Rafael found an empty bench in the corner of the park, away from the buskers, skateboarders and general fanfare around the park's fountain. He almost never visited Washington Square Park, which made it the perfect place to meet Olivia. No NYU students would care about whatever either of these middle-aged, overdressed professionals had to say about their relationship, or lack thereof, and virtually no one from either of their offices would venture to the heart of a college campus for an mid-day picnic. (A very high-stakes picnic, he tried to joke with himself, but it fell flat.)
At exactly 12:01, he spotted her by the entrance of the park, clutching a brown paper bag. She handed him a sandwich wrapped in foil, and he didn't have to unwrap it to know that she'd bought him his usual - bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel. "Stopped by Black Seed Bagels. Figured we'd be here a while," she said, tone flat and neutral.
"Thanks." He took the sandwich from her gingerly unwrapping it, looking for any excuse to delay the inevitable or look into her eyes. She didn't seem angry or upset, which was a promising start, but he didn't want to let his guard down until he knew for sure.
Olivia was the first to speak. "Can we agree on something before we start talking?"
"Mmm?" He finally turned to look at her. He still couldn't read her face, he was starting to feel his palms get clammy.
She was resolute; firm - she meant business. "We need to be 100% honest with each other today. No hiding, no white lies, nothing."
He straightened in his seat, resisting the urge to make a snarky comment about the precise lack of honesty that had led them into this situation. As much as it formed the basis of their friendship, snark wouldn't help them - not today. "I agree."
"Now that we have that out of the way - I think there's no use beating around the bush, Rafael."
"Where do we even begin?" He kept his tone as calm and collected as hers. He certainly didn't want a reprise of their explosive - and seismic - argument in his apartment, knowing how that one had ended.
"Well... how are you doing?"
"What kind of question is that, Liv? How do you expect me to answer that? We clearly wanted to have sex with each other, and we did..." Rafael bit his tongue when he realised that his response came across far more hostile than he'd intended. What a way to start this discussion… He paused and looked at her apologetically.
Olivia wasn't rattled. "That, we can at least agree on. It was consensual. We both wanted it, we made our consent clear, neither of us was incapacitated or withdrew consent throughout?" she stated, letting her detective instincts take over for a few seconds while he nodded along. At least they weren't looking at a he said-she said scenario. It was a small start, but an important one, nonetheless.
"I agree. Okay, it's good that we have that out of the way... but how the fuck did we end up in this situation?" He instinctively turned to her for guidance. There was no ADA or detective shield to hide behind now. It was just Olivia and Rafael - two people in some very deep shit, talking at mid-day, in a park they never visited, because they'd done something so scandalous that it could never enter their offices. The calm, collected tone of the conversation up to that point imploded immediately, and they sat next to each other awkwardly, arms folded on their laps.
She stared at her bagel and contemplated her response. "It's on me. I was having problems with Ed, I came to you, the two of us ended up talking about… whatever feelings there are between us, and I kissed you first, and then we had sex." He could hear the guilt in her voice, which pricked his heart - he wouldn't be able to live with himself if Olivia blamed herself entirely for what happened, knowing that he was just as complicit as she was.
"You know, it takes two to tango. We both chose to do this. This is on the both of us. And I don't know how productive it's going to be if we sit here talking about who exactly is responsible for all of this, because none of this would have happened if one of us wasn't a willing participant in one way or another." Maintaining his courtroom facade was the only way he could continue with this conversation without it rapidly spiralling out of control. "So please, don't blame yourself, Liv."
He was grateful when she nodded quietly. "You're right, and I know it. But I can't stop thinking about that conversation we had before, you know, we had sex." Olivia turned to him with sadness in her eyes, and he knew that that was one elephant in the room that they wouldn't be able to dance around if they ever wanted to work normally again. "I think that's what we have to talk about first."
Rafael found himself tongue-tied for the first time in a long time. He really didn't want to kick-start this discussion. "Do you want to go first?"
"I don't even know where to start, Rafael."
"I don't know, either." Ease into it and prolong the awkwardness, or bite the bullet and get it over and done with? All of his legal training hadn't prepared him for this. He shifted uncomfortably in his suit and the bagel in his mouth suddenly felt stale and tasteless.
"Might as well cut to the chase then." She took an enormous breath and squeezed her eyes shut. "What I said was true. I... have had feelings for you, Rafael. And I think... I mean, I know... I still do. God, I can't believe I'm actually saying this right now." Olivia stumbled over her words like that admission physically pained her. "This is such a mess..." She buried her head in her hands, eyes stinging with tears for the umpteenth time since she'd left Rafael's apartment the previous morning.
His breath caught. He'd fully expected Olivia to retract what she'd said that night and write the sex off as a heat-of-the-moment mistake, but here she was, affirming her feelings for him, even after what had happened? Shit. How he wished these weren't the circumstances, because things weren't going to get any easier.
She looked at him, expecting a response, but he stared at her, feeling the enormity of that statement sink in. Olivia Benson has feelings for me. Present tense. The desire he'd seen in her eyes and passion in her kisses two nights ago suddenly felt ten times more intense in his memory, as impossible as he thought that was. There was no other logical explanation for the passionate sex they'd had. He hadn't hallucinated it. Those feelings were real!
But... Ed. Where did Rafael fit into the picture?
He wanted so badly to kiss her again and tell her that he loved her too, but all he could manage after a tense, endless silence was a feeble "You're with Ed, Liv..."
Olivia flinched hearing Ed's name. She bit her lip and tried to push any trace of the IAB captain's blue eyes out of her mind. "I know..." she muttered, but didn't make a move to elaborate further. There wasn't a need to - the guilt both of them emanated was telling enough.
Rafael let his mind settle and hands still before speaking. "What I said is true too, Liv. I do have feelings for you; I have since we first met." His eyes brimmed with sadness and a tinge of defeat; for years he'd been waiting for the right moment to finally tell her, but there was no wiping the slate clean now. "But there's no point in me saying that now, right?"
He was right.
The reality of their feelings filled the air with a crushing, defeated silence. They evaded each other's eyes and stared at the Washington Square arch in the distance, impervious to the mid-day hustle and bustle. How badly he wanted to take her hand and kiss her like a lover; how much she yearned to be in his grappling embrace on this very park bench, letting the city race by around them. But all they settled for were resigned sighs.
"God, what have we done, Rafael?" It came out as both a statement and plea.
He didn't hide his disappointment. "Something we can never do again, Liv."
They didn't have to look at each other to know that they both had tears welling in their eyes. He knew her: Olivia wasn't going to give up on stable, reliable Ed up so easily - not after a history of tumultuous and rocky relationships. And Rafael wasn't going to ask her to do that for him. It'd be best for them to act like it had never happened.
Here they stood at the crossroads: were they going to walk away from each other for good, or choose to stay in each other's lives, knowing the enormous pain that could come from their once-unshakeable friendship? He didn't even want to think about the former, but forced himself to confront that possibility. If that's what she needed to find happiness with Ed, he'd resign himself to it and let her find it.
But if this was the last time they ever talked as friends, he wanted to be strong - for her, if not for himself. Walking away from her and giving them a clean break was the best way to sort this mess out, he knew perfectly well, but he couldn't bring himself to do it; not even after 2 days of contemplating the possibility.
They'd agreed to be 100% honest with each other, right?
He muttered a quick prayer under his breath, ignoring the fact that he hadn't been to mass in years, and plunged head-on into the abyss. "I will always love you, Liv." He could barely keep a lid on his emotions - it was driving a knife through his own heart - but forced himself to speak. "But I don't want you this way. I can't be a third party. But I still want to be your friend; your best friend, like we are... or were… I still want to be in your life. It would kill me to lose you," he admitted, his voice now filled with vulnerability and sadness. "I'll understand if you don't want to see me again, but-"
She cut him off before he could continue and let her tears fall freely. "I don't want to lose you, Rafael. Please don't walk away from me," she pleaded quietly. "I was so scared that you'd never want to talk to me again."
"You won't lose me, Liv." He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder - the first physical contact they'd made since that morning - and suddenly didn't know how long to let it linger. Fuck. He knew that this was going to be a difficult conversation, but it was all these tiny cues and signals that were going to be his undoing. He was going to have to re-programme everything about the way he behaved around her if this had any chance of working.
Rafael put on the strongest facade he could to conceal how much everything they were discussing crushed him - being so close to Olivia Benson and knowing that she felt the same way he did about her, but not being able to hold her hand or call her mi amor. Rafael desperately wanted to promise that to both her and himself, but the prospect of watching her with Ed, especially after the night they'd shared, made him feel sick to his stomach.
How different could it really be from the last few years, seeing her almost every single day, while knowing that he couldn't have her? But he knew that it also wasn't anything like before. He once could live in the blissful liminality of hoping she loved him back; of reading into every little touch and knowing glance they shared and hoping that one day, they'd mean something more than just friendship. From now on he'd look at her and have to accept that they'd never be able to pursue those feelings. They challenged each other to work better; changed each other irrevocably. They meant the world to each other, yet couldn't be together, and it cut deeper than any other heartbreak he'd ever experienced.
But the prospect of losing Olivia entirely terrified him even more. She'd become an anchor in stormy weather - the Alex Munoz debacle, the passing of his abuelita, the cases he genuinely thought were un-winnable. He'd stood by her through all the major obstacles in her life - Brian Cassidy, the William Lewis ordeal, her adoption of Noah - and not only because he secretly pined for her love; he knew he'd stuck around because he genuinely, genuinely cared for Olivia Benson.
The afternoon sun bathed them in a warm glow, and he took a second to take in her presence next to him - her thoughtful eyes, calming voice, wise face. The answer to his conflict suddenly became blindingly clear. Even if he couldn't love her romantically, he still wanted to be her friend, if that was even possible at all. He always told her to trust her gut, so why not take his own advice?
He didn't want to walk away from this woman, no matter how much it pained him. Rafael watched Olivia's eyes fill with a quiet resolve, immensely grateful that she didn't want to walk away either.
For a minute they basked in the wave of peace that suddenly washed over them, but she quickly yanked their conversation back to reality. "But what are we actually going to do now?" She stared at the remainder of her bagel and felt her appetite disappear. "How are we going to move on from this?"
Rafael sighed quietly and admitted, "I don't think we truly can move on, Liv. We just have to live with it and go on with our lives in the best way possible."
"So, we just bury what we feel about each other?" In both their minds, they knew that this was the only way forward if they wanted to end this and get on with their jobs. However, hearing Olivia actually say it out loud gave the implications a crushing gravity. They'd get up from this park bench having completely erased the most earth-shattering two days of their relationship - an enormous gulf never to be addressed again.
"It looks like that's the only way now. I don't think either of us wants to throw away the jobs we love and the good work we do together for... this." He didn't have to wait for her to respond to know that she felt the same, but they absolutely had to be in this together, even if they never could talk about it. "I think we're going to have to set some ground rules, Liv."
"What are you thinking of?"
"We have to promise each other that this will never happen again, Liv. We can't hang out or work alone at each other's apartments until the middle of the night anymore. We can't talk about this at work, ever. And we're going to have to do our best to be professionals and get our jobs done, because that's the only way our friendship could ever," he gulped, "go back to normal in the future."
It hurt to hear, but he was right. They had to set firm boundaries, or risk even their friendship being lost forever; sacrifices they were going to have to make, at least in the short-term when emotions still ran high. She'd miss laughing with him on her couch, case files scattered all over the floor; the nights he helped watch Noah while she cooked or worked on her laptop... but those were small things to give up to salvage whatever they could from the ruins of their relationship.
"I think that settles this..." Olivia felt a tiny weight had been lifted from her shoulders - tiny, but it nonetheless was some progress. Their discussion hadn't devolved into another argument, and more importantly, she wasn't going to lose Rafael. She could hang on to that, at the very least, as they picked up the pieces together.
"Wait, Liv. Can I ask you just one question about... you know?"
She nodded but half-suspected what came next, and her heart sank again when she heard it.
"Does Ed know about what happened?" He stumbled over the question like "Ed" was a forbidden word. That's only natural, she thought. Even she couldn't bring herself to speak his name in front of him.
"No, he doesn't." She quickly continued before he pressed for more details. "I'm not going to tell him. I can't break his heart. Especially not now." Olivia still didn't know if that was the best decision, but also wasn't about to unload that dilemma on the very person she'd cheated on Ed with...
He noticed the tears welling in her eyes. "Are you okay, Liv?"
Rafael wasn't sure whether or not to expect a response - he didn't know if it was his place to ask - but she did eventually. "Truth be told, it's killing me. I can barely look at Ed without crying. I feel terrible." She quickly caught herself, knowing that she'd launch into a long - and selfish - monologue if she elaborated any further, although she ached to talk to Rafael like before. The long list of taboo conversation topics they now had felt like a wall of glass.
"I'm sorry, Liv." He offered her a napkin, but didn't know what else to say.
She dabbed her eyes and composed herself. "No, I should be the one who's sorry. I shouldn't be confiding in you about what's going on between us - it's unfair to you."
As much he wanted to be a supportive friend like he'd been in the past, Rafael was silently grateful that Olivia had helped him dodge a massive emotional bullet. He really didn't want to listen to Olivia talk about Ed. He realised with a heavy heart that he simply couldn't be a friend to whom Olivia could bring her relationship issues - which maybe deflated the "friend" label slightly - but he was going to take whatever he could get and also tolerate, lest he drag them into even deeper shit than they were already in.
Boundaries. He repeated that word in his head. We need boundaries. If we ever want things to go back to normal. Hopefully they didn't last forever, but he had no way of knowing, and would have to grit his teeth and persist.
Olivia wiped the last of her tears and looked at him with concern. "Enough about me. Are you okay, Rafael?"
He honestly didn't know if he was okay, or when he'd feel okay again. However, if she wasn't going to bring her problems with Ed to him, he wasn't going to place a burden on her either. "I feel terrible about coming between you and Ed. But I'll find a way to cope. I always have." She eyed him skeptically, but he looked her right in the eyes and assured, "I'll take care of myself, Liv. I promise."
She must have believed him, because he watched her exhale softly and her worried frown morph into a soft, contented smile.
"And Liv, I just want you to know that I'm happy for you and Ed. I want the best for you. And I'm happy enough to be in your life - as your friend. Whatever I say or do to you, I don't want to have an ulterior motive, you know?"
Maybe he didn't fully believe it - yet. But he desperately wanted to, and he was going to make sure that he did, eventually.
Olivia looked visibly more at ease hearing that. "I've never doubted that about you, Rafael."
That was the friendship they knew and loved - that mutual respect, that trust in each other. For the first time since they'd arrived in the park, they cracked genuine smiles. Maybe they'd be alright after all.
He glanced at his watch and winced in disappointment seeing how quickly time had flown. "I need to get back to the office soon, Liv. Meeting with Jack McCoy."
She crumpled her bagel wrapper into a ball and tossed it into the nearby bin. "Back to reality for both of us, I guess."
"Liv, thank you for this."
"Thank you for meeting me here, Rafael."
It'd been a discussion that neither of them truly wanted to have, but both Rafael and Olivia were grateful that they'd had it - and that it'd gone surprisingly well. He helped her up from the bench and they walked in the direction of 6th Avenue, suddenly acutely aware of how close they usually stood to each other when they walked. Years of coffee runs and strolls between the precinct and 60 Centre Street had desensitised them to it, but with the residual awkwardness hanging in the air, he stood half a step further from her, right arm suddenly feeling very exposed from the lack of contact. A small change, in the grander scheme of things, but nonetheless a quiet reminder of the magnitude of the situation. They wordlessly swallowed their disappointment.
They both had a lot of work to do.
Olivia decided to walk back to the precinct, while Rafael stopped at the corner of West 4th and 6th to call an Uber to take him back to the DA's office. She turned to leave after a quick - and frankly unsatisfying - goodbye, but Rafael stopped her before she could walk away.
"I know this is a weird question and you don't have to answer me right now, but Liv... are we okay?"
The exact same question from two different men, on two consecutive days. She didn't know her true answer to either, but looked in Rafael's green eyes and let the tiny sliver of hope that had planted itself in her heart during their conversation guide her response.
"We are, Rafa."
All she wanted to do was believe it.
Olivia wandered through the streets of Greenwich Village on her way to the precinct, lost in thought. Thankfully, it was a slower day at SVU and she could afford an extra half hour to herself without incurring much suspicion from her eagle-eyed co-workers - a much-needed half hour to think about how exactly this situation with Rafael was going to pan out.
She still hadn't decided if she was going to tell Ed about what had happened between her and Rafael. Both possibilities were equally dangerous: tell him, and she risked her heart being broken for the umpteenth time in weeks. Not tell him, and she'd have to live with the secret indefinitely. Ed seemed like a sensible man, but finding out that she'd cheated on him with one of her closest friends was the biggest possible violation of trust that could be thrown at him, and she had no way of predicting how he'd react. Maybe it made more sense for her to carry that guilt on her own and not hurt Ed's feelings, at the likely expense of her mental health, but both those options still made her head spin.
And then there was Rafael. Is working with him going to be easier said than done? How was she going to explain their sudden coldness to her squad if they asked? Would their incredible working partnership - a constant and anchor in both their lives - survive this trial? What if, God forbid, he happened to drop by the precinct when Ed was there? The thought of facing both of them in the same room was terrifying.
She desperately wanted to talk to someone about the enormous mess she was in. How she wished Noah was old enough to discuss matters of the heart with her. But who else could she turn to? Certainly not Rafael - he definitely had his own emotions to process, she could tell, and she wasn't going to add to that while this was still raw. It wouldn't be fair to him at all.
Fin? She loved him like a brother, but she didn't know if bringing the issue into the squad room was a good option, especially given how much he despised dealing with IAB. Amanda was a no-no for the same reason. And she simply wasn't close enough to Sonny or Mike Dodds to go to them with issues as complicated - and sensitive - as this one. They didn't strike her as being particularly judgmental, but this was serious and she didn't need people talking smack about her behind her back.
As she neared the precinct, Olivia suddenly remembered that there was one person who'd listen to what she had to say. She hadn't seen him in months, but fished her phone out of her pocket and looked for his number to leave him a message.
"Dr. Lindstrom? It's Olivia Benson. I know it's been a while since I last paid you a visit, but something new has cropped up in my life and I was hoping I'd be able to talk to you about it. Let me know when it's good for an appointment."
The meeting with Jack McCoy turned out to be a fairly useless one about the office's updated leave policy, and Rafael spent its duration tapping his gold pen against the desk and letting his mind wander back to his discussion with Olivia at the park. Knowing that they were alright took 20% of his anxiety away. But the other 80% - actually being alright - ate away at his soul.
He returned to his office with the intention of brewing a fresh pot of coffee and stewing in his emotions for the afternoon, only to be hit with two last-minute, back-to-back, and intense meetings - he'd missed Carmen's texts about them while he was at the park. The young woman apologised profusely to him for the inconvenience, but he realised that he honestly didn't mind it. Work gave him a distraction from the enormity of the problems in his personal life. Thank goodness he wasn't needed at SVU to consult on a case - he'd probably combust from being in the same room as her.
For the rest of the day, Rafael pored over the stacks of legal documents on his desk and was briefly transported back to a simpler time in his Brooklyn office: when he lived and breathed his cases and didn't have an Olivia Benson to think about. Legal complexities are far more interesting than romantic ones, he'd told himself over and over again, as he turned down his Brooklyn colleagues' regular invitations to drinks in Williamsburg until the day he left. It'd worked for him then; why not now? I can work my way through this.
But perhaps it was too early to say that.
He opened his drawer to look for a pen refill and caught a glimpse of a squad photo, taken last Christmas at their annual precinct celebration. Everyone's happy smiles - his included - flooded his body with a fresh wave of restless anxiety. He flipped it face-down and slammed the drawer shut. A part of him still refused to believe that he'd actually slept with Olivia Benson - the one person he genuinely believed he'd be friends for life with. Squabbling at 85, right? Now he didn't even know if he'd be able to stand attending the next Christmas party.
Coffee wasn't doing it for him. Rafael retrieved his half-finished bottle of scotch from his hidden liquor cabinet and was about to pour himself a glass, but the taste of it on her breath filled his mouth. He grabbed a glass of water and quickly downed it, trying and failing to erase the sensation from his mouth. Fuck. He couldn't even drink scotch without thinking of her and what they'd done.
Carmen had long left for the day, and he stared down the long hallway of empty offices. He could see that only his light was turned on, and an unsettling silence had fallen over the usually-busy building. Unworried that someone would walk in on him, he collapsed onto his sofa, while attempting to forget that it was on this very sofa that he'd shared many an intimate conversation with Olivia, and let one of his empty glasses - the one that Olivia usually drank from - crash from the armrest to the floor, shards coming to rest right by her usual seat. Typically he'd write it off as an accident and order a replacement, but tonight he lingered over the broken fragments, cursing that it had to be her glass (the only one without a single crack, that he saved for her) that had taken a tumble. He knelt down and angrily cleaned up the mess with his hands, shards cutting into his skin, but even the sight of his own blood didn't faze him. Good riddance, he thought.
He stood up and cast his eyes on his messy work desk. Fuck. I'm a mess. He dabbed his bleeding fingers with a napkin and got to work with a vengeful drive - files returned to their proper places, pens and books straightened to perfection, and leftover food wrappers (including an uneaten chocolate bar from Olivia from a week ago) tossed straight in the trash can. There was work he hadn't yet finished for the day, and he scrawled down a detailed to-do list for the first time in years.
If he couldn't control this terrible situation, he could at least get his personal messes in order.
A pit of dread formed in his belly when he realised that the difficult conversation they'd had in the park that afternoon was only the first step in what looked to be a long road to any semblance of normalcy. It pained him to go back to his frankly unhealthy Brooklyn habits and social isolation, but it was the only thing he was certain of now. He was good at his job, and had to throw every ounce of energy into being a good prosecutor to keep his mind from racing.
He didn't even stop to remove his suit when he walked through the door of his apartment. Instead, he made a beeline for his bedroom and ripped the sheets, which still smelled of her perfume and he couldn't bear to change the night before, off the bed and shoved him into a laundry bag. The unwashed scotch glasses from that night promptly went into the dishwasher. He swept, mopped and organised until his living space was as good as the day he moved in, and texted his cleaning service to let them know to skip his place this week. He bagged up his suits for pick-up by his dry-cleaning service and allowed himself to relish in the (limited) control he felt over his rapidly unravelling existence.
Finally, he crumpled into a heap on his fresh bed linen and tried his best to expunge thoughts of Olivia from his head. He was going to need a good night's sleep if he wanted to throw himself into work the next day.
I have to keep my head down and focus. This will get better with time, won't it?
He prayed that it would, because he didn't want to face the consequences if it didn't. Tomorrow would be Day 1 of what looked like a long, arduous road ahead.