Summary: Sometimes she has this urge to comfort him. And sometimes that comfort isn't professional. Wesalise.
Couple: Annalise K. / Wes G.
Show: How to Get Away with Murder
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. All characters presented in this fic belong to the amazing mind of Shonda Rhimes. Just throwing that out there.
Undertones
She dreams of him once.
And only once.
But it's enough to have her on edge for more than a week.
She remembers her dream, but she doesn't like to think about it. To think about her student in such a way that her subconscious likes to think about him.
But it happens after too many bottles of wine and too many lonely nights. When it's just her and her house that's too big for one person.
It happens.
And sometimes she lets her mind replayed the dream.
And other times she stops it before she gets herself too titillated.
It works, for the most part. And when he stops coming to class, it works even better.
X
Days later she overhears a conversation her associates are having in her living room. The topic of conversation is him. They talk about how he hasn't been around much. About how he gets a free pass while they do all the work because his lying ex girlfriend ran out on him.
Connor doesn't think it's fair. Asher makes a derogatory comment about Wes getting laid to forget Rebecca. Michaela scuffs not wanting to make a comment but also wanting the conversation to be over. She continues to highlight passages she think can help win their case without saying a word. Laurel rolls her eyes and tells Asher to shut up and that Wes will come around when he wants, too.
She steps into the room, her heels clicking against the floor. They look up at her and she waits for one of them to open their mouths either about Wes or their current case.
They start with the case at hand. Giving her evidence and clues on why their client couldn't have done it. She nods at all the information given. Giving them a slight nod of approval for their hard work.
She turns around to grab her purse and coat, but stops when Connor asks why Wes isn't here helping them. She squares her shoulders. Turns around on the heel of her pumps, coat folded over a forearm and purse clutched in the palm of her hand. She looks at all, because she knows they are waiting for an explanation. One she doesn't actually have. But she answers him(them) anyway.
"Worry about yourself, Mr. Walsh. Mr. Gibbins whereabouts are none of your concern. If the workload is too challenging for you. You can always leave. Theres the door." She points out with a jerk of her head. He doesn't move from his spot. "No?" She asks, leaving her spot, taking several steps towards the foyer, "Then get back to work." She demands while disappearing from their sights.
She calls him later that night. When she has finished her Chinese take out and is a glass or two from finishing off her first bottle of wine.
She dials his number on the way up the stairs. Her feet bare and her hand gripped around the neck of the wine bottle.
He picks up on the fourth ring. She working on taking off her wig in the vanity mirror when his rough disconsolate voice grace her ear drums. It's the first time she hears his voice in about a week and a half. Since she stopped overhearing phone conversation Laurel has with him outside of her classroom. Trying to catch him up on the lessons of the day.
They don't talk about much, or anything at all. He's too aloof with his answers and she's a little too tipsy to get into any deep discussions. So they keep it casual and superficial. This is just one of those calls that one makes to someone they haven't spoken to in awhile. Just to make sure they're alive and kicking.
But, Wes sounds likes he can barely form a fist to fight, yet along kick.
Annalise can tell this even in her intoxicated state.
She doesn't ask any obvious questions like:Is he okay? Has he been sleeping? When is he coming back? Has he been eating daily?
She doesn't ask because she already knows the answers. The boy is wallowing in pity that doesn't belong to him, and it's tearing him up from the inside out. She feels slightly guilty about this. And she knows she can't tell him the truth, that Rebecca is dead and she didn't run away, anytime soon or at all.
So, she ends the call with a 'good night'. Crawls into her bed that's too big for one person, drinks the last of her wine and passes out.
X
It's not surprising to Annalise. That she's the first to break the routine of them not seeing each other during his absence. She's at his door some days later with a brown paper bag filled to the top with groceries. Only to find out that the apartment is vacated of an owner.
She asks the manager about a boy that use to live in apartment five, if he left a forwarding address. But the potbelly man shrugs before he returns his attention back to the square box he calls a TV that's showing reruns of Old House On The Prairie. Annalise finds the remote, cuts the TV off, and walks back to her car. She dials his number when she opens the door that's suppose to seat the passenger and sets the paper bag on the seat.
He doesn't answer her call, and she finds out why when she parks her car in her driveway.
He's sitting on the stairs of her porch instead of the provided outdoor chairs. His bike is to the side of where she parked her car.
He doesn't look up when she makes her way to him, carrying the paper bag in her arms. She doesn't stop walking until she had reached her front door. She unlocks it and keeps it open as she walks deeper into her house, heading for the kitchen.
She hears the door shut. His torn down sneakers scraping against the hardwood floor as they follow her footsteps.
She looks at him as he passes through the archway. He looks beaten down, disheveled as if he's lost some weight. Weight he couldn't afford to lose, he was already skin and bones before all this mess started.
She leans against a marble counter. Watching every step he makes as he sits down on one of the bar stools for her island counters.
He looks weak if the way he slouches into the stool is anything to go by. Annalise would bet good money that he hasn't had a good home cooked meal in a while.
"You moved." She states not as a question, but more of a way to start the conversation off.
He nods."Some weeks back." He mumbles out, his voice just as weak as his body language.
"Where are you staying now?" She asks as she digs into the bag of groceries she had brought for him. She had intentionally been buying groceries for herself. When his face popped into her mind. She had been in the middle of choosing which apples looked the juiciest. She couldn't decide. So she brought more than she actually needed. Which leads her to adding a few more items into her cart.
He gives her an address to an apartment complex some blocks down from his previous address. "I couldn't stay there anymore. Not after-after everything that has happened." he tells her, his voice low, his eyes even lower. He hasn't looked at her since she arrived. She refuses to ponder on why and instead pulls out her cellphone from her purse, punching in numbers on the keypad.
"You look tired. There's a spare room upstairs." She tells him, not as a suggestion but an order. "Two room to the right." She tells him when he stands from the barstool, making his way out the kitchen.
He doesn't come out of the guest room to eat when the food she orders arrives. So she eats by herself with a glass of wine and a dream that she allows her brain to fully replay.
X
It two full days later, when she sees his face again. His hair is wild and he's wearing the same clothes, but the dark circles under his eyes have lessen and his posture is straighter.
She in her office with the door open, the desk lamp illuminating the only light in the otherwise dark house. She's barefooted, dressed in a robe, wig off and no makeup on looking over paperwork from their recent case. She feels his eyes on her more than she actually hears him walk in. There's a sense that takes over her in his presents. When his sole focus is her and her alone. It causes a chemical reaction in her body, that's she use too but is very new to her. It takes more time, than she's willing to admit to allow her body to calm down and for her to look him in the eye. When she looks up, he's standing in the doorway, his shoulder is wedge into the door jam, hands folded over his chest, and a question in his caramel eyes.
She waits for him to ask, but he nevers does, so she tells him he has food waiting in the microwave. He leaves her alone after that and if he hadn't knocked on her bedroom door an hour later, she would have thought him to be gone.
"I wanted to thank you." He says, taking steps into her bedroom. "For allowing me to sleep here."
She doesn't reply to his gratitude,but does turn to look at him when he says; he's been searching for Rebecca.
"I haven't found anything yet. Not a clue to where she could have gone. Or who help her. It's like she vanish." He continues on.
Or dead. She thinks, pulling off throw pillows and pulling back her comforter.
"She's not coming back." She says with too much certainty, even to her ears. "Why would she want, too?" She asks, taking a sit on her bed, her eyes on him.
He looks hurt, but accepting of her words. He opens his mouth to say something but closes it without a sound. If she had to guess it had something to do with false hope and him trying to make amends.
She stands from her bed, walks to him and folds her arms under her beast. "You should stop." And it's not a suggestion, even though it sounds like it. It's only three words but by the way his head drops and his eyes look at her carpeted bedroom floor, they have hit their mark.
She reaches for him, her hands cupping each side of his face. She angles his face to hers, eyes connecting and skin burning from where his hands wrap around her wrist.
He nods, thanks her again and walks out.
That night she lies awake for hours and when she finally does drift off to sleep, it's dreamless.
I have no idea what this is. But HTGAWM comes back this Thursday and this has been sitting in my drive for months. I'm not entirely sure this is finish. But I can't think of anything else and so I guess it is.