A/N: I had been wanting to add a little piece onto the moment of angst that was Cooper and Violet attempting friends-with-benefits ever since the episode aired. And even though we all love fluff, all I could come up with was angst. Ah, well. Enjoy reading anyway.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately for me, I do not own Private Practice. All I do is play with Shonda's characters.

Holding It All In
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Cooper's halfway through putting his shirt back on when he hears the crying start

Cooper's halfway through putting his shirt back on when he hears the crying start.

It's quiet, but it still pulls at his heartstrings with a terrible force. He hesitates at the door, but ends up walking back in anyway, shutting it softly behind him.

She's curled up on the bed, wrapped in that green blanket and facing the far wall. When he sits down on the opposite end of the mattress, she stiffens, pulling the blanket tighter around her, and he sighs.

"Vi…" Cooper doesn't know quite what to say, and instead settles for scooting across the sheets until he's right up next her still form. He puts a hand on her arm, flinching when she jerks away from his touch. "Vi, I'm really, really sorry." His voice is barely more than a whisper.

"Just go, Cooper."

"You have to…" He shifts even closer, now, and his crossed legs are pressed up against her back. "You have to hear me, Violet." Cooper puts his hand back on her arm, and this time she doesn't pull away. "It's not that you're not good enough or pretty enough or deserving enough. You're too good and too pretty and too deserving. I can't give you unemotional, Violet. Not when I know you deserve more."

"What if I don't want more?" she snaps, turning her head to face him. "More is messy and more is complicated, and I don't want to deal with more anymore." Violet turns away with a dejected sigh. "I just wanted… less. And you couldn't even give me that."

"God, Vi…" he breathes, running a hand through his hair. "I want to have sex with you."

At this point she turns completely, blanket still clutched close to her. "What?"

"I want to have sex with you," he repeats, using hand gestures for emphasis. "I just… I can't… like this."

"You do realize that I have no idea what you're saying, right?"

Cooper puts his face in his hands, mumbling a muffled, "I know." He really, really wants to say you never have any idea what I'm saying, Violet!, but he's too good a friend to do that. Instead, he just says, "I know," again.

He doesn't want to look up because he knows she's staring at him, all confused, and right now he's immensely frustrated with her obliviousness. (He also doesn't want to look up because, well, she's naked under that blanket, and his mind has been tortured enough for one evening.)

By the time he does raise his gaze, she's facing the wall again. "I'm… gonna go." He doesn't want to leave her like this, but she's looking so small and sad and vulnerable that he's scared he'll do or say something to screw things up even more than he already has if he stays any longer. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Cooper slides off the bed and makes his way back towards the hallway.

"Cooper."

He stops and turns to see her sitting up now, holding her knees to her chest. "Yeah?"

Violet looks at him for a moment, head tilted to the side just the slightest bit, and then murmurs a quiet, "… never mind."

And as she listens to his footsteps fade away, she leans back against the headboard and wonders who the hell she's supposed to talk to about this when the only person who would ever understand just walked out the door.

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End