All the offices are the same. All smelling of nicotine and chicory. Testosterone and sweat.
It's late.
After eleven by the clock's count and the District attorney's office is proof that crime never rests. Neither does she. Olivia is six hours into overtime and three cups into the caffeinating process and she just needs a warrant.
She avoids the faces of interns and secretaries as she walks the halls. The hopeful and the tired. She doesn't want to meet their gazes, the faces that no doubt echo her own. Eyes bloodshot. Red. Waiting. Bodies tense and minds wandering. They're all holding onto that ghost of a memory: once-warm beds. Once-smiling families.
His office doesn't have a secretary. It's tucked toward the back. Cast off. Quiet. She nearly knocks when she sees the door is slightly ajar and stares at him through the crack.
Rafael is leaning against the side of his desk, profile to her, head bowed like reverence. Like sacrifice. His suit jacket is off. Suspenders and matching tie the brightest shade of burgundy. There's a heavy tumbler in his hands. It flashes like amber absolution as he brings it to his lips.
"Do you want to know what I learned today?" Rafael takes another light sip, staring intently at something Olivia can't see. She freezes, considers leaving. Instead she turns, silent, in a way only cops and killers can to get a better angle of the room. His desk is leaden with files, subpoenas, literal lives in the lines of witness statements and jury decrees.
She sees George Huang's body, turned toward the window and staring out. She immediately thinks he's vulnerable in that position. Then she sees the gun on his hip. His fingers grazing over it absently. He doesn't answer.
"I learned that normal people, normal couples, don't have sex on their kitchen floor," Rafael says and takes another sip of his liquor. His eyes are dark and molten and searching. "Did you know that?"
George is silent. His fingers leave the heavy gun secured on his hips. "Rafael," he says, in that impossibly soft voice. He turns then and Olivia takes a good look. He's forgone the suit. Instead dressed in a pair of gray chinos, a white button-down. His red tie is loosened, his hair mussed. "Why am I here?"
He steps from the window, slowly. Trying to bypass the attorney, to collapse heavily into one of the sturdy chairs in front of the desk. Rafael grabs his wrists, pulls him closer.
"You're drunk," Olivia hears George say.
"Unlikely," is Rafael's sharp reply. "I've only had one drink."
"You can get drunk off other things."
They stare at each other. George's eyes say so many things in a language Rafael keeps trying to learn. His hands tighten around George's wrist. He watches for the flinch, the flash. Neither comes. He isn't afraid of him and something in Rafael exhales. So he kisses him. Sudden and hard, hands leaving wrists and wrapping around hips. When he releases him, the shrink's eyes are darker and wider than before. Achingly sober.
Olivia watches it all. The way George's hands settle on Barba's shoulders. The calm breath he lets out. "Why am I here?"
"Do you believe in second chances?" He releases him. Reaches over and pours himself another two fingers to avoid the tortured eyes of his occasional lover.
Huang takes the glass from him, swallows it in one go, grimaces. "I believe there's only so many times before another chance becomes another relapse," he says, nestling his hips between the attorney's thighs. Shameless, Olivia thinks, as if he belonged there.
Rafael chuckles, licks his lips. "Are you saying you were addicted to me?"
"I'm saying we're destructive," George sighs and places the glass back on the desk. His voice gets tighter, frantic.
"I'm saying that you can be a bastard and I don't let things go. And yes, normal couples don't have sex on their kitchen floors. They don't. But we did. We do. I bite and you bruise and we take. We take things from each other and if we keep doing that, there won't be anything left."
There's silence. Heavy and thick and Olivia watches them. Watches as Rafael processes the doctor's word. Watches as his heavy hands rest on the doctor's waist. Brown eyes meet brown.
"Tell me," he says, voice barely above a whisper. His tone urgent. "Tell me it isn't worth it. Tell me we don't matter and I'll say you're lying. Because I know you didn't believe me when I said I wanted to speak with you tonight about the profile on our perp. I know I can be a bastard and you don't get over things as easily as you'd like to. But I'm not me without you. You know that. Call it another chance, call it a relapse," a sharp nervous laugh. "Hell, call us addicts. All I know is, with you the world just works and without you it doesn't."
"You shouldn't need me for things to work. It isn't healthy." A pause. George sighs, the sound seemingly coming from the very depths of his soul. "But I won't lie. Sometimes I can just feel it and it feels worth it. Sometimes. When I can forget what you are and what I am and what that means to the rest of the world."
Rafael runs his hand through George's hair and tugs, baring the other man's throat to his hot mouth. His sharp canines threaten to break the flushed expanse of flesh. "I'm willing to be unhealthy if you are," he mumbles against his skin. "Are you willing, pup?"
George shifts, eliciting a growl, and offers up a slice of a grin. He says, "I think Olivia has had enough of our unhealthy relationship. Don't you?"
Rafael chuckles and finds her eyes widened from their place in the doorway, his own bright and black with mirth. "We are a bit Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? aren't we?" he asks to no one in particular but releases the shrink from his grasp. The doctor straightens his clothes and breezes by Olivia with a quick farewell.
She watches his retreating form before turning back to the still amused attorney.
"I have your warrant," he says, shifting papers on his desk before extending the piece of paper before her. "And your discretion?"
She walks further into the room and tries to take the paper from his outstretched hand. He holds it though and forces her eyes to meet his, no longer full of mirth, as sober as the doctor's had been. She sees the hope in their cool depths, the need for her understanding as his friend, the need for her trust. But she wants to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing as one of the most powerful vamps in the northeast screwing around the leader of one of the fastest growing wolf packs in the world. But she doesn't.
She just nods, runs her tongue over dry lips and takes the warrant from his hand. She makes it halfway out the door before his voice calls out to her, kind but weary.
"Olivia," he waits until she turns to him before speaking. "The warrant can wait 'til tomorrow. Get some sleep."
"I could tell you the same thing," she says and makes her exit. The halls are nearly vacant, the secretaries and interns have seemed to realize the futility of whatever endeavors they were trying to execute before morning. She walks the empty corridors, mind racing and flashing to what she just witnessed. She's seen love tonight.
She decides to sleep with this knowledge and execute the warrant in the morning. For now she walks out of the district attorney's office and into the light summer rain. She knew no matter what happened this love she witnessed would make for one interesting summer.
…
A/N: Reviews are most appreciated.