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Freeing her hair from the tightly pulled bun, Angela expects the steady throb of pain behind her eyes to be released with it. To her dismay, it isn’t.
She rubs her temple, inhaling slowly. Winning a fight with a criminal isn’t the same as making it out unscathed, as she’s quickly being reminded. He sits in a holding cell, now, but the wall he slammed her head-first into didn’t make any less of a mark because of it. Such is the life in this line of work, though the rewards of patrol seem to be lingering longer tonight.
Angela does her best to ignore it, as she quickly pulls on her own clothes. She never likes to hang around in the changing room, but now even less so, when she has someone waiting for her.
Gathering her things, she weaves through the main foyer of the precinct, until she finds herself in the holding area. Wesely must be able to sense her presence because he looks her way the second she steps in.
Angela can’t hide her smile as she opens the holding cell door for him.
“Judge says you can go,” she greets.
He smiles back at her, playful, as he crosses the threshold and rejoins her in the strange little world that exists between them. Glancing briefly at his watch, he nods. “About time.”
“You should still be able to make your date with Melanie.”
She knows, even before she gets the full sentence out, that she’s made a crucial mistake, here. Wesley’s face falls, and the mention of the women by name only solidified his expressions. Frustration. Disappointment.
“How exactly did you know about that?” He asks, then, “Ah. Let me guess. You performed an illegal search of my phone.”
“I did it as a civilian, not in conjunction with a case,” she replies, quickly, an automatic attempt at de-escalation, “so it's not an illegal search.”
Angela knows it’s a weak defence - even before she sees the look he gives her at it - but it doesn’t make the cold glint in his eyes sting any less.
“Does that make it better?”
“No.”
Wesley sighs, shaking his head. He’s hurting, now. She hurt him, and the thought makes Angela’s blood run cold. Wesley has been nothing but kind to her since they decided to try and make things work between them, and she’s returned the favour with a slap in the face. This, surely, will be the moment he realises it can’t work.
“Melanie is my stepmom.” Wesely supplies. “My dad died last year. She was gonna be alone, so I'm taking her out to dinner.” The admittance is a blow to the heart, shattering the air around them.
“Oh.” Angela whispers. “I really screwed that up, didn't I?”
“Yep.”
His tone marks the end of the conversation.
Wesley walks away before she can call after him, disappearing into the main foyer and quickly becoming lost in a sea of officers.
Angela buries her face in her hands. Really, she doesn’t think things could have gone any worse. Valentine’s day of all days and she’s managed to mess up what could have been the perfect relationship. Her stomach twists at the thought, because maybe this was always bound to happen. Maybe she was doomed to be the factor that would shatter their perfect dream from the start.
She doesn’t remember sitting down, but she finds herself perched on one of the booking benches, and she pulls one hand away from her face to let the other massage her temple. She thinks the ache in her head has gotten worse, now, a punishment for her recklessness. Or maybe it’s just gotten worse on its own accord. Either way, it’s a nuisance, blocking her mind from being clear enough to think how she’s going to fix this.
Because she has to. She has an obligation to Wesley to at least try and make this right. And if he still wants to break things off, then she’ll let him; but she would be a hypocrite to her own heart if she didn’t go down without at least some kind of fight.
He’ll have to swing by his office before he goes out for dinner - with his step-mom, she reminds herself, who’s surely a sweet lady if Wesely if anything to go by, and who Angela practically spat in the face of when she meddled in their business. She could meet him there, plead her case now and get it done, and then step out of his life permanently after tonight, if that’s what he wishes.
She isn’t sure if it’s a good idea. She isn’t sure of anything, really, right now. Her head aches, a dull swell of pain behind her eyes and wrapped around her forehead, seeped under the skin. She can’t think clearly, but the image of Wesley’s face so full of disappointment is burnt white hot into her memory, stark against the haze of her mind.
She’ll do anything to at least try and make amends for that.
—
It isn’t hard to find his office; there’s not many Law Firms above Ethiopian restaurants in the city. It’s a small building, she flashes her badge to get inside and finds Wesley’s office at the end of a short corridor. He’s inside, sorting through papers on his desk in a careful hurry.
She knocks once. He glances in her direction and then looks away, as if pretending he can’t see her will make her leave. He knows it’s not nearly enough to get her to give up. They both do.
“Wesley.”
“You shouldn’t be here, Angela.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You don’t need to, you want to. To make yourself feel better about messing up.”
She stops, fidgeting with one of her bracelets. He’s not wrong, she knows he’s not wrong and the more she thinks about it the more she’s beginning to doubt why she’s even here at all. Something twists inside of her, snarling. Selfish, it hisses. And she is.
But she’s nothing if not stubborn, too.
“Don’t get all psyche evaluation on me now, Wesley. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“And what do you want to talk about? Because as far as I’m concerned, you said as much as I needed to hear earlier to know how I feel about all this, and I’m really not in the mood to listen to excuses.”
“I’m not here to make excuses, I just want to explain myself.”
“They’re the same thing, Angela.”
She scrunches her brow. She can’t think clearly enough to know if he’s right, or just trying to throw her off her argument. Her head hurts. She doesn’t want to keep thinking. “Don’t—”
“Don’t what? Try to argue with you? I think we both know how that’ll end so how about we skip the nonsense and we end this here. Just go home Angela.”
“I didn’t come all this way to be shut down like this.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come!” Wesley turns away, massaging his temple. “You shouldn’t have come here, Angela.”
“But I’m here now. I just want to make this right.”
Wesley pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling slowly. “Can… this be made right?” He asks.
“Is that… rhetorical or are you looking for an answer…? Because I could try and give you one but we both know that the decision is up to you, ulti… ultimately.” She swallows. It’s more effort than it’s worth, just as focusing enough to use words more than two syllables is becoming. “You don’t have to forgive me, you don’t have much reason to and you… you can never bother with me again after this, if you’d prefer that. But I won’t give up on this - on us - without at least… at least trying to, to make amends.”
Wesley huffs out half a chuckle, turning back to face her. “Fine.” He says. “You get one minute, that’s it. So state your case, Lopez.”
“Okay,” she replies. Mumbles. She knows what she wants to say, or she knew, at least, when she was making her way to see him. It’s all jumbled in her head now, though, her little spiel having used up the last of her energy, seemingly. It feels pathetic. She feels pathetic. Her head hurts. She can’t think where she wanted to start. “I, uh, okay. Wesley. About… all of this. What I did. I, uh, okay.”
She digs deep into her mind, tries to drag out what she came here to say. It’s a feeling, more than anything clear and tangible, but there’s words that can be pulled from the swirl of emotion, if she can just push past the way her pulse seems to be beating against her temple.
Her head hurts.
Angela shakes her head quickly as she sees Wesley go to interrupt, and she opens her mouth to start. Her tongue is heavy in her mouth. The words are there, but they stick in her throat, bulky and too-round - too-sharp, in places - all the shapes her mouth seems adverse to forming, suddenly.
Blue eyes trained on her face. The ocean, piercing her soul. And she’ll drown in it, she’s almost certain of that, now, as the waves lapse up, a gentle pounding in her skull; and black swarms her vision. She’s already there, already being swept away, and part of her wants to just let herself drown in it, because the world seems so much more simple when she’s lost deep in delicate blue.
But Wesley’s eyes are cold; and she’s dragged back to the surface - blinking away the dark edges of her peripheral, desperately - by the wave they carry that seems to douse her in grief. She can’t call it guilt. She knows that’s what it is, but to admit that is to admit to herself that as she stands here, as she is, she is guilty. An officer and a lawyer stand parallel in a room and the former is sure she would fold under an admittance - so shroud in irony, by circumstance - that she is guilty.
Grief, for what she let be lost between them, is easier. Stripped to its barest bones, it is familiar.
(She stormed out. He was drunk. He drove. His mum was the one to tell her he flipped the car. It was closed casket. She still thinks, sometimes, she let him die.)
(She’s scared, now, she’ll be the reason she loses Wesley, too.)
Ocean eyes, pressed against the folds of her soul, and she’s here to make this right. To explain, at the very least, her grief. Plead innocence, placate the defendant. But an officer and a lawyer stand parallel in a room and the former finds, suddenly, she cannot speak. And the more she thinks about it, the harder it is to think, at all. Her mind is a haze, skull pulsating, no, pounding, in a steady rhythm. She came to Wesley to make things right, and her body seems hell-bent on doing anything but comply. Coming all this way, and she can’t even apologise to him.
Taking a step back, she thinks she sees something light up in his eyes, abruptly. She thinks it’s hatred. She hopes it is.
(Because she let him down.
And she thinks it might actually be killing her.)
She hopes Wesley doesn't notice, but she knows him well enough by now to realise it’s a pointless desire. He views the world with careful, observant eyes, and in any other scenario she’d admire him for that; but right now, it’s a nuisance more than anything.
Though, truth be told, she can tell just by how her body won’t move the way she wants it to as she takes another stumbling step backwards that even untrained eyes could tell something is off with her. The thought makes her skin crawl. This isn’t who she is, nor at all who she wants to be seen as by him.
Wesley Evers, honestly, isn’t sure what he’s seeing in front of him.
He’d been ready to pack up quickly, when he’d got back to his office, but that’s always wishful thinking. He’d forgotten how much of a hurry he’d left his office in, finding it a mess of papers spread across the desk and a files discarded on the floor. He knew well enough the start of tomorrow’s shift would be a worse time to walk in on such a sight, though, so he’d made quick work of handling it.
The moment Angela had burst into his office, though, he’d started to regret that choice.
The regret only sunk in deeper when she immediately jumped into trying to explain herself to him. He’s seen it enough times before to know how this goes - she’ll try to blame everything on extenuating circumstances, pretend like it makes it okay. Or at least like it makes it something then can easily sweep under the rug.
But the rug in Wesley’s office has collected enough dust over the years from desperate attempts at rectification. The rug in Wesley’s office has no room left under it, and Wesley Evers doesn’t care to just forget. He doesn’t want to hear her bear her soul to him here and now, like this. Heave her heart from her chest and let it guide her tongue as it spills the deepest parts of her, that he would have wanted to learn in quiet moments between them.
He wants to get to know the creases of her soul when they're together, comfortable and away from the world - not when it’s rushed out in a attempt to make amends.
Part of him regrets his tone when he snaps back at her. Part of him is glad it’s so easy to slip into a professional mindset, a shield against surrendering to his desires. He’s short with her, careful, and purposefully blunt because he wants to push her away. It’s the only way to stand his ground and not fold. He can’t let her win, not yet, because there’s still a part of him that aches for what she did.
He tells her one minute, and she splutters out something barely coherent, and then she looks up at him as if he’s supposed to know the way this is meant to go. He’s about to butt in when she shakes her head, quickly, and he gives her room to continue.
Her lips move, a half-twitch, like the half-flutter of a hummingbird’s wings - but no sound escapes her. Wesley sighs, arms folded. Waiting. Patience is a skill he’s had to master, a necessity in his line of work more than just a bonus of it. Still, this isn’t a case, it’s personal. And he’s coming to find he has a lot less patience when it’s personal.
Angela looks at him, blinking slowly, an almost helpless expression drawn across her features. He wonders if she’s waiting for him to move, to take the next step in this strange dance they’ve come to be caught up in, because it’s always easier when someone else takes the lead. Part of him wants to, to turn around and turn his back on the last few hours; embrace the ignorant bliss of sweeping it aside. But the rest of him burns with the agony of a betrayal, because trust is something he values above most other ideals in life. He has, since even before truth became integral to his work.
He knows if he takes the first step he’ll melt back into the dance and he won’t be able to break away. It’s a tempting option, but he holds his ground. He can’t be let to seem lenient, and there is still some part of him that is, genuinely, angry.
Angela swallows, and something new washes over her face - an emotion he can’t read. He notices all at once that her complex had paled significantly since she showed up. She takes a step back, and their awkward tiptoeing around each other is brought to a crescendo as he moves towards her, on instinct. He catches himself just as fast, moves back, again. A cocktail of concern and disinterest swirls around in his chest, a weight against him.
Angela blinks at him, long and slow, as though she can’t quite process that he’s there. Her brows pinch, and she mumbles something incoherent before her gaze darts out, suddenly, eyes locking with his.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, “I’m so sorry.”
“Angela—”
“Wesley.” She pushes out. “There’s no excuse for what I did… I just… I was scared but that isn’t… I’m sorry. You're right, actually. I should go.”
Angela spins around before he can stop her, and she regrets it immediately. The room swims around her, still spinning even when she’s stopped. She screws her eyes shut, reaching out blinding to steady herself against the doorway. It’s farther away than she remembers. Or, more so, she can’t remember where it was to begin with.
She does find it, not with her hand but her shoulder as her body tips sideways, of its own accord, and she crashes into the frame. Her eyes flutter open, and she’s met with brightness all around her, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Her mouth tastes bitter, and her tongue stings and she must have bitten it at some point. When she fell, maybe. She thinks that makes sense. She isn’t sure.
The only thing Angela can think clearly is that she needs to leave. She tries to push herself up, away from the doorway, but she barely makes it two steps before the world is spinning again.
She waits for an impact with th floor.
It doesn’t come.
Firm hands wrap around her forearms, holding her up before she can pitch forward. She leans back, tilts her head up and blinks away enough of the bright lights to make out Wesley’s eyes looking down at her. Oh. Wesley. She squirms in his hold, trying to pull away, but any lingering strength has drained out of her. She slumps into his chest instead, surrendering.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. It’s all she can think to say. She thinks there was more, at some point, but it’s gone, now. Her mind is doused in a thick haze and her head hurts. Her head really hurts.
“Angela?” Wesely blurts out. “Hey, it’s— it’s okay.”
She stays slack in his hold, a stark contrast to how steady she holds herself most of the time.
“Hey, hey-! Angela, Can you hear me?”
She only hums in response, and it makes his chest ache. He’d noticed as soon as she’d shown up that was something off with her complexion, that her eyes didn’t seem to have her usual spark in them; but he’d brushed it off. He’d ignored it in favour of being short with her.
He regrets that, now.
“Angela, I need you to work with me here, okay?” Wesely tried to keep his tone short. Collected. If he can talk to her professionally, she might be more inclined to answer. She hums again, a little firmer this time. Wesley sighs, trying to wrack his brain for any first aid training. He goes through the symptoms in his mind, purses his lips. “Angela, hey, did you hit your head on patrol today?”
He feels her head tilt slightly against him, sees her blink a few times before she nods, ever so slightly. “Yeah,” she mumbles, then again, clearer, “shit, yeah. I think I did.”
“I think you’re concussed.” Wesley replies. “Scratch that, you are definitely concussed.”
“Ah, shit.” She mutters. “That’s… not… uh…”
“Favourable?”
“Yeah, sure, that.”
“You’re not wrong, but it’s… it’s fine.” He sighs, looking around the office before deciding it would be more hassle to try and drag her back over to his chair (which is, currently, home to a large stack of files anyway). “Let’s sit down. Here.”
He guides her to the floor, slowly, manoeuvring her back into his room to lean against the wall next to the door. With a clear view of her face, he can see without doubt that she is concussed. Not just that, she’s heavily concussed, from what he can determine.
Not favourable at all.
“Right. Okay. You sit tight here, I’ll go see if I can find some, uh, ice. Or something. Or… I don’t know if we’d have ice here, actually. I’ll find someone who would know. Or maybe just someone who can help. Yeah. I’ll go get help.” Wesley rushes out. “Yeah. You just stay here, I’ll see what I can do.”
He moves to get up, but Angela’s hand suddenly wraps around his wrist, stopping him. She looks him straight in the face - as much as she can manage at least. Even with unfocused eyes, her gaze is strong.
“You have dinner.” She says, firm. “Tonight. You have dinner, with your stepmom. You need to go.”
“Angela—”
“I’m not being the reason you miss that, not when I’ve already treated you unfairly today.”
“I’m not just leaving you! You have a concussion Angela, you almost passed out.”
“And I’m… better now.” She blinks a few times, a small amount of awareness trickling back to her. “That was just a… a little hiccup.”
“You don’t just get better from a concussion in the span of a few minutes.”
“Are you a doctor now?”
“Angela, please. This isn’t the time to be difficult.”
He sees her face fall the moment the words leave his mouth. He bites his lip, looking away.
“Sorry.” She mutters, before he can say anything. “I’m not trying to be… difficult. I just don’t want to mess up anything else for you.” She leans her head back against the wall, closing her eyes. “I, uh, I really didn’t mean to hurt you. I did… I know I did and this isn’t… an excuse. Or maybe it is I… I ‘unno, anymore. I could give the whole… ‘I had a bad childhood and it affected my ability to trust people’ spiel but… you’ve heard that a hundred times ‘m sure.”
“A couple hundred, yeah.” Wesely sighs. “For the record, it’s a terrible defence. It’s like, I’m sorry if you had a bad time then, but you’re an adult now, you have the ability to know right and wrong.”
“Yeah, and I did something wrong, really wrong, and I just want you to know it was… it was stupid. And I regret it and… I’m sorry.”
“I know. I know you are.”
“Don’t… think you have to forgive me.”
“I didn’t, don’t worry.”
“Oh, ‘s good then. But still, I mean… I’m not saying this to get you to forgive me, I just… didn’t wanna end things… like that…”
Wesley turns to look out the window, at the night sky that’s come to loom over the city. He shakes his head. “Yeah... Me neither.”
Angela hums, again, a softer, more content sound this time. “You deserve a good ending.” She whispers. “You deserve… so much, Wesely.”
He laughs. “Now you’re just trying to win me over.”
“Maybe…” She glances at him. “‘s it working…?”
“Just a little bit.”
She smirks. “Good.” Her head falls forwards, lolled against her chest. “Then m’work here ’s… done…”
Her eyes flutter shut, and Wesley takes a moment to process the sight before he’s reaching out, shaking her gently. “Angela? Angela, hey, no, no sleeping on me, yeah? Angela? C’mom—”
She doesn’t react, and the fear that takes hold in his chest is so strong, so overwhelmingly potent, that he realises in that moment he can’t keep lying to himself. He doesn’t want this to be the end of them, not at all.
He gathers Angela up in his arms, and as he notices one of his colleagues walking past, he watches them almost jump out of their skin when he yells.
“Call an ambulance. Now.”
—
Angela remembers, vaguely, leaning against something solid. Uncomfortable. But as awareness slowly seeps back to her, she can’t help but notice that she’s laying on something soft.
She rolls over, or tries to, as best she can. The room around her is bright as her eyes flutter open, but it’s not overwhelming this time. There’s a few steady buzzing sounds around her, a rhythmic beep, but otherwise, it’s quiet. It’s the calmest she’s felt all day, like she’s floating in a space hidden away from the rest of time.
Memories trickle back to her slowly, and they pop the bubbles of her tranquillity as they flood in, reminders of how she got here. The pain in her head comes back last, it’s much duller now, rather pathetic in comparison to how it had been, but it serves as no less of a reminder of the day.
Of the fight with the criminal, and, more pressingly, the fight with—
“Wesley?”
Angela almost rolls right off the bed as his face moves into her line of sight. His brow is creased with worry that quickly melts into relief, as their eyes meet.
“You’re awake. Gosh, okay. You had me worried there for a bit. Doc says running around that much with a concussion is like… well the worst thing you can do for a concussion. Other than sleeping on one, which you also did! You know I told you to stay awake, I thought a cop would be better at following orders—”
“Wesley.” Angela interjects. “Hey, hi. I’m awake now, I’m okay. It’s okay.”
“Right, yeah, of course. Hi! Hi, uh, how are you feeling?”
“Like I had my head slammed into a wall by a mad man trying to escape the law— what are you doing here?”
“Well, when someone collapses in your office I feel like it’s common courtesy to stay with them until they wake up. And… well I guess on top of that, I may have been a little worried.”
“That’s… sweet and all but, didn’t you have dinner? With your step-mom?” She tries to push herald upright. “God I tried to fix things and I ruined your plans even more didn’t I?”
“Hey, hey it’s alright, okay? Youshouldn’t strain yourself too much right now.” Wesely days quickly, guiding her back down. “I rescheduled dinner to tomorrow night - I’m friends with the restaurant owner so he had no bother moving the reservation. And I told Melanie I had a case I had to work late on today, she didn’t mind too much at all.”
Angela hums. “Good. Okay, that’s good. Still… I’m really sorry. Not just for this but… how I acted, in general. It was completely out of line for me to go through your phone and even though I can promise from here on out it’ll never happen again, I completely understand if you don’t feel able to trust me after this—”
“Angela, no strain, remember? And… it’s okay. I won’t say I’m not mad because I’d be lying if I did, but I also understand this came from a place of fear, not malice. That doesn’t make it any less of a dick move, but, if you’re willing to prove that it won’t happen again, I’m willing to let you try.”
“So, what does that mean? For… us? Are you willing to give that another try?”
And Wesely Evers would be lying if he said his heart didn’t swell a little bit at those words. That he hadn’t been quietly hoping for the very question to pierce the air. He can tell just by looking at Angela, at the remnants of the previous few hours that sit apparent in her still-too-pale complexion, that this won’t be easy. That there'll be more times to come when they fight and make up, or one of them does something stupid in the name of love. But he thinks, as he feels himself getting lost in the creases of her smile, he’s willing to fight for it.
For them.
“Yeah,” Wesely replies. “I really, really want to give us another try.”
(And if Angela Lopez takes barely two seconds to reach out for him, and if they both find themselves melting into each other's embraces, eyes wet and hearts so, so full of love - well, that’s just for them to know.)