Chapter Text
Chapter One : Cracks in the Glass
When Rafael woke up that morning, he wasn’t expecting much.
He expected to present his closing statements in an open-shut case and wait maybe an hour for the jury to deliberate, which they did. Returned a guilty verdict in forty-six minutes exactly. Then he expected to grab a third cup of coffee and calmly inquire about Carmen’s progress on updating the backlog of paper files as they’re converted to digital. He did, got a glare in return, and he didn’t bring it up again. Lastly, he expected to check in with SVU on a new case picked up the night before and get told by Olivia to back off until they had something concrete, which he did. In fact she hardly waited until he was fully in her office before telling him to get out.
What he didn’t expect was for Carisi, practically bouncing with energy, to offer to drive him back to his office.
“It’s no trouble at all,” Carisi insisted as he followed him out the door. “I’m headed that direction for an interview. I can drop you off.”
“That sounds to me like you have better things to do.”
“It’ll take ten seconds to drop you off at the curb,” the detective laughed, fine lines around his eyes appearing and drawing Rafael’s gaze. Against his will. “Come on, I know for a fact you’re too busy to sit here and wait for a car.”
Rafael sighed. “Fine. Lead the way.”
There was a file in his briefcase that warranted Carisi’s attention anyway and this was as good a time as any. At least he thought so, until Carisi started with rambling small talk that bored him to tears and frustrated him to no end because there were more important things they could talk about if only the man would stop bouncing his knee and licking his lips and give Rafael half a second to talk. It didn’t look that was going to happen anytime soon, though, and Rafael had no choice but to wonder why Carisi was so on edge. Nervous , he would have thought, which made him more curious than anything else.
“Hey, listen,” Carisi finally started and Rafael was thankful because maybe, just maybe, they were going to get to the point, “There’s something—”
Carisi didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence and Rafael would never know what the man was trying to say.
The car came out of nowhere.
He hardly had time to acknowledge the gleam of dark metal to Carisi before it was plowing into them, a god-awful cacophony of breaking glass and screeching metal. He heard a sickening crack in the middle of it all and had the presence of mind to brace himself even as he was thrown against his seat belt hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. Stomach rolling, head whipping around with the force of the impact, Rafael closed his eyes and waited for the worst. The car spun only briefly, even if it seemed like hours by the time the back end of the sedan hit a light post and brought them to a sudden stop.
Stopped.
They were stopped.
Even through the haze of confusion he could hear the engine hiss and the cries of people outside their car. That input was secondary, though, because all he could feel for a long moment was a hand reaching out for him, patting his thigh a few times before gripping his fingers. Tight. A strong grip that grounded him if only for a moment - just long enough to bring him back into the reality of what just happened.
“Hey. You okay?”
Carisi’s voice was groggy and slurred. Either that or Rafael’s hearing was and he wasn’t sure which made more sense in that moment. The good news was that the sirens approaching didn’t seem slurred at all as they got louder and louder.
“Yeah,” he finally answered, feeling pain radiating up the side of his neck and pounding in the back of his head, “I think I’m okay.”
Carisi wasn’t, he realized as he pried his eyes open and looked around. He could see the red-brown smear on the glass from where Carisi’s skull had cracked against the window. It was that he heard in the middle of it all, ringing out in the car’s interior even over the sound of the crash. He was too busy staring at that dark smear on the glass to feel the throbbing in his wrist or the strained muscles in his neck as he did his best to shrug his way out of the seat belt. Carisi was slumped against the window, eyes closed. Still holding Rafael’s hand and he couldn’t bear to shrug him off when he was focused on watching the steady rise and fall of the detective’s chest, even as the darkness crept in.
There was blood on the window.
And then there was nothing.
…
When his eyes blinked open again his door had been pried open and his seatbelt was being cut. In one quick slash he was free, the hard bands falling from his body as he took his first deep breath in what felt like ages. It took him a second to remember what was going on but then someone was gripping him under his arms and pulling him out. Whoever it was lifted him like he was nothing, leading him to a gurney situated nearby. He felt hard plastic being strapped around his neck, fastened, and it was that more than anything that shook him out of his stupor - he grasped at it, over the hands, and ripped it away.
“No,” he ground out, “I’m fine. Don’t put me in that fucking thing.”
“Sir, the possibility of a spinal injury-”
“I don’t have a spinal injury,” he spat and slipped off the gurney, putting his feet on the ground even as whoever had pulled him out made a noise of discontent.
He was shocked to realize he could stand. Taking a step, though, was a bad idea and he wobbled. Violently, until those same hands gripped him again and led him to the light post nearby. The one that stopped them, probably, Rafael realized as he leaned back against it.
“Hey, man, take it easy,” a man in a uniform told him. An EMT, he realized. “Give yourself a second. What’s hurting right now?”
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly as his adrenaline started up. “Listen, Carisi—”
“They’ve got him already, don’t worry.”
“His head—”
“We know, we’ve got him,” he assured him quickly. “He’s headed to the hospital in just a second and we’re going to follow. Can you tell me your name?”
“Rafael Barba.”
“What’s today’s date?”
“May 7, 2018.”
“Who’s president?”
Rafael scoffed. “Don’t make me say it.”
The EMT chuckled. “Good enough for me. Feel up to walking?”
The man led him over to a second ambulance, just as the first was closing its doors and taking off down the street. Carisi, he realized, with a nauseating slide of his stomach. He thought of the blood on the window then and had to brace himself against the need to vomit. Instead he focused on the EMT leading him, the man keeping up a steady stream of patter to tell Rafael what happened. Another driver had a heart attack, hit the gas in a panic. He’d been carted off already, expected to be fine.
“Carisi?” Rafael interrupted as the EMT sat him down on a gurney. “The detective who was driving me.”
“Almost definitely a concussion. Maybe more,” he admitted. “Looks like he hit the window pretty hard. We won’t know much until we get him a CT scan.”
“Did he wake up?”
The man’s dark eyes looked up briefly and then back at the floor. “A little, here and there. He was pretty out of it but that’s normal after something like this.”
Rafael nodded even as his mind turned to darker waters.
By the time the EMT finished his examination Rafael had been diagnosed with a broken wrist and a pretty nasty muscle strain in his neck and shoulder. Something that would be confirmed once he got to the hospital and got an x-ray to confirm. He agreed to be taken by ambulance, inquiring only once if he would be going to the same hospital as Carisi. It was a comfort to hear that he was but he refused to articulate why. Instead he did his best to make himself comfortable on the gurney and hold on as the sirens came on above his head and the ambulance lurched into motion.
…
Carisi was kept separate from him at the hospital. Probably for good reason, considering a head injury was more severe than his broken wrist. He was set aside on a gurney in the ER with nothing but a curtain to maintain privacy. Not that he needed it. It was easy enough for the doctor on call to read the x-rays and move his head around - something painful enough that Rafael swore under his breath at the first awful shift of his neck - and pronounce the EMT’s initial diagnosis correct. A brain scan revealed no overt signs of trauma. He would get a cast and keep it for eight weeks. His neck would need rest and care when moving but would mostly heal on its own, and the horrendous tension headache he was currently experiencing was considered normal under the circumstances. The nurse gave him a particularly strong pain pill and pronounced him free to go after the paperwork was signed.
Which… was taking a while to make it to him.
Around five o’clock he thought to tell Liv, who called and ranted for ten minutes before insisting on coming to get him. Carisi’s family would be notified. She also offered to call his mother, at which point he hung up on her and waved down a nurse. His cast was still drying and he was careful not to rub it against his clothing.
“Yes Mr. Barba,” the nurse stated and the exasperated sigh spoke less about her current state than the dark circles under her eyes.
“Detective Carisi,” he asked and had a quick flash of blood on the window again, “How is he?”
“He’s in a room of his own,” she told him. “But last I heard things looked good. A doozy of a concussion and three cracked ribs but nothing life threatening.”
“Good,” he said for lack of anything better. “I’m glad.”
It was the truth. He was… fond of Carisi, he guessed.
Probably something a little more than that but it was a road he didn’t dare travel down again, having found out in his twenties just how ill-advised it was to be involved with a colleague. The conflicts of interest, the fights that bled over into their work. The initial thrill paled when faced with the reality, never quite being able to extricate yourself from a lover who was part of both your personal and professional lives. Still, hearing Carisi was fine loosened a knot of worry in his chest he hadn’t realized he was carrying until he felt it give way.
“Don’t let yourself get too worried over it,” the nurse told him, seemingly reading his thoughts. “Your husband will probably go home today or tomorrow.”
Rafael whipped his head toward her so quickly his neck screamed in pain and he had to hiss a breath through his teeth to keep from cursing.
“What did you say?”
“Your… husband,” she said slowly, as though he might be the one with the brain injury.
“I don’t have a husband,” he replied, bewildered. “Why would you say that?”
“The detective. He said—”
“Carisi told you we were married ?!”
She blinked at him, eyes wide as she asked, “Are— are you not?”
“No!” he cried. “We’re not even dating! We work together!”
The nurse took a step back at his raised voice and looked concerned, eyebrows raised. He really couldn’t blame her considering the heat he could feel creeping into his face, something too close to blatant confusion to be actual temper.
“He’s been awake for a little while now,” she told him gingerly. “Wanting to know where his husband was, if he was okay.”
“I am not married. Not at all, least of all to a colleague,” he insisted and held up his left hand. “See? No ring. I will guarantee you Carisi isn’t wearing one either. Our surnames are different. We were in that car together because he was on his way to interview a witness and offered to drop me off at my office.”
“Right. Okay, um,” she started and shuffled her feet for a second, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. “I think it’s possible that Detective Carisi’s injury may have impacted more than we thought.”
“You think?!”
“Let me talk to the doctor. If you’ll excuse me—”
“Where is he?” Rafael asked, interrupting her polite attempt to ditch him. “Where’s his room?”
“That’s not a good idea right now,” she told him, voice turning ever so slightly gentler. “Listen, why don’t you wait here? I’m going to go get the doctor. Just sit tight.”
“No, wait-”
Too late.
She had taken off faster than her orthopedic white shoes could carry her and Rafael was alone again, mind spinning faster than he could process it and suddenly regretting his decision to talk to Olivia. She’d been making noises like she suspected something and Carisi suddenly announcing that they were married after a head injury wasn’t likely to make that better. If only he could get to see Carisi, to talk some sense into him. Surely all he needed was a reminder...
Rafael snagged the next staff member to pass by his curtain, this time a young volunteer who was doe-eyed and clearly desperate to help.
“Excuse me,” he said kindly to grab the girls’ attention before putting on a pitiful smile. “They’re discharging me soon and I’d like to go see my husband in his room. Can you tell me where he is?”
“Sure, Mr…”
“Carisi,” Rafael answered.
“Mr. Carisi,” she acknowledged with a comforting smile. “Let me just go check the computer and I’ll be right back.”
He thanked her and if he failed to feel any guilt whatsoever, clearly it was his pain medication and not his complete lack of shame.
The girl came back with a room number on the fourth floor just a few minutes later, even going so far as to try and help him off the exam table and handing him his jacket.
“Careful,” she told him softly, chiding but kind. “You’ll be sore later after all the adrenaline wears off.”
“Thanks,” he told her with a smile. “And thanks for your help.”
“My pleasure, Mr. Carisi. I hope your husband is doing well.”
It was a comfort, he supposed, that the words still sounded odd in his head.
Something was still normal.
It took him awhile but he found the elevator at last, traveling up to the fourth floor and silently hoping that the nurse who tried to head him off didn’t happen to be waiting outside Carisi’s door. He got off the elevator and rounded a few corners, following the hospital signs that led him to a wing of rooms for patients already admitted. He found Carisi’s and stood outside the door, noting the drawn windows and dimmed lights. A file sat in a tray under the door number, labeled with Carisi’s full name and date of birth. He was born on Leap Day, Rafael noted absently as though that were the most pressing issue at hand.
“Are you here to see someone?”
Rafael turned, finding yet another painfully young face - this time a nurse’s assistant, if her name tag was to be believed. Julie, he noted, as he nodded and flicked his eyes toward the door.
“Um, Detective Carisi. He and I were in the car together.”
“Ah, okay,” she said slowly and came around the nurse’s station. “He’s awake, let me just see if Dominick is up for a visitor.”
“Sonny.”
“What?”
“He prefers to go by Sonny,” he said and she nodded, offering another small smile.
Julie knocked once, announced herself, and Rafael felt a heavy thump in his chest at the sound of Carisi’s voice. Letting her know it was okay to come in, and she answered with a warning that he had a visitor. The door swung open and Rafael was faced with the sight of Carisi in a thin hospital gown, the white fabric turned gray with a million washes and whimsical blue dots that seemed like an affront to the rest of him. A blood pressure cuff on his arm, oximeter on his finger. A small stripe of his shaved head where the stitches were sewn in. It made his stomach flip uncomfortably but the man in the bed didn’t seem to notice. Still, Carisi laid eyes on him and smiled.
Smiled.
“Hey, there you are,” he said as though he’d been waiting all this time just for Rafael to walk in the door. “You alright?”
“I’m fine,” he heard himself say. “Nothing major.”
“Oh, thank God,” Carisi replied and seemed genuinely grateful. It baffled him. “They’ve shoved me in just about every machine in the building but they think I’ll be good to go before too long. As long as I promise to stay awake and all.”
“Right,” he said and stepped closer to the bed. Slowly, like Carisi might jump out of it and attack. “Can you tell me something?”
“Sure. What’s going on?”
“Do you know who I am?” he asked tentatively and Carisi scoffed.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Not even a little.”
“You’re Rafael Barba. Assistant District Attorney for Manhattan,” he answered and Rafael let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. At least until Carisi smiled so wide and happy and added, “My husband.”
The words were so alien to him that he honestly couldn’t respond for a second, just kept staring at Carisi’s happy face and at the stitches in his head while he saw flashes of blood on the car window. He couldn’t imagine his expression but knew it was something less than comforting as he watched Carisi’s face fall, his eyebrows draw together.
“What?” Carisi asked finally, eyes flitting to the nurse still hovering in the corner of the room. “What’s the matter?”
Rafael remembered his injury, remembered that he was should probably be playing along to avoid upsetting him, but he hadn’t lied to Carisi once in the time he’d known him and didn’t plan to start now. When Carisi was hurt - vulnerable and looking at him with so much concern it made his chest ache.
“We’re… shit,” he muttered under his breath and drug his fingers through his hair. On the injured side, forcing a grunt of pain. “Carisi, we’re not married. We’re just—”
“What?” the man interrupted, eyes widening. “What are you talking about?”
“We’ve never been-”
“Rafael, why are you saying that?” Carisi questioned, voice growing earnest. It was offset by the sound of the blood pressure cuff switching on again, a dull buzzing behind the quickening beeps of the heart monitor. “What are you even talking about?”
“We work together. We’re not-”
“Stop saying that!” he shouted, voice echoing off the mint colored tile. Rafael watched with mounting apprehension as the sound of Carisi’s pulse continued to climb, faster and faster, and the blood pressure cuff sounded the alarm that it was getting too high. Flashing on the screen like a warning.
Or an accusation.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Julie said, intervening and wrapping her thin hand around Rafael’s upper arm. Now there was steel in her voice, iron in her grip. He supposed he should be happy that Carisi was under the care of a nurse who went to such lengths to care for a patient. “I think it’s time we let him rest, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” he told Carisi as he was ushered out and was surprised to find he meant it.
“What just happened in there?” Julie asked him once they were in the hall and the door was closed behind them, her stern voice and indictment he wasn’t in the mood to hear at the moment. He was rattled already, before ever stepping foot in Carisi’s room, and now he had the sounds of medical equipment clanging around in his head along with everything else.
“He told the ER nurse that we were married,” he said absently, tapping his foot to alleviate his need to pace.
“Aren’t you?”
“No,” he said resolutely. “We’re not. Or at least we weren’t before he bashed his head against the window.”
“Right…” she said. “Have a seat for me, okay? Let me go see what his doctor is saying.”
He didn’t have the chance to agree - she was gone.
How the hell did nurses move so quickly everywhere?
She took off down the hallway at a light jog and spied a group of chairs a few feet away. Only just remembering to use his uninjured arm, he dragged one over to sit beside the door and watch as an aide rushed into the room at the sound of the machines going off. She closed the door behind her and suddenly he was alone again, left with the faint sounds of Carisi’s panicked voice on the other side of the door.
Taking a deep breath, he rested his head in his hands.
…
“What are you telling me?” Rafael asked close to an hour later, faced with a neurologist with a heavy Texan twang and an affect Rafael couldn’t quite read. The man had disappeared into Carisi’s room several minutes ago, murmuring about tests and results and refusing to let Rafael in. “That he’s just going to keep believing this?”
“Essentially. Until he doesn’t.”
“I hope you realize just how little you’re actually saying,” Rafael sneered, unamused as he paced the hallway. The pain meds had dulled his headache to a low throb but he could feel it start to pick up again. His phone vibrated in his pocket - Olivia, most likely, as he’d been waiting to hear if a member of Carisi’s family had been told where he was.
“I’m saying very little, Mr. Barba, because that’s all I can tell you at the moment,” the man said, peering over a thick stack of papers in Carisi’s file. The specialists in the hospital were much less affable than the nurses and Rafael had been talking to this one for less than ten minutes. “You’ve witnessed firsthand how your friend reacts to being corrected and until his condition is more stable I wouldn’t recommend doing anything that gets his back up.”
“I won’t have to correct him. Reality will do the work for me,” he replied, frustration evident. “We don’t live together. In fact, I don’t even know where he lives. We live completely separate lives that I can’t just consolidate for the sake of this little trick. How is he going to feel when he goes back to his own apartment and sees no hint of a husband at all?”
He looked up from his paperwork and Rafael couldn’t tell if the grimace that twisted his mouth was supposed to be comforting or amused.
“I wouldn’t recommend Mr. Carisi go home unsupervised.”
Rafael recoiled, following the inevitable trail of logical to its intended destination.
“You’re joking.”
“I’m afraid not. With this concussion on top of the others, it’s not surprising that he’s confused.”
“Others? Other concussions?”
He wasn’t sure why the thought of previous injuries made his heart beat a little faster.
“At least two,” the doctor confirmed. “Which, for a police officer, is not entirely unusual.”
Rafael sighed, sitting in his chair again. “How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long is he going to keep losing it when I try and tell him the truth?”
“I can’t tell you that,” the man said. “All I can tell you is to wake him up every two hours and ask him a few orientation questions. His name, the date, his job. Who you are, since that seems to be the primary concern.”
He thought of Carisi’s stricken face, begging him to stop telling him what Rafael knew to be the truth about them.
“Fine,” he breathed, so low he doubted anyone could hear him. “Fine, I’ll… play along, I guess.”
“It could be as little time as a couple of hours,” the doctor told him, probably in an approximation of comfort. “The brain is really pretty damn good at healing itself if given the time and the environment. He could realize his mistake by tomorrow. Or a few days. We just don’t know.”
That was a few hours to a few days of allowing a colleague, someone he was fond of, to believe a lie and play along.
To keep him safe, his own brain supplied and Rafael shook it off. He wasn’t a man equipped to keep anyone safe.
"He’s being discharged today?” he asked instead of insulting the man the way he wanted to.
“They’re drawing up paperwork now. There’s nothing to be done here that you can’t do at home,” he said, shuffling the papers back into Carisi’s file. Rafael had the ugly thought that hospital just needed the bed and was taking a gamble on who they could safely kick out without earning themselves a lawsuit. “Wake him up every two hours and ask the questions. Bring him back to the ER if there’s a decline in his condition. Follow up with his primary doctor in a week if nothing else comes up.”
Rafael must have muttered some kind of agreement because then the doctor was off, sauntering down the hallway without another word. He took a moment to gather his thoughts and then stood, bracing himself against the possibility of a wounded-looking expression on Carisi’s face as he tried again to probe Rafael’s thoughts on the situation. Undoubtedly he would, too, because Carisi had never been the type to let anything go without nitpicking it to death. Instead he gripped the knob, opening the door to Carisi’s room again to find the man standing next to the bed and buttoning his shirt.
Moving of their own accord, his eyes swept over the width of Carisi’s pale chest and the planes of muscle down his abdomen - the constellation of bruises across the ribs on his left side - before landing on the parted button and zipper at his waist. Miserable and remarkably anxious for someone on pain pills, Rafael turned around and exhaled loudly while Carisi chuckled behind him. Apparently the panic of earlier had faded - now he was smiling again, looking as calm as he’d ever seen him even if he was moving carefully to favor his left side.
The cracked ribs, Rafael guessed.
“Raf, what’re you doing?” he asked on a laugh. “I’m pretty sure this is nothing you haven’t seen before.”
And you’d be very, very wrong.
Refusing to answer, Rafael pulled out his phone and looked at the message from Olivia. She was confirming that Sonny’s family had been notified and his younger sister was on her way to the hospital as of ten minutes before. That was a whole other world of problems he wasn’t prepared to deal with so he was quick to type out an answer.
Don’t bother, Rafael texted back. Carisi is coming home with me.
What?
Long story. We’re leaving soon.
“Is that the Lieu?” Carisi asked from behind him.
“Yes.”
“I knew it. You make this weird grunt thing under your breath when you’re talking to her,” Carisi told him matter-of-factly and he briefly wondered if the detective had been taking more note of him than he previously realized. “Did you tell her I’m fine?”
“She knows,” he replied instead of asking just how in the hell Carisi knew what sounds he made when talking to his friend. “Are you decent?”
He heard a very sarcastic scoff and had to bite his lip to keep from lashing out.
“Yeah, I’m decent,” Carisi replied finally. “What, you don’t trust yourself all of a sudden? Thinking about trying for a quickie before the nurse brings the discharge paperwork?”
“Absolutely not,” he answered honestly but would be lying if his dick didn’t give a firm twitch of interest. Traitor. “You need to fill out your discharge paperwork before we can go and I’ve already done mine. Your sister is on her way and I’d really like to avoid her if at all possible.”
Because explaining that he had to play a fictional husband because of her brother’s head injury was too much for him to handle at that moment.
“You’re going to have to fit in with the family eventually, Raf.”
No he won’t.
“No I won’t,” he shot back and reached for the door handle. “I’ve put it off thus far and I have every expectation of continuing that. Let’s go.”
He left the hospital room and headed for the nurse’s station, feeling his wrist smart as it swung at his side. Carisi was right behind him, undoubtedly smirking at his obvious frustration as he stood at the desk and requested Detective Carisi’s discharge paperwork. It was a goddamn miracle that he didn’t hear the man’s amused voice behind him, playfully asking why he’d forgotten to use his married name after almost five years of wedded bliss.
Because yes, they’ve been married for years - at least according to the information he gave to his nurse. They hadn’t even known each other five years ago, much less enough to get married. But that was an argument he wasn’t supposed to bring up and so he didn’t and neither did Carisi. He barely had the chance to marvel at his good fortune before he felt a warm hand on his lower back and a set of decadently full lips at his ear, murmuring in a tone clearly meant only for him.
“You look good bossing people around, Rafi,” Carisi told him and Rafael’s mouth went dry before he could begin to think of an answer.
Fond of Carisi indeed, it seemed.
And now they were stuck together, feigning a marriage Rafael hadn’t even imagined - much less agreed to, even if it was under pain of Carisi suffering another medical event. Not that he would have known Carisi was feeling bad at all, if his nearness and playful hands on his hip were any indication.
God help him.