So, some people had good thoughts/concerns about the kiss last chapter, and I've decided to keep it. However, they are totally right, so I've decided to have them talk/think about it a bit and voice the fact that there are significant hurtles with Olivia's trauma and they aren't going to be able to pursue the relationship right now (physically at least?). I hope this fixes some of those hesitations about the kiss! I still don't know whether this will be the last chapter or not, but I want more fluff and more Barson, so maybe I'll write a little more.
Also, I had a new idea for a work. It would be called "Calander Girl" (like the song) and each chapter would be a month. As the months went on, the Barson relationship would develop. Like January they are just friends and he proposes in December. Basically all holiday fluff. January = New Years, Feb = Valentine's day, March = ?, April = Easter w/ mrs. Barba, May = Mother's Day, etc. etc. Each holiday, their relationship would get a little more intimate and established. What do you guys think? I mean I should probably do some more of my prompted works first to be fair, but is it a good idea? It probably won't be on the top of my to-do list, though.
After Noah padded off to his bedroom with his new stuffed animal for the second time – Olivia made it clear that she knew the glass of water he so desperately needed was just a ploy to postpone bedtime – and the two adults were alone again.
The sounds of the apartment were comprised of the street noise outside, with only a little sound coming from the almost muted television, as Rafael and Olivia sat on opposite ends of the couch. Both were exhausted, from the exercise of the zoo and the fright of the early morning nightmare, but neither one made any move to indicate it. The ambient yellow lighting would usually help lull the tired woman to sleep, but Olivia was wide awake in anticipation of their promised talk. And although dealing with the "r-word" would certainly be the main topic, there was a suffocating need to discuss their kiss first. Although the memory was pleasant, something about it ate at her soul and filled her with doubt.
Olivia took a deep breath that provided extraordinarily little oxygen and leaped into the unknown. "Rafa, about earlier..."
Her friend sat up in his seat and held his breath, praying he didn't make the wrong move or corrupt her levels of comfortability with him. That very possibility kept him fidgeting in the car ride home and made his mind race with doubt.
"I just... I don't regret the kiss and I'm glad we're finally being fully open with each other..." Olivia swallowed, and Rafael visibly exhaled in relief. "but... I need you to know that I can't exactly do... things... with you..."
Rafael leaned forwards to rest his elbows on his knees, so his face was level with hers bowed head even though they weren't looking at one another, and took a couple of seconds to assemble his thoughts.
"Liv, I never want to make you feel uncomfortable. Or, worse, feel like you have to do something that you don't want to do." He looked at the shag carpet, ashamed that his romantic impulses got the better of him. "But I need you to know that even earlier today, I knew there was no possibility for... anything more than that. I don't expect anything more right now. Or ever, if that's what you want. Friends first."
"Friends first." The right arm of the couch was slightly compressed as her elbow pressed against it and her head rested in her hands. "I want to explore... whatever this is. I'm just not sure I can right now."
"I completely understand, Liv." Rafael made no efforts to move closer, to punctuate the point that he really was okay with not pursuing any physical intimacy, but finally looked her in the eye as he spoke softly. "I know that navigating relationship territory is stressful, and you don't need any extra stress right now. I get it, and I agree."
"Maybe... maybe it would be okay to explore some emotional aspect of... this. But definitely nothing physical." She looked to gauge his reaction and prepare to apologize for the inconvenience out of habit, but he just nodded in agreement. He really did understand.
They sat in silence for a little longer. The atmosphere was an odd mixture of comfort – there was a level of relief in their newly established understanding of their relationship – and anxiety. Rafael fidgeted and pretended to inspect the cleanliness of his nails while Olivia was in too much of a contemplative trance to notice. Finally, the curious man leaned forward to clutch the remote and turn off the muted re-run of the original Wonder Woman. When, or if, this conversation would finally happens, he didn't want anything to diminish the seriousness of the moment.
Now that the apartment was only lit by the kitchen counter lights, Rafael got up to turn on the nightlights in the living room and a small palm-sized cube light on the coffee table while Olivia briefly thought about the thoughtfulness of his actions.
She impulsively, and unexpectedly, decided that it would be better for her to break the silence. "So, uh... we should talk about..."
Rafael, unaware of where to start or what to say, remained silent. His body language told Olivia that she could elaborate if she wished, but she wasn't sure where to begin. Olivia countered by staying quiet as well, motioning with her hand that he should ask away if he wanted any information. It was better this way, anyway, because at least she wouldn't reveal any information that if he wasn't already catching on to her shameful secret.
The humble man spoke softly and quietly after mentioning that she could pass on any of his questions if they hit too close to home. "Do you mind telling me what your nightmare was about?"
"Lewis, mostly. Joe at the end." She shook her head lightly to expel the memories, and Rafael cringed at his question choice. "I don't really want to go into details."
"That's okay." The silence returned more awkwardly than before. He pondered the pros and cons of pressing his real concern and came up with an inconclusive answer. Or, rather, many questions. Why was Olivia screaming for someone – who he now knew was Joe – to get "out" of her? PTSD nightmares could sometimes warp reality and create events that didn't really happen. Was this nightmare a memory or a fictional terror? He eventually decided to pry ever so gently, promising to let it go if she didn't answer.
Rafael's voice was laced with obvious hesitation. "You, uh... said some things. About Joe." He paused, for the millionth time, and let her absorb what he was implying before he actually got the courage to ask. "Did he... do things to you... in the nightmare?"
A small part of Olivia was relieved that they were only discussing the nightmare and not the real trauma, but a larger part almost wished that she could just say it. That she could just tell him. Instead, Olivia cowardly hid behind her rusted armor of pride, a rather cruel irony. She was reduced to head shakes.
Yes.
"Oh..." Rafael didn't know why he was surprised. After all, he had suspected her answer would be grim from the very moment he heard her terrified screams last night. Perhaps actually seeing her nod of confirmation had caused him to finally internalize every aspect of the situation around him. He was reluctantly and curiously beginning to move past his state of half-denial. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Olivia looked away, making eye contact with the glowing cube before her. A minute passed before she made any attempt to speak, and her voice was soft and quiet. "It hurt, Rafa. Like I was being torn apart." Tears crawled down her bare features and her voice started to crack. "I thought he was going to break my legs. I thought I was going to die."
Her eyes remained locked on the light as she subconsciously slightly turned her entire body to face Rafael.
"You know what the worst part was though?" she shook her head and leaned forward to bury her face in her hands, "I never got the chance to really fight him. I mean, I tried. But it didn't matter. He didn't stop. I just...I couldn't..."
Suddenly, she sat up and faced him without looking at his sympathetic features. Her words filled with venom, not necessarily at him but rather at her own demons.
"You have no idea what it's like to be ripped apart like that. To have your insides stretched beyond imagination while some piece of shit moans about how good it feels. To mourn a part of yourself and grieve for your own death even though your heart is still beating and you're still breathing. It's barbaric."
Her words were haunting, but an even darker revelation cast a shadow over his soul. He felt his chest clench and a wave of second-hand pain shot through his abdomen like a bullet to the soul. "You aren't talking about the nightmare anymore, are you?"
No, I'm not.
Rafael's voice was barely above a whisper as he moved a little closer, still careful not to intrude on her space. "Did he rape you?"
There it was. The r-word. He said it, asked it, and couldn't take it back. Olivia tried to open her mouth, but no sound would come out. Her bruised throat constricted, her emotions bubbled over the surface, and comprehensible speech became impossible once more. Rafael grew concerned – his fears were of a similar fashion to the way he was shocked in the early hours of this morning – and tried to break her out of the spell but it was too late.
Thoughts of Joe flooded her mind. She remembered his voice when he commanded her to take her bra off, and his member when he painfully thrusted hilt-deep inside of her. Olivia felt like she was in the ocean, knee-deep but drowning with no lifeguards in sight. She watched the height of the next swell build and build above her as her terror grew until it became a breaking wave that crushed her weakened body and turbulently pulled her under into a flashback.
Her tied hands weakly tried to untie the knot flutily while Joe pushed down her pants to her ankles and forced her legs up so that he could have access without having to untie her bound feet. Oxygen was precious and hard to come by, so her body involuntarily refused to let her waste any energy especially when the outcome was guaranteed to be grim.
The status of her pants – they were bunched around her ankles because 1) they were characteristically tight and 2) the zip ties prevented their full removal – required that Joe force her legs closer into her chest so that he could access her most sensitive flesh.
He wasted no time in drawing anything out or making it about her – as Lewis surely would have – and Olivia was torn about what to think about his hurry. On one hand, it would be over quickly. However, his rush meant that the assault would occur in the next couple of seconds.
There was one thought that Olivia clung to for sanity, despite her physical position. "I will not stop fighting."
She didn't stop fighting when he hooked his thumb around her panties to move them aside as his hands rested on her inner thigh. She didn't stop fighting when he freed his erection from its confines and pumped it to its full hardness. And she certainly didn't stop fighting when he aligned himself and pushed into her, bottoming out on the first stroke.
The injured woman threw her head in her hands out of frustration and shame as her flashback retreated. The cushions shifted when her whole body started to lean towards her best friend and the quiet sobs shook Rafael's arms as he moved to support her.
Rafael never pitied Olivia, at least outwardly. Internally, the gears of his mind were clogged with all sorts of guilt, remorse, shame, and every other negative feeling in the dictionary. But anyone close to the proud woman knew that pitying her isn't a response she reacts well too. While refraining from any generic "I'm so sorry"s that she was sure to hate, Rafael simply held her. And held her. When the near-silent sobs didn't relent, he gently used his left hand to stroke her forehead while his right arm held her head against his chest.
"You're safe." Rafael continued stroking the side of her forehead as she moved to lay her head in his lap, her body still quaking from her adrenaline and suffocating emotions. "I've got you, Liv. I've got you."
His assurances faded into comfortingly unintelligible whispers and her silent wails faded into sniffles. Many minutes passed before either one said anything.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier", she sniffled again and further leaned into the pillow on his lap, "I just... you mean so much to me and I didn't want you to think... that... that you'd always have to look over your shoulder and make sure that I'm okay."
Rafael absorbed her words, glad that she was opening up to him but his heart clenched at the levels of shame in her voice.
Quickly realizing that this had a somewhat cathartic effect, Olivia continued. "I didn't want you to lose interest. Think that I'm too damaged to be with... to broken to want me..."
This time, he decided to speak up. "That's not true and won't ever be true." He punctuated each clause with the twiddling of his fingers around her stray strands of hair.
Olivia shut her eyes and began to softly cry again, but not before choking out another admission. "Brian didn't."
"What?"
"He didn't want me. After." Fresh tears formed and Olivia moved her arm underneath the pillow as she angled her face further into it. "He could barely even look at me when we had sex."
"Oh." Rafael cringed at his reaction, but he couldn't help it. He knew that she clearly wasn't ready to have sex in the period between the beach house and her breakup with Brian, which sparked fury deep within his chest. The man-child should have known better than to listen to a woman who was merely trying to prove to herself that she was fine. He should have told her she wasn't ready instead of sticking his dick in her. Brian not only had sex with a vulnerable woman but then continued to make her feel ashamed of her trauma scars. He couldn't help the "fucking bastard" that slipped out.
For some reason, Olivia felt the need to defend him. After all, he was somewhat helpful during her recovery and she did truly love him a little over two years ago. Apparently, their mutual feelings just weren't enough to sustain their relationship. "He wasn't all that bad. He tried his best, really, but Brian just wasn't ever that good with the vic-… SVU cases."
Rafael swallowed his anger and conceded a little. "I know he tried. But... I would have never..."
They both thought back to their conversation earlier in the night. "I know."
Silence ruled their domain once again, but it was a different kind of quiet. Not awkward or contemplative, but rather peacefully content. Well, at least Olivia was somewhat content. Rafael's mind was still brimming with questions and he was currently trying to pick which ones would be the best to ask, if he should even ask them at all.
Suddenly, his thoughts reverted to when he was Mr. Lawyer Man and he stopped playing with her hair for a moment. "What about the rape kit? It's the third day and it's been just over 72 hours." Although careful to leave out any traces of blame in his tone or words, he was shocked and somewhat panicked. When the time came to prosecute Joe, he wanted to have the most evidence at his disposal in order to crucify the bastard.
"I... uh..." Olivia didn't know what to say, so she just decided to rip the Band-Aid off. "I did get one. The other night. With Fin."
Rafael knew there was a logical reason behind her decision to keep him out of the loop but couldn't help but feel hurt at her decision to tell Fin and not him. Olivia sensed this and continued.
"Fin and I have a history with dealing with... a similar situation. A long time ago." His face was still masked with a stony stoicism to hide his hurting, but Olivia saw it soften slightly. "I couldn't tell you, Rafa. I just... it's all the things I said earlier but also... whenever one of these incidents happen, I always end up wrecking a relationship. Harris and Elliot, Lewis and Brian... I just didn't want to... you mean too much to me..."
He let her ramble for a few minutes, relieved and filled with a new understanding. It did, after all, make sense. They talked for another half-hour, calmly and without tears, while he maintained his ministrations on her forehead and hair. Eventually, the emotional and physical exhaustion got the better of both of them, and they began to feel the weariness of their eyelids. The soft lighting and comforting ambient noise from the street didn't help, either.
"Everything is beginning to sink in, you know? It's still fresh, it's only been 3 days, but I'm starting to... internalize things? I don't know how to explain it." Olivia felt the weight of her nonverbal admission – she never did articulate that she was raped but anybody could understand the meaning of her response earlier – become lighter and figured that maybe that had something to do with it. Confirming Barba's reaction to the news was calming, after all. "I'm tired to the bone, though."
Rafael was still in the dark about how to express his question. "Can you... uh... sleep by yourself or..."
He felt the weight of her head in his lap increase as she gently shifted. Olivia took a couple of seconds to respond as the waves of exhaustion – a perpetual feeling that had only been growing ever since the incident – were washing over her. "Right here is fine."
"Anything you want, Liv." Rafael gently stroked and fiddled with her hair as she fell into a light sleep. A nightmare would most likely rear its hideous head later in the evening, but for right now, they truly were fine. He whispered once more, "Anything."
