Chapter Text
The fight still weighs heavily on Sonny as he walks the hall towards Rafael’s office. It started small, then snowballed into something completely different with Rafael suddenly shutting down and leaving. Just like that. One moment they are at it, and the next Rafael closes up, a whole barrier appearing between them, stands up and walks out.
Now it’s been almost a full day since they last saw each other, and Sonny feels untethered without the constant text messages and little drop-bys. Which is exactly why Sonny took up the delivery job to hand over some paperwork to his still pretty new boyfriend.
Carmen is already gone, her desk empty for the night, so Sonny walks straight to the door, knocks gently.
The reply comes slowly, as if Rafael barely registered it and looked up confusedly at the door, then the time and the door once again before actually speaking up, a small exhausted ‘come in’.
Sonny opens the door slowly, peeks out only to see Rafael shut down once again. The sight tugs painfully at Sonny’s heart, which makes him breathe in and out for a few moments. He comes in but stops in front of the desk, doesn’t cross this line they created themselves. Rafael doesn’t look at him, but he also isn’t working anymore — his eyes are stuck on the document in front of him in that unfocused way that tells Sonny he’s looking without seeing.
The desk breaks the room apart, creates two spaces — both frigid cold, but one was made so intentionally, while the other fell down the well of despair in reaction to the first one.
Sonny takes a deep breath. “Is it splitting?” he asks, makes sure that he’s read the signs right.
Rafael’s sigh is even more exhausted than Sonny’s, weighs around a million tons, no less. He nods, still doesn’t look up.
It’s only the second time this happened, but after the first one Sonny looked up everything he could to make sure he would be prepared. Only now he realizes — he could never brace himself against this, against Rafael’s icy gaze that is so different from any other look Sonny saw on him. This one isn’t angry, isn’t disappointed either. It’s not Rafael pushing Sonny away, no.
This is Rafael freezing himself in an attempt to avoid hurting either of them. This is a defense mechanism for Sonny more than for Rafael. A way for Rafael to make sure he doesn’t lash out at Sonny — violently and completely uncalled for.
Sonny nods, adding real-life knowledge to his theoretical list.
“Understood,” he says simply, hating the world for his inability to perch on Rafael’s desk next to the man, for having to stand away in torturous wait. He hoped for an opportunity to breach the distance, but obviously it’s not now. He places the file — the official reason he actually came by — near Rafael’s laptop. “This is from the Lieutenant,” then he opens his bag and takes out the items he’s taken extreme care to place in the bag so they wouldn’t get crumpled. “And this is from me.”
Sonny puts the items on top of the file. It’s nothing fancy, just a raspberry chocolate bar and one blue hyacinth on top of it, tied with a blue ribbon. Sonny feels like it’s the time to say something, but Rafael has explained to him that in times like this his brain simply doesn’t let him register the positivity. It racks and ravages, mars and tarnishes, until the original meaning is lost forever, drowned under his mind’s deceitful scrutiny. So Sonny nods once more and simply walks away. He has one hand on the door handle, when Rafael’s voice stops him, turns him around.
“Sonny…” Rafael breathes out, cradling Sonny’s gift tenderly, his mouth opening and closing as he looks for words, but none come. However Sonny knows that he touched Rafael’s heart directly with his tiny simple present.
There are tears shimmering in Rafael’s eyes — the ice he put himself in melting under Sonny’s affection.
“It’s okay, I get it,” Sonny says with a sad rise of his lips. “Call me when you are ready.”
With that Sonny leaves, closes the door but can’t stop himself from turning around once more, looking one more time through the blinds. Rafael didn’t move at all, sits in place with the chocolate bar in one hand, the other carefully undoing the bow and picking up the flower. He brings it close to his nose, smells the fragrance and promptly crumbles forward in tiny shudders. Sonny feels the tug to come back and grab Rafael into his arms, hug tight in comfort, but — he repeats to himself — it’s not the time. Right now Rafael is distancing himself so that he wouldn’t push Sonny away. Sonny will respect it. So he walks away. For now.
Sonny made his move, showed that he still cares and doesn’t plan on giving up. Now it’s time for Rafael to scramble back from the darkness his mind put him in.