"I just wanted a nice, easy day with my boyfriend, Liv. Is that too much to ask?"

Liv is silent on the other end of the line, her hesitation in answering his semi-hypothetical as evident in the silence that hangs between them as the lines that mark the skin above Rafael's brows as he allows them to meet, pinching the bridge of his nose between index finger and thumb.

It wasn't a hypothetical, not really.

He knew that, if Liv allowed herself to be honest, the answer would be, "yes".

The answer would be, "Yes, Rafael, it's much too hard. It's quite the inconvenience for me when both you and Carisi have the day off, because apparently, everyone else in my squad either a) fell asleep the day that they went over Miranda Rights at the academy, or b) simply chooses to disregard them."

Or, in other words, "Yes, it's too hard because I need someone here who actually cares about upholding the law and-slash-or making valid arrests which will actually hold up in court."

And since it was an investigation not even yet one-day old, an investigation in which no single piece of evidence was strong enough as of yet in which to pinpoint the squad in any particular direction resembling a suspect, Rafael's services hadn't been of need when Benson had called that morning, just as he'd been peeling back his eyelids to reveal the beams of sunlight refracted across the blue of his comforter, all different shapes and sizes of the sun spread out and over he and Sonny's tangled legs.

Sonny had still been asleep on his chest as he'd groaned, fumbled aimlessly with the arm that wasn't dead weight underneath a bony shoulder in a cursory attempt at silencing the offending object.

His hand had traveled across sheets, only finding solid once he'd hit the surface of his bedside table, the vibrations against the polished oak only serving to further annoy him as he'd heard the telltale clink of his watch slipping to the floor.

The brightness on Sonny's phone had still been halfway-lowered from the previous night's retreat into bed, but Rafael had known that only one person would be up and alive at that hour of the morning in order to effectively ruin the one day that he'd had off since a six-month streak of office-bound weekends.

"What?"

He'd almost yelled before he'd remembered the man still snoring, mouth parted and lips halved over his collarbone, sleeping against him.

"You know that this is Carisi's phone, Rafael. Give it to him, please," and Liv's voice had been so saccharinely sing-song that Rafael had actually turned to wake Sonny, if for no other reason than to make her go away.

He'd looked to his right, cheek falling to the opposite side of his pillow, and he'd known from where the sun had acquired its name.

Sonny, with golden streaks of light dancing and twisting their way throughout the loose tendrils of his hair, his features soft and body warm as the sun kissed every lanky inch of his pale skin.

"Do I have to?"

Rafael would've loathed the way that he'd sounded like a middle school-aged child facing the unpleasant prospect of deep cleaning one's bedroom if not for the way in which Sonny had shifted in his sleep, fingertips curling underneath the shelf of Rafael's ribs.

Just let him stay here with me. Just this once! I promise I'll return him in perfect condition on Monday! No scratches or dents, guaranteed!

"Can't I have this one day, Liv? I'm sure our custody agreement at least allows me that."

"Not when TARU just supplied us with some cleaned-up security footage taken outside of the victim's apartment and your boyfriend's the lead detective on the case, Rafael."

Perils of fraternizing with a detective, he'd supposed.

It had been an effective end to the conversation, but that didn't mean that Rafael had to like, nor accept the situation that he'd been forced into on his supposed-to-be-spent-with-Sonny Sunday off.

Only the picture that Sonny had texted him, two hours after his unexpectedly early departure, had made the sting of their cancelled brunch reservations a little easier for Rafael to tend to.

Sonny: Wish I was with you eating pancakes. Even though my pancakes are what Lafayette's can only aspire to be.

You're more of the Alton Brown type, though. They have the market on buttermilk, and you have the market on the nitrous oxide/wheatgrass combination.

Sonny: That was one time.

Sonny: And it was wheatgrass and pineapple. Don't blame me, blame Bella, she was on a health kick and I was just trying one of her recipes out like the good older brother I am. And you kinda liked it, right?

I plead the fifth.

His patience now, however, was wearing dangerously close to thin, and Liv's apparent – Inability? Willingness? Desire to prolong his suffering? – to answer his question wasn't helping in nudging his mood back down to something resembling calm.

"Liv – whatever it is – just tell me. Did someone do something illegal during an interrogation? Coerce an ID? Because I thought that's why you called Sonny down there this morning, so that this sort of thing wouldn't happen – ".

"My squad isn't entirely incompetent, Rafael. You're boyfriend's quite good, actually. He managed to nail our suspect on the security footage alone. He'll be home to you within the hour."

"Oh. That's – that's good. Thank you for letting me know, Liv."

Cool air blasted the tops of his bare feet, the refrigerator door revealing with its swing a cornucopia of leftovers wrapped tight in aluminum foil, each labelled from right to left in chicken scratch penmanship with the container's exact content, because Sonny loved him far too much for his own good.

Sonny called the delicacies, "What you eat when I'm working late so that you don't accidentally starve yourself to death thinking that vending machine pretzels are an acceptable form of sustenance."

Rafael called them, "midnight snacks".

He would cook for Sonny, then; that's how he would salvage their Sunday.

"I'll see you in court on Monday, then, yes? For the arraignment?"

Pork, rice, beans, why didn't they have anything stronger than wine in the house?

"You're welcome, counselor."

Rafael swore that he could taste the woman's smirk as she put down the line and he popped a slice of tomato into his mouth.

"Honey, I'm home!"

If only Rafael were still at the point where he could pretend as if he wasn't wooed by such a sentimental platitude.

But, God, did he love this man.

Pink-cheeked, blond hair deliciously wind-ruffled, dimples telling of a grin that broke and trickled across the expanse of his cheeks, the crinkles at eyes and the upturned lines near his lips the debris of a dam kept carefully guarded throughout the former portion of his day.

One look at Rafael, and the infrastructure had broken apart.

"I think it works far better if I'm the Ricky Ricardo in this scenario, Sonny. You know, the whole Cuban-American thing and all that?"

Sonny shrugged, his toes coming around to tug at the heel of a shoe and vice-versa; his suit jacket sprawled haphazardly across the back of an armchair next, and Rafael's stomach rolled at the thought of wrinkles, and dry-cleaning, and pressing those out.

"Nationalities aside, I'm the one who had to go to work today while you got to stay home and play housewife. Which, by the way, are you making me dinner?"

Sonny had once claimed that the Carisi's had the nose of a starved bloodhound after its first tangible scent of meat; he'd been drunk when he'd first said it, albeit, but Rafael was starting to see the truth behind the inebriated confession.

"I'm gonna bet my cards on pork, rice, and…beans?"

"Bastard!" Rafael flicked him with some of the dark liquid still leftover on his fingers and drained from the base of a can of beans, the droplets falling short of skin and sprinkling the countertop instead. "How did you know? How did you know?"

"My intellect cannot be captured in so few words, Rafi," he smirked, his leisurely gait picking up tempo only to wrap an arm tight around Rafael's middle. Sonny kissed him soundly on the mouth, a clever tongue teasing along the outskirts of his lips. "We'd have to completely cancel dinner for that one."

That earned Sonny a pinch to the abdomen, a knee-jerk laugh quickly turning into a wince that had Rafael doubling back and reassessing the pressure he'd applied, the spot in which he'd aimed, if he'd twisted too quick –

"Jeez, Rafi, relax, I'm fine. I mean…you didn't do anything, at least."

"And someone else did?" Rafael demanded, his eyes already following to where Sonny's nimble fingers rested, gentle circles being traced into blue fabric.

"Well, yeah, sorta…" he muttered, sheepish grin Tupperware plastic compared to the warm one he'd worn upon his earlier arrival home.

Rafael, quite literally, stuck his hands down Sonny's pants, no sexual pretense necessary as he removed the button-up's fabric from the confines of Sonny's slate gray slacks, fingers flying along a path of buttons next.

"Jesus, Sonny."

Sonny's skinny waist, the thing that Rafael loved to put his lips on more than any other part of Sonny's body was on full-feature display, and yet all that his gaze could pull into focus was the bruise blooming to life across the length of Sonny's ribs.

"What the hell happened?" He was afraid to even look, the fusion of deep purple and blue already having seemed to darken under the glow of low kitchen lighting.

"I dunno, we were chasing down the perp – ".

"Sonny, I swear to God if you shrug again like this is no big deal – ".

"And he got a good swing in on me, that's all."

Who had known that words could cause one's blood pressure to rise?

"That's all? That's all?" Rafael stepped closer to him, his hands falling warmly on Sonny's torso, fingertips careful and clear to avoid the mark trailing along his right side. "Did you even think to go to the ER? To at least have someone else look at it? Liv, Rollins? He could've broken one of your ribs, love."

Even through the glimmer that he caught in Sonny's eyes at the word, his boyfriend still possessed the self-preservation to at least pretend to feel guilty for being the object of Rafael's affectionately agitated state.

"Yeah, but he didn't. If he had, I would know, trust me. Clumsiest player on the high school baseball team, remember?"

Rafael scoffed, but didn't give pause to breathing a kiss into the soft underside of Sonny's jaw: "You wear that title as if it were Rookie of the Year."

He heard Sonny laugh quietly above him, laugh quietly against him, belly and chest open and full with the happy vibrations.

"You really do have to stop getting hurt, though. I won't survive a lifetime of Sonny Carisi injury-related heart attacks."

How he felt Sonny's heartbeat quicken in his own chest, he didn't know.

Maybe it was because Sonny's heartbeat might as well have been his own.

The smile that he felt kissed into the shaved edge of his hairline was known on past experience alone.

"I dunno if I can promise you anything when it comes to the whole 'not getting hurt' part. But the 'lifetime' thing? I can make good on that."

Perils of falling in love with a detective, he supposed.