This fic is inspired by the song Sometime Around Midnight by The Airborne Toxic Event. If you haven't heard it, please go listen.
Sometime Around Midnight
by ScintillatingTart
He used to enjoy galas. The sparkling half-wit of conversation, the flow of champagne and things harder, the glitter of diamonds and sequins and flashes of the good life on show like so many dreams barely out of reach.
Now they merely annoyed him.
After spending so much time with Benson and SVU, having seen the darker, sordid side of the underbelly of high society, the slithering snakes in the grass, Rafael Barba couldn't bear to rub shoulders with anyone for too long. Once he had been a casual partaker of such liberties, but now… now he could barely stomach his own company for long.
A good man could barely stand to look in the mirror for his own perceived faults, let alone shoulder his disdain for others'.
He was neither on the side of the devils or the angels: he was smack dab in the middle of purgatory.
And his hell on earth had chosen to wear a white, flowing gown.
Of course, Olivia Benson was gorgeous – why wouldn't she be? Stunning, breathtaking, all the usual adjectives that men would apply to the women who wore high heels merely to crush their hearts with in the most vicious of fashions… And yet, would she do that on purpose? No.
She would just rip his heart out like a she-demon and chew on it right in front of him to spite him.
She had already done it.
And, more fool him, he would gladly shove the tattered remains back into the cavern of his ribcage and let her do it all over again just to have the privilege of having her speak to him again instead of playing this annoying high school game of "I'm not speaking to you". It wasn't as if he could present her with his side, his reasons for –
And, of course, she's laughing and having a wonderful time – or at least pretending to – all lovely red lips and wide smile, hair tossing, her wine held clutched in her grasp like a vise though she's not drinking from it.
He wonders if anyone cares that he's staring at her, but he feels like he's seeing a ghost – a whisp of what could have been if he hadn't been a coward, if he had only…
The moment she sees him, her lips press together into a thin line and her eyes narrow; even from across the room, her posture change to the defensive is immediate and striking. Gone is the flirtatious, happy Liv and in her place is a shielded Captain Benson who would tear him to shreds if he came close enough to be heard.
So he merely raises his glass and smiles wryly, wishing that she knew that it had always been her. Since the moment they had established a working rapport, a quick give and take, he had been falling in love with her – and now he was so deeply mired in it that there was no escape and no hope of rescue from himself. And that… that was what would kill him. Not her rejection. Not seeing her with someone else. Not her getting hurt again by another perp – The part where he could have done something and just didn't.
He watched her make her way to the exit, and felt his heart lurching sickly out of his chest, a sad, stuttering tattoo that made him spring into action, following her at a distance.
She was waiting for a taxi in front of the hotel; one pulled up just as he got to her side. "Olivia –"
"I'm not doing this, Rafael."
"Maybe you aren't, but I am," he said quietly, putting his hand on the door before she could open it. "I don't care if you don't believe me, but if you intend to shut me out forever… you're going to hear it anyway." Rafael took a deep breath and said, "I love you. I love Noah." He paused, the million other things he could have said seeming to be so much less significant than that. "That's it." He pulled back, took a step back on the pavement, then two, then three, until he felt like he could breathe again.
There was something ethereally beautiful about Liv in that white dress that took his very breath away and made his heart break as she shook her head sadly and got into the taxi – a moment so crushing that he didn't really know what it meant until it was over.
She had been the one to walk away this time. This time, she was the one running. It brought him a small measure of comfort in the recesses of his drunken, frail brain.
Even the strongest of men would break eventually.
He took off his tuxedo jacket and walked the twelve blocks home, glad that his shoes pinched after a while and that they weren't honestly meant for walking such distances. The streetlights glared down on him as he walked, sometimes fluttering through tree leaves, sometimes casting shadows on piles of steaming garbage on the curb, sometimes not illuminating the construction areas very well. He was a miserable excuse of a man, yet, the world went on around him: the city just kept humming with the thrum of life.
He got to his building and was surprised to find Liv sitting outside on the steps, nervously wiping her hands on her thighs. "Hey," she said.
"What are you –"
"I love you, too."
And it starts sometime around midnight…
