It wasn't his fault for snooping.

He technically wasn't even snooping. The laptop had been open on the living room table when he walked into her apartment and she got up from the couch to get dressed for lunch. Clearly she had nothing to hide; maybe even wanted him to see what she was looking at.

Whether or not it was his fault for hating what he saw on the screen, however, Rafael wasn't sure.

How To Start Your Job Search.

Tips for Job Searching as a Mid-Career Candidate.

Updating Your Resume for a New Job Application.

Next to those open tabs was one for jobs in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, which Rafael instantly furrowed his brows at.

So that was what she'd spent her morning doing.

So she'd been serious when she'd made that comment about employment while they were lying in his bed last night - or more specifically, had turned to look him directly in the eye and announce that she intended to start looking for a job.

(He'd definitely spent the morning trying to push that comment out of his mind.)

Of course she was serious, he quickly rebuked himself - when did Olivia ever joke about things like that, especially with that determined look in her eyes? Of course it hadn't just been a passing remark. Of course she had a plan.

Rafael wasn't sure how serious he'd been when he'd gritted his teeth, forced a smile and said that it was great and he was excited for her, and now he was even more doubtful as he stared at the open tabs in a daze until the words started blurring into one another. It was only then that his gaze drifted to the notepad lying beside the laptop and he caught sight of what she'd scrawled on it in her signature scratchy cursive.

Federal funding ends in November

Create a new resume and prepare essential documents

Goal: Find a job by the end of the summer (August/September)...

There was more - an assortment of notes she'd copied from articles she'd read and fragmented ideas for industries she was considering - but he quickly looked away as though the sheet would burst into flames before him. There it was - her plan.

He hadn't even realised that he was holding his breath.

Now two equally pressing things were on his mind: the job search that Olivia clearly was ready to nail, and the fact that he was going to be devoid of a steady monthly income - an adult's version of a treasure chest - if he didn't get his act together by November. They were going to have to look for employment; they inevitably were going to have to rupture this peaceful new normal and face up to the realities of taxes and bills and budgeting.

Employment. It wasn't like the issue hadn't crossed his mind. Occasionally they'd drive by a law firm or chance upon listings in the Washington Post and he'd allow himself to contemplate the still-unfathomable possibility that he'd one day settle into a new job completely removed from the legal world, perhaps hunched over a computer in a tiny cubicle and staring at paperwork until he'd finally be forced to invest in reading glasses.

Then he'd be so struck by revulsion - and the stabbing pain that came with never being able to return to his life's work as a prosecutor - that he'd eject the issue from his head entirely, focussing instead on the significantly less agonising dilemmas of what to cook for dinner that night or whether to watch a rom-com or action movie with Olivia. He absolutely could live in the liminal space between Rafael Barba and Rafael Marquez for a few weeks - maybe even months - more.

(Or maybe he just was refusing to let go.)

It was the end of May, the calendar in the corner of the screen reminded him. They had six months to go - surely six months was more than enough time? Surely he'd be ready to move on by then?

(He wished he felt more sure about that.)

Still, it was the first time in his life that he'd had to consider the possibility that he'd be staring at a negative bank balance in half a year if he didn't find something to do soon. Rafael nervously ran a thumb over his cell phone in his pocket, curious about his current bank balance but refusing to admit to himself that he'd been spending far more recklessly than the marshals would approve, as hinted to him by Blake's disapproving glares at some of the more ostentatious gadgets he'd decked out his apartment with the day before.

(But he was adjusting to a completely new life. There were so many things he needed to sort out - surely spending a little more than usual was warranted?)

Of course Olivia was serious about finding a job, he told himself. She was a planner. She'd never admit to it (when had it been socially acceptable for an NYPD detective to admit that they were good at paperwork?), but it was precisely her flair for even the most mundane of administrative tasks that had been integral to her smooth transition into her sergeant's role. She was good at this - detail-oriented, organised - and for him to expect any less from her would be an insult.

He stared at the laptop and notepad - both emblems of the ambition and drive Olivia seemed to have in spades - and the same feeling that'd hit him as he watched her jog away from him that afternoon returned like a painful slap to the face. Inadequacy. He was feeling inadequate.

He was comparing himself to Olivia.

Why even was he doing that?

What reason did he have to worry about his own job search? Surely a combination of seven years at Harvard among some of the most aggressive job-seekers he'd ever encountered, even more years of staring at the resumes of prospective Brooklyn ADAs and thinking about Olivia look at job postings on the same couch she'd straddled him on two nights ago was going to force him into action somehow, even if he had no clue what the fuck he was doing now.

Just because Olivia was well on her way didn't mean he had to spring into action immediately. He'd get there eventually - just like with every unpleasant curveball at him at work he'd deftly swerved around. He'd eventually get over the deep sadness that ate away at him when he thought about the law career he'd been forced to abandon without a substitute; he'd find something that fed that intellectual hunger and stoked the flames of ambition and close the minute gap between them in due time. He was far better than worrying even before he'd started.

There was no logical basis for the restless anxiety that was creeping into his chest, but Rafael got up from the couch and paced the room, the cup of coffee she'd brewed for him lying untouched on the table. Why was he letting himself be intimidated by her? Since when did this need to be a competition?

He had to exterminate this feeling; stamp out any traces of it before they could plant seeds of doubt in his mind. He was going to look her in the eye and tell her with 100% sincerity that he was excited and happy for her; he was going to give her all the support she needed when she asked for it.

If she asked for it.

(He hoped she would.) (Even if he wasn't sure how to help.)

"Hey, I'm ready to go." The sound of her voice snapped him out of his reverie.

Olivia emerged from her room, clad in the same floral dress she'd been wearing that torrid, heated night they first fell back into bed together - the day they'd finally broken that invisible barrier between them under the pink glow of a D.C. sunset - and Rafael's breath caught for a second as the memory of her lips pressed to his in the darkness of her living room washed over him.

That was the Olivia who made his heart flutter when he laid his eyes on her. That was the Olivia he was going to smile at without even a hint of fear or insecurity in his eyes.

He could handle his own feelings. He was going to get over the initial surprise and throw all his support behind her. Rafael took a gulp from the mug of coffee, letting the lukewarm shot of caffeine jolt him back to rationality.

"Great, I'm starving," he laughed a little more loudly than usual. He wasn't sure if it was the caffeine or the increasing flush of his cheeks talking, but the smile that appeared on his face as their eyes met again was just an ounce more deliberate, more calculated than it usually was.

"Give me a second." Olivia stepped in front of her laptop, impervious to his earlier discomfort, and with a press of a button, the very tabs that'd sent him down this train of thought disappeared into black within seconds.

It was precisely what he needed to do with everything on his mind.

He caught a last glance at the notepad lying next to her laptop as she locked the door and quickly swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. This was nothing more than a moment of weakness; a few minutes of perfectly justifiable worry about his livelihood that'd disappear once he got his head straight.

He wasn't going to turn this into an issue. This wasn't even an issue.

Maybe it was his fault for snooping, after all.


Between the Golden Girls rerun on TV, the sonorous hum of her washing machine in the adjacent room, and the frantic click-click-click of Olivia's rapid typing, Rafael's mind was going into overdrive.

Just a few weeks ago they'd been standing in the middle of the crowded computer section at Best Buy, where Rafael was in the midst of convincing Olivia that she'd need a reliable laptop eventually, and that said reliable laptop had to be a Macbook Air (and not only because there was a discount if they bought more than one). He'd emphatically explained the merits of owning one to her until her resistance wore thin and they were carrying two white boxes out of the store with them. Now it was the reliable laptop on which she was forging ahead with the next stage of her professional life, while his gathered dust on his desk and saw the light only for Netflix and an occasional scroll through the Washington Post website for local news (most of the political variety).

She'd certainly kept the laptop much closer to her in the last few days. Or maybe he was only just noticing its quiet omnipresence on the coffee table or kitchen counter; the click-click-click of the keys echoing through the apartment as she trawled through articles and websites while he watched TV or brewed coffee. The glowing Apple logo looked especially sinister from across the room, silently taunting him for his refusal to open a damned Safari window and type the three words he refused to string together: jobs near me.

The machine would quickly get powered down and put away right as they kept the last of the dishes and climbed into bed, or when he leaned in to rest his hand on the small of her back and she'd turn to look at him with the same warm, tender affection she always did, the intensity with which she'd just stared at the screen melting away in seconds. Then they'd fall right back into bed without a second thought, luxuriating in the warm familiarity of each other's bodies in a private world where the two breeds of anxiety creeping into their routine didn't exist.

But it still didn't stop Rafael from feeling like something was different; that the colour of their relationship was slowly changing in ways he couldn't even express in words - and he didn't know what to make of it all.

Sometimes he looked across the room at her and he'd be taken back to the 16th Precinct, afternoons sitting across the conference table from her with quiet admiration for the way she just threw herself into their cases and made every single one her personal mission. But sometimes all it took was a few seconds of that incessant click-click-click to become a thunderous and resounding reminder of his own inadequacy.

Inadequacy. He hated that it was the word he'd flocked to, even though he - Rafael Barba, one of the most sought-after prosecutors in New York City - knew he had to be far from that. Except that there was no more New York City, and there was no running from the sobering reality that the only person he made more than small talk with across a cash register definitely was a step, if not more, ahead of him in recovering traces of their old existences.

Sometimes he felt nothing at all - and those moments scared him the most. Indifference to the mounting need to get started on his own job search; a stubborn and irrational refusal to follow in Olivia's footsteps and start chipping away at this oppressive burden before he ended up desolate and broke. Perplexity over how to cut short the extended funeral he'd been having for his legal career. Numbness he'd forced himself into before Olivia saw through him, because feeling nothing was better than letting his discomfort bubble over and fracture the fragile peace they still enjoyed (somewhat).

"Rafael?"

Her voice sent electricity coursing through him - intoxicating or paralysing, he didn't know.

Rafael whipped his head in her direction, their eyes meeting over the glow of her screen. "Can I get your help with something, please?"

"Mmm?" He hesitated getting up from his spot on the couch.

"You're probably better than me at this - I was hoping you could have a look at what I have so far and see which sections can be worded better," she asked nervously, her cheeks turning pink as she gestured at the Word document she'd been working on all afternoon.

She was asking for his help - just what he'd been hoping for. How could he say no to that?

Then he walked to her side and was taken aback by what he saw on her screen.

It took a few seconds for him to make sense of it all - Olivia Davis at the top of the page in bold, accompanied by the new passport photo she'd taken on their first day with the marshals and brand-new address and phone number. Then a section detailing an educational history that involved a Psychology degree at the University of Oregon; then an even longer section outlining a professional history so convincing that he almost believed she'd really been a community activist and social worker in Portland.

There were many words he used to describe resumes like that when they came through HR at the Brooklyn DA's office: comprehensive. Convincing. Professional. Hers was all of that, but also came with a quality only someone who'd spent twenty years on the job would possess: it was polished.

And there it was again: that same nagging feeling of inferiority he'd sworn he'd buried as he walked out the door of Olivia's apartment three days ago.

It was the same bitter resentment he'd once felt in a Harvard dorm room one winter when Rita Calhoun had generously given him free access to her typewriter - the fancy electronic IBM type with line memory that she always had a brand-new cartridge for - to spare him the misery of sitting alone in the library, with the constant reminder that the worn-out machine he shared with his roommate was in no condition to type up a resume for Henshall & Langan, of all places.

Maybe he'd been too busy mentally calculating how much of his meagre pocket money he'd have to save each week to come close to affording one of these formidable machines - emblems of the old-money elite he rubbed shoulders with in class every day but still hadn't managed to fully infiltrate - as he hesitated on the section detailing his professional experience. Perhaps it was the fact that he'd grown up using one of the shitty typewriters in his mother's teachers' lounge after hours because his father had smashed the one at home to a pulp in one of his drunken rages.

Then he quickly realised it definitely was the glimpse he caught of Rita's finished resume lying next to him, the creamy white Calhoun family stationery momentarily distracting him from the fact that the only thing more impressive than the "Dowland School" and "Harvard College" that headed it was how polished it looked - immaculate formatting, every bullet point crisply worded with a finesse only an elite prep school education and Manhattan socialite parents would have prepared her for.

She'd gotten that internship. He hadn't.

There was a word for that bitter resentment he'd felt that cold winter's afternoon and weeks later when the envelope had arrived in Rita's mailbox - one that'd eluded him since the night Olivia uttered the sentence that seemed to have changed everything.

Envy.

Rafael had been happy for Rita. Why wouldn't he? She'd been one of the first people to sit at the lunch table with him, finally tearing down the invisible wall between Upper East Side and el barrio; weeks later she offered him a ride back to the city in her Mercedes for winter break, and within months they were inseparable. She'd done him many a favour without the judgmental eyes that some of his classmates seemed to cast at him all through that semester. That gratitude was the most effective antidote to the envy he once thought he'd be consumed by, and it'd clearly worked if they'd stayed friends this long. Heck, she was the only person he trusted with caring for his mother and abuelita in his absence.

And it wasn't like he hadn't caught up eventually. He'd gotten that internship the following summer; heck, his grades had begun to surpass Rita's once he'd gotten the hang of crafting a Harvard-calibre essay. They'd both scored the coveted prosecutor jobs they'd been working towards. There was no reason to be jealous of Rita. Maybe he was the problem; he was the one who had seen competition where there didn't need to be any.

There was no reason to be jealous of Olivia, either. He'd gotten over that with Rita - surely 44-year old Rafael could exterminate that bitter resentment far more easily than his immature 19-year old self could?

He was going to be happy for Olivia. Why wouldn't he? She'd been everything Rita had been to him that first semester, and more - she alone had stopped the crippling loneliness of being Rafael Marquez from engulfing him completely. She'd been his one source of strength and companionship and the only bridge between the two halves of his soul. Not only did he have no reason to be jealous of Olivia, but for him to even be thinking about this feeling felt especially abhorrent and egregious.

He knew that he was the problem. He was the one who was seeing competition where there didn't need to be any.

And he wasn't sure what he hated more: that he was entertaining these nefarious thoughts, or that he'd allowed the seeds of envy to sink their roots in his mind in the first place.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Olivia gently tapped him on the shoulder and he was roused back to reality: her remarkably polished resume and his fingers hovering over the keys, paralysed by writer's block or hesitance, or maybe, guilt. "Is it really that bad?" she chuckled.

"Just deep in thought," he laughed nervously. "This looks great, Liv. There really isn't much I need to change."

There wasn't much he needed to change, because it was effortlessly polished - just like how she'd effortlessly jumped into this job search, completely bypassing the extended funeral he was holding in his mind for his fallen legal career and entire New York existence.

The relief in her expression was genuine. "Thank goodness. It's been over twenty years since I last did this."

"It certainly doesn't seem like it."

The awkward smile he wore was less genuine, but he immediately turned his attention back to the Word document and deftly corrected the lines that jumped out at him before he could get carried away, because that was what supportive friends did for each other.

Even if he did realise as his fingers flew over the keys that all this was feeling increasingly real by the second - Olivia's seemingly airtight and flawless plan, his glaring lack of a plan, and the growing discomfort that was pooling in his belly with every glance at Olivia Davis in 16-point Helvetica Neue in the centre of the screen.

But that wasn't supposed to matter. He was going to be happy that things were going so smoothly for her, because that was what supportive friends felt for each other. She smiled at him gratefully as she went over the changes he'd made, and for a second he was able to convince himself that he could do this, after all. He could get out of his own head and actually help her in ways beyond sitting quietly by her side as she fussed over whether or not to change the headers to blue. He could be happy for and proud of her.

Now all he had to do was find a way to think those emotions into existence.

But as he slipped out her front door an hour later and stopped by Whole Foods to pick up ingredients for dinner at his place, it didn't take him long to realise that he was going to need to do something far more drastic. Just ruminating over the topic was far from enough to stem this increasingly discomfiting train of thought before it consumed him.

And so he found himself standing in the whiskey aisle at the nearest liquor store, reaching for the familiar navy blue box emblazoned with "Macallan" and recalling that he'd never finished the last bottle in his office - a gift from Jack McCoy to celebrate a year at the Manhattan DA's office, back when he still had a job to wake up to every morning. He ignored the rest of the shelves and headed for the check-out line, only to impulsively grab a bottle of Bacardi on the way and hastily slap it on the counter before buyer's remorse had a chance to creep in.

The numbers that flashed on the screen as the cashier rang up the bottles should have pricked at his conscience - or at the very least, drawn his attention to his rapidly depleting bank balance - but he handed over his card and signed his new name without as much as a second thought for the first time since he'd gotten to Bethesda.

He was adjusting to a completely new life. There were so many things he needed to sort out - surely spending a little more than usual was warranted?

The bag was almost oppressively heavy in his palm as set it down on his kitchen counter, the boxes that'd once been pantry essentials now very out of place in his new surroundings. Here he was, unboxing two bottles of alcohol he'd once naively thought Rafael Marquez wouldn't need. Why would he, when spending almost all his waking hours with Olivia imbued him with a natural high that a glass of scotch could never? It was a hedonistic New York habit he'd been more than happy to cut back on; one that his liver probably was going to thank him for.

Until now, when his temptation to break open the seal and pour himself a glass to turn his anxious train of thought into a blissful, contented tipsiness was mounting.

Laundry's done. Be there in 15!

Rafael could almost hear her enthusiasm in that message - one so pure and untainted that he winced recalling the thoughts he'd been entertaining all day. She'd added a smiling emoji, and he quickly fired one back at her, but the excitement implied by the exchange on the screen was a sorry veneer for the flurry of emotion swirling in his mind.

He didn't know what to think anymore.

He had to be overthinking this. It had to be a by-product of his current lack of legal problems to mull over. They still had six months to get everything sorted - he still had time; this wasn't a race. He wasn't going to force himself to shed every last trace of his legal career - the one thing that defined every bit of the person he was - before he was ready and throw himself into a new one just yet.

The bottles remained unopened, but Rafael hid them in a kitchen cupboard he was reasonably sure that Olivia wasn't going to open. He didn't know why he did that - not when Macallan was centre stage on the shelf whenever she walked into his office at 1 Hogan Place or passed the liquor shelf in his old living room; when it was precisely three glasses of the amber liquid at Forlini's that'd first plunged them into their two-month-long (and counting) dalliance.

Was it shame? Embarrassment? Guilt? He technically hadn't done anything wrong, so why was he letting something this simple; this routine eat away at him?

Maybe he just needed something - one thing - all to himself.

There they stayed when she rang his doorbell and he greeted her with a warm, inviting smile, because that was what supportive friends did at the end of a long day.

Thoughts of the bottles had long exited his mind by the time he turned the lights down and Olivia's hands were teasing his belt buckle and pulling him into his bedroom, but he feared what he was going to do when sunlight poured into his room the next morning and he'd come down from that rapturous high and have to confront his inertia all over again.

And so he forced his eyes shut when his head hit the pillow, realising with some disappointment that Olivia's quiet, steady breaths next to him suddenly felt more disquieting than comforting.


They were sitting in the middle of an industrial-chic coffee shop in North Bethesda with summer heat scorching their skin through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, but all Rafael could see and feel was a blisteringly cold Bronx high school classroom floor and the disappointed, eviscerating gaze of his English teacher.

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;

It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock

The meat it feeds on.

I don't believe you when you say these lines, Rafael - make me believe them! she'd shouted at him over and over again that afternoon, his classmates awkwardly averting their embarrassed gazes while Rafael had silently wished for the earth to swallow him whole.

And it only got worse from there.

Alex, show him how you did it. Alex didn't have any problems with this scene.

He couldn't understand why Mrs. Rodriguez had insisted he share the role of Iago with Alex Munoz; he didn't care that this was "just" high school theatre or that he knew better than to take her infamously blistering criticism personally. Perhaps Rafael didn't even care that knew he was by far the better actor of the two (and by no stretch of the imagination). For one long month, every glance at the cast list on the bulletin board - where "Rafael Barba/Alex Munoz" was printed in bold text - was a sobering reminder of the fact that nothing was going to make him Alex Munoz - charismatic, magnetic Alex Munoz who stole everyone's attention on stage and won the best roles without even really trying. Charismatic, magnetic Alex Munoz, who Rafael's own mother had told him to stick with because he'll be mayor of New York someday.

The adoring twinkle in Lucia's eyes as she'd said it never resurfaced, not even when Rafael gave the performance of his lifetime on his night of the spring production of Othello. She'd never said the same about Rafael.

He'd been happy for Alex - at least until he'd been arrested and his political career decimated after last fall's scandal, of course. Why wouldn't he be? Everything he wanted, Alex got, and Rafael couldn't even argue that his friend didn't deserve them all: class president, stellar grades, the best roles in every damned high school production. He'd deserved to play Iago, even if Rafael had nailed his audition first. They both were from humble working-class families; Alex had worked like hell to be where he was. And when they'd both gotten standing ovations by the end of the weekend in 1986, they'd celebrated together, because they were friends.

But there was a word for the shame that had stabbed him in that cold, hostile classroom, as Alex, seated in the front row and hiding behind his copy of the play, awkwardly got up from his seat and recited those lines to perfection while Mrs. Rodriguez lavished praise that Rafael wanted so badly to hear about his own acting. Envy.

The irony of that emotion hadn't been lost on him as he'd read out the line for the fifteenth time that day - or read it for the fifteenth time today.

Rafael thumbed through the yellowed, heavily annotated copy of the Collected Works of William Shakespeare that'd survived the trip from New York to Bethesda, his eyes lingering on the lines he'd underlined in pencil so many times that they left a metallic stain on the facing page. It'd taken thirty years, but he knew now - he knew what it was like to be the "green-eye'd monster", the one who saw proofs of holy writ in the trifles light as air that were Olivia's every move: her frantic typing, the open windows on her laptop, the intense focus in her stare.

Today was supposed to be a pleasant change of pace; them finally deciding that sitting by her kitchen counter all afternoon wasn't cutting it and that they might as well find a coffee shop to camp out at for a few hours. But his gaze kept shifting nervously between their sides of the table, an emblem of the self-indulgent walk down memory lane he'd allowed himself to take instead of following Olivia's lead.

Was Olivia sensing his discomfort? Surely she had to have picked up on it over the last few days; she was too perceptive not to. But even if she had, she certainly didn't look like she was planning to broach the subject with him - not when it seemed like her entire life was the Ask a Manager page and the notes she was making on the pocket-sized notepad she seemed to have with her at all times.

Did he want to tell her about his discomfort? Since when couldn't he be upfront with her? Maybe it was because he didn't have a tactful way or the courage to even suggest to her that her job search was stirring negative emotions in him and-

"Olivia!"

An almost jarringly cheerful voice echoed through the empty space and Rafael looked around nervously, anxious that someone from New York had recognised Olivia Benson, but it clearly hadn't fazed Olivia, who waved at the mysterious person standing across the room.

"Didn't think I'd see you here at this time of the day," a young woman with a megawatt smile remarked as she donned a barista's apron and approached them. "This must be Rafael; it's so nice to finally see you in the flesh! Hi, I'm Allison."

"Allison's the one who makes our coffee when I stop by here in the morning," Olivia promptly clarified, to which Rafael flashed a polite smile at her. "Thought I'd finally drop by and stay for longer than five minutes."

"And I'm so glad you did. We just got a new machine and some European blends. How have you been liking Bethesda?"

"It's been great," Olivia replied sincerely. "We've really been enjoying getting to know the area better." She turned to Rafael for confirmation, and he hastily nodded in agreement.

"That's great! It probably isn't exciting as Portland, but..."

From that point onwards, Rafael wasn't paying attention to the exchange in front of him.

Portland. Olivia had cultivated what was looking increasingly like friendship with this spirited young woman who now recognised her on sight and knew about both Portland and Rafael - in character as Olivia Davis.

It was virtually effortless, the way Olivia's bell-like laughter and ear-to-ear grin lit up the room and regaled Allison with a description of her favourite coffee shop in Portland, while sneaking the occasional glance at Rafael, who smiled politely although words were going in one ear and out the other. So this was what a summer undercover as an eco-warrior got her: tales from a fictitious life slipping out of her mouth as calmly and confidently as did the Olivia Benson who commandeered the squad room less than two months ago.

"So, how have you been liking Bethesda, Rafael?" Allison turned in his direction, jolting him back to reality. "It must be a big change from Chicago."

He wondered what else Olivia had told her about him.

Chicago. That was where he was from; that was the city he'd spent hours poring over travel guides on while in the clearinghouse. A city he'd last visited at least eight years ago for a legal conference before promptly heading for the airport to catch a plane back to LaGuardia the second it ended.

Chicago. Surely he hadn't already forgotten all the factoids and city landmarks he'd committed to memory a month ago - but where was the incentive to remember when he spent all his time with Olivia and never had an opportunity to actually use any of these facts, until now?

"Bethesda's been… nice," he stammered with a strained smile, his tongue suddenly feeling like lead. "Definitely a change from Chicago, but… nice."

Nice? He had a degree in English from Harvard - no, Yale now - and the only adjective he could muster was nice?

Olivia must've sensed his discomfort, because she quickly jumped in. "We drove to D.C. to visit the Natural History Museum last week. It was fantastic."

"It really was," he interjected half-heartedly.

"I've been to Chicago once in high school. You guys have pretty great museums there too, right?"

Ah, shit. He couldn't even remember if he'd read up on any of the museums in one of those travel guides - how could he have missed that, when he'd been a Met membership holder and generous MOMA donor for most of his professional life?

"We do," he muttered, hoping his cheeks weren't turning a beet red as he willed himself to just think and talk his way out of the situation, just like he used to do for a living. "But it's great that all the Smithsonian museums here are free."

It was a technique the marshals had taught him; one that he thankfully recalled on the fly: turn the attention to the person you're speaking to; they'll back off on questions about you. Still, he desperately hoped that he'd gotten that factual detail right.

"Definitely!" Allison replied enthusiastically, much to his relief. "I'd go more often if I had more time off. Law school's been keeping me really busy."

God, she's in law school.

It was a very unwelcome reminder of the fact that Rafael Marquez's currently-unwritten resume was not going to list a J.D. from Harvard as one of his academic achievements.

"I didn't know you were in law school," Olivia remarked without missing a beat, while sneaking a quick are you alright glance at an increasingly uncomfortable Rafael, who wished the ground would swallow him whole.

"Yeah, I'm at Georgetown Law. Started there last fall!"

Now he really wanted to tune out of this conversation.

He was thankful that Allison's manager quickly cut the conversation short by calling her to help him troubleshoot the new coffee machine, but Olivia's cheerful wave goodbye was a stark reminder of the very topic he'd been preoccupied with all afternoon.

He didn't know how she did it; how she made everything look so god damn effortless. How he looked at her and still saw the very essence of Olivia Benson while she flawlessly got her new life in order and made casual conversation in character as Olivia Davis, while he stumbled over his words during a one-minute exchange about the extremely populous major city Rafael Marquez hailed from.

Everything was Olivia did was infuriatingly effortless - job hunting, sex, exercise, errand-running, coffee shop conversations; fuck, she even lied well - and he didn't even try to suppress that mounting envy.

He didn't know why he couldn't just open his mouth and tell her all of this - his fears; the seeds of his insecurity. That he needed her to tell him he was going to get over this god damn slump and be alright; that he was going to find the indomitable spirit Rafael Barba once had and get his shit together by November.

Except that the very thought of telling her disgusted him so much that his coffee turned sour in his mouth. It was downright mean and unfair - mean of him to even suggest that she was the reason for his growing misery; unfair to saddle her with the burden of rousing him into action. He couldn't get in her way just to soothe his own bruised ego.

And so he vowed to try again - to exterminate every last trace of envy and insecurity trapped under his skin.

Eager for a distraction as Olivia returned to her work, Rafael flipped right past the dog-eared Othello pages and opened another play at random.

Tis much when sceptres are in children's hands,

But more when envy breeds unkind division:

There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.

Damn it, he cursed quietly, grateful that her attention was diverted by what looked like an especially compelling article.

Of all the plays in this collection, he just had to open the book on King Henry IV Part 1 (who even read that?) and that page.

Maybe it was a sign - confirmation that the poisonous seeds of envy had long planted themselves in his mind.

Maybe he'd already ushered in the unkind division and ruin and confusion, and didn't know if or how he was going to shield Olivia from it, when he couldn't even protect himself.


When Olivia caught a final glimpse of herself in the salon mirror as she handed her card to the stylist, she almost signed Persephone James on the receipt.

She'd made the appointment with only a simple trim in mind, but after making an off-hand comment about the bangs she'd sported circa 2006 when she still could get away with wearing cropped tank tops under her blazers, the stylist had suggested she try them again - and Olivia had gamely agreed. Thankfully, she hadn't let the young woman talk her into a perm - Dean Porter's ill-advised suggestion for a free-spirited, tree-hugging eco-activist leaning into a 1960s flower child stereotype - but Olivia still couldn't resist staring at her reflection in the window of the restaurant Rafael was waiting for her at, the drastic transformation far from unpleasant.

Maybe she even liked it. She liked that Olivia Davis was a fresher, younger Olivia Benson, before the deluge of unfortunate events that'd been sent her way over the last few years had extinguished the light from her eyes - Calvin, Elliot Stabler, William Lewis, Munch and Cragen retiring, Brian Cassidy…

She wanted this change; maybe even needed it.

But when Rafael looked up at Olivia as she walked in and caught sight of her transformation, she wasn't quite sure what to make of the way his mouth hung agape for an uncomfortably long time.

"That's… a change," he finally stuttered as she sat down across from him, his expression inscrutable - which never was a good sign, as far as Rafael Barba, always an open book, was concerned.

It certainly wasn't the reaction she'd been expecting. "Be honest. You hate it, don't you?" she noted with a dry chuckle.

Rafael bristled at her candour. "Hate is a very strong word, Liv. You just look… different," he replied cautiously as he struggled to make sense of the unfamiliar sight before him.

Different was almost an understatement. The shoulder-length brunette layers that framed her face were just as glossy and immaculate as they'd been the first time they met in the courthouse, but he almost couldn't believe that a change as simple as getting bangs made her look like a completely different person.

Like Olivia Davis.

He'd barely bat an eyelid the day she returned to work after the Lewis debacle with that short bob - or maybe they hadn't been close enough friends for him to take an interest. This change was only half as drastic and he'd thought for a second that a stranger had taken Olivia's place when she walked through the doors of the restaurant.

If the last few days had gradually made him aware of the subtle ways their lives were diverging, this change absolutely confirmed it. Now he looked at her and saw someone not only different, but also new - and the one step that Olivia had been ahead of him over the last week immediately became two.

Two steps weren't huge by any stretch of the imagination. They certainly weren't as huge as the country mile that separated him from the prep school-educated, holiday-home owning Harvard legacies who had more social capital in a fingernail than Rafael had in nineteen years of existence. But those two steps were enough to make him grimace - and judging from the puzzled expression on her face, she'd definitely noticed it.

She broke the awkward silence first. "Rafael, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Liv," he replied listlessly, his eyes peeled to the cup of coffee he was nursing.

She leaned in concernedly and reached for his hand across the table, Rafael resisting the temptation to pull away lest he alarm her even more. "You've been pretty downcast the last few days."

So she had noticed, after all. He didn't know what to feel about that.

"Is it something you want to talk about?" Her eyes were silently begging him for his trust in her.

What was stopping him from doing just that? Bangs or not, Olivia's lilting, soothing voice never failed to make every last emotion leap out of his chest, and he was a second away from finally opening his mouth and pouring his heart out to her - the uncertainty, the latent fear, the guilt

No.

He wasn't going to saddle her with that burden. It was unfair. He had to get a grip on his own emotions - and he was going to have to do that sooner than later.

"Maybe," he eventually muttered after a long pause, hopeful that even a non-committal response would appease her. "I'd rather not talk about it now, though."

"Okay," she nodded, clearly unappeased by his cursory response. "But is there anything I can do?"

There was so much she could do - stop staring at her Macbook all day, for a start - but he bit his tongue and searched his mind for something far more unselfish to suggest.

"Could we maybe switch things up today? I'm not sure I want to spend another afternoon lounging around and reading."

There - a far more diplomatic way of putting things before he found words that more truthfully addressed the root of the problem. Lounging around and reading, he was more than happy to do, if he could actually do that for once instead of spending another afternoon watching her leave him in the dust. But the circumstances warranted that small lie.

"Of course we can do that," she agreed in a heartbeat. "Maybe we can drive out somewhere new for dinner?"

"Yeah, I'd like that," he smiled - perhaps his first real smile in a long time.

Olivia couldn't resist the quiet sigh of relief she let out seeing some light return to his eyes after days of furtively trying to scrutinise them for hints as to what was wrong. The signs had trickled in so gradually that they were almost imperceptible - a resigned sigh when he channel-surfed on the couch, the occasional uncomfortable glance piercing enough to burn through her as she stared at her laptop screen, then the way he'd clammed up at the coffee shop and uncharacteristically silent car ride home.

Something was on his mind, and she hated that she hadn't nipped it in the bud earlier. Maybe it was her fault for getting so carried away with her new mission that she'd missed the signs as they appeared; perhaps she or Blake had inadvertently blurted out something that'd unlocked something unpleasant in him. But was it even something Rafael wanted to talk about with her? What had happened to his increasing gregariousness; a side to him she'd finally managed to chip away at after months of only the impersonal professionalism of ADA Barba? What couldn't he trust her with?

In any case, the tension that hung over their table was uncomfortably thick, and she had a nagging feeling that she was responsible for it somehow.

She pulled out her cell phone and searched for restaurants in parts of the D.C. metropolitan area they had yet to explore, catching another glimpse of her new hair in the corner of her phone screen.

She wondered if she liked it that much after all.


Rafael was grateful that he could barely hear his own thoughts over the thunderous sizzle of meat on the grill.

When Olivia had suggested they try a Korean barbeque place she saw on Eater, he'd agreed even before she had the time to read the reviews, not caring that it was in Annandale and hence an hour's drive away. This - the newness, the surprise, the novelty - was exactly what he needed to finally stop picturing the glow of the Apple logo on her laptop and hearing the click-click-click of the keys, even if it meant an arduous drive to Virginia in rush-hour traffic.

Perhaps it was serendipity that it was precisely the kind of restaurant where talking was virtually impossible in the smoky, cacophonous, echo-filled space, where the only thing he had to focus his attention on was cooking each piece of beef to a perfect medium-rare and shoving it into his mouth, and Olivia's amused smile from across the table, obviously delighted that his appetite had returned after that uncharacteristically meagre salad at lunch.

She'd tied her hair back into a messy ponytail, the new bangs seamlessly framing her face, and he was starting to realise that he didn't hate the new hair as much as he originally thought he did.

Maybe he'd never actually hated it. He'd just hated what it represented.

But he didn't have to think about that now - not when even the small beef combo was proving so formidable that he already was contemplating what to do with the leftovers.

She'd clearly also been thinking about that as she waited for him to finish the last of the bulgogi, because it was the first thing that came out of her mouth when they emerged into the scorching night air, their stomachs almost uncomfortably full and clothes reeking of smoke.

"Beef fried rice. Perfect combination." It was her go-to dish for late-night suppers in the precinct - times she now was starting to look at through rose-tinted glasses.

"No offence intended, but I don't think you have the culinary skills to make that work, Liv," Rafael quipped, his deep-throated laugh reverberating in the empty parking lot. "But I'll happily be your guinea pig."

"Who said I'm the one doing the cooking?" she retorted playfully, the much-welcome sound of his laughter instinctively closing the half a foot of distance that'd seemed to creep into every interaction they had over the past week.

"We'll just order fried rice from China Garden and put the beef slices on top of it. Easy."

Easy. That was what this night had been - just what they both needed after an unexpectedly draining few days.

"You up for dessert?" she suggested impulsively as they climbed back into his car, recalling from the article she'd read that afternoon that Annandale was a Korean enclave - a Koreatown far more expansive than the two Midtown blocks it occupied in New York.

"Dessert, after how much we just ate?" he asked in disbelief. "But… yes, I'm up for dessert," he added sheepishly.

"I knew it," she declared triumphantly. This was the Rafael she remembered and had desperately wanted back - and she couldn't wipe her ear-to-ear grin off her face as he pulled out of the parking lot.

The Korean bakery they found themselves in ten minutes later was quiet and homely, a far cry from the almost raucous, sizzling (literally) energy of the barbecue joint. Rafael emerged onto the second floor balancing a tray of shaved ice, greeted by the sight of Olivia shaking her hair free of the messy ponytail it'd been in a few minutes ago, and his breath caught watching her brunette layers fall effortlessly around her neck.

He'd had that exact reaction to this sight countless times - the precinct, Park Avenue, even the courthouse after a day of cross-examinations - but tonight it came with an extra side of relief. He could still look at Olivia and go weak in the knees (although, thankfully, not so weak that he dropped the tray he was carrying); he knew for sure that all the monstrous, poisonous envy that he feared would engulf him hadn't completely quelled the warm, ebullient affection he'd always felt for her.

It was his sign that he was going to be fine; that they were going to be fine, eventually.

Out of the corner of her eye, Olivia caught a glimpse of Rafael approaching, and the serene, smitten smile he wore as he looked at her made her heart leap.

It was her sign that he was going to be fine; that they were going to be fine, eventually.

It would've been the perfect opportunity for her to continue the conversation they'd had at lunch; to finally get to the root of his trapped agitation in a place where the only soundtrack was a medley of soft Korean ballads, and their only company a few young couples and families occupying the other half of the terrace. For a minute she agonised over her opening question; one that would hopefully open the floodgates - but then their eyes met over the mound of shaved ice between them and she immediately jettisoned her plans. A balmy June breeze was drifting in through the open windows, and she leaned back in her chair and allowed herself to let it go and just be.

Why race to excavate every emotion? They'd have plenty of chances to talk about it tomorrow, or maybe even later than that. And judging from Rafael's contented expression, he was glad that she hadn't brought up the elephant in the room either.

Maybe that was all he needed to remember: that there was a world he still could share with her that was devoid of all the bitterness and envy and insecurity he'd almost allowed to swallow him whole.

He vowed to hold onto it as tightly as possible.


Olivia couldn't quite remember where she'd gotten the idea - maybe it was a Facebook ad or one of the travel guides she'd perused in the clearinghouse - but she knew that the drive had been worth it the instant she and Rafael stepped out of the car into a lot so silent that every crunch of gravel under their feet reverberated through the air.

She couldn't recall the last national park she'd been to that wasn't Liberty or Governors' Island (were they even national parks?), and so nature-starved had she been her entire life (Central Park didn't quite count, although it certainly tried) that the gentle wind that caressed her skin sent a profound calm washing over her. She could feel herself breathe in just a little deeper than she usually did when they passed the sign welcoming them to Great Falls National Park, Rafael's arm protectively moving to her back when she almost tripped over a branch in her path.

She'd lived on some of the noisiest avenues in Manhattan her entire life; if she wasn't, then her mother's drunken midnight tirades provided more than enough background noise to compensate. Silence was a luxury - a virtual impossibility in a city that never lulled - and Olivia had long learned that the roar of a passing subway train or crash of glass bottles in the back of a recycling truck were going to be constants for as long as she lived. Maybe she liked the way that the city's soundtrack drowned out her thoughts; maybe they made her feel like she was in the thick of something so much bigger than herself.

But now she was standing in the middle of a tree-lined path with only Rafael's footsteps and the quiet screams of cicadas and her thumping heart in her ears, both sides flanked by greenery so immense that she was almost overwhelmed, and she knew that she was in the thick of something so much bigger than herself. The air was fresher, the trees taller, her footsteps lighter. She snuck furtive glances at Rafael, their shoulders grazing lightly as they strolled down the deserted path, gratitude for each other's company silently percolating between them.

They'd spent their lives finding pockets of quiet where they could - bathroom stalls in the basement of 1 Hogan Place, the cribs when the rest of the squad had gone home for the day, The Ramble in Central Park at sunrise if they were lucky. Now they almost didn't know what to do with the seemingly infinite silence and lush foliage that blanketed them, the combination so intoxicating that their footsteps slowed to a crawl as they took everything in.

Olivia could hear her own thoughts for the first time in months. There was no hiding between the cacophony of traffic sirens or 80s radio playlists or frenetic restaurant chatter - it was just her, and Rafael, and the immensity of their surroundings. She wanted to bottle this feeling and keep it: the quiet ecstasy of retreating into solitude, where the distinction between Olivia Benson and Olivia Davis didn't exist and she was just Olivia, and he was just Rafael. There was no pretence, no nagging reminder that Olivia Davis was always going to be a liar no matter how hard she convinced herself otherwise or how many acquaintances she won over with her concocted backstory.

Rafael kept pace next to her, his footsteps finally falling in time with hers as they approached the outlook overlooking the Potomac River, transfixed by the relentless rush of water hundreds of feet below them. There was no need for conversation; not when they both stared down into the torrent and let the comforting gush of cascading water settle over them. He gripped her hand for support as they clambered a large rock by the edge of the outlook, setting himself cross-legged next to her, and realising with a contented smile that their fingers were still intertwined.

He wasn't sure who was the first to spot him - the lone kayaker in his bright yellow vessel, a neon beacon against the murky green-grey water, furiously paddling against the current even though every foot he ascended was promptly followed by a three feet shove in the opposite direction. Rafael commenced a mental countdown - how long until he gave up? - but seconds and then minutes passed and the distant figure was still relentlessly fighting the ripples of water that looked on the verge of engulfing him whole.

He finally broke the comfortable silence. "You know, that's what I feel all the time now," he deadpanned, although the subtle crack in his voice gave away the plethora of emotion behind that sentence before he could catch it.

Olivia's eyes had, too, been trained on that lone kayaker, except that hers were silently willing him to press on, and Rafael could have sworn that the earnestness in that distant stare would reach that man somehow. But then she turned to meet Rafael's gaze, that steely determination instantly melting into sympathetic concern as his voice punctuated the tranquillity.

There it was.

The first outpouring of honest emotion from him the whole week. The opening she'd - and maybe he'd - been waiting for.

"He's doing one heck of a job," she pondered aloud as she turned her attention back to the kayaker, the twenty or thirty feet he'd covered in the last minute probably akin to a marathon's worth of energy under those punishing conditions. "I think it's admirable."

She paused to look Rafael in the eye, the subtext in that line clear as day.

"What's the point, though? If he's going to paddle uphill furiously and never reach the head of the Potomac?" he frowned, grateful for the convenient metaphor that let him dance around the insurmountable challenge of articulating the withering pain of their current reality.

"But he doesn't have to reach it, does he? All he has to do is paddle until he finds a point along the river he's satisfied with bowing out at."

"And if he realises that it actually isn't enough to satisfy him?"

"Then he'll hop right back in that kayak and paddle until he does - or he'll rest on the bank and give himself time to let all he's accomplished sink in."

"I don't know, Liv."

Those were four words that referred to much, much more than just that kayaker.

Do you want to talk about it? she mouthed, one eye still trained on the yellow vessel inching up the river in their direction, its diminutive length just a speck in the enormity of the gorge.

"I'm fucking terrified, Liv," Rafael blurted out, his voice choked with pent-up emotion.

She grimaced hearing the raw pain in that sentence, every word a cut to her heart. If only she'd picked up on this earlier...

"All these changes - finding a new job, just being here and being Rafael Marquez… I thought I could take them in my stride, but they're so much more… exhausting than I expected."

Olivia instinctively tightened her grip on his hand, her shoulder coming to rest against his.

"I don't know what I want to do with my life. Law's all I've known. And now I'm going to have to pretend that this chapter of my life; this part of myself never existed and find something new to fill that void. And I don't know if anything ever will," he admitted sadly.

"You don't have to know what it is just yet. We've only been here a month. Surely you can afford to take the time to figure things out," she assured him.

Not when you're already on the road to doing just that, he almost shot back in a moment of weakness, but bit his tongue before he completely and irreparably shattered the already-fragile peace between them.

No, he wasn't going to snap at Olivia. She didn't deserve that.

It was his problem, not hers.

"It's not just that. I'll have to find a job that I won't hate dragging myself out of bed at 7am for. It's going to have to pay the bills and rent. And I'm going to have to start from scratch in an industry I'll probably know nothing about because Rafael Marquez doesn't have a J.D," he rambled. "I was a good lawyer, Liv. And I don't know if I'm ever going to stop hating the fact that I had to give it up, because it feels like a part of my identity was just… ripped out of me the day we left New York."

His eyes fell to the ground in agony. "And I'm going to have to actually apply and pray that someone will hire a Chicago transplant in his 40s. Getting a job out of college is hard enough nowadays. We have it even worse."

"I'm worried about that too," she confessed, her free hand tracing idle circles on his arm. "But I've seen lots of great articles about resumes and applying for jobs as an… older person. We'll figure out a way around this somehow."

She was met by a stony silence, but Olivia could have sworn that Rafael had grimaced ever-so-slightly upon that casual mention of the articles she'd perused - and something stirred in her.

She almost couldn't believe she'd taken this long to reach that epiphany.

"Rafael," she dipped her voice to a gentle, cautious whisper, "you know you can tell me if this is too much, right? If I'm stressing you out?" she remarked, her face flooded with a mix of concern and- was that guilt?

Shit. She'd seen right through him.

Of course she had. To expect any less from her would be an insult. She was uncannily perceptive, and nothing slipped past her - it didn't matter that they were hundreds of miles from the precinct.

Perhaps it'd been wishful thinking to expect that this would be easy to keep from Olivia. Now he had little more than a few seconds to decide how much of that ugly, monstrous envy he wanted to bare to her.

"You don't stress me out, Liv."

The answer: none.

"I'm just… intimidated by the prospect of searching for a new job. That's all," he said tentatively, as he forced himself to meet her gaze with a reassuring smile.

Relief washed over her, but she couldn't shake the lingering discomfort in his expression - was that doubt in his eyes? Hesitance? Was he still hiding something that she didn't know how to draw out?

"It's not you, Liv," he added, this time slightly more firmly when he sensed her trepidation. "It's just a lot to think about - and I think I'm going to need some time to figure things out."

That second sentence was airtight. The first, however?

But did it really matter, when Olivia's visible relief seemed to instantly restore the calm they'd been enjoying before he'd opened the floodgates? Wasn't this the calm that he so desperately needed - much more than any selfish need to soothe his own ego?

Olivia's hand remained tightly wrapped against his. "You know you can talk to me about anything, right?" her tone gentle and assuring but eyes silently begging for his trust; his faith in her.

"Of course, Liv." He said it with as much confidence as he could muster.

If only he knew how to.

He did trust her. He had faith in her. So much faith, in fact, that he feared that the sheer egregiousness of the thoughts that'd coursed through his mind over the past week would irreparably destroy any of the faith she had in him - a quiet faith bursting through in the way she clutched his hand.

The last thing he wanted to do was let even the slightest trace of his poisonous envy leak out onto her; breed the unkind division that he feared they would never come back from.

Her head was resting so close to his that he could feel her warm breath caress his neck. "Is there anything you need me to do?"

God, he didn't deserve her.

And he couldn't imagine losing her - which was why he vowed for the umpteenth time that week to try even harder to exterminate every last trace of the bitter resentment that was threatening to bubble over. Olivia wasn't his competitor; his foe - she was the one clutching his hand and trying to make him feel better and help him find his joie de vivre again. And he didn't want to keep her at arm's length, or to let his emotions continue to draw an invisible wedge between them.

He couldn't let his selfish envy come between them. He could be many things with Olivia, but a Shakespearean green-eyed monster wasn't one of them.

"You being here is enough, Liv," he replied softly, one of the things he could say without burying a monster looming in its shadow. "Your support is everything to me."

She didn't have to say a word; her head resting on his shoulder was agreement enough, and he wished he could freeze this moment - rushing water, rustle of leaves, Olivia.

He had to keep his emotions in check - if not for himself, for her.

"You did well for yourself back in New York, Rafael, and you're not going to lose all of that drive overnight. You're going to be just fine - I know it."

Her faith in him was so earnest; so pure, that he wished he could accept it unquestioningly.

"But what if I don't feel like that person anymore?"

"You're still that person."

That sentence, in its simplicity and directness, cut deep.

He'd been broken down to what felt like a shell of his former self, and she still looked at him and saw Rafael Barba where he couldn't recognise his own reflection. She completed the piece of him that'd been ripped from him as the marshals' car raced down the I95 away from the city; she represented the only part of his past that he could still hold in his arms.

"I miss New York, Liv."

That sentiment had hung over them ever since they stepped into the spartan hallways of the clearinghouse, but it was the first time he'd said it out loud, and he felt foolishly close to tears as the sentence rang in both their ears.

Olivia's eyes slowly fluttered shut, a tidal wave of emotion pouring over her. She'd tried so hard to embrace this life; embrace Olivia Davis, and maybe it'd worked - but without the roar of traffic on Rockville Pike or cheerful capitalism of the mall to force her mind into believing that she was a new person now, she couldn't fully escape that woeful longing for a life forcibly ripped from her arms.

"I miss New York too."

She wondered how things were at the precinct. Was Fin holding the fort? Did they like their new CO, whoever they were? What had they done with her old desk; the chipped coffee mug that she stubbornly refused to discard? She recalled the last time she'd stepped through the door of her office and inhaled the mix of stale coffee and printer ink, Fin's sarcastic banter with Nick and Amanda sending laughter echoing through the room.

She replayed that scene, only to feel that reality - that memory - slip even further away from her, and one look at Rafael was enough to tell her that he'd wandered down a memory lane of his own.

It was like he'd read her mind. "All I have are memories," he muttered quietly, "and I'm terrified that I'll wake up one day and they'll be so distant that I can't even see them clearly anymore."

His mother. His abuelita. Rita. His old apartment. His old office. One month into their new lives and he already felt the gulf between Bethesda and New York widen so much that he no longer fell asleep with his mother's face imprinted on his mind and her voice ringing in his ears.

"I can't let that happen."

Memories. They were all he could hang onto for the rest of his existence here - but they already were fading far more quickly than he wanted them to. He shook his head, his refusal to surrender to the cruel hands of time.

"Memories matter to me, Liv, because in the end, memories are all that any of us have."

He could feel the warmth of his abuelita's last embrace on his skin, only for it to evaporate in a second, ephemeral and phantom-like - the only trace of Catalina Diaz that he still carried.

Rafael turned to Olivia with glistening eyes, although tears refused to fall.

"And you. You are all that I have."

Maybe he didn't know what was real anymore, but he knew one thing for sure: Olivia was real.

She was real; she was here; she was his only bridge to the memories he could feel slipping out of his reach by the day.

And all he wanted to do was to fall right into those brown eyes, every glance in his direction imbued with more kindness and love and tenderness than he deserved in a lifetime, and let her complete the parts of him he thought were gone forever.

Neither of them had to make the first move, because they pressed their lips to the other's in perfect sync, the melancholy of their exchange pouring into that kiss until it exploded into warm comfort.

He couldn't care about the pain of abandoning his old life or sting of envy that he'd hidden from her and still kept hidden; he couldn't remind himself that he and Olivia were going to need to rupture this comfortable routine in due time and succumb to the realities of employment, or that that the colour of their relationship was going to change far more than it already had.

There was just one uncomplicated truth in this profoundly complicated new existence - one that he had to hold close to his chest. He needed her.

He felt a melange of emotion towards her, but none as strong as his anguished, impassioned hunger for the solace in her kiss; her steady presence next to him. He needed her.

She needed him. He could feel it in the way her lips sent electricity coursing through him; the way her hands gripped the thin fabric of his T-shirt and pulled him against her.

Maybe that burning need was enough for them to fight their way through whatever came next.

In the distance, the kayaker's bright yellow vessel finally sailed over the steep incline right in Rafael and Olivia's line of vision.

Maybe he needed to believe that this was enough; she was enough.

Maybe he needed to believe that he was enough - for this, and for her.

The long, languid silence between them felt like slow hours, the taste of her lips lingering on his tongue as they luxuriated in the hushed peace of the clearing. There was something almost luxurious; almost indulgent about this, the two of them trading the hustle and bustle of law enforcement for an afternoon perched on a rock overlooking the river, but he didn't feel an ounce of guilt over the hours he'd whiled away.

They had time. He had time. He wanted - needed - to remember that.

"Hey, we should get a picture of the Potomac for Grandma!"

The chatter of a young family approaching the outlook shattered the silence, and reality quickly descended upon them as Rafael watched Olivia lean down to tie her left shoelace, their skin parting for the first time since they'd clambered onto this rock.

He had a very clear idea of how the rest of the evening was going to go. They were going to get back into the car; an hour later they would stand over her stove with the leftover beef from last night and burn the fried rice and call China Garden to deliver a box; they'd polish it off and within minutes she'd be on top of him on the couch and running her hands down his chest and-

"Come on, let's head home and get out that leftover beef from yesterday."

He almost laughed at just how in sync they were.

Maybe that predictability, that routine, was exactly what he needed to keep his head above the water. Olivia was real - the only real thing from his past life that he could have and hold. He'd live with all his trapped emotions for that comfort; the assurance of her presence - and even if he didn't know how to, he'd will himself to find a way, just like he always had as the ADA he'd once been, and hopefully could find again.

They were in sync now. Why fracture that with a bombshell - one that he could very well defuse even before it exploded?

Of course he'd tell her the full truth someday, when he was ready. Maybe when they'd put all this so far behind them that they could look back on these days and he'd crack an off-handed joke about how her job search had made him want to tear his hair out. She'd laugh; they'd promptly go back to cooking dinner in his kitchen or watching an 80s movie on her sofa after a long day at work. Maybe it'd be like the night he'd told Rita everything over wine at Forlini's and they'd guffawed so loudly their stomachs hurt. Maybe the right opportunity would arrive, eventually.

But for now, he needed this. He needed her.

The kayaker disappeared into the distance, every stroke still as resolute and determined as it'd been the second they'd first caught sight of him, and Rafael silently wished him the best - or maybe the person who needed it more was himself.