Length of relationship: 5 months, 6 days

He stares at his phone, waiting for it to ring, wondering if it will, or if he should be the one to call her.

He doesn't really know what to do, they've never had a fight like this before, they squabble and disagree plenty, but this was different. Over the past hour and a half he has tried to reason that it was always going to happen. All couples fight, he and Sloan are no different, he knew it was coming, he just hadn't expected it to be this way.

He shakes his head, staring at his half finished second drink, he thinks to himself that he should have pulled her segment from the show, he should never have let her on the air tonight. She'd been in a mood all day, the bits and pieces he'd caught of her 4 o'clock show had been different than usual. Her normally calm and explanatory tone had been replaced by an angry and punchy vibe, her address to her viewers had sounded like a lecture and he'd caught the end of Zane scolding her in her office afterwards. He just dismissed it though, everyone has bad days, and he certainly had more of them than most people, so he cut her some slack and assumed that she'd even out as the day went on, but she didn't. Her appearance on Will's show was unnecessarily argumentative, she was bossy and contrary and at the time all he thought was, that's weird, she's in a weird mood today! Why the fuck hadn't he cut her segment, if she'd never been on the air, she wouldn't have had the opportunity to do what she did, and then he wouldn't have gotten mad at her and they wouldn't be in this mess. That said, he's not her fucking keeper, he's her boss, and yeah sure, he's also her boyfriend, but at work, when she's on his show, he's her boss and she is supposed to fucking listen to him, so how dare she pull the stunt she did. He always thinks it's funny and kind of cute when she defies Zane, but that's because Zane is a legitimate backwards thinking moron and she has little to no respect for Zane, but he is her boyfriend and he thought they respected each other.

So now he doesn't know what to do, because he is livid, and he is entitled to that because she is the one who screwed him over tonight, but he is the one who just broke up with her in a screaming match and stormed out of the apartment.

She doesn't cope well with emotional things, he knows that, it's what he signed up for, so instead of going home to drink himself into an enraged coma, he's sitting at a bar two blocks from her apartment, not quite finishing his second drink because he needs his faculties intact to deal with this, deal with her. He can't go home, because even though he just broke up with her, hes pretty sure he also needs to go back and look after her, because he thinks he might have just hurt her really badly.

…

She didn't wait until the end of the show to leave, the second he booted her off the air she stormed off to her office, grabbed her things and went home. There was no chance in hell she was going to stay in the office and see him, she was incensed at his lack of journalistic integrity.

Walking into her apartment she slammed the door, hearing the pictures mounted on that wall give a little rattle, she threw her handbag at the couch on her way to the kitchen and she poured herself a generous glass of wine, and essentially sculled the entire drink. When she placed the glass back on the kitchen counter there was a momentary loss of anger where she felt the intense dread lurking in the back of her mind about the oncoming fall out of her interview. Deciding that anger was easier than fear she let the emotion sweep back in and take hold.

He stormed through her door half an hour later, to find her pacing her living room, "what the fuck was that?" he yelled before he'd even finished closing the door.

"Journalism," She spat back, "he's a lying sack of shit and I was calling him on it!"

"He's a Supreme Court Judge, can cannot talk to a Supreme Court Judge like that ever, let alone ON AIR! Have you gone fucking insane?" he yelled at the same volume even though he was now less than two feet from her.

"Don, he's a criminal," she argued, before being cut off by a dramatic scoff.

"He is not a criminal, you're being ridiculous," he dismissed.

"He is the scum of the earth, I don't give a shit if I offended him, someone needs to stand up to him," she matched his incredible volume.

"You were so far out of line, I told you what you were allowed to ask, I fucking wrote it down, it was idiot proof," he says to insult her.

She decides she's not just going to just take that though, "I am not a sheep, I asked the questions that needed to be asked."

"You weren't allowed to ask any of that," he tells her menacingly.

His stern expression freaks her out a bit so she turns away from him yelling over her shoulder, "I don't need your permission to ask…"

"Yes you fucking do," he all but screams, and she turns back to stare at him, she looks mad, but also a little like she's going to cry. She looks the same way she did the day that Charlie yelled at her in the newsroom after the Fukashima incident, but he carries on, she needs to hear this, she needs to know that what she did was wrong. "I am the producer, and it's my show, it's my god damn integrity that you just threw under the bus and my job you just risked."

"What integrity?" she spits back insultingly.

"Don't you dare, there is a time and a place… that wasn't it."

"Yes it was, it was right there and you passed up an opportunity most journalists would give their left foot for because you were too fucking scared," she accuses.

They carried on like this for fifteen minutes, the argument showing no signs of slowing down, but getting steadily nastier as they went. Until he hears himself yell, "I can't do this anymore."

"Do what?"

"This," he points between them indicating their relationship, she is suddenly silent, the only noises she makes are the sounds of her breathing, it is ragged from all of the screaming. "What you did tonight; you have no respect for me, I can't do this," he tells her, but her face shows no sign that she's understanding him or even really listening to him, her jaw is still clenched, her expression frozen in fight mode, "I'm done," he spits, before he picks up the bag that he dropped by the door on his way in and leaves the apartment in the same manner he arrived in.

He stares at his phone, willing it to light up, with the awful picture of them that she set as his caller id, he finishes the last of his drink and goes to climb off the bar stool just as his phone begins to vibrate across the counter top, as if his wish was what made it happen. There it is, the world's most awkward photo of them, eyes squinting in the sun, she thought it was hilarious at the time, he clicks answer and brings the phone to his ear, he has no idea what to expect, and no idea what to say. The phone rests against his ear for a moment, and he takes a breath before trying to speak, but then he's not sure if he should apologise or just say hi, or maybe even yell some more because he's still so mad. He doesn't quite get anything out before he hears her "where are you?"

"Why?" he asks indignantly.

"I just," pause, "where are you?" she sighs, her voice is meek but her exhalations read loudly and clearly that she's still somewhat pissed off.

"At home," he lies, he supposes that he doesn't want her to panic, "What do you want Sloan?" he's not really sure why he's being so evasive.

She doesn't answer him, and he can't seem to read the subtext of her silence, it's too tense and it draws out, he lets her sit there without saying anything for a minute.

"Sloan," he repeats, nothing, but he knows she's still there, "Sloan, what do you want?" but he's not asking the same way as before, it's not a petulant throw away, he's genuinely asking her what she wants; from him, for them, "Sloan?"

When she finally speaks her voice cracks with a small sob that she attempts to swallow, "you just left," she tells him.

"Yeah," he agrees, it's a confirmation and a question, 'why does it matter?'

"You can't just leave in the middle of an argument," she argues pettily.

"Sloan," he warns her, he doesn't want to put up with anymore crap tonight, he's so tired and so done with it.

She doesn't say anything for a little while again, he takes his time to examine the old condensation rings on the bar, until he hears her, "come back," she whispers it.

He lets the phone drop away from his ear to give himself a moment to think, he doesn't know what to do, maybe they need a night of space, maybe they're too tired and emotional to deal with this now, maybe he should leave it for tomorrow? But she's asking him to come back to her, and that's what he wants, so maybe she should just do it.

He raises the phone back to his ear to ask her 'why?' but as he's about to speak he realises that she's gone, its just a dial tone that he's listening to.

He unlocks her apartment door, a bit afraid of what he's going to find, but it's silent within. The lights are turned off in the living room, but he can see soft lamplight filtering out from her open bedroom door. He walks over her room, slowly, loud enough that if she didn't notice the front door opening and closing she'll hear him approach. He stands in her doorway, taking in the dimly lit scene; she sits cross legged on her bed in pj pants and a tank top, which in its self is unnatural and foreign to him, he's used to seeing her sleep naked or in one of the many t-shirts of his that have accumulated at her place. Her bed is still made, she hasn't tried to climb under the covers, and spread in front of her are the disembowelled sections of multiple newspapers. She's made an attempt to distract herself from the fight in the almost two hours that he's been gone, however, her stare is vacant and he can tell from her far away expression that she has not been successful in reading anything of a distracting nature. She looks up at him as he leans against the door frame, her gaze is fleeting and her eyes never meets his, but it is long enough for him to just make out in the low light that her face is blotchy from having been crying. He walks, sighing around to his side of the bed, he toes of his shoes and leans to shift some of the papers out of his way before he sits on the bed, legs stretched out in front of him. He leans back against the head board and rubs his hands over his face in frustration and exhaustion.

"Sloan," he mutters, it carries so much weight even though he has no real idea what meaning he was trying to impose onto it. He sees from the corner of his eye one of her hands swipe at a runaway tear, and he doesn't know what to say so he just reaches out, one hand behind her neck, akin to the way she grabbed him in the control room the day of their first kiss, and pulls her body into his. She crumbles silently into him, a mess of knees and elbows and she holds on tight around his neck where she has firmly latched herself. He can't believe this is how their evening went, he is so thoroughly exhausted, and mad, but he is glad he came back, because he realises while his shirt collar collects a few tears that even while he's this angry, he is still so completely in love with her, and they can fix this.