#:) well bitch I don’t recall pls elaborate

[barbie-nightmare-house]

I have four pre programmed social pleasantries to offer and every time someone goes off script I am momentarily convinced I’m capable of murder.

[inflagranteinnuendo]

i died at your barba & co-counsel hc could we get a sequel pls (with more legal jargon in or outside of the courtroom because omg you make it sound so hotttt)

you think legalese is hot? hella. me too

Read part 1 here

pre-scriptum nota bene 1: you should read Part 1 before this one

pre-scriptum nota bene 2: oops this turned out a little (really) angsty and a little (very very) long

pre-scriptum nota bene 3: I’m still canadian so you know the drill, let me know if i make glaring mistakes in describing american judicial processes

Tuesday night. 

You watch as Rafael Barba makes you an elaborate cafecito, looking unusually business-casual without his tie.

Things should be stilted between you. But they weren’t –and that’s all due to the intensity of Barba’s laser-sharp focus on the case at hand and his capacity to compartmentalize. And you –well, you’ve never had such a relationship with someone you considered a mentor before. You were normally the sharpest at navigating uncertainty (see: rubber chicken dinners and 7-part interviews) but there was something about you and Barba that was… inexplicably foreign.

It didn’t help that you were both so busy (with the case and micro-managing the media circus) that you’ve never discussed it together. 

It was like those 24 hours never happened. 

He had never touched you since. Not once, not even a hand on the arm.

“-could drop them a line so they can hang themselves with it, what do you think?”

You startle when Barba sets the cup in front of you, momentarily disoriented from being jerked out of your thoughts. “Uh,” you utter, scrambling for a shred of coherency. If the managing partner of your firm could see you now, she’d bury your career. “That’s… contingent on whether we lose the least progressive jurors’ empathy for the victim,” your say slowly, watching him settle down in the chair beside you.

Barba surveys your face critically. “And that’s a risk we should or shouldn’t take?”

You shiver at his wording. 

“We shouldn’t,” you say quietly into your cup. You shouldn’t. If this -whatever this was with Barba- gets back to your firm, your reputation goes down the drain. 

Barba narrows his eyes at you and leans in with a forearm on the back of your chair. “Elaborate.”

You swallow nervously and gather your thoughts, trying to ignore the heat of him across your scapula. “Ms. Warren doesn’t exactly fit their cookie-cutter mould of a victim, does she? She’s COO of Scioni, top of the corporate food chain, and she’s being painted by Buchanan as a power-hungry, misandrous bitch who takes pleasure in humiliating her male employees. If you attempt to manipulate Buchanan, you’re just going to substantiate their claim and perpetuate that image of-”

You jump in surprise when you feel Barba slide his free hand up your calf and flicks a thumb against the inside of your knee before toying with the hem of your skirt, rucked up by your crossed legs.

“Why?” Barba asks with a frown.

“Uh, I thought- I thought I just explained, Ms. Warren-”

“No,” he interrupts you impatiently. “You’ve never been nervous with me. Not when I mistook you for an intern when we met, not after I chastised you for taking a deposition without me. Why now? What changed?”

What changed? What changed? After he had first wrapped your hair around his fist and tugged, after he’s made the goddamn Supreme Court of the State of New York an unsuspecting voyeur to your sex games, –he’s now asking you-

“-what changed?” You laugh incredulously. “Are we really doing this, pretending that you and me never happened?”

Barba looks alarmed at your tone, but stills his hand against your knee and remains silent at your question.

Figures. You get up and push away from the dining table, quickly gathering your coat and bag before making your way toward the door without a backward glance.

You did not work your ass off for the last decade to reduce yourself to an emotional mess when you were about to close the very first case of your career. You were you. 

In 49 cases and 50 settlements, you will be a third year associate at a firm for which most attorneys would kill to have their CV cross the mailroom.

You have no time to waste on the likes of Rafael Barba, regardless of the depth of your feelings for him.

He speaks your name and catches your wrist gently as you slip into your heels.

“Don’t touch me,” you warn him.

He immediately lets go of you as if you had burnt him.

You win.

The moment the jury was dismissed, you turn around toward Ms. Warren, who was sitting in the first row behind the pews beside detective Benson. You give both of them a warm handshake, and bid Ms. Warren to take care. They leave.

You turn back toward your table, your euphoria fading as your gaze lands on ADA Barba. Since you left his place on Tuesday, there had been enough space between you for one-and-a-half Buchanans, but now, as you both make your way out the courtroom door, your hands grazing–

“Congratulations,” Barba finally says when you both make it past the press on the steps of the courthouse, under the darkening afternoon sky. “First case, first win. A rare feat.” 

“Thanks,” you reply numbly.

Before long, your shared cab glides to a stop in front of your place. 

You try to open the car door, but your fingers would not flex when the warm line of his thigh is pressing against your own just so.

Your eyelids flutter shut.

“I am going to invite you up,” you whisper, “for truce.”

He does not touch you. 

“Put up your right hand.”

“What?” you ask, flabbergasted.

“Do it,” he orders flatly, leaving no room for discussion.

You slowly raise your right hand, feeling silly, standing beside your heels in your cream Chloé dress and no-show socks.

“Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

You almost laugh in his face out of surprise but you quickly sober up when you realize that he was dead serious.

“Yes,” you say, humouring him.

He drops his briefcase and his coat on the side of your bed and steps up to you, but you stand your ground. “Why did you leave?”

Well. No time like the present. “Because there wasn’t anything to stay for, Rafael. You made it clear that-”

“I know Harvard hasn’t lowered its standards since I graduated,” he barks, interrupting you, “address the counsel like you were taught.”

You bristle, stung. “Sorry, Mr. Barba,” you amend plaintively. 

He circles you, slow, predatory. Your breathing grows shallower in anticipation.

“Who undressed you the first time I fucked you?”

“You, Mr. Barba,” you whisper, shivering at his foul language.

“Do you want me to undress you now?”

You breath stutter. You feel your face redden. “Y-yes, Mr. Barba.”

He reaches out and tugs on the ribbon around your waist. Your wrap dress unravels before him and slides off your shoulders. 

“What did you promise me when I was inside you last?” Barba says, taking off his cufflinks.

“That… I was yours,” you recall, feeling a flood of heat soak your panties.

Barba towers over you as he meticulously undresses. “So you remember that?” he asks.

You press your thighs together, also remembering how it felt to have him between them. “I do, Mr. Barba.”

He carefully lies you on the bed and kisses you possessively. You mewl against his tongue, burying your hands in his hair. Then he draws back.

“Do you think of me,” he pauses, slipping a hand into your panties to toy with your clit briefly before pulling your panties off entirely, “when you touch yourself?”

You turn your face to the side and bite your lip, embarrassed. 

“I d-decline to answer pursuant to my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution!” you gasp as he thrust two of his fingers inside you. He crooks them and you jerk against him in response.

“So you do?”

Your squeeze your eyes shut, trying not to come. You were nothing if not the most competitive person this side of the hemisphere. “1965!” you sob, writhing, clutching his biceps as he works you open on his fingers. “Griffin v. California –no inf-inference of g-guilt can be drawn f-from silence!”

“Not so silent now, though, aren’t you? Will you scream for me?”

“Yes, Mr. B-Barba,” you hiccup.

And you do.

He shoves you up against your headboard and fucks you like you matter, like you mean something to him. 

You cling to him, allowing yourself to suspend your disbelief, if only for a moment.

He steadies your jaw with one hand and kisses you hard. “Why did you leave?”

Unable to turn your head or look away from him, you squeeze your eyes shut against the sudden sting of your tears.

Mourning the loss of him already, despite him inside you.

He knows.

“Did you miss me?” 

He knows.

“Yes!” you cry, throwing all caution to the wind, and he rewards you with a thrust that drives him so deep that he fills you full. “Yes, I missed you.”

“Then. why. did. you. leave?” he growls. “Do you remember your promise? Say it.”

“I’m yours,” you gasp, and instantly come undone, dragging your nails down the length of his back.

He grinds into you, yielding himself to pleasure.

You breathe into each other’s mouth, him reluctant to leave your body, you reluctant to let him go.

“You don’t get to leave me,” he says with his forehead against yours. “You promised. That’s a verbal contract.”

“Yes, Mr. Barba.”

Read part 1 here

(img credit x)