones. "I remember him," he heard himself say. "He was a pain in my ass."
Sonny's laughed softly. "Yeah, well, the feeling was mutual."
"Was it?" Rafael asked.
Sonny's smile faded, replaced by a look of something more complicated. He seemed to be choosing his words with care, sifting through memories.
"No," he said finally. "I mean, yeah, you pushed buttons I didn't even know I had. But I liked it. I liked all of it. The fighting, the winning. The losing, sometimes. I liked working with you." He paused, his eyes dark and serious. "I liked you."
A simple, past-tense confession.
Rafael's heart was beating a quick, heavy rhythm against his ribs.
He thought of all the times he'd pushed Sonny away, all the sharp edges he'd presented to the world, to him especially, and how Sonny had just kept showing up, relentless.
Until he couldn't anymore, because Rafael was gone.
"Sonny," Rafael started, then stopped. He didn't know what to say. I liked you, too was an understatement. You were the best part of my worst years was too dramatic, too true. I think about what could've happened if I'd answered your calls was too little too late. "I wish I'd known that then."
"I think you did," Sonny said gently. "I think you knew."
Rafael had.
Maybe he'd just been too much of a coward to do anything about it, too convinced that any crack in the armor would bring the whole structure down. He'd built a fortress around himself, and Sonny had knocked at the gates for years.
"I wasn't in a place to..." Rafael trailed off, the excuse tasting as hollow as it was. "You know."
"I do know," Sonny agreed. "But it doesn't stop a guy from wondering."
"Wondering what?" Rafael asked, a question he had no business asking, let alone knowing the answer to. Sonny's wife was sleeping fifty feet away.
"Just... what if, you know?" Sonny's voice was barely a murmur over the gentle hum of the jets. "What if we'd just... let it happen."
Rafael couldn't breathe.
The house could have been on fire and he wouldn't have noticed. All of his senses, all of his focus, had narrowed to the man in front of him, to the two inches of water between their legs, to the confession hanging in the humid air.
"Why are we talking about this?" Rafael managed, the words scraping their way out of a throat that had gone tight.
"I don't know." Sonny shook his head. "Because I'm a little drunk, and you're... here. You're here, and looking at me like that." He gestured vaguely at Rafael's face. "Like you used to."
Rafael could feel the blush rising hot on his cheeks. "That's a surprisingly self-aware assessment of the situation." He tried to deflect, to fall back on the old patterns, the sarcasm, the intellectual distance.
It didn't work.
Sonny just smiled, another little sad curve of his lips. "Can't bullshit a bullshitter, Rafael."
Rafael looked down at the water again. He thought about what it would be to reach out, to let his fingers brush against Sonny's thigh under the water. Just to see.
"I should get going," Rafael said again, but this time it didn't sound like he meant it even a little bit.
"You said that already," Sonny pointed out. "You're still here."
Rafael looked up at the house again. He had a sudden, vivid image of Amanda waking up, coming down to find them like this, talking in hushed, confessional tones in the warm water. He felt a spike of something close to panic.
"This is a monumentally bad idea," Rafael said, but he still wasn't moving.
"What is?" Sonny asked. "We're just talking."
But they weren't. Rafael knew they weren't, and so did Sonny.
This was a conversation they should have had seven years ago in Rafael's office, or in a dimly lit bar after a long trial. The conversation that was never going to happen, except now it was.
"We're not just talking, and you know it," Rafael said, the accusation softened by the exhaustion.
"No, I don't," Sonny pushed, leaning a little further away. "Whatever is in your head that's making this a bad idea, that's you. I'm just... sitting here."
Rafael wanted to believe him. He wanted to let go of the knot of responsibility and loyalty and the simple, fundamental knowledge that this was a line you didn't cross, even if he couldn't put his finger on which line it was.
"Sonny," Rafael pleaded.
"What do you want?" Sonny asked, his gaze unwavering. "Just for right now, in this stupid hot tub, with me. What do you want?"
Rafael wanted to go back in time.
He wanted to say yes to one of the thousand roundabout invitations Sonny had extended for drinks, for dinner, for a ride home when it was raining.
He wanted to feel that bright, relentless optimism directed at him, just for a little while, something he wasn't even sure Sonny had anymore.
He wanted to know what it would have felt like to kiss him in his office after-hours, to wake up next to him, to see what the happiness he'd found with Amanda would've looked like with him instead.
But that was then.
Right now, in this hot tub, what Rafael wanted was to feel something other than the quiet, lonely ache that had become the background noise of his life. He wanted Sonny to stop looking at him like that. He wanted him to never stop looking at him like that. He wanted to stay in this warm, quiet bubble with a man he'd loved and left behind.
"I want..." Rafael started, leaning a little closer against every iota of his better judgment. "When you think about me. The 'what if.' What are you picturing?"
Sonny swallowed hard, and Rafael's eyes tracked the motion. "Are you asking if I think about fucking you, Rafael?"
The question was so blunt, so crass, so disgustingly honest that Rafael let out a breathy, startled laugh.
"Did I say that?" Rafael deflected, but heat was coiling in the pit of his stomach, a slow, undeniable pull.
"Would you rather I tell you about all the times I thought about holding your hand?" Sonny countered with a wry smile. "Maybe the way I imagined you looking on a Saturday morning, calling out crossword clues while I made breakfast? Or the time I almost, almost asked you to be my date to my cousin's wedding? Yeah, fucking is cleaner."
Rafael stared at him, truly, properly stared. "You're shitting me."
"Cross my heart," Sonny said, making the gesture over the water. "And then I pictured you at the wedding, looking like you'd rather be dead. Or that I'd ask, and you'd double over laughing at what an idiot I was for thinking you'd even consider something like that. Either way, I came to my senses. It was a close call."
The words were harsh, but Sonny was teasing him. Rafael knew that.
And it hurt anyway, a little, because Sonny had been right. He would have laughed. He would have shut him down with a well-placed, devastating remark. Because that's who he was then.
"I'm sorry," Rafael said, the most honest thing he'd said all night.
"Ancient history," Sonny said with a wave of his hand. "But you get it, right? Why the sex is all that's left?"
"I get it," Rafael said quietly. "So tell me."
Sonny's eyes darkened, the blue of them almost black in the dim light. "You really want to know?"
"Sonny, the only thing I want to know is that I'm not going to be the reason your beautiful house gets sold and divided up by lawyers," Rafael said, the last-ditch effort of a man who still believed he had some sort of moral high ground to stand on. "It's not worth it."
"That's a little dramatic, even for you," Sonny said, but he didn't dismiss it entirely. "Amanda and I... we're solid. What happens in this fucking hot tub isn't gonna burn down the house."
"That's not reassuring," Rafael said, but he felt himself fold like a card table in real time. "I want to know. For some selfish, unforgivable reason, I want to know."
It was a surrender. A white flag.
"Okay," Sonny said, and he let out a long, slow breath. "Sometimes... the thing I think about. The 'what if.' It starts in your office, after a win. You've got that… that look in your eye, like you just shot Bambi's mom, and you'd do it again. And I think what if... what if you'd just looked at me and said 'Carisi, lock the door.' And I would have. I would have in a second."
Sonny's voice was low, hypnotic, painting a scene in Rafael's mind so vivid he could almost feel the leather of his chair against his back. He remembered that look. He remembered Sonny's reaction to it, the way he'd look away, then back again.
"Sometimes I'd think about what it would be like to get you on your knees. Right there, on that shitty carpet," Sonny continued, and Rafael's breath hitched. "Just to see what you'd look like. If you'd still have that smug look on your face. I bet you would."
Rafael couldn't speak. He could only listen, the words branding permanent images onto the backs of his eyelids.
"God, I think about what you'd look like with my cock in your mouth," Sonny said, and the words were so raw, so filthy, that Rafael felt a jolt of pure heat go straight to his groin. "I wonder if you'd be good at it, and then I think about how stupid it is to bother wondering, because of course you would be."
Rafael's own cock was hardening against the tight fabric of his swim trunks, a slow, undeniable throb. He shifted, trying to relieve the pressure, but it didn't do any good. It did bad, actually.
"I get myself off thinking about it sometimes. Still," Sonny confessed, and Rafael felt a dizzying sense of vertigo. "I'll be in the shower with my eyes closed, and I'll pretend my thumb is your tongue. Licking up the side, nice and slow. Under the head. In the slit." He paused. "I wonder if you'd swallow."
Rafael had to close his eyes for a second, just to get a grip. Because he could picture it too, picture himself on his knees, looking up at Sonny. Mouth open for him.
"Then there are the other times," Sonny went on, his voice rougher now. "Bending you over your desk, or fucking you on your couch. Pushing your legs apart and just... looking at you. I think about that a lot. Just knowing what you look like."
Rafael opened his eyes. Sonny was looking right at him, and there was no mistaking the heat in his gaze.
"What if..." Sonny started, then stopped, like he was steeling himself. "What if I said that right here, right now, I have a hard-on thinking about it? Talking about it.”
Rafael's blood went hot. He could feel it in his face, in his chest, in the heavy, demanding ache between his legs. He looked down at the water, at the churning surface that hid everything.
"I'd say you're not the only one," Rafael admitted on a low rasp.
Sonny let out a shuddering breath, a sound of pure relief. "Yeah?"
Rafael just nodded, not trusting his own voice.
"Show me," Sonny said.
Rafael's head snapped up. "What?"
"Show me," Sonny repeated, and it wasn't a command, not really. It was a request. A question.
It was a line, and Rafael was on it. The line was thin and wavering, but it was there.
"I... we can't," Rafael said, shaking his head. "We can't."
"You're right," Sonny said softly. "So we won't. I'll keep my hands to myself. You keep yours to yourself. We could just... share the view."
It was the most insane, irresponsible, arousing thing Rafael had ever heard. It was the kind of loophole idiots get themselves hung by. A technicality that was no technicality at all. It was a bad, bad, bad idea.
Rafael's gaze flickered from Sonny's face to the dark windows of the house and back again. He saw the want in Sonny's eyes, an echo of what he knew was in his own. He saw the years of silence, of missed chances, all of it circling the drain of this one entirely unnecessary moment.
He thought of the quiet, lonely apartment he was going to go home to, and the empty space on the other side of his bed.
He thought of the fact that this was, for all intents and purposes, all that was left.
Slowly, deliberately, Rafael let one of his hands drift down from where it was resting on the edge of the tub. The water was warm, slick against his skin. He watched Sonny's face as he did it, saw the way Sonny's pupils blew wide, the way he bit down on his own bottom lip. His other hand, the one on the ledge, curled into a white-knuckled fist.
Rafael's fingers brushed over the fabric of his trunks, stretched tight over his erection. He felt the jolt of it through the thin, wet material, and he let out a soft, shaky breath. He let his palm press against himself, a firm pressure.
Sonny watched every move, his gaze so intense it may as well have been a physical touch. His own hand mirrored Rafael's, sliding down beneath the water. Rafael couldn't see, but he could picture it perfectly—Sonny's long fingers pressing against the dark fabric of his shorts, the muscles in his shoulder tensing as he found the shape of himself.
Rafael's movements were slow, a torturous tease for an audience of one. He circled the head of his cock with his thumb, the friction sending a bright spark of pleasure up his spine. His hips rolled up, a small, involuntary motion seeking more.
Sonny made a low noise in the back of his throat, a quiet groan that was swallowed by the hum of the jets. He shifted in the water, pushing himself up slightly, very obviously sliding his shorts down over his hips, if you knew to be looking for it.
Rafael did the same, lifting his hips just enough to tug the damp material down, letting his cock spring free into the warm, bubbling water. The sudden, unrestricted contact of the jets against his skin was a shock. He wrapped his fingers around himself, giving a slow, experimental pull.
The look on Sonny's face was too much. It was pure, unadulterated want, stripped bare of any pretense. His jaw was tight, his lips parted, and he was tracking the motion of Rafael's hand with a rapt, unwavering focus.
Sonny's own hand was moving now, too, a steady rhythm beneath the surface that Rafael couldn't see for the jets. God, did he wish he could.
"What if..." Rafael swallowed hard, trying to find the words past the sheer disgust at himself, at Sonny. "What if I told you I used to jerk off thinking about you too?"
A slow, satisfied grin spread across Sonny's face. "I'd say I'm not that surprised."
"You're such an asshole," Rafael breathed out, but there was no heat in it. Only a familiar, worn-in affection that felt like coming home.
"Maybe," Sonny conceded, his hand never stopping its lazy rhythm. "But I'm an asshole who had a pretty good feeling I wasn't the only one having impure thoughts. I never noticed until I told you I passed the bar. Or maybe it didn't start until then, I don't know. But I told you, and you looked at me like you wanted to eat me alive, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't see the way it stuck around."
The memory was so clear Rafael felt like he could reach out and touch it. The courthouse hallway, the warm light, Sonny's half-smile. He'd felt it, that dizzying lurch when his eyes had dropped to Sonny's lips for a fraction of a second too long. He thought he'd gotten away with it.
"You never said anything," Rafael said, a useless statement, an accusation with no teeth.
"Rafael, I said a lot of things," Sonny countered, his pace increasing just a little. "How many files do you think I brought by your office that could've been an email? How many cups of coffee did I put in your hand while I was 'just in the neighborhood?' You think I was going into Liv's office and sitting my ass on her desk like Fran Fine to have a heart-to-heart? I was playing the long game, Raf."
The long game.
The words sent a pang of something sharp and bittersweet through Rafael's chest. Sonny hadn't just been wanting him; he'd been courting him, in his own bumbling, earnest way, and Rafael had blown him off.
"You had a shitty strategy," Rafael managed, his own hand starting to move in earnest now, long, slow pulls from base to tip, the water slicking the way.
"It worked on Amanda, didn't it?" Sonny shot back. "Sometimes all you gotta do is show up."
The mention of her name was like a splash of ice water. Rafael's hand stilled. "Sonny."
"I know," Sonny said, his own movements slowing. "Trust me, I know. But I also know you're still here, and you're still hard, and I've wanted to see you come since the day we met."
The blunt, filthy honesty of it short-circuited the guilt. Rafael's cock twitched in his grip. He started moving again, the strokes quicker this time, more purposeful.
"I thought about... when I'd get off thinking about you, it wasn't in my office," Rafael confessed. "It was in my old apartment. In my bed. I thought that if it was ever going to happen, it would've been after we'd all gone out for a drink. It was always Liv leaving first, then Amanda and Fin would split a cab. Everybody else would... whatever. But then it would be me and you, left there at the bar. What if I'd just said 'You wanna get out of here?'"
Sonny's breathing had gone ragged. "Yeah," he breathed. "Yeah. What if you had?"
"I pictured it," Rafael went on, his head falling back against the hot tub's edge, the words coming easier now, flowing with the pleasure building in him. "I've never known what to do in the quiet, and I don't think you do either." Rafael's lips quirked in spite of every reason they shouldn't. "I don't think I would've been able to stand it the second the elevator doors closed and I was alone with you. I think I would’ve just… pushed you up against the wall."
A low groan tore from Sonny's throat. "Against the wall," he repeated, a confirmation. He'd picked up the pace again, the motion of his arm a frantic, choppy rhythm through the water. "And then what?"
"I would've stuck my tongue down your throat, Carisi, what do you think?" Rafael said, a hint of sarcasm back, but it was breathy, lost in the heat. "I imagined trying to get my key in the lock while you were mouthing at my neck. Biting my ear. Grabbing my ass."
"God, I love your ass," Sonny said, and Rafael's whole body went tight at the present tense. "I'd watch you walk away, and I'd think 'there goes the best view in Manhattan.' There's not a chance in hell I wouldn't have had my hands all over it the second I got the go ahead."
"You should've said that instead of bringing me coffee," Rafael ground out, his thumb sweeping over the head of his cock, making him shudder. "Might've been more effective."
"Next life," Sonny promised, his eyes locked with Rafael's.
Next life. Because this one was already spoken for.
"I kick the door shut," Rafael said, pushing forward, pushing past the pang of guilt. "I would've been on my knees so fast, Sonny. I would've gotten that belt buckle open before you could even get your coat off."
Sonny's eyes fluttered shut for a second before he forced them open again, like he couldn't bear to miss a single second. "You talk a big game, Barba."
"The problem was opening the door, not what I'd do once I was in the room," Rafael's voice was strained, the words punctuated by shallow, hitching breaths. "I would've let you fuck my face right there at the door until I was choking on it. I always imagined you'd like it messy. Spit dripping down my chin, tears in my eyes. Getting your hands in my hair and just holding me there. Not... not in an aggressive way. But like you were trying to get deeper, trying to crawl inside me. Like you couldn't get close enough." He paused. "And... yeah. I'd swallow."
"Christ, Rafael, are you reading my mail too?" Sonny breathed. "That's... that's all I wanted. To get closer."
The confession hit Rafael harder than any of the filth they'd been trading. He felt it in his chest, a deep, resonant ache.
"I imagined that you'd want me to want it as much as you did," Rafael said, and his pace quickened, the slick glide of his fist almost punishing now. "I wanted you to want me to want you as much as you wanted me."
Sonny huffed a strained laugh. "I'm pretty sure I followed that."
"I wanted you to want me, Sonny," Rafael repeated, raw and open. "I wanted you to want me so much you couldn't stand it. I wanted you to want me so much that it didn't matter that I was a piece of shit or that I had no idea what to do with it. I wanted you to want me so much that you'd take it so I didn't have to make myself give it to you."
"I did," Sonny gasped, and he looked wrecked, his face flushed, his chest heaving. "God, Rafael, I did. If you'd have given me an inch, I would've taken a mile. I'd have—" He cut himself off with a choked sound, his head falling back, exposing the long, vulnerable line of his throat. "It doesn't matter what I would've done. You know. You know."
A tear, hot and startling, escaped the corner of Rafael's eye and slid down his temple. He didn't wipe it away.
Because Sonny wasn't talking about sex. He was talking about the quiet nights, the easy mornings, the shared burdens. He was talking about all the things that were on the other side of Rafael's glass wall, looking back at him. He was giving Rafael what he wanted by reminding him of everything he'd lost by waiting to want it.
"I used to wonder if you'd ever been with a man," Rafael said, pushing the words out past the lump in his throat. "I'd wonder if I'd be the only one. If I'd be your one. And god, the fucking arrogance of that, that I could be... the only one, like I was so special."
"You would've been," Sonny replied, sounding almost urgent. "You are. There'd only been window shopping before you. I was waiting for the main event. I thought I was waiting for you."
The admission knocked the wind out of Rafael. He was so close. He could feel it building in him, a tight, hot coil at the base of his spine, the saddest, most pathetic orgasm of his entire life barreling toward him.
"I wanted to show you everything," Rafael confessed, a fractured whisper. "How to open me up. I wanted to talk you through it while I was shaking so badly I could barely hold myself up. To watch your face when you slid your fingers into me for the first time, to see the... I don't know. The awe, maybe. I wanted you to think I was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen."
Sonny made a raw, wounded sound. "You were, Raf. For a very, very long time, you were."
Rafael... god, it was so much he wanted to die.
He wanted to climb into Sonny's lap and take back all the years, all the missed chances. What he wouldn't give to undo all the moments he'd kept Sonny at arm's length, to trade this desperate, stolen intimacy for the chance to do it right, even just once.
"Most of the time, I thought about you fucking me," Rafael went on, chasing the feeling, chasing the end so he could get the hell out of this water and this yard and this life that wasn't his. "I'd fuck myself on my fingers and pretend they were yours. I'd think about you talking to me. You would, wouldn't you? I'd want you to."
A tear-track shone on Sonny's own face now, glistening in the dim light. "You know I would've. But don't pretend you wouldn't have been talking right back. Foreplay would've been opening statements."
A broken, wet laugh escaped Rafael's lips, because it was true. They were talkers. They talked.
"We'd talk," Rafael agreed. "And on those nights, I'd work my way up from my fingers to... god, don't make me say it. You know what I'd do."
Sonny's breath hitched. "Say it." His tongue darted out to wet his lips. "Tell me what you'd do. Tell me what you'd pretend was my cock."
"Fuck you." Rafael’s hips stuttered up into his own fist. "It was... a dildo, okay? A black one. I'd pull it out of my drawer and try not to think about it until I was already ready for... I'd slick it up and pretend it wasn't a piece of fucking silicon."
"Jesus," Sonny breathed. "How did you... Rafael, what did you do with it?"
"Anything you can think of," Rafael said, his voice rough, thick with a pleasure and a pain he couldn't begin to untangle. "I'd ride it until my thighs burned, imagining your hands on my hips, pulling me down. I'd lay on my stomach with my ass in the air and fuck back onto it, pretending you were kissing the back of my neck. I'd lay on my back and fuck myself with it, picturing my legs around your waist, or over your shoulders. I could close my eyes and let myself believe for five minutes that when I opened them, I'd be looking at your face instead of the ceiling." His rhythm faltered. "I'd hold it inside me after I came, just for a minute. Just to... just for a minute."
Rafael couldn't bring himself to say the rest.
That he'd lay there, just for a minute, and imagine that when he got up, Sonny would be there. That he wouldn't have to wash the toy and put it away and get back into the cold, empty bed alone. That the morning would bring the sound of someone else's breathing, the weight of a heavy arm thrown over him, the smell of coffee brewing. Just for a minute.
He could see in Sonny's face that he didn't need to say it. Sonny knew.
"I'd have put my ring on your finger," Sonny said, a raw, shattering whisper that tore through the sound of the jets, and it was so far past the line it was in another country. "You know that, don't you? I wasn't just trying to get you into my bed. I was trying to get you into my life."
"Sonny," Rafael moaned, a desperate plea. "Don't. Don't do that."
"I'm sorry," Sonny said, and he sounded it. "I just... this is it. This is all we get. And I want you to know before it goes back in the box. I loved you so much."
Loved.
Past tense. The final, definitive period at the end of the sentence.
"You didn't love me, Sonny," Rafael said, shaking his head, another tear slipping free. "You loved an idea of me you had in your head. You don't know me."
"What I'm not gonna do is sit here and list all the reasons you're wrong, but you're wrong. I'm an asshole, but at some point it's just cruel," Sonny said, his own strokes becoming erratic, urgent. "But here's one—you said you thought about me fucking you most of the time. But the other part, it was you fucking me, wasn't it? You wanted to be the only person to ever have me like that. You didn't just want to be my one, you wanted me to be yours."
Rafael couldn't answer, but the choked sob that escaped him was all the confirmation Sonny needed.
"It's okay," Sonny whispered. "It's okay. I wanted it too." He huffed a sad laugh. "Next life, we'll flip a coin for it, how's that?"
It was so stupid, so reminiscent of the Sonny he used to know, the one who could find a way to make a joke in the middle of a tragedy, that Rafael felt a hysterical bubble of laughter rise in his chest. It caught on the pleasure that was cresting, a wave so high it was blocking out the sky.
"Come here," Rafael whispered, a self-immolating, impossible request.
Sonny didn't hesitate. It wasn't dramatic, he didn't throw himself across the tub. He just pushed off the ledge, closing the foot of water between them until their knees brushed, then their thighs. The contact was electric, a point of white-hot focus in the swirling water.
"That's all I get," Rafael breathed. "That's all you get."
Sonny nodded, but it was for show. His free hand found Rafael's under the water, clumsy at first, then sure. He laced their fingers together in a tight, desperate grip that Rafael really, really would've like to pretend he didn't want.
"I want to see your face when you come," Sonny breathed. "Tell me you're as close as I am."
"God, Sonny, I am. I'm so close," Rafael said, and he was, he was right there. He tightened his already vise grip on Sonny's hand. "And you're—"
Sonny cut him off with a low groan. "You have no idea."
"Tell me—" Rafael swallowed hard, fighting the urge to brush his thumb over Sonny's knuckles, fighting the urge to lean in and kiss the tear track from his cheek, fighting the urge to say the words that were clawing at the back of his throat. "Tell me again."
Sonny shuddered, a full-body tremor Rafael could feel through the water, through their joined hands. "No," he whispered, and Rafael's stomach dropped. "You say it. Or don't. But I'm not saying it again."
Rafael met Sonny's gaze and held it for what felt like an eternity. He saw everything in Sonny's eyes—the years, the want, the regret, the life he'd built, the life Rafael hadn't.
"Next life," Rafael promised. "Flip you for it."
Sonny's smile was a watery, devastating thing. "I'll see you there."
Rafael's world went white, then black, then a dizzying, technicolor explosion behind his eyelids. He spilled over his own fist, into the warm, churning water, a silent sob tearing from his chest as he came. His body went rigid, then loose, a violent release that had been years in the making, a pale shadow of what it should have been.
He could feel Sonny's orgasm a beat later, the way his grip on Rafael's hand went painfully tight, the way his whole body seized up beside him, a choked-off gasp of Rafael's name lost to the night. It was messy and beautiful, the most intimate they'd ever been, the end of a beginning that had never really started.
They sat there for a long moment, not moving, hands still joined, bodies still thrumming. The jets hummed on, oblivious. The city hummed on, oblivious. The house sat dark and silent, a monument to a life Rafael had chosen not to have.
And just like that, it was over.
Rafael pulled his hand away first, a slow, reluctant retreat. He could feel the phantom warmth of Sonny's palm in his own. Sonny didn't fight him, just let his hand fall to his side.
God, it was cold, even in the hot water.
They both moved to pull up their shorts, the water lapping at their chests, reclaiming them.
Rafael pushed himself up, slow and stiff. He felt a hundred years old. He felt like he'd run a marathon. He felt like he'd just committed a felony. He had just committed a betrayal of the highest order against a woman who’d stood by him through some of the worst moments of his life.
He got out of the tub, the cool night air feeling like needle pricks on his overheated skin.
Sonny stayed in the water, watching him. His face was unreadable in the dim light, a smooth, blank mask.
Rafael grabbed a towel from the stack on a nearby chair, scrubbing at his shoulders. He didn't look at Sonny as he dried off, his movements automatic, perfunctory. Then he pulled on his clothes, stiff fabric clumsy over damp skin.
He stood there for a moment, fully dressed, hair dripping onto the deck. He had his wallet, his keys. He was ready to go.
He should say something.
He should say it was a lovely party. He should say it was good to see you. He should say he was sorry. He should say a lot of things.
He turned to look at Sonny one last time, maybe for the last time ever, if he could get that lucky.
Sonny was still just watching him, half-submerged, the water swirling around his chest. His hair was damp, his cheeks flushed, and he looked tired. So tired.
"See you in the next life," Rafael said, a cracked whisper in the quiet dark.
Sonny's lips curved into a ghost of the smile Rafael had fallen in love with and run away from. "I'll be waiting."