A/N: Just a little AU one-shot I wrote up in twenty minutes. Hope you guys like it! I don't own SVU or its characters. ENJOY!
"Dismissed."
The bang of the gavel was all she needed to hastily shove her files in her briefcase and beat it from the court room. The jury was under the defendant's thumb, her witness crumbled on the stand, and Buchanan was giving her a hell of a time and enjoying it. More than once she wanted to open her mouth and let him have it, but Barth would have her head on a stick if that happened in her court room.
She pursed her lips and shoved past Amanda and Carisi, who were trying their best to bring her spirits back up, but it was for naught. Nothing was going to make this better. She was going to lose this round and a smug little college football playing rapist was going to walk free, off into the sunset in a Porsche his daddy paid for with his doctor's salary.
All the way to the elevator, the two detectives went back and forth about how great she was up there, commanding attention and keeping the jury enraptured in what she had to say, but she would have none of it. She waved them off when they tried to get on with her. She wanted to be alone in her office, where she could wallow in self-pity like she did in secret.
"Liv, c'mon," Carisi pleaded, "Let's go grab a bite to eat, take your mind off it?"
"No thanks. Now if you'll excuse me," she hit the close door button rapidly, relieved when the door slid shut on both of their faces. It was a short ride up to her office, where she promptly told Carmen she would be locking herself into her office most of the night and she didn't want to be disturbed. When the woman offered to call Lucy and let her know she would be getting home late, Liv promised her a raise.
She smiled at the picture of Noah on her desk, with a chocolate smeared face and a giant grin plastered on it. Another sat next to it of her and him, heads pressed together while the Statue of Liberty posed in the background.
She always felt guilty when she stayed late at the office, having Lucy step in to do dinner, bath, and story time before bed, but she was so beyond frustrated, it likely wouldn't do well to be around him in this state. She would see him in the morning, and when this trail was over and she walked out of the court room with her tail between her legs, she would treat him to ice cream sundae's and a movie marathon to start off the weekend.
Sitting back in her office chair she sighed, watching the setting sun cast an orange glow across the dull carpet. Sometimes, she wondered what life would have been like had she opted to enter the police academy, like she had wanted, instead of studied law like she ended up doing. Would she be here? Living and working for the NYPD like her friends did? She wondered what it would have been like had she been on the street, tracking down evidence and perps like her colleagues did for her.
Life would be different…that was for sure. It wasn't that she hated her job. She was proud of her work, putting away assholes who thought they could get away with it. It gave her peace, knowing that she was the one who brought the gavel down in the long run. Locking them up tight and throwing the key away.
It was hard one days like this, though, to come to terms with the fact that sometimes, there was no justice to be served. It irked her to her core, like it did everyone else. But just knowing it could have ended differently if…if she could have done more…
There was a knock on her door that broke through her thoughts and she groaned.
"Carmen, I said no disturbances," she called out, and she was about to unload on whoever was opening the door until she realized it was the one person who could manage to keep her calm and enrage her all in one breath. It was the only person she would welcome, day or night.
"Sulking?"
"Shut the door, Rafa."
Rafael smirked and took a seat across from her desk, kicking his feet up on the edge and sitting low in the chair. He looked exhausted.
"You too, huh?"
"I'm getting too old to be chasing thirty-year-old men across the city," he yawned out, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the seat. She smiled and allowed her eyes to travel up the length of his exposed forearms. He only rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie when his day was officially through. She smiled at the thought of him coming to see her, no doubt hearing how she utterly failed in court from Thing 1 and Thing 2.
"Better you than me. Knowing me, I'd somehow screw that up, too."
He lifted his head and looked at her disapprovingly. "The guy's charismatic as hell and our witness might as well have been blindfolded at the scene. It was a bad case to begin with. If anyone screwed up, it was me. And Finn. But don't tell him I said that. I'll never hear the end of it."
She chuckled, resting her chin in her palm, elbow propped up on her desk. They stared at each other for a few seconds before she sighed dramatically, earning another smirk from him.
"Do you ever wonder what it would have been like had you went to law school instead of the academy?"
"Is that another way of saying I'm a bad cop or I'm incredibly stupid for turning down a full-ride scholarship to Harvard?"
She smiled, "Neither."
He shrugged his shoulders, picking at some invisible lint on his pants leg, "Sometimes. I wonder where I would be…what I would be doing. Hands down, prosecution. I hate defense attorneys. And I would be working in a big city. Maybe Brooklyn. Or here. Hell, I'd probably have your job. Maybe you would have had mine."
She smiled, thinking about how different it would be with their roles reversed. Not a bad thought, but one that wasn't worth dwelling on. It would never happen. And she was ok with that. Just as long as he was always in her life.
"Do you think we'd still be on good terms, if that were the case?"
He stood up and walked around her desk, coming to stop next to her. She swiveled in her chair and he planted his hands on the arm rests, leaning over her. She smiled and accepted a kiss, feeling calm for the first time since she stepped foot in the court room that morning.
"Do you mean would we still be sleeping with each other and dancing around the idea of dating?"
She slapped his arm, "We're not dancing. We're waiting until two weeks before McCoy retires to disclose so I don't have to listen to him drone on for months about how I'm too good for you."
"It's the truth," he winked and leaned in for another kiss. "Seriously…do you think we would?"
"I'd like to think so," she stood up as he leaned back and wrapped her arms around his waist, sighing into his shoulder as the cologne wafted over her, soothing her senses. He always had a way of doing that to her.
"Hmm…I'm thinking differently."
"Oh yeah?" She teased him, letting him sway them back and forth to some tune only he could hear in his head.
"Yeah," he wrapped an arm around her waist, grabbing her hand and cradling it to his chest, "I think had things turned out differently, I would have been a massive idiot who kept his feelings to himself and couldn't take a hint. But, that only because had I gone to law school, I would have kept on being the massive nerd I was all throughout my child hood."
She smirked and turned her face into his neck, kissing his jaw, "That implies that I would pining after you with all those hints I would be dropping."
"Please, with my luck you would have ended up married to Cassidy…or Tucker of all people," he cringed, and she laughed into his shoulder as they moved around her office.
"Tucker hit on me once, let it go," she ran her fingers through the hair on the back of his head and kissed his cheek, pulling away. He wrapped his other arm around her, trapping her against him. She adjusted herself, feeling his gun press uncomfortably into her side.
"What brought all this on? Questioning your life choices just because of a bad day in court?"
She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders, wrapping her arms around his neck, "Just thinking about what might have been." She rested her forehead against his and sighed.
"But I wouldn't trade this for the world."
"Sap," he whispered, and they laughed. He made her that way, that was for sure.
"How late is Lucy staying tonight?"
"Extra late," she pulled away, reaching for her briefcase that she hadn't bothered to unpack, "Dinner, drinks, and your place?"
"How about yours?"
"Really? You'll get stuck in the land of Legos and dinosaurs before I order pizza? And tomorrow's Saturday so he's probably going to be up late, forcing you to watch Disney movies."
"It won't kill me to watch those annoying, yellow things run around screen like idiots for the fifteenth time. Besides, you, Noah, and pizza sounds like a perfect night to me."
They left her office side by side and as soon as they were in his car, she laced her fingers with his and listened to him sing along to the radio on the drive home through crazy, after work traffic.
She often wondered what life would have been like had she made different choices. Sometimes, she thought she would have made a better cop and Rafa would have made a better lawyer, but all of that disappeared into thin air when they were like this, together.