Part X: Meeting Mami

Meeting the parents doesn't always go smoothly.

Warnings: Language, angst, some body-shaming, sexual situation, OC.

Associated episode: N/A

"Oh, yeah, that went well," I snapped, throwing open the apartment door. I may have looked like an overgrown toddler in the throes of a tantrum, underscored by the fact that I never really had learned how to walk in heels and was unsteady on my feet. I blew in the door and made it as far as the kitchen before I kicked the first one off. It flew sideways and collided with the stove. The second made a much better appearance, soaring into the living room and knocking over that hideous table lamp in the living room. I laughed without any humor, "That's the best thing that's happened all night!"

Hobbling a bit thanks to the blisters from the new heels, I made tracks for the bedroom, shedding what I had thought was tasteful jewelry as I went, working like an acrobat to unzip my own dress. I didn't want his help. Not now.

"Tonight," he said, and hesitated a long moment. I heard the clatter of his keys on the kitchen counter. "Tonight could have gone better."

I stopped in my tracks, and swung around. He looked at me like I was a Valkyrie ready to swing down and take his face off. I kind of felt ready to.

"Oh, really?" I was shaking, physically shaking as I stormed up to the breakfast bar and glared at him. He propped himself up against the opposite counter, looking like a man settling in for what he knew to be a long, tedious evening. "What do you think could have gone better, Rafael? Maybe, I don't know, your mother could have addressed me a few more times as 'your dot-dot-dot friend'? Maybe she could have spoken a bit more Spanish, for the benefit of your idiot, redneck girlfriend from Bum Fuck Egypt?"

"She never said anything about your intelligence…"

"Of course not! She only said how hard I must've worked in night-school at my community college to become a nurse in an inner city hospital. Just before reminding me that you graduated top of your class at Harvard Law. As if I needed a reminder. Like I don't know how mismatched we are!" I spun around, ripped the clip out of my hair and shook it out, sending bobby pins flying like snowflakes in a blizzard. I stopped, pressed my eyes closed and rubbed my face, not caring if I was smearing my makeup. I couldn't look at him. I took a deep, shuddering breath, and asked, "What the fuck are you even doing with me, Rafi?"

"Oh, don't start this again…"

Frustration ebbed, anger surged. I threw my hands in the air. "No, seriously," I said to the ceiling, the floor, the walls, looking anywhere but at him as I started pacing. "I'm sure that lovely detective your mom was asking about all night, oh, what's her name? That's right, Sergeant Olivia Benson, is single. And a much better match for you! Fluent in Spanish, isn't she? A high ranking officer, one of New York's finest! Oh, she's fucking gorgeous, too, a real knock out, not a pale Sasquatch like the thing you dragged in off the street, huh? Oh, and you didn't pluck her outta some backwoods field like you did me!" My down-home twang couldn't be controlled, even had I wanted to, which I didn't particularly. "Now, I don't know a whole lot, but I sure know when I'm bein' made fun of, and honey, and y'know what? Maybe she's right. Maybe you'd be better off with someone older, more successful, more beautiful, more edu-ma-cated. Anybody but me."

I wanted to end on a high note, to really drive my point home, but my tone had gone from strong and sarcastic to hurt faster than the speed of light, and I was immediately disgusted with myself. I ignored him as he started talking, and hurried down the hall. I hit the bedroom, fuming, mad at myself, mad at him, mad at his mother, mad at the world.

In hindsight, it was appallingly apparent that I had overestimated myself, thinking I was so going to make a good impression on his family. Now, I'd never done the whole 'Meet the Parents' thing before, but I went into it with high hopes. I mean, Raf and I had been seeing each other, albeit quietly, for nearly two years. I felt I had at least the prerequisite knowledge of his life and upbringing. I thought, 'Hey! I'm a good Catholic girl, in a good, modest dress, with a good job! I've been told I'm eloquent when I want to be, and can rein in my sailor-mouth. I'm a shoe-in for her good graces!'

Hah! Yeah, right! I wasn't six inches into Lucia Barba's entryway before I realized how wrong I was.

I tossed my simple silver bangle and earrings onto the dresser, shimmying out of the dress I had loved four hours ago, the dress I now loathed entirely, if only to have something tangible to blame the outcome of this night on. Anything but to blame it on myself. I fled into the bathroom, the tile cold against my bare feet, and slammed the door, leaving the dress in a navy pile on the bedroom carpet.

My hands braced on the counter, I glared at myself in the mirror until my reflection was nothing but a blur. A too-pale blur. An ugly, too-pale blur. "Dios mio, look at your pallor. Are you ill?" Her voice echoed in my mind. "Oh, I knew you weren't Cuban the moment I laid eyes on you. Cuban women have more… delicate features. And we're generally more… petite."

I screwed up my face, then pawed madly at the mascara-laced tears that slipped out of my eyes. I let out a long breath, and blinked at my reflection. There would be no crying over this. It wasn't going to do it, I just wasn't.

I heard his tentative knock on the door, and hurried to turn the water in the shower on to drown out the sound of my name. I slid out of my damned matching navy underwear - color coordinated with the dress, for fuck's sake - and stepped under the too-cold spray. The frigid blast of water was okay, actually. It gave me something else to focus on besides my crash and burn.

My entire body was shivering by the time I stepped out. I took my time drying off, toweling my hair dry, lotioning up. Anger had faded to sadness, but surely it couldn't be because a woman I'd never met before didn't like me. I rubbed my favorite scented lotion all over my skin, before popping the lid back on and tossing it back into my drawer. My drawer. I had a drawer in this man's bathroom, this man whose mother hated me, whose mother could see through my demure, 1940s style dress, my respectable airs, my nervous smile. She looked at me and saw me for what I was: a minimally educated backwater redneck from a broken home, from a family of Irish alcoholics; a lower-middle class medical worker with a too-tall, too-thick, too-pale body and too little substance. It's no wonder she didn't like me. I didn't like me. I never really got why Rafi seemed to, but clearly, that was over now. This night was probably just what he needed to shed the film from his eyes and see me, really see me for what I was. A mess.

Hot tears were burning my eyes again, as I wrapped the towel around my dry, lotioned, sweet-smelling, lead-heavy body. I flipped off the bathroom light, cracked open the door, and peeked out into the bedroom. He was lying there, eyes closed, still in the robin's egg blue shirt and black trousers he'd worn to dinner, his hair in its usual neatly combed style, shoes lying beside the bed. "Muy guapo!" I had declared when he'd knocked at my door that afternoon. So handsome! I had been so proud of my use of his language, despite the fact that I didn't understand hardly any of his reply.

"Muy bien, mi amor," he had laughed, and kissed me hard. When he pulled away, he gave me a once over, and in my ignorance, I gave a kicky little curtsy, thinking too much of myself. He spoke rapidly in Spanish and I caught not a single word, but it hadn't phased me, I just laughed.

"I'm getting better, but I have no idea what you just said."

He'd grinned, "I said you look beautiful. My mother will love you."

A lie, or perhaps a vain hope? I watched the slow rise and fall of his chest from my hideout, until his eyes popped open. I resisted the urge to melt back into the darkness of the bathroom. I couldn't read his expression as he patted the bed beside him.

I crept out, thoroughly embarrassed, both by my tantrum, and by my very presence. I should have just collected my dress, gotten dressed, and left. It probably would have been more comfortable to leave quietly than to have whatever conversation now awaited me.

I perched on the edge of the bed, and looked down at my hands. He didn't speak, and neither did I. I felt this terrible, horrible foreboding, like I was watching a storm roll in, and all at once the winds died and silence fell, and I knew the tornado would swirl from the sky at any moment. I knew whoever spoke first would likely be ending what had been the best relationship I'd ever had. I didn't want it to be me.

Finally, the quiet became too much to bear. "I'm sorry," I said, and was quite happy that I didn't sound nearly as broken as I felt. I didn't know what else I should say.

"I love you." He said quietly, and my mind echoed 'But? But?'. But no 'but' came.

I rubbed my face, acutely aware of my rounded freckled shoulders, my fat arms, my 'unhealthy pallor'. "Why?" I asked. I heard him sigh, but I didn't look up.

"I love that you sat through dinner and didn't say what I'm sure you were thinking to my mother. I appreciate you showing her that kind of respect, even though you weren't shown much of it tonight. And Mami and I, we're going to have a conversation about that, trust me."

I picked at my nails, my fingers, my palms.

"I love your voice. I love that you don't sound like a New Yohkah. I love that you can fall into that incredibly sexy drawl at the drop of a hat. I love that you work as hard as you do. I know you hate your job sometimes, but not a one of your patients would ever know it. I've watched you, you know, a dozen times. Last Tuesday, waiting for you at lunch. When that old woman stopped you when you walked into the cafeteria. I know you were running on about two hours of sleep on a twelve hour shift, you hadn't eaten since the day before and you just needed a break. But when she stopped you, you smiled - God, I love your smile - and you talked to her about her daughter, about getting in touch with an insurance provider, and you offered to help with her knitting. I fell a little harder for you then.

"I love that you put up with me. You listen and absorb and process and actually make sense of things when my brain is going in a thousand different directions and all my wires are crossed. I love that you… you pull me back when my toes are on the ledge. You calm that part of me. And you do it so easily, like it's nothing. I don't know how you manage it. You somehow keep coming back, and I've… I've stopped wondering why. You see my… neuroses, my… crazy, as you say. You see my… broken pieces. And somehow you're still here."

My fingers picked at the terrycloth towel. I tried to smile. "Your mom… she had some good points, though."

"Really? Name one. Go ahead. Make an argument. I'm good at winning them."

"So I've heard," I said quietly, smiling at my lap. I tried to bring my doubts to my lips, tried to force them from between my teeth, but they were wedged there.

"Convincing argument," he intoned dramatically, then sighed. I felt the bed move, then the warmth of his hand on my bare arm as he maneuvered himself behind me, sliding his legs on either side of mine, and wrapping his arms around me. My cold shower and the chill of the air had left me goosepimpling, and his heat was a welcome one. When he spoke next, he didn't need to do more than whisper, his lips right next to my ear. "I'm almost forty years old, mi amor. I love my mother, but her opinion is not the most important one in my life. I intend on getting to the bottom of what went on tonight, but I promise you, when she realizes that if I have any say at all, you're going to be in my life for a long, long time, she'll come around." His hands crept down my arms, his fingers intertwined with mine, pulling me in and holding me tight against him.

"And you know," he continued, reaching up to pull my still-damp hair away from my neck, and planting a lingering kiss on my cool skin, a kiss that made me shiver for a reason entirely unrelated to temperature. "I really don't care that you're not Cuban. I don't care that you don't speak Spanish, or that you don't cook Moros y Cristianos. And I'm actually… really… exceptionally… fond… of your… what was it? Ah. Unhealthy… pallor…" Between each word, he scattered kisses down my neck and across my shoulders.

The more my smile grew, the more I felt like my face was cracking. I still wanted to tell him all the reasons this couldn't work, the reasons we couldn't work. But damn it, he had that way of calming me down, and I couldn't get my mind to focus on anything but the heat of his mouth on my skin. One of his hands had sneaked up to my throat, gently tilting my head back to lay on his shoulder, exposing my neck to his mouth. The other fumbled with the knot of the towel wrapped around me.

"I love your freckles," he breathed as the towel fell, and he kissed my speckled shoulder, his hands roaming, and my chuckle turned into a gasp that only made him grin. "Mmm. I love your neck, have I mentioned that? I don't think I have. I do. I love your shoulders. Your arms. Your hands," he caught one up in his own and brought it up to his lips, kissing its back, then palm, then fingertips. I suppressed my smile, pressing my lips hard together. "I love your shoulders. Wait, I already said that. Hmm," his hands moved again, tracing over my skin, coming to cup my breasts. "There's a lot I love about you. Your arms, and lips, and eyes, your stomach, and thighs, your breasts, your lovely, lovely ass. Every inch of you," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper in my ear as one hand traveled down my abdomen, past my navel, and oh…

I woke up sometime in the night, tangled up in sheets and Rafi. The city lights seeped through a crack in the curtain, and I watched it turn his skin into liquid silver, listening to the slow, steady rhythm of his heart. One of his hands was still threaded through my hair, the other holding my hand against his chest.

I'd never heard a man say the words 'I love you' to me before Rafi, and I'd never heard those words so much in my life as I'd heard them tonight. I knew I loved him, but I'd never known what being in love felt like. To tell the truth… I kind of liked it.

I peered up at his face in the dim light, so peaceful, an expression he rarely wore while awake.

"I love you too, Rafi," I whispered, before planting a kiss on the skin of his chest, and nuzzling back into him, letting my eyes drift closed and the beat of his heart lull me to sleep.

Translations:
Muy bien, mi amor - very good, my love
Muy guapo - very handsome

A/N: It's been a long time since I updated, I figured I'd post a nice long, angsty one for anyone still interested in reading! These aren't necessarily posted in chronological order, but Mercedes Ruehl tickled me as Barba's mom, and I had to write something about OC meeting her. She brings a certain strength, a certain sassiness to all of her roles, I just imagined how she would react to meeting the girlfriend of her beloved son, a girlfriend she didn't think was quite up to his standards. Anyhow, as always, thanks so much for reading, and any reviews are appreciated more than you know. ^.^ -C