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“Hang in there, Rafael.” Rita gives him a consoling look before retrieving her purse and leaving the dive bar where she asked him to meet.
It’s a testament to the state of Rafael’s life these days that he’s relying on Rita Calhoun for a shoulder to cry on. It’s gotten to the point where she’s the only friend of his who doesn’t treat him with abject pity at least once during their conversations. Even Liv can’t be trusted not to speak to him like he’s one of their victims.
It’s no one’s fault that his fiancé has been undercover for six months longer than the assignment was supposed to last, but Rafael is bitter anyways.
He motions to the bartender and orders another drink. The bar is in a part of the city he and Rita stopped hanging out in a decade ago, but he suspects the nostalgia was part of her plan to distract him from the utter melancholy he’s been wallowing in lately.
Rafael has had a hard week. First, the SVU case he had been prosecuting crashed and burned, then one of Sonny’s nieces was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Rafael loves Sonny’s family, but facing hardships like that without him only worsens the ache of his absence.
Eight months. Eight months of SVU being understaffed. Eight months of coming home to an empty apartment. Eight months of sleeping alone. Eight months of missing Sonny so much his heart hurts.
Rafael stares down at the engagement ring on his finger before taking another sip from his now almost empty glass. He vaguely registers the sound of the front door opening and more patrons entering the bar. He decides he’ll finish this drink and then stop feeling sorry for himself. He’ll finish this drink and then go home and go back to being strong like he promised Sonny he would.
“Now what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?”
Rafael’s hand freezes in lifting his glass to his lips. For a long, heart-stopping second he thinks he’s imagining things. Imagining the man’s voice, the thick Staten Island accent that washes over him like a warm tide. Imagining the all too familiar shape of the man leaning on the bar.
He’s not imagining things. He turns, and Sonny is there.
His blond hair is longer and grayer than Rafael remembers, disheveled with none of the usual gel he uses to style it. He wears a simple dark blue Henley and worn jeans. The biggest difference is the full beard, which Rafael is wholly unused to seeing on his fiancé’s face.
He almost looks like himself.
“Uh, I think he’s a little out of your league, Dominick,” says a shorter man to Sonny’s right. From the way he hangs back with two others, it looks like the four of them came to the bar together.
“Fuck off, Gio,” Sonny tells him. The other men just laugh and head to the back of the bar to find a booth.
Rafael is still frozen. He tries not to stare at Sonny in complete shock and awe, lest he blow his cover.
Sonny moves a bit closer to Rafael, close enough that he can smell his cologne: earthy sandalwood and something floral. He smells so familiar Rafael could cry.
“What are you drinking?” Sonny asks him, snapping Rafael out of his daze.
He remembers where they are and who Sonny is with and says, “Scotch.” But Sonny already knew that.
Rafael watches as his fiancé orders two more drinks for them. His brain slowly reminds him to act like they are strangers.
“Cheers,” Sonny says, offering his glass up to Rafael with a small smile.
Rafael clinks his own against it, trying to act natural. Like a guy being hit on by a stranger at a bar. He can feel the eyes of Sonny’s companions on them.
“So,” Sonny begins, setting his glass down, “if I don’t get to know why a pretty thing like you is hanging out in this dive, do I at least get to know your name?”
Rafael arches an eyebrow at him, taking a careful sip of his drink. “Shouldn’t you give me yours first?”
Sonny smiles broadly at him. Too wide for a man trying to flirt with a stranger, but Rafael’s heart clenches at the sight. “Dominick. Dominick Cossetta.”
Rafael shakes his hand when he offers it. “Rafael Barba.”
Sonny turns to lean back against the bar, still smiling down at Rafael. Rafael forgot how tall he is. “Anyone ever told you have beautiful eyes, Rafael?”
You, all the time, Rafael thinks to himself. He suddenly feels like crying. He doesn’t want to pretend not to know Sonny and flirt with him in a dive bar like he’s just some part of his undercover operation. He wants him home.
Instead, Rafael clears his throat. “Once or twice.”
Sonny leans closer to him, smirking. Rafael thinks that if this was 15 years ago when he was in law school, and Sonny really was a stranger, he would definitely go home with him. The identity he assumes when he’s undercover is a man too beguiling and cocky for his own good. “Is that what that ring is all about, sweetheart? You got some lucky guy waiting to tell you all this same shit when you get home?”
Rafael’s heart skips a beat when Sonny calls him “sweetheart.” It’s Sonny’s favorite pet name for him and he’d had no idea how long it would be until he heard it again.
“Who says I’m going home tonight?” he replies.
Sonny chuckles, nodding. “Alright, alright, I get it.”
“Is this guy bothering you?” a voice asks from Rafael’s other side. He turns to find Gio, Sonny’s “friend” who made the comment earlier.
“If he were, would it be any of your business?” Rafael snipes.
Sonny laughs again, leaning even closer to Rafael in order to speak to Gio. “Dude, fuck off.”
Gio laughs. “Alright, but just so you know, this guy’s a total lowlife,” he tells Rafael before heading back to the table where his friends are waiting.
Rafael turns back to Sonny to find him closer than he expected. Their faces are only inches away, and he can’t help his gaze falling to Sonny’s mouth.
“He’s just giving me a hard time,” Sonny explains, speaking softly like he’s telling Rafael a secret.
Rafael’s hands move of their own accord and he brushes imaginary lint off of Sonny’s shoulder. With him standing this close it’s impossible not to touch him. “Your friends seem like dicks,” he replies.
“Yeah,” Sonny says breathlessly, moving ever so closer, his eyes on Rafael’s mouth, “they really are.”
Rafael knows that once he starts kissing Sonny he won’t be able to stop. He also knows that climbing his fiancé like a tree after a few minutes of conversation won’t do much for his cover. As far as every other person in this bar is concerned, Rafael is a wealthy man with a white collar job and Sonny is a small-time criminal hoping to get lucky.
But—God help him—Rafael can’t stop staring at Sonny’s lips, his neck, his grown-out hair. His beard is thick and full and Rafael wants to know what it would feel like brushing against the skin of his thighs. He can see a thick gold chain peeking out of Sonny’s shirt collar and he recognizes it as Sonny’s grandfather’s old crucifix—the one he always wears when he’s undercover to play up his Italian-Catholic-with-questionable-morals character.
His heart squeezes in his chest. He’s missed Sonny so much, and even now when he’s standing right in front of him, he’s so far away.
Rafael swallows the lump in his throat. “So—Dominick. What do you do?”
Sonny catches Rafael’s slip-up, how he had almost called Sonny by his preferred nickname but turned it into the word “so” at the last second. His eyes widen almost imperceptibly, like he’s asking Rafael to use that name and stay away from it all at once.
“Oh, you know,” the other man says, taking a sip of scotch. “A little of this, a little of that. Working for Watty Watkins down at his club.”
Rafael recognizes the name as the target of SVU’s undercover operation. Wyatt “Watty” Watkins—owner of a BDSM club they suspect of sex trafficking. As Sonny discovered after three months of undercover work, the operation Watkins runs is far more complex than they initially realized.
And so here they are.
Rafael smiles slowly. “Something tells me it’d be wise to stay away from you.”
Sonny is looming over him now, their height difference exaggerated by the fact that Rafael is seated at the bar. “Aw, c’mon, sweetheart, where’s the fun in that?”
Rafael pretends to think for a moment. “Hm. Weird. I can’t seem to find any.”
“There you go, sweetheart,” Sonny says with a grin, winking at him. “You look like the kind of guy who knows how to have a good time, anyways.”
Rafael actually feels himself blush. He can’t remember the last time Sonny hit on him like this, and not just because he’s been gone for eight months. They were together for a year and a half before Sonny went undercover, had fallen into a domestic routine that didn’t require them to have elaborate flirting matches every time they wanted to sleep together.
Rafael feels a thrill run through him as he says, “What kind of good time did you have in mind?”
“Why don’t you come back to my place and find out?” Sonny asks, eyeing Rafael from head to toe.
Rafael takes a last sip of scotch. “Lead the way.”
Sonny helps him down from his seat at the bar before leaving some cash for the bartender. He places a possessive hand on the small of his back as they walk past the table of his associates. Rafael hears one wolf-whistle and another call out, “Get it in, Cossetta!”
“Christ…” Sonny mutters, before turning and making a rude gesture at them.
Outside in the humid July air, Rafael immediately pushes Sonny up against the bar’s brick exterior. He kisses him soundly on the mouth, running a hand through his long hair. Sonny’s hands settle on his waist and he pulls their bodies flush together.
All at once, Rafael’s entire world feels righted. He’s been missing Sonny like he would miss his right arm if it got up and walked away, but he hadn’t even imagined it could feel this good to have him in his arms again. Rafael suddenly feels tears stinging the back of his eyes again. He pulls away with a gasp.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” he says, voice thick.
Sonny chuckles, rubbing his hands up Rafael’s back. “No need to rush, sweetheart, we’ve got all night.” Rafael flushes as he realizes what Sonny is really saying: We’re too close to the bar, not yet, don’t blow my cover.
Sonny takes one of his hands and Rafael works on calling them an Uber as he leads them down the block.
The silence they experience during the short ride to Sonny’s temporary apartment is tension like nothing Rafael has felt before. They’re not about to expose Sonny’s true identity to a random Uber driver, and Rafael wouldn’t make out with his fiancé in front of a stranger if his life depended on it, so they’re left with Sonny’s hand gripping Rafael’s thigh, his gaze boring into the side of Rafael’s head. If Rafael looks him in the eye now he will actually lose his mind.
The apartment the NYPD rented for Dominick Cossetta is in a dilapidated brick building that, under normal circumstances, Rafael would probably refuse to even consider entering. But, truthfully, he would follow Sonny anywhere, especially in this moment.
Rafael doesn’t get to see much of the actual studio apartment anyways, because the moment Sonny closes the door behind them, he pulls Rafael into his arms, tips his head, and kisses him.
Rafael feels like he can breathe again, feels like he’ll never tire of the taste of Sonny on his lips. Sonny’s beard scratches against his cheeks as he opens his mouth to Sonny’s tongue, warm and soft, caressing every inch of his mouth.
Sonny reaches down to grip Rafael’s thighs, and Rafael uses momentum to aid him as Sonny lifts him off his feet and presses him against the wall across from the bed. Rafael settles into his arms easily, like he never even left. He wraps his legs around Sonny’s slim waist and goes back to kissing him like a man possessed.
Sonny breaks away to trail kisses down Rafael’s neck, his beard tickling the delicate skin. Rafael arches against him desperately.
“Sonny,” he pleads. He wants to say a hundred different things, ask a hundred different questions, but there’s no time. They only have tonight.
Rafael figures his body will just have to say what he can’t voice. That he loves Sonny more than life itself. That he misses him hopelessly. That he needs him.
Sonny lifts his head and looks Rafael in the eye. “Rafi,” he rasps, looking as wrecked as Rafael feels.
Rafael takes his face in his hands and kisses him again. “I can’t believe I found you.”
Sonny lets out a broken, heart-aching sound. “I love you so much.”
It’s the last thing Sonny said to him before he left. Rafael will never forget it. Only this time, he can say it back. “I love you, Sonny. I’ve missed you so much.”
“I know, sweetheart, I know. Me too. I can’t—” Sonny breaks off, seems unable to find the words. He kisses Rafael instead. The slide of their lips together is slow and hot. Rafael is painfully aware of his erection pressing into Sonny’s stomach.
“I need you,” Rafael moans, pressing himself against Sonny’s body.
Sonny nods hurriedly, seeming distracted. He shifts Rafael in his grip and Rafael can feel Sonny’s hard cock pressing against his ass.
“Sonny,” Rafael gasps. They haven’t had sex in eight months. He’s sure this is not going to last long.
“Come here,” Sonny mutters, carrying Rafael over to the bed. He drops him onto the mattress, still fully dressed in the suit he wore to work that day. He must have recently washed the sheets because Rafael can smell the laundry detergent—the same brand they use at home. “You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Sonny says.
Rafael sits up and starts taking Sonny’s belt off. Sonny laughs, a bright sound that rings through Rafael’s ears.
“You can’t say shit like that and expect not to get your dick sucked,” Rafael explains, exasperated.
“Oh, is that right?” Sonny asks, peeling off his shirt as Rafael tugs the belt off.
Sonny bends down to help Rafael out of his suit coat and that’s when Rafael sees it.
On his grandfather’s chain, nestled against the crucifix, is Sonny’s engagement ring—a simple gold band, just like Rafael’s.
“You—” Rafael cuts himself off, reaching up and taking the ring between his fingers. He’s almost too shocked to speak, his heart in his throat. “What are you doing with this? I thought you left it in the safe in the hall closet.”
“I’m keeping it safe right here, sweetheart,” Sonny says, covering Rafael’s hand with his own and pressing it against his chest, right over his heart.
Rafael has felt on the verge of tears all night, but this is what finally does him in. A hot tear spills down his left cheek. “That’s not safe! What if someone sees it? It would blow your cover!” he cries.
“Rafi, sshhhh,” Sonny says, looking confused at the sudden change in mood. He sits down next to Rafael on the bed and pulls him into his arms. “If anyone saw it I would just say that it’s a family heirloom, just like the crucifix.”
Rafael feels ridiculous, now fully sobbing against his fiancé’s neck. He clings to Sonny for dear life, like something is about to pull him away at any second. He didn’t even react like this when Sonny left to go undercover almost a year ago. Then, he was calm and mostly collected. He didn’t cry when he left and was able to let him go after an appropriately long hug.
But back then, everyone thought this assignment would last two months at most.
“I’m right here, baby,” Sonny promises, “I’ve got you.”
Rafael hugs him tighter. “I’ve missed you so much. I’ve been so worried. Every second of every day I’m thinking about where you are, if you’re safe—”
“I’m safe, Rafi, I promise. Most of the guys I work with are idiots. Watkins is the only one with two brain cells to rub together.”
Rafael laughs, sniffling as his tears finally abate.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Sonny whispers, easing him fully into his lap so Rafael is straddling his thighs. He finishes helping Rafael out of his suit coat and starts to loosen his tie. “And if all you want to do for the rest of the night is cuddle and cry, then we can do that. Whatever you need.”
Rafael shakes his head, dabbing at his cheeks delicately with his shirtsleeve. Once he feels marginally more composed, he runs his hands over Sonny’s bare chest. “I need you inside me,” he says.
Sonny grabs Rafael’s hips, rocking him so his ass drags over his cock in a slow grind. “Yeah, baby?” Sonny asks, grinning. Rafael has the sneaking suspicion that Sonny is still just trying to make him smile.
“Yeah,” Rafael answers. “Care to make yourself useful?”
He can hear Sonny’s breath catch in his throat. “You know it, sweetheart.”
Rafael motions to his shirt before looping his arms around Sonny’s neck as the latter begins to undo the buttons. He ducks his head, sucking a bruise under Rafael’s jaw at the same time.
“Not anywhere visible,” Rafael gasps out.
Sonny groans in frustration, but does as he’s told and pulls away. He pushes Rafael’s shirt off his shoulders once he has it all the way unbuttoned and starts giving him a love bite on his collarbone instead.
Rafael rolls his hips forward, grinding his ass down onto Sonny’s erection.
“Fucking Christ,” Sonny bites out, hurrying to undo Rafael’s belt.
The next few minutes are a blur of bruising kisses and fumbling hands as they undress further. Rafael pushes Sonny’s boxer briefs down at the same time he pushes Sonny to lie flat on the bed. When he kneels between Sonny’s splayed thighs, the latter moans desperately.
“Rafi, you don’t have to—”
“Did I not say you were getting your dick sucked?” Rafael snaps before wrapping his lips around the head of Sonny’s hard cock.
“Oh, fuck,” Sonny moans, his hands slipping into Rafael’s hair.
Rafael is suddenly desperate to have as much of Sonny inside of him as possible. He takes more and more of Sonny’s cock into his mouth, licking along the underside and hollowing his cheeks.
Sonny grips Rafael’s hair, and it takes Rafael a moment to realize he’s trying to pull him away.
“I’m gonna come—fuck, Raf,” Sonny groans. Rafael pulls off of his fiancé’s cock and sees that Sonny is gripping himself hard around the base of his dick in an effort to stave off his orgasm. “Baby, I can’t.”
“I want you to come inside me,” Rafael rushes out, feeling a hollowness in his core that only Sonny can fill.
“Yeah, yeah.” Sonny nods, licking his lips. His cheeks are flushed and his hair is disheveled from writhing against the mattress. “I want that sweetheart, wanna be inside you.”
Rafael practically throws himself on top of Sonny, capturing his lips in a messy kiss. His cock drags a streak of pre-come across Sonny’s stomach and the bolt of pleasure that follows the movement makes him shudder. Sonny’s beard dampens with saliva as their tongues brush together over and over.
“Gotta get lube,” Sonny grits out, struggling to pull himself away from Rafael.
Rafael finally lets him go, settling back against the pillows as Sonny retrieves a bottle of lube from the tiny bathroom.
“C’mere, I need your fingers,” Rafael demands.
Sonny hurries to follow his order, spreading out on his side next to Rafael on the mattress. After coating two fingers in lube, he presses them against Rafael’s hole, teasing.
“Like that, sweetheart?” he asks. His eyes are blown wide with arousal, his heated gaze glued to Rafael.
Rafael’s mouth falls open as he presses against the sensation. “Sonny, fuck me.”
Sonny tries to slip both fingers in at once, but meeting too much resistance instead focuses on pressing a single digit into Rafael.
“You’re so tight,” Sonny says in awe, torn between watching Rafael’s face and watching the place where he penetrates his wanton body.
“It’s been so long,” Rafael gasps out, driving his hips down against Sonny’s hand. “Don’t like fingering myself, not since you.”
“Not since me?” Sonny asks. He thrusts the single finger in and out carefully.
Rafael shakes his head.
“Yeah? You need me to take care of you?”
“Your fingers are longer than mine, so—Christ, Sonny,” Rafael breaks off into a moan as Sonny begins pressing a second digit into him.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Sonny repeats, mouthing at Rafael’s neck. He fingers Rafael open quicker after that, growing impatient in his need.
Rafael lays prone in his arms, shaking with arousal as Sonny drives his fingers against his prostate. Rafael has never been with anyone who’s known his body so well.
“Sonny, Sonny, please fuck me,” Rafael pleads, worrying he’s going to start crying again. He’s all but trembling in Sonny’s arms, so desperate to have him sheathed inside him he could scream. He probably will scream.
“Alright, yeah,” Sonny agrees, hurrying to spread more lube over his cock. He closes his eyes in pleasure as soon as he touches himself. Rafael soaks up every second, watching Sonny stroke his own cock to get himself ready for Rafael.
“Raf.” Sonny gives him a pained look. “Baby, I’m sorry, but I’m going to go off in, like, a minute.”
Rafael whines. He can’t remember the last time he was reduced to begging like this. He would be embarrassed if he weren’t so frantic to have Sonny as close to him as humanly possible. “I don’t care as long as you do it inside me,” he snaps.
“You drive me crazy,” Sonny mutters as he looms over Rafael. Grabbing Rafael’s hip with one hand and his own cock with the other, he lines up and pushes slowly into Rafael, eyebrows drawn together in concentration. Once he’s balls-deep inside his fiancé, he drops down onto his elbows, groaning.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Raf. You’re so tight,” Sonny says.
Rafael wraps his legs around Sonny’s waist, canting his hips down in an effort to get his dick even deeper, as if that were possible. “Fuck me!”
Sonny pulls back and drives his cock back in before freezing again, a moan tumbling from his lips. “You feel too good.”
Before Rafael can well and truly start begging, Sonny finally fucks him like he means it, driving in in hard thrusts that have Rafael arching off the bed. Sonny’s crucifix and engagement ring swing with his movements, brushing against Rafael’s chest.
“Oh, God,” Rafael says. “Faster…”
Sonny does as he’s told, thrusting faster. “Say my name,” he says, breathing heavy. “Please.”
“Sonny,” Rafael moans.
“No,” Sonny chokes out. “My first name.”
Rafael is confused for a split second before he realizes that Sonny means his given name.
He can count on one hand the number of times he’s called Sonny “Dominick,” outside of introducing him in a professional context. But if Sonny needs to hear his birth name—his family name—from someone who knows the real him, after months of pimps and rapists and drug dealers calling him “Dominick,” Rafael can do that.
It feels almost too intimate coming off his tongue. “Dominick,” Rafael says, like a prayer.
Sonny groans, fucking into Rafael harder. “Sweetheart,” he gasps. He sounds wrecked. Rafael knows he’s close.
“Dominick,” Rafael sobs, clinging to Sonny harder. He brushes a hand through the hair at the back of his head. “I love you.”
Sonny moans again, the sound hoarse and urgent. He thrusts into Rafael once, twice, before stilling, coming deep inside of him.
Rafael swears he can feel him filling him up. He whimpers at the sensation, grinding his hard cock up against Sonny’s muscled stomach.
Sonny brings his hand to Rafael’s dick, slicking the pre-come gathered at his slit down his shaft to jerk him quickly. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds before Rafael is coming across their stomachs. His every nerve feels alight with pleasure as he finds a release he hasn’t been able to grasp since the day Sonny left him.
In the long seconds that follow, Rafael becomes increasingly aware of just how sweaty and sticky they are. Still, he won’t let Sonny go for anything. He hugs him tighter, the backs of his knees, slick with sweat, slipping against Sonny’s slim hips.
Sonny hugs him back, kissing his jaw. “I love you,” he whispers.
Eventually, Rafael’s leg starts cramping and they have to disentangle themselves from each other. Sonny pulls out, wincing at the sensation. Rafael wriggles up the bed until he can pull back the covers and slide between the sheets.
“You want a towel?” Sonny, who knows better than anyone how much Rafael likes feeling clean, asks.
Rafael shakes his head. He can’t bear to erase any evidence of Sonny’s presence from his body yet. “I just want to cuddle.”
Sonny grins and pulls back the other half of the bedding, settling down next to Rafael. He holds his lanky arms out and Rafael curls into his side.
Rafael feels more at peace than he has in eight months, even in a strange apartment in a bad part of town. Wherever Sonny is, that’s where he belongs.
He listens to Sonny’s heart beat for a few quiet moments before saying, “I don’t know what to say. I have so much to tell you.”
“More than in your letters?”
Rafael’s letters are the only form of communication they’ve had for the past eight months. Once a month, Rafael writes to him, and gives Liv the letter. She passes it onto Sonny at their next check-in. Sonny reads it, burns it, and gives Liv a verbal message to pass along in return. Usually just “I love you” or “I miss you” or “Kiss my mother for me.”
“More since the last one,” Rafael says. “Mia had appendicitis.”
“What?” Sonny cries.
Rafael smiles. “She’s okay. It was scary, but they got to the hospital in time. She misses you. Everyone does.”
Sonny’s hand drifts slowly over Rafael’s back. “Me too, sweetheart. You have no idea.”
“I think I do,” Rafael says. He traces the familiar pattern of Sonny’s abdominal muscles with a finger.
Sonny squeezes him in a hug, kissing his forehead.
“I’ll be home soon, Rafi. I promise.”
“Don’t,” Rafael says, looking up into Sonny’s eyes. “Please—just don’t make a promise you can’t keep.”
Sonny is silent for a long moment before nodding.
“Raf,” Sonny begins, “when I proposed to you before I left, that wasn’t just—it wasn’t some excuse. Like, I wasn’t trying to get you to wait for me or whatever.”
Rafael glances up at Sonny, but he’s staring off into the distance, a hard look in his eye.
“I know that, Sonny,” Rafael says.
“I just—I just need you to know that I meant it. More than anything. I couldn’t bear to leave you without you knowing how much I love you.”
Rafael smiles, his heart squeezing in his chest. “I love you so much.”
Sonny finally looks at him, smiling back. He kisses his lips, then the tip of his nose. “Let’s get some sleep, baby. I’ll set an alarm for early and call you a cab in the morning,” he says.
“And then?”
“Raf…” Sonny sighs. “We can’t see each other again.”
Rafael knew this all along, but he still has to shut his eyes against the fresh sting of tears. “I know, Sonny. But someday.”
Sonny holds him close. “Someday.”