Coliver Fic: Let Him

horchatita:

Note: This is not the domestic fluffy stuff I am supposed to be working on, not even a little bit.

Rating: PG13 (for allusions to the murder)

Word count: 1067

You’d think he was trying to speak directly with the
President with the way this woman was blocking his numerous attempts to knock
on Annalise Keating’s office door.

“Annalise doesn’t have the time, patience, or interest to
hear about how one of her minions has slighted you. You’ll take it up with me
or you’ll leave. Pick.”

“I need to speak with Professor Keating and I’m not going to
leave until I do, if she really has so little interest in-“

The thick door creaks open and there she is, standing in all her terrifying
glory. Oliver has only ever seen her on television before, always strutting out
of the courtroom with her head held high and her overworked ducklings trailing
behind her. He is particularly concerned about how much she’s overworking them,
and he isn’t afraid of her. Not at all. Or at least not enough to back down
now.

“I need to speak with you.”

“Yes I heard. Mr. Hampton, isn’t it? I understand you’ve
been of some service to a few cases. I can spare some time for whatever
impassioned rant you’ve prepared.”

“Annalise-“

“Let him be Bonnie. Come in, Oliver I don’t have all day.”

The way she leans back on her chair when she sits across her
desk from him and reads him like a book is petrifying. But he made it all this
way and even if Connor never speaks to him again he can’t let this pass.

“Connor worked six 17-hour days last week between classes
and your internship. As I understand it all of your interns are on similar
schedules so if you don’t particularly care about Connor or his health or his –
it doesn’t matter,” he snaps, “because I’m sure you care about having interns around
to do all of them frankly insane things you ask of them and you won’t have them
much longer if you work them to death.”

She still sitting there evaluating him, completely unfazed. “Last
time I checked all of my interns were capable of breathing without the assistance
of machinery, they look the picture of health to me, in fact.”

“Well then you must not be paying attention which is insane
because you have them in your house all day every day except for now when they’re
apparently three towns over sweeping some dude’s house.” He pulls out his
phone, still open to the text. “It’s 11:30 at night on Wednesday.”

She blinks. Twice. “Is that all?”

“Don’t you care about them?”

“You mean don’t I care about him, the way you do. That’s
always the question,” she says, leaning forward, “isn’t it. When you start to
care about someone that’s a little bit frayed at the edges. Why doesn’t the
world care the way I do? Why can’t I protect him? And the answer is because
there isn’t anything to be done. I didn’t sign Mr. Walsh up for my class, or
his career, or his frankly destructive coping mechanisms. I chose him because
he’s brilliant, more so than my most studious – and less cunning than he thinks
he is. All of the students I choose I choose for two reasons. The first is for
what they can do for me, their particular skill. Mr. Walsh believes that is his
ability to obtain information by borderline prostitution. He is wrong. That’s
my second. I show them their blind spot, or at least I intend to. But you must
know, Mr. Hampton that it’s been trying year.”

“I know that.”
“Then I guess I have to admit you’re partially right. It was always my
intention to show Mr. Walsh that he is more than an attractive trap. Just like
it is my intention to put some foundation in the quaking crystal tower Ms.
Pratt insists living atop. All of them are more than they can see.”

“And what,” he says, shaking his head to try to get some
sense of where she’s going with this strange web of words, “you got distracted
from the lesson?”

“In way. You know just how seductive Mr. Walsh can be. You
can imagine that the results are just as tempting for me.”

It makes him so angry, so furious, and so unbelievably
helpless. “You’re using him.”

“And he knows it,” she shrugs, “just like you always knew he
was using you.”

“I don’t – I don’t care about your intentions. You don’t
understand what you’re doing to him…”

“I understand perfectly. Some people break. Or explode.
Shooting stars, we call them. It has to be someone and it might well be him.”

The helplessness presses down on him like the weight of the
ocean and he thinks maybe he’s shaking in his seat. But he’s run out of bravado
and words.

“I can see you understanding that there is nothing you can
do, because I am not doing anything to him. Because you’re not here about his
work schedule. You’re here about the shake in his hands and the shift in his
eyes. You want it to be about work and school and not something else.”

“So you do notice. You do know what it’s doing to him –“

“I know. And I care. And there is nothing you or I can do
about it, I’m afraid. But I can give you one piece of advice.”

“Not legal, I hope.”

“All advice is legal advice, in one way or another. Now
listen to me, Oliver. Let him lie to you. Don’t pry or dig or beg. No matter
how much his eyes give away or your gut tells you he’s full of shit. Let him
lie to you, for your own sake. Honesty, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

So he sits across from him at his own dinner table two days
later and listens in detail about the NA meeting he found just outside of
campus. About how he’ll find a way to fit it into his day. He listens and
smiles, he tries to forget about every night he wakes up in a cold sweat. He
tries to forget about his shaking hands and the way he shudders and curls up
into himself in bed. Mostly he tries to forget about the way he mumbles in his
sleep he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead. He
tries to forget about all that and remember, to let him lie to him for both
their sakes.