blues and greens (barson)

ii.

"So you can demand my presence immediately-"
"Rafa," she sighed, "stop. I didn't demand your presence for no reason. I wouldn't have reached out if this wasn't an emergency."
He sighed, "what is it?"
She picked the letter and it's attached stack of papers up in her still gloved hand and then grabbed another glove and held it out to him.
His green-blue eyes surveyed her a moment before putting the glove on and taking the paper. She watched as his eyes flicked back and forth across the letter and he slowly lowered himself into a chair. He flipped through the documents.
"I thought they'd been destroyed?" His voice was soft, no malice remaining.
"I had intended to call," she began to explain, reaching to take the papers back.
He handed them to her and she grabbed an evidence bag and slid the envelope and the papers into it and sat it aside.
"I agreed that someday I'd like to have a child. I agreed that I'd like to raise a child with my best friend."
She nodded and rubbed at her face again, pushing her glasses into her hair.
"What do we do?" Rafael finally looked at her, really looked.
He saw the exhaustion of these last few months. He saw the way she looked like she was going to be sick. It reminded him of the day he'd come after Noah had been taken, the day he'd held her and gave her a handkerchief. The way he'd been so helpless. He felt similarly now.
Olivia felt like the world was crashing down around her, which she knew was a bit dramatic, but she'd just been informed that one of her eggs that had been combined with some of Rafael's sperm and frozen for their eventual decision to be made was a person sitting in the next room. Maybe this, of all times, was one to be dramatic.
"I don't know," she admitted.
He pulled the glove off his hand and tossed it in the trash. She copied him.
"Call Langan?" Barba offered lamely.
She looked at him and found herself nodding in agreement. Following his help with Noah, she called Langan for most custody issues.
She grabbed her phone and made the call and then looked at the man who was once her best friend.
"I'm sorry, Liv."
She tilted her head at him, "yeah. I'm sorry, too, Rafa. I... I know you were doing what you thought was right for me when I was doing what I thought was right for Elliot."
Rafael felt the acid in his throat when he heard the detective's name. He'd barely met Stabler, he didn't want to know the man. He knew him as a rap sheet of misconduct a mile long, he knew him as the man Olivia had loved that left her, he knew him as the man who used Olivia's position to arrest a man guilty or not.
Olivia watched the gears turn in Rafa's head.
This was something she'd loved to watch back in the day, the absolute calculation of every word and syllable. The way he prepared every possible outcome of each letter leaving his mouth. Here, now, she worried that the words that would leave his mouth would hurt her. They'd be a tightly woven string that would sting as it slapped across her. She remembered falling in love with Barba much clearer than the way she'd fallen for Stabler.  With Stabler it was proximity, it was safety and care, it was the first man to ever look at her and see someone who knew what she was doing.
With Stabler it was inevitable and his return made her feel young again, but also made her feel boxed into someone she wasn't anymore. He didn't seem to understand that he wasn't the only one who'd had a life the last ten years, he didn't seem to understand that she hadn't just been in this squad room the whole time. He didn't seem to understand that she wasn't who he'd left behind.
With Barba it was slow, it was certain, and it was comfortable. It was colleagues sharing a drink to celebrate a win or to mourn a hard loss, it was friends sharing Chinese food over a discussion of a case, it was dinners and talks of all aspects of life. It was friendship that evolved into love and want.

There was silence between them, it wasn't tense or unsettling. Just two people lost in thought.
Rafael's brain was still moving just as fast as it had been, just as fast as Olivia's.

He hadn't realized at first that he'd been falling for Olivia. It wasn't until the day Mami told Olivia that she drove him a little crazy that he realized he may have begun to have some feelings. But it was a slow and comfortable descent. He wouldn't call it falling in love, he'd call it finding. He found love in a world he'd begun to lose hope in before he'd met her.
The knock on the door startled both of them from their thoughts, each of them jumping about a foot. They both laughed at the other's expense before laughing with each other.
Through her laughter, Olivia managed to say, "come in."
Trevor Langan entered the office as the captain and the counselor tried to calm themselves down.
"Well, I'm glad I'm not walking into a crime scene, I suppose," the man quipped upon hearing their laughter.
They both knew this was Langan's way of informing them that he'd heard of their fallout.
Olivia calmed down and took a deep breath, "hi, Trevor."
Rafa felt a brief jealousy at the personal greeting that he'd not received upon his own arrival.
"I hear we have a situation?"
Olivia nodded.
Rafael sighed slightly as his brain was filled with the sass filled remark of 'understatement of the century' but he bit his tongue.
Olivia began filling Langan in on the situation.
Rafael wasn't really listening, he'd made his way to the window into the interview room and peeked through the blinds.
Amanda was there but his eyes were set solely on the younger girl.
He took in her chocolate brown hair that fell in waves from her pigtails. Her eyebrows were furrowed as she looked over the puzzle pieces scattered before her.
He knew that she couldn't see him, but almost as if she could hear his silent pleading to look up, she looked directly toward the window for a moment and he saw them. Eyes so like his own, shape and color, looked directly at him without seeing him.
She said something to Amanda, her lips forming Olivia's name.
Amanda glanced toward the window and turned back to the girl, uttering a response that Rafael couldn't hear.
Whatever it was made the girl smile and he swore it was like someone had copied Olivia's smile onto that little girl's face.
He watched as she put several pieces into the puzzle in rapid succession which made Amanda sit back in shock. The cocky smirk that took the girl's face brought another pause to him, he'd heard whispers of the smirk. The way people knew he'd gotten what he'd wanted in the courtroom, the way people knew he'd gotten the response he'd wanted from someone he was talking to. Never had he seen it but seeing the way that little girl smirked, he knew that that was his.
Amanda seemed to realize it too as she glanced over her shoulder toward the door.
"Rafa?" Olivia's voice brought him back to reality.
He turned away from the window, swallowing hard as he did.
Langan started spouting family court jargon that Rafael knew well enough.
Olivia on the other hand watched Rafael's every reaction. Wondering if her best friend that she hadn't spoken to in months would show any signs of what he was feeling.
He didn't.
"And once the investigation is complete I don't see why the courts wouldn't allow the two of you to take her if that's what you want," Langan finished.
"That simple?" Rafael released a dry laugh.
"Biologically, you're both her parents and given the parents that raised her for the last six years have no intention of returning as based on this letter..."
Rafael nodded.
"Well, we have to launch an investigation into her parents, right?" Olivia inquired, glancing between the two men.
Rafael shrugged, that wasn't his department. He put one hand on his hip and rubbed at his face, he needed coffee, he was starting to feel irritable.
There was a knock on the door and Carisi entered with a tray of coffee as if he'd heard Rafael's silent prayer.
The three of them silenced upon seeing the ADA.
"I heard you were having a lawyer meeting without me and got concerned," the former detective admitted upon seeing the looks as he handed out the coffees.
Olivia let out a laugh, her shoulders relaxing.
Rafael gulped from the large coffee, not bothering to let it cool. He needed it. On top of his overwhelming addiction to caffeine, the lack of sleep he'd been dealing with since Olivia had stopped talking to him was taking its toll this morning.
Carisi made eye contact with his former mentor and gave a small nod.
"Well, as long as all's good, I'll just be on my way," Carisi said, leaving that statement hanging for a moment.
Olivia jumped into an explanation, wanting the current ADA's opinion on who they should be investigating.
Carisi did something similar to Rafael as he was handed the evidence bagged letter, slowly lowering into the chair across the desk from Olivia. He looked between his two mentors. He had so many questions but he knew it wasn't his place to ask right now.
"Well, given the parents seem useless, I'd go after the facility. If you find the parents in the investigation, so be it, but if not, find out why or how the facility fucked up."
Rafael nodded in agreement, which he didn't particularly like doing when it was Carisi.
"I agree with that," Langan said, "what these people did is clearly irresponsible and negligent but it comes back to the facility. I'll contact Judge Linden at family court and see if I can get temporary custody put in place for the two of you, if you'd like?"
Olivia looked at Rafael and he gave a small, barely there nod to her.
She nodded and looked toward the door, "Carisi, would you grab Fin?"
The ADA nodded and moved to the door, poking his head out.
Fin came in and Olivia handed the evidence bag, instructing him to take it to the lab to get dusted for prints and get a copy of it.
He glanced at it and then looked at Liv with a 'we'll talk later' sort of look before he left.
Carisi went to check on Amanda and Langan to introduce himself to Aspen, leaving Rafael and Olivia alone again.

He took a deep breath, "we should probably discuss this... whole... thing."
She looked at him and then toward the room where Langan was speaking to Aspen and nodded.
"I know that this wasn't the plan. We had separate samples frozen and then the embryos just in case neither of us found someone and we wanted to know the child's other parent," Rafael started.
Olivia nodded again, her glasses shifting slightly on her head. She didn't say anything.
"So what do we do now that one of those embryos is a whole person?" Rafael prompts.
Part of Olivia wants to grab him by the shoulders and scream that it's a sign from the universe that they're supposed to be together. Part of her wants to yell at him because to her this is God, the universe, some higher power pulling them back together after his initial departure and the even further strain of the last few months.
She doesn't, though, because she's stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Stabler, the first man she ever truly loved had asked her to dinner for Friday.
Elliot, the one that was the right one at the wrong time was there and wanted her after all these years.
El, that had been her partner for eleven years. They had been close to inseparable for those eleven years. Eleven good years, despite all of the pain and heartache of so many cases. Despite his marital status. 
She knew that she and Elliot were so different, each a separate planet crossing orbits.
Elliot made her so angry at times, though, and he riled her up. They'd gotten in trouble so many times because of one of his ideas or one of hers that he, as a superior in years, didn't talk her back from. For a split second she let herself wonder if she'd be in this office if he hadn't left.
She knew that she loved him all those years ago and she knew that, given time to truly connect again, she could love him again.

And then there's Barba, the man she'd sat across from and ate garbage takeout and discussed every possible angle the defense could take. 
Rafael, the man she'd meet nearly every night at Forlini's to just relax and feel like normal people. To talk, unabashedly, about anything and everything.
Her Rafa, the man who'd come to her and asked if she was disenchanted. The one who'd held her when she broke down over Noah being kidnapped. The one who'd picked up the pieces Stabler had left behind.
Noah's Uncle Rafa, the man who went from holding a baby two feet away from him to playing Legos and talking about stuffed animals and his distrust for them.
They had been inseparable once too. He'd pulled her back from so many ledges, so many possible career ending moves. He'd led her in better directions without even realizing. He'd supported her through sergeant, lieutenant, and even called her when she'd become captain.
They weren't as different. They were cut from the same cloth, edges a bit frayed but together they were more whole than they were with anyone else. She was never mad at him, she never had been. She'd been disappointed, she'd been hurt, and even betrayed, but never once had she ever felt truly angry with him.

Elliot was the port in a storm but Rafael had become home.
How could she choose between two men who meant so much to her?
How could she choose between two men who had left her, hurting her in doing so? Yes, they'd both returned after some time, but they'd both left before.

Rafael watched her, she'd been silent for so long following his question and it was taking everything in his power to not turn into a lawyer and press her for an answer. He could see that her mind was racing and he wasn't going to push her because his was too.
This was Liv. This was the woman he'd fallen in love with. This was his safe haven, his hiding place. This was the woman who took his black and white world and showed him shades of grey. This was the woman who had painstakingly painted color through every aspect of his life. Introduced him to the beauty in a world where before he'd only seen ugly. This woman taught him how to trust, how to love, how to believe. She taught him what family meant.
And he knew, in that moment, looking across the desk at the woman who had become his best friend... the one he'd loved and lost, that this was it for him. He didn't ever want to try to find anyone else. As a bisexual man, Rafael knew that there were perhaps millions of fish in that sea, but there was only a single person who knew the way he liked his coffee and knew exactly which brand of scotch he liked. There was only one person that knew he stirred his coffee with his pen because he wanted to see who was observant enough to notice. There was only one person who knew that he liked to sleep on the left side of the bed because it was further from his bedroom door as a kid, further from the man that was his father. There was only one person who knew him inside and out, backwards and forwards. Not even his Mami knew him that well.
This was it and he knew it.
But did she?