Chapter Text
“One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”
- Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
It's probably the weariness that comes with balancing secret murder and finals, or the time they've spent over cases in near orbit of each other in Keating's office; whichever it is, Michaela would admit that Laurel has become used to having this...opposing force in her space (blocking doors, hallways, whichever). From the first time Laurel raised her hand in Keating’s class. Michaela thought Laurel was an odd girl, and that hasn't changed as a simple descriptor. She is an odd girl.
But now it's due to the fact that Laurel knows how to hide her emotions too well, curious yet demure. Sometimes Michaela pairs Laurel's nature with the way a cat slinks around, form echoing the finesse and control of something larger and more dangerous.
If Laurel was turned inside out--
Wait, no. Michaela cringes.
If Laurel wore most of her intent on her face from the beginning, truthfully they would've gotten nowhere.
Michaela gets that Laurel needs to be sneaky to know things the rest of the Five doesn't, but Annalise promoting her to "Bonnie" status rubs Michaela the wrong way aside from the fact that it wasn't her. She can think about something that isn't related to her own gain for like more than an hour at a time.
She remembers Laurel stooping down to at least try to get her to think rationally, to stop crying while keeping a shaky-necessary-calm, even though Sam's body was in their peripheral view and all Michaela could remember was how easy it had been to shove him once he was close enough.
How fast it'd happened.
Michaela feels the stickiness of the pool of blood, hears the hushed yet harsh whispers and feels like her body is just out of reach and like she should've been OVER this reaction by now but she's still flashing back. Her medical student mind tries to rationalize, pooling her brain with words memorized from lectures.
PTSD is chronic, incurable--
--intrusive memory--
warranted by the individual reliving the event as if it's happening again--
PTSD is nothing more
than an imbalance--
in the brain of--
She hears papers flutter and smack to the floor and looks down upon someone calling her name, feeling like she’s touched-down on Earth from hurtling around the Moon. The file she was holding and it's contents are fanned out at her feet.
"Michaela, what's wrong?"
They said it'd take the Prozac a couple of weeks if not longer to start working but Michaela takes even less than the recommended dosage or none at all because some days are calm as an ocean’s deep.
She’d mistaken the calm for safety and had forgotten what lurked in depths.
"Michaela."
A light touch on her shoulder, a familiar, soft-but-firm voice.
Michaela turns and meets those green puppy-dog eyes swirling with concern. Possibly even pity, Laurel's perfectly sculpted eyebrows lifting up, the line of her mouth a faint grimace. Michaela steps back, out of Laurel's touch and smiles like she's chewing glass. "I'm fine. I just remembered something I forgot to do that's super important. Class related."
Laurel's brow furrows (because, yeah, Michaela! She's totally gonna' leave you alone with that vague-as-fuck excuse) and she nods, the cut of her cheekbones making her disbelief seem more severe. She puts a hand on her hip and glances around the room. Asher is asleep on the reclining couch, Wes and Connor had looked up when Michaela had dropped the files but aren't looking over now so much as sneaking slightly concerned glances.
Michaela can see the joke ready on the tip of Connor’s tongue. She picks up the files smoothly and smiles, getting the intended result of Wes and Connor going back to their work, Connor thinking better of the barb but giving her one last knowing look before focusing on his papers again.
She switches her attention back to the girl that still won’t stop looking at her.
"I'm fine, Lauren." Michaela hopes she turns around, hopes she ignores her. She doesn’t need her pity or her scrutiny.
Laurel smiles the way she had when Michaela had asked her for those outlines, corner of her mouth quirking up tightly and shook her head.
"Out of the goodness of my heart, I'll still offer you a ride back home."
That's it. There's no, ‘you're not fine', because it’s in the tilt of Laurel’s head and hip. Michaela, remembering her anger at how much Laurel ‘knew’, folds her arms.
"I'll take a cab."
Laurel knows Michaela is stubborn as a brick wall so her shoulders slump a tad as she rolls her eyes.
"Suit yourself."
--
Michaela's awake at 12 AM because she took a very small dose of Prozac so she'd stop fearing the shapes the shadows took on her wall. Now she can’t find the warmth of sleep.
She goes to her living room, and slumps onto the couch in front of the TV. There's a knock at her door almost a minute after and fear shoots through her. She breathes in and out slowly through her nose and peers through after a second of the peephole to see someone she'd still rather not see. Michaela opens the door anyway, intending to shut it in their face just as quickly.
"I texted you," Laurel says with a sheepish shrug, her hair maybe a little disheveled from her own hands. (Michaela knows she does the hair raking thing more frequently when she's nervous.)
Or maybe it had been Frank's hands?
Michaela’s mouth twists into a frown. "My phone was on silent." She wraps her blanket tighter around herself and shifts her weight to her other foot, feeling under-dressed for this encounter.
You could do it, she thinks, You could shut the door right now in Miss Know-It-All's stupidly perfectly angular face--
Laurel chuckles.
"What's so funny?"
"Um, sorry. Your, uh...," Laurel gestures delicately with both of her hands, framing Michaela's shoulders, "muttering and the blanket around your shoulders makes you look like a viejita." Her Spanish comes out in something between a gross snicker and a giggle that sounds so terribly human--unrehearsed--that Michaela's nerve to close the door falters.
"'Old woman'? Michaela digs up her elementary-level knowledge Spanish. ”Did you just call me an old lady?"
"A little old lady. It's a good thing? I mean, my abuela's pretty cool."
"I can't believe you came to insult me in my own home."
"Technically not IN your home right now. Standing out here. In the cold."
Laurel does that puppy-dog thing again, pouting a little on purpose and Michaela sucks her lips over her teeth in an attempt to stay straight faced. She sighs.
"What do you want?"
"Wanted to check in to see if you were okay." Laurel clasps her fingers together and shrugs with one shoulder. “Is that allowed?”
Michaela for the past five minutes has been working up the energy to just slam the door but it's just not working and she's remembering the shadows on her wall. She just rolls her eyes and steps back into her apartment, Laurel following her inside after a beat and letting the door close behind her.
Michaela sits on the couch, and Laurel takes in the apartment again, the first time being at their "study party" which turned into a sleepover. Laurel leaves a cushion in between them when she sits down and waits for Michaela to speak. When she does, Michaela keeps her eyes on the TV.
"How do I have the utmost certainty that you're not here as 'replacement Bonnie',” she spits.
Laurel to her credit looks a bit sad, a bit put out by the insinuation but it also doesn’t seem a surprise to her. She sighs. "I can say, 'I'm not', as many times as you'd like but you probably wouldn't believe me anyway."
Michaela raises her eyebrows and nods still looking at the TV. It’s on mute and there’s an infomercial playing for a young-adult encyclopedia set Michaela vaguely remembers her mom ordering for her when she was 13. Only about half of them had ever arrived and it was weirdly the “L” through “Z” ones.
At that time in her life, a lot of things felt incomplete to her.
She turns to look at Laurel in her green sweater and black jeans, the flickering TV light brightening her profile. The latina’s green eyes glitter at her in the dark curiously. Waiting. Michaela scrutinizes.
lau•rel: any tree of the genus Laurus:
see: Laurus nobilis
a symbol of highest status.
an emblem of prosperity and fame.
a symbol of victory.
Laurel waits still and Michaela folds because she’s not so sure Laurel would spread the fact that Michaela can’t sleep because she’s kind of on medication for PTSD.
“Kind of”, because she skips doses. “Kind of”, because she’s scared of having to take this thing for the rest of her life. Of not being whatever normal was for her before that.
She only tells Laurel the first half though and-
“I can’t ...sleep right when I’m on it.”
That slips out because it seems more grey than black. Laurel can read into it if she wants, (which she will because she’s Laurel) but it isn’t Michaela giving all of herself away.
Laurel’s eyebrows screw together over her eyes in sympathy and Michaela holds up a finger to hopefully put this pity party to a screeching halt.
“Don’t. Pity me.” The words grind out maybe a bit more severely than intended because it’s late and Michaela’s irritated at everything. Laurel’s eyebrows raise slowly back up but she still looks concerned. “I don’t need sympathy,” Michaela slumps into the side of the couch and wraps her blanket tighter around herself. “Everybody went through shit, I know it isn’t just me.”
Even Annalise must have nightmares sleeping in those silk sheets, Michaela was sure.
Laurel looks at the TV, at Michaela’s pathetic form sunken into the corner of the couch. She scoots carefully over the empty cushion but keeps at least two feet between them, approaching her like Michaela might lash out at any minute. Michaela resolutely stares at the TV and sinks further into her blanket, bringing it over her nose.
“Michaela.”
Michaela’s heart flutters without her fucking permission and she bites her bottom lip. She looks up at the ceiling, the wall, anywhere that isn’t in Laurel’s direction.
“Michaela.”
Shit.
Michaela feels her head turning to Laurel but she still peers out of the blanket, glaring suspiciously. Mirth dances in Laurel’s eyes as she reaches out to pull the blanket down from Michaela’s face. Michaela’s glare subsides to a scowl and she’s very aware of the foot-or-so between their faces as Laurel makes sure she’s looking at her.
“Your pain isn’t less important just because others have pain. You’re allowed to be human. Just like everyone else.”
Michaela tenses. ‘Human’. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Laurel screws her eyes shut and breathes out through her nose. She opens them after a bit and holds her hands up in front of her as some sort of white flag. “ Oh my God. It means. That you don’t have sit here alone or experience this alone. You can call me, or Wes or… maybe not Connor. Or Asher. Wes and I talk to each other. It helps.”
Michaela settles back against the couch arms folded, “I’m not calling or texting anybody.”
I can help myself.
She purses her lips and unmutes the TV, a laugh track filling the room from the sitcom that was on. She hopes Laurel gets the message that she should take her exit now but she looks over and Laurel has her arms folded as well, tossing her hair over shoulder, like she’s saying,
Well, I’m not leaving.
It’s childish what ensues next, Laurel kicking out her legs so that she takes up the rest of the couch, legs in Michaela’s lap. Michaela growls and shoves at them to no avail, huffing and sinking deeper into her blanket, trying to ignore the warmth in her stomach.
After ten minutes they actually start paying attention to the show and Laurel finds one of the gags so funny that she does that terrible snicker-giggle again. Michaela contains a laugh in a snort and straightens out her face but Laurel notices.
“What was that?”
“Me???” Michaela gapes, indignant but smirking. “What about you?” She mimics Laurel’s snicker-giggle terribly making herself laugh, and Laurel pouts.
“I do not sound like that.”
Michaela continues to laugh up until she snorts. At this Laurel’s eyes widen and she starts snickering again which....makes Michaela keep snorting and they’re just a mess.
Michaela nods off a bit after that, head resting back on the couch and Laurel soon after.
--
Laurel wakes to Michaela’s feet jamming into her right armpit, her head on the opposite arm of the couch. Her mouth is wide open, and she’s snoring softly her arms hanging over the couch’s edge.
So refined, Laurel thinks, snickering softly. Apparently not softly enough because Michaela’s eyelids twitch, her eyebrows screwing down and Laurel can tell she’s at least partly awake because her snoring halts. She still doesn’t open her eyes but her arms lift slowly to make sure her head-wrap is still in place.
Laurel sees the flex of Michaela’s bicep, is reminded of how toned Michaela is and zones out slightly. Michaela kicks her in the side and Laurel realizes with a grunt that she’s missed something Michaela said. Her eyes are open and bleary and she has a sweet smile on her face.
“Thinking of leavin’ anytime soon?” Michaela asks pointedly, her southern accent faint but there.
“‘Leavin’?” Laurel rasps teasingly and gets two feet kicking her in the ribs repeatedly until she tumbles rather ungracefully off the couch.
She does have class in 45 minutes though, she realizes looking down at her phone and leaves in a rush. By the time the door swings shut, Michaela’s already falling back asleep with a smile on her face.