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lovemesomerafael · 5 years

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El Amor Todo Lo Puede Chapter 41: Restless

Source: @minidodds

Chapters 1-40

Rafael Barba was making his closing arguments, meaning this trial was finally going to end. Laura was looking forward to the opportunity to go to the gym and work off all this nervous energy. As nice as it was to have the opportunity to sit for hours doing nothing but watching Rafael, the trouble was the “sit for hours” part. Laura wasn’t much good at sitting still. She found it especially difficult in this situation, because she couldn’t shake the feeling that any moment the defendant was going to go off. He was visibly wired, taut, like a panther crouched and ready to spring.

Laura wasn’t the only one who felt it. She could see the court bailiffs eyeing him, too. She would let them take care of the defendant, Cameron. But Rafael sat less than ten feet from him. And if Cameron decided to go after Rafael, Laura was going to get to him first. Rafael didn’t have to love her. He could be as brusque and businesslike as he wanted. She’d been dealing with that all summer, and she rarely still cried about it. But that didn’t mean she didn’t love him. And it certainly didn’t mean she would let anyone hurt him.

She missed Rafael a hundred times a day. At first, the pain had been so acute she sometimes had to lock herself in the bathroom at the station and just sit on the floor, knees pulled up tightly to her chest, rocking and crying. That hadn’t happened in a while. The months had done at least that much. These days, missing him usually took the form of hearing him say something particularly clever, or seeing him do something that reminded her of when they’d been a couple. She usually didn’t cry about it anymore. Usually, but not never.

Laura wasn’t concerned that Cameron would be acquitted – he wouldn’t. But until he was safely shackled and out of this courtroom, he was a threat to Rafael, and she was anxious. Not a good state of mind for someone as restless as Laura to be in as she sat through a week-long trial. She was glad the day was nearly over; it had been a long afternoon.

Rafael, on the other hand, was in his element. He had no fear of Cameron. Cameron was a blowhard and a bully, nothing more. Rafael was in complete control of this trial, making sure that a rapist went to prison and wiping the floor with smarmy Trevor Langan in the process. It was a good day. Best of all, he could feel Laura in the first row, directly behind him. He wasn’t above showing off in front of her, even now.

Rafael and Laura had somehow cobbled together a working relationship, cool and impersonal and overly polite as it was. He thought there might even someday come a night when he didn’t purposely work too late to avoid being home at times he used to spend with Laura, only to lie awake thinking about her anyway. For some reason, she and Stone still hadn’t gotten together. He knew that because he had seen Stone a couple of times at Forlini’s, treating the bar like a corner bodega where he could just stop and pick up a girl on his way home.

He also knew it because, prior to a meeting one morning, he’d been pouring himself a cup of coffee and overheard a conversation between Fin and Laura.

“So how was your date with Rollins’s friend?”

Since Fin and Laura were the only two at the table, Fin had to be speaking to her, although Rafael’s back was to them.

“I only did that as a favor to her. And he was a troglodyte.”

Rafael couldn’t help but grin with both amusement and relief. Which was stronger, he didn’t examine too closely.

“Troglo-what now?”

Rafael turned around then, not being able to convincingly spend any more time simply pouring a cup of coffee. “A caveman,” he told Fin as he sat down at the table.

“Why’nt you just say caveman, then? Damn nerds all up in here…” Fin complained.

Spontaneously, accidentally, Rafael and Laura had begun to share a smile before both catching themselves and awkwardly fumbling to look elsewhere as though it hadn’t happened. That moment had been both the highlight and the most painful part of Rafael’s day. He couldn’t have known that the same was true for Laura.

At this moment, Rafael was walking around as he gave his closing argument, first standing in front of the jury to address them directly, then standing in front of the defense table and gesturing toward Cameron as he laid out the evidence, link by link.

Laura wished he wouldn’t do that. As long as he was closer to Cameron than he was to her, Cameron could get to him before she could. With each additional fact and piece of evidence, she could see Cameron’s jaw clench harder and his face get redder. His hands had been in fists throughout the trial, but now he was actually knocking them softly against the table in front of him. A couple times, he shifted his weight as if to stand. Each time, Laura shifted hers in the same way, ready to jump up.

Cameron’s obvious difficulties controlling his seething anger had caused the court bailiffs to move a little closer to him. One, a wiry Asian woman who looked like she could move quickly, stood within 5 feet of the defense table ready to act. The other, a tall, beefy white guy with a very red face, had inched to within three feet of the defendant. Although he stood slightly behind Cameron so that he couldn’t be seen directly, Laura could sense the defendant’s awareness of the bailiff just behind him.

Rafael continued his closing, bringing up a photograph of the victim on the large screen across the room from the jury. Laura noticed Cameron’s face turn a frighteningly dark shade of red that seemed almost purple.

This wasn’t good. She elbowed Fin, sitting at her left, as she moved forward to the edge of her seat. She pulled the edge of her blazer back from in front of her holster and unsnapped the strap that secured her weapon. Fin did the same.

Rafael moved back behind the prosecution table. Continuing his closing, he turned toward the defendant, who glared at him with abject hate. Laura leaned forward and placed an arm on the rail between the gallery and the counsel tables. That was when Rafael made a particularly strong point, put so cleverly that there were scattered laughs in the courtroom. That did it.

At that moment, the defendant’s pent-up rage exploded in a violent roar as he used one hand to push the table at which he had been sitting halfway to the judge’s bench. With the other, he pulled the red-faced, beefy bailiff toward him by the belt and grabbed his sidearm before the bailiff had a chance to react.

In one fluid movement, Laura stood and vaulted the rail with one arm, throwing herself at Rafael and allowing her momentum to knock him to the floor, where she landed on top of him. She pulled her Glock from its holster and aimed, leaning on Rafael’s back as much to cover his body and keep his head down as to give her a steady firing platform. “Stay down,” she said into his ear. But it was already over. There had been only one shot: Fin dropping the defendant where he stood.

The courtroom filled with the cries of terrified onlookers and court staff, the judge pounding her gavel and screaming ineffectually for order, and the chaotic banging and scraping of fifty people trying to escape from the room using the same two doors. Laura didn’t immediately let Rafael up – she surveyed the entire courtroom from where she lay on top of him behind the table to ensure that there was no further threat. The other detectives were doing the same. When they saw that there was no more danger, the rest of the team began to assist those in distress and work to calm the general panic.

Laura levered herself off of Rafael’s back and sat up next to where he lay prone on the floor. She holstered her gun, then gave him a quick but thorough once-over and saw no blood. “¿Estas bien?”[1]

Rafael began to roll to a sitting position. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

Laura put her hand on his shoulder and pushed off him to stand. She offered him her hand to help him up, which he declined. “I’m good here.”

She squatted down next to him. “Look at me, Rafael.”

He did. Her heart contracted at being this close to him, looking into his beautiful green eyes.

“You’re OK,” she said, nodding slightly at the same time and willing him to believe it.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m OK.” He didn’t look, or sound, convinced.

Laura, not knowing what else to say and not wanting to crowd him, especially given their circumstances, stood up and said, “I’m gonna see what I can do here.”

For the next two hours, each member of the team was busy taking statements from those who had been present during the shooting. They assisted the crime scene unit and the Medical Examiner as they did their work, finally helping to load the body onto a cart for transport to the morgue. As Laura turned away afterward, she noticed that there were less than ten people left in the room. One of them was Rafael, sitting slumped in his accustomed place at counsel table, head down, hands folded in front of him. He stared at a legal pad that she could see had nothing written on it.

She walked over and leaned on the rail near him.

“You saved my life,” he said, not looking at her.

She pulled a chair from the defense table and sat down facing him across his table, trying to figure out what a neutral distance was. After what had just happened, she knew to let him speak if he wanted to, or just sit with him if he didn’t.

“You knocked me down. If he’d have shot, he’d have hit you instead of me.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

He looked up at her with his eyes, not moving his head.

“That’s why I knocked you down. Bullet would’ve gone right over our heads. Anyway, Fin got him.” She deliberately tried to keep her voice neutral, factual. She wouldn’t deny the reality of the situation, but needed to avoid feeding his reaction.

“And then you stayed there, protecting me. Why did you do that?”

“You know why. It’s the job.”

He didn’t respond. He looked over at the bloodstain where Cameron’s body had been. A team of custodians was already beginning work to clean the stained area of the floor.

“By tomorrow, that’ll be gone, and it’ll be like this never happened.” He sighed. “Except it won’t.”

“No. It won’t. But you’ll be OK anyway.”

They sat in silence. After a few minutes, Lieutenant Benson called to them that it was late and there was nothing more to be done, so the team was leaving.

“We’ll be right behind you,” Laura answered in a casual voice, waving nonchalantly. There were some intrigued looks between the other members of the squad.

“I didn’t think he’d do anything. I thought he was all talk.”

“Most of them are.”

“But you and Fin took him seriously.”

“That’s – “

“The job, I know. But I feel like I should’ve been shot, just for being such a colossal idiot.”

“Good grief, Rafael, if stupidity was a capital offense… I know there’s a good joke there, but I’m too tired to think of it right now.”

Rafael actually chuffed and his lips twisted at that. “Raincheck.”

“Thanks.”

Again they fell into silence. Rafael was busy processing what had happened. He appreciated Laura just sitting with him, not judging or preaching, just letting him work it through. With anyone else, he might have felt the need to be cool, to downplay his reaction. But even after everything that had happened between them – or maybe because of it – he didn’t think he needed to waste the effort with her. When the custodial team actually began mopping up pooled blood, Rafael decided he’d had enough.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

“Let’s.”

They both liked the way that sounded. As they walked slowly from the courtroom, somewhat farther apart than perhaps other coworkers might, Rafael thought how much he needed to spend the evening with her in her cheerful, laid-back apartment. He needed to eat takeout in front of a ridiculously violent movie where The Rock did impossible stunts and beat the hell out of everyone he came across, and he needed Laura next to him wearing one of her grubby outfits, with her hair pulled thoughtlessly into a knot on top of her head. And then he needed to make love and fall asleep holding one another.

The similarity of their thoughts, had they known it, would have shocked them both. But they would have to settle for being together in the same car on the ride home.

Both were quiet, awkward, uncomfortable, trying to figure out how to be together outside of work. They’d had drinks with the whole squad a couple of times since Rafael had ended their relationship, which had been a little awkward at first, although liquor helped. But this was the first time they’d been together alone since their breakup. It helped that they’d just been through a traumatic experience, which gave them an obvious topic of conversation and also the bond that unites people who have been through such an event. But there was a massive, obnoxious elephant in the room that was pretty hard to ignore.

They walked down the street, far enough apart that there was no chance their hands would accidentally touch, making occasional innocuous remarks about the September weather and the shortening of the days that comes with the season. Laura knew that she should try to get Rafael to talk about Cameron’s attempt to shoot him. But she was uncomfortably aware of her angry words to him that first day, when she had told him that they were not friends, and that he was no longer allowed to ask whether she was OK. She decided to do the right thing, and let him call her a hypocrite if he wanted to. The fact was, she would do the same thing for any of the other members of the team in a similar situation.

“So, um… Cameron. It’s supposed to be helpful if you talk about this kind of stuff.”

“So Lindstrom said,” Rafael responded.

“Yeah, I guess this isn’t your first time to the dance, is it?”

“And I can’t help but notice that this stuff didn’t happen to me before I met you. Coincidence?”

Oh, it felt good to hear that gentle, teasing tone in his voice after so long! It hurt terribly, too, but Laura was used to everything wonderful he did reminding her of what she’d lost. She would have loved to say something clever back, but could think of nothing. Self-conscious and nervous, all she could do was smile.

“Lindstrom wanted me to tell him the whole story of what happened with Rhee. Apparently, that’s healing. But this... you were there. You know what happened.”

“Actually, it would be interesting to hear it from your perspective. I mean, did you expect me to tackle you?”

“No! As a matter of fact, I was meaning to ask you how you got there. How much do you weigh, anyway? It felt like I got hit by a truck.”

“You did not just ask me how much I weigh! I know your mami taught you better than that.”

“I stand corrected. Still felt like a truck.”

“Thank you. Or sorry. Not sure which.”

“Thank you? Why would it be thank you?”

“OK so maybe for you it’s sorry. But if I tackle a bad guy – sorry, offender or suspect, not bad guy – I’d be thrilled if he felt like he got hit by a truck.”

Laura had exaggerated the way she said “offender or suspect”, making gentle fun of his instructions to her during their first witness prep meeting together. Rafael would like to have been able to spit out a few curse words when he actually felt his dick twitch just from being teased by her. His mind went temporarily blank and he completely forgot what they were talking about. ¡Coño![2] Three months apart, and she still affected him every bit as much as she ever had.

Fortunately for him, she went on. “You might not have noticed it, you were too busy pontificating, but-“

“Pontificating? I do not pontificate.”

“Waxing eloquent?”

“Better.”

“Anyway, you were putting your thing down,” she looked mischievously at him, causing yet more agitation in his pants and his mind to once again go offline temporarily. “So you weren’t watching Cameron. But we were, and the bailiffs were, because it was clear he was going to blow. So when he did, I hopped the rail and covered you.”

“Literally.”

“But that’s my story. You were supposed to be telling me your story.”

They reached the parking garage and, as he always did, he opened her door for her. As she always did, she found that small courtesy disproportionately sexy.

When they’d buckled in and Rafael was starting the car, he said, “I honestly didn’t see it. I was concentrating on putting my thing down,” he looked that teasing, under-the-eyebrows look at her and suddenly it was her whose body was responding. “I was in the zone. I had an outline, and I was running through it. Maybe paying a little attention to how ill Mr. Langan was starting to look… And then Cameron stood up and the next thing I knew, OOF.”

“And…?”

“And I… wasn’t quite sure what had happened for a second. I think I felt you hit me at the same time I heard the gunshot. I think.”

“Happened pretty fast. I’m not sure, either.”

“Which means if Fin hadn’t gotten him, you might not have gotten there in time.” The drop in the volume and register of Rafael’s voice evidenced the effect this realization had on him.

“Fin got him,” she said in a quiet, but firm voice.

“Yes, but…”

The implications hung in the air for a moment.

In the same quiet tone, Laura asked, “Did you and Dr. Lindstrom ever talk about ‘what ifs’?”

“A little.”

“Dr. Charles said you look at them like you’re window shopping. You acknowledge them, say ‘isn’t that interesting’, and move on.”

“Lindstrom said something similar. Maybe not as picturesque.”

“Fin got him, Rafael.”

“Yeah.”

A few minutes of silence ensued, during which they each followed their own thoughts.

“I have to thank you for being there. Again.”

“Someone messes with you, they mess with me.”

“So I’ve heard. Nice to know it still applies.”

That night, after they said an uncomfortable good night as Rafael took the elevator and Laura the stairs to their respective apartments, Laura let herself into her apartment just before the tears became uncontrollable. Everything about him was the same: all the things she loved about the way he looked, his ability to tease her in a way that felt like foreplay, the smoldering looks he didn’t even know he gave, the way he smelled when she was close enough… Everything but one, crucial thing. He didn’t want her. For the first time in weeks, she found herself sitting on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, rocking to dissipate some of the biting ache of loss.

It was one of those nights when Rafael laid awake, unable to think of anything but Laura. He didn’t even care that it hurt like hell. He couldn’t stop, and he didn’t want to.

[1] Are you OK?

[2] All-purpose swear word.

#rafael barba #raul esparza #law & order svu #law & order: special victims unit #fin tutuola #chicago pd #chicago fire #chicago med #chicago justice

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