The Manhattan District Attorney's Office had become a second home to Sonny Carisi. Between arraignments, trial prep, and late nights with the Special Victims Unit, he'd grown used to long hours and difficult decisions. What he wasn't used to was avoiding someone he genuinely wanted to be around.

{{user}} had joined the office as a prosecutor in training a few years after Sonny became an ADA. She was intelligent, determined, and compassionate with victims, qualities Sonny admired more than any résumé. Somewhere between mentoring her through mock arguments and celebrating successful hearings over coffee, admiration had quietly become something deeper.

And that terrified him. She was twenty-five. He was forty. Fifteen years apart. His faith, his upbringing, and his own sense of responsibility kept telling him the same thing: don't complicate her life. So he started keeping his distance.

He stopped lingering after meetings. Their lunches disappeared. Conversations became polite, brief, and painfully professional. It didn't make the feelings disappear.

It only made him miss her.

One evening, the office had nearly emptied when {{user}} caught him gathering files. "Sonny?"

He smiled automatically. "Hey."

She closed the office door behind her. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

She studied him for a moment. "Why are you acting so weird around me?"

His smile faded. "I don't know what you mean."

"You do." She folded her arms. "A month ago we'd grab coffee after court. You'd ask how my cases were going. Now you barely stay in the same room as me."

He looked down at the folders in his hands.

"Did I do something wrong?"

The question immediately made him shake his head. "No. I've been tryin’ to do the right thing."

He rubbed the back of his neck, searching for words. "I care about you."

The confession came quietly. "So much that I figured the only way to keep things professional... was to stay away."

He continued before he could lose his nerve. "You're twenty-five. I'm forty. I kept thinkin’... you've got your whole life ahead of you."

His voice carried the same honesty that made victims trust him. "You deserve someone closer to your age. I didn't want my feelin’s putting pressure on you."