This, right here, was where Rafael Barba was supposed to be. It had taken years to get to this Manhattan courtroom, years of hard graft, of long sleepless nights, and aching eyes from reading too much in bad light. Of lost opportunities for other kinds of happiness.

His plan – Barba had a detailed life plan, hell, he had made spreadsheets - had originally been to get the Manhattan transfer by the age of thirty-eight, to put himself on schedule to be in the running for D.A. before fifty. But somehow, he had gotten caught up in things, in Brooklyn. He had been distracted, or maybe just plain busy.

Barba had liked his office and been well known and respected by everyone he worked with. It had been a decent life, and he had started to wonder if he really wanted to move on at all. Years had crept by while he had kept his head buried in case files.

Until the morning he had read the article about his old friend Alejandro Muñoz, the quote about him planning out his run for mayor feeling like a stab in Barba's gut. Barba hadn't seen his old friend for a few months. In fact almost a year, he had realized. Clearly, he had been out of the loop on Alex's life these days.

The picture accompanying the article had shown Alex with his beautiful wife Yelina and their adorable little daughters standing in the summer sunshine, on a street in the old barrio. Barba had looked at the picture for a long time. Yelina just kept getting more and more lovely. That still hurt, just a little.

That evening, Barba had called his mother and told her that he was putting in for the transfer. She sounded skeptical and had told him that it was about time. She had also read the paper, that much was clear.

If he were Alex Muñoz, she had said, he would not have still been bumming around in Brooklyn at the age of forty-two. Good old Mamá. She always knew just what to say to make him feel better.

'I'll get him convicted for kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, so how about he takes ten and spares us all the humiliation.' Rafael Barba was on a roll. Oh, yeah. He was on fire. Life right now, he knew, was about as good as it ever got.

Barba patted the other man's arm, in a sarcastically conciliatory gesture. He had just won by a half mile, he was reigning supreme, and Barba wanted to watch this excuse for lawyer realise it and assimilate it and suck it up. Which he did.

That moment, when they realised just how beaten they were and just how damn good Barba was, that was one of his favourite things about this job. It made it all worthwhile.

Then he turned.

There was someone waiting for him by the courtroom door, a man he recognized. Captain Harris. He knew him from his time back in Brooklyn. With him stood two of the most beautiful women Barba had ever seen. If he was honest with himself, Barba would have admitted that Harris was pretty fine himself. But Rafael Barba was not always completely honest with himself about that stuff. It was complicated.

As he approached, he realized that he probably had about a decade on the blonde woman. The dark one, however – with shining hair, stunning curves and those big, deep, coffee colored eyes, all his favorite things - she was definitely in his preferred ballpark. Uh, age range-wise, he thought. Keep it clean, Rafi.

But the thought had been there, along with a slight tremor of a feeling down somewhere that he was absolutely not thinking about right now, here in this courtroom. Absolutely not.

He grinned and made some offhand quip about the ladies being young enough to be the Captain's daughters. When making first impressions with women, Barba told himself, he liked to keep his flirting as cheesy as possible. That way, they'd never see it coming. Give them a few weeks, and by the time they realized how charming they found him, he'd already have them thoroughly under his spell.

Funny how it never actually seemed to work out like that.

The gorgeous dark haired woman pursed her lips at his highly original compliment. Then, as he shook her hand, she almost smiled.

He wasn't going to think about that either, he decided. Too late.

Barba bet she had a fantastic smile. He really wanted to find out.

These two lady cops had bleeding hearts when it came to their victims, that was for sure. He had read the most important parts of this victim's file as they had walked back to the office. They were catching him up on the rest of the case now. The author of his least favourite book had been raped. Of all the ADAs in all the world, of course they had come to him.

Barba's new office was still in disarray, his many certificates leaning against the walls, his books piled out of order on the shelves.

Olivia – he knew he should probably think of her as Benson. He didn't care - followed him across the room to the desk, with the other one, Rollins, bobbing along in her wake. She was pushing him to take the case, despite all the potential problems he could see in it.

He was not going to make this easy on anyone, just because he found this Detective Olivia Benson person incredibly attractive.

In fact, that only made him want to push back even harder. Really hard. Oh God, his brain needed to stop doing that. Not to mention the rest of him.

Besides, in the circumstances, this was really inappropriate.

Barba let it go and forgot all about it while he told the officers about the case in Red Hook, the one he had lost. That idiot woman and her ridiculous book had stolen justice from that girl and caused the jury to believe her abuser. If they hadn't read and trusted that fake-S&M garbage, everything would have been alright. It had weighed on him for weeks, and not just because he had lost.

You weren't supposed to care too much, it wasn't healthy. Much as he tried, he did care, a little, sometimes. He just couldn't help it. The case still bothered him, the picture of that girl's bloodshot eyes still came back into his mind whenever he was lying awake at four in the morning. Which was more often than he liked to admit.

Not that he was going to tell these cops any of that.

This author, Jocelyn Paley, had been brutally attacked. He could see that. It did sound terrible. She wouldn't be the most plausible witness, he decided, knowing he was probably being a little unfair. He was still angry.

Olivia Benson, however, was snarky. He liked that in a woman. She looked away, considering. Then her dark eyes sparkled at Barba, giving him a direct challenge. 'Harris told us that you win cases that everyone else ducks.'

She clearly thought he was an awesome attorney, and she wasn't afraid to tell him so. Rafael Barba liked that in a woman even more.

How could he refuse her? It was, quite simply, impossible.

He would talk to the victim. It would be her choice whether they went on with the case, not his.

'Guilty.'

Barba looked over at Cain, and took a moment to enjoy the man's shocked face as he was led away. Another one down. He mentally licked his finger and marked the score. One more point to Rafael Barba.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he looked over his shoulder. He was checking on the victim, he told himself. He just wanted to see how Jocelyn Paley was taking the verdict. It was a lie, and he did not find himself convincing.

The truth was, his heart was pounding so loud in his chest that he thought he could hear it. He was hoping for something, desperately. He wasn't sure why it mattered so much. He wasn't even quite sure what he was hoping for. Whatever it was, it would be in Olivia's eyes.

She was looking right at him and he found it, in an instant. She believed in him, completely. Her lips ticked up at the corners, not a full smile, still more than a little sad. It was enough to make him realize that he would do anything for her, if she would only ask.

She nodded to him and he nodded back. He felt, suddenly, extraordinarily happy.