#summermint

1st February - The second email comes late in the evening, just before midnight as Sonny is finally crawling into bed.  His phone beeps to signal a message and any other day he would have left it.  But today is February the first and he’d snuck another gift to Barba earlier in the day, leaving the small box of candy on Carmen’s desk while she was at lunch.  Once may have been a fluke... he gets an email on the day of Barba’s first gift, from an anonymous person who wants to Sonny to be waiting at home for them.  But twice?  Sonny settles himself against the pillows and opens it up, surprised at the personal admission.  Would Barba go so far as to mock him with false confessions?  Confessions like this, that reek of vulnerability?  He didn’t know.  Sonny had always worried that he was the last thing Barba would want.  Maybe he was.  Maybe this wasn’t Barba, telling Sonny what he wanted and needed and missed out on.  

Sonny read them again anyway. 

1st March - There’s something wrong with him.  It’s all he can figure, knowing how God felt about the thoughts running through his head.  Sonny was born Catholic, was raised in the church, had even considered joining the clergy himself.  And still here he was, imagining loosening Barba’s tie with the blunt edges of his teeth.  Grabbing the taut elastic of his suspenders and snapping them, gently at first, and then harder to listen to Barba’s shocked gasp as they stung the tender skin of his nipples through his shirt.  Sonny feels guilty, feels sick as he feels himself stiffening insistently behind the loose fabric of his boxers.  He knows he’ll touch himself soon, knows it will be Barba’s direct green gaze behind his eyelids as they shutter closed and as he fucks the tight circle of his fist.

His admirer has trust issues.

Sonny has faith issues.

1st April - Barba knows.  

Sonny is certain of it now, with the message sitting in his inbox.  He’s read it dozens of times now, memorizing those two sentences with all the affection he can muster in a halfway house with ten other men.  He knows it’s a mistake to have something personal with him - any one of the guys in the other bunk beds would be willing to bust him up just for being a cop - but he couldn’t leave it behind.  Not knowing what his next confession was due to arrive on Barba’s desk that day, knowing what he would read when he opened it.  

Barba knows.  

Barba prays for him.

Sonny wants to go home.

1st May - He would think that scarf was ugly - Sonny was particularly fond of it.  His great-aunt Vera bought it for him because it matched his eyes.  Didn’t matter.  Sonny had his eye on a better one anyway - something dark blue and pristine white.  Something draped carelessly over Rafael’s chair while the man takes a phone call.  He makes sure to take off down the hall before Barba returns.

1st June - Barba’s confession in June hurts the most but Sonny understands.  Appreciates it, even.  Sonny knows how hard it is.  To have someone under your skin, in your blood.  Before acceptance comes denial.  The period where you concern yourself with the superficial - is it the ties, the flecks of gray in his otherwise dark hair?  Could those same things on someone else hold the same sway?  Sonny knew now that they didn’t... but Barba deserved to discover that for himself.  Even if it killed Sonny to read, even if every part of him screamed in misery.  First at the thought of someone else taking his Rafael into their body, at the thought of someone other than him seeing the look on his face as he surrendered himself to orgasm.  Then at the idea of Rafael in so much pain, at hating himself so much.  Sonny wanted to comfort him.  Wanted to tell him that it was okay, that he understood.  

That maybe what they were fighting didn’t have to be a battle.  That maybe it could be a beginning.  

1st July - Sonny gets ice cream every day for a week.  Delights in the color staining Rafael’s cheeks and maybe spends too much time cleaning the sticky sweetness from his fingertips.  Rafael practically runs out the door and Sonny wants to chase him and offer strawberry-flavored kisses and a still-cool tongue on which to spend himself.

1st August - Fuck.  Oh, fuck.  There was nothing Sonny would love more than darkening bruises on his hips.  Bruises in the shape of Rafael’s fingers.  Indentations pressed into pale skin as Rafael thrusts up, as he pulls away to finish across the soft flesh of his lower abdomen.  The feeling as Rafael smears his fingers into his on fluids and traces it into Sonny’s skin - wide across his hips, low onto his pubic bone and the thick patch of curls at the base of his prick.  For his own part of the bargain... Sonny didn’t know yet.  It would require thought, consideration.  An outrageous amount of fantasizing.  Absolute fucking certainty because he was going to remember it forever.

1st September - Sonny has three weeks of vacation days saved up.  He sets aside fourteen of them, already wishing for the days they’d spend in a red convertible on smooth road.  The world in front of them.  Reality behind them.  When he could whisper Italian nothings in Rafael’s ear as he drove and fully appreciate the man’s knuckles pulling white on the steering wheel.  His gruff promises of what will happen to Sonny once they stop for the night.

Sonny can’t wait.

1st October - He would wear a chain of bruises.  A sweet, sacred rosary of love bites so long as it was the shape of Rafael’s teeth that marked his skin.

1st November - What Rafael doesn’t know is that he hums a lot.  When he cooks, when he cleans.  When he thinks.  When his body is at the very edge of release and he’s hoping the vibration in his chest will tip him over the precipice.  He’ll find out soon enough, Sonny imagines.  He only has one confession left - his last.  His final expression of courage, of hope.  He already has it written - he’s just waiting for the day to come around.

He hums the entire way home.

1st December - The ring fits.