Work Text:
She’s barely older than the students when she comes to work for Annalise. The senior associate treats her as one of them, someone to be dispatched on errands or saddled with boxes upon boxes of files that won’t hold any solutions but must be combed through nonetheless. Bonnie does what she’s told and more besides, accumulating extra jobs like buttons on a coat. She has an opportunity many pass within reach of, and waste; she will not end up on Annalise Keating’s reject pile.
Annalise likes to pretend she’s above noting the minutiae of every case - who pulls the key detail from endless reports, who coaxes a confession from the shy witness - but there is already enough unpredictability in the courtroom for her to allow it in the house. She lets them compete for her attention, already well aware of who is disposable and who is not.
Bonnie has yet to realise that. What she knows is that Annalise uses people up all the time, cycling through clients, interns, rivals, enemies, her ever-growing list of victories the only reliable constant. She knows Annalise does not need another student; she knows how young she looks, soft and fragile like a china doll.
She picks out a brighter shade of lipstick.
***
They’re a few days out from a big trial, and Annalise is sequestered in her office with the other associate. The glass can’t contain their argument, raised voices spilling out now and then like a radio without a steady signal. Bonnie hears enough to know it’s turning ugly, but she’s found something crucial to the case so she stays, keeps working under her little circle of lamplight, waiting for the right moment.
Sam comes home at some point, wanders over to say hello; he’s tired but he always spares time for her. The voices rise again, breaking into their small-talk.
“What’s going on in there?”
“I don’t know, I - ”
They both look up as the office door opens, discharging the other woman who spits back one last retort before storming from the house. Sam breaks the stunned silence, ventures towards the battlefield.
“Annie?”
She tries not to listen in on their murmurings; she feels like a child crouched on a staircase, overhearing things that aren’t for her to know.
“Bonnie? You still there?”
She unfolds herself from the chair, her steps careful as if the floor is strewn with splintered bones. She hesitates in the doorway, but Annalise has cleaned her sword and put her professional face back on. Well, almost; she’s leaning against her desk, clutching a glass of vodka.
“I find myself suddenly short an associate. I need to know you can handle the extra load.” She’s redrawing the lines, like a general closing the ranks of her army.
“Of course.”
“It’s a lot of work,” Annalise says.
“I can manage.”
(She’s already doing the hours.)
“Good. Now go home and get some rest, or you’ll be of no use to me.”
She’s almost out of the line of fire when Annalise calls after her.
“You heard most of that, didn’t you?”
They both know the answer.
“She’s not wrong about me. What I do to people. You still sure you want to stay?”
Annalise is seeking reassurance for the third time in as many minutes. Bonnie gives it to her freely.
She has nowhere else to go.
***
They win that case, and the next, and the next. Annalise stops talking about hiring someone new. It would make it easier on both of them but things are clearly going well, and Annalise has never been interested in easy. They’re unstoppable and they know it.
That’s when the phone call comes.
Bonnie’s expecting DNA results, and it takes her a moment to make sense of ‘parole hearing.’ Her centre of gravity lurches, as if there’s still a hook in her heart.
“Was that the lab? Do we need to change our angle?” Annalise calls from her office. Bonnie is too slow to register that she’s spoken, and Annalise, who hasn’t the patience to wait for something so important, emerges from her office before she can get her guard up again.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” she says, but her hands are trembling as she replaces the phone.
“Don’t lie to me. Tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it.”
Annalise is being gentle, as if expecting her to bolt. She treats witnesses this way occasionally, ones who’d be reduced to tears by any other approach, but Bonnie should be tougher than that.
“Talk to me, Bonnie.”
She can’t tell her.
She can’t lie to her, either.
“It was about another case.”
“What other case?”
“Mine,” she says, choking up. She can’t break down, not here, not ever, but she can feel the years of self-reliance peeling away as if she never really grew up, and the only thing that scares her more than that is for Annalise to watch it happen.
It’s inevitable, really. In a matter of weeks Annalise knows exactly how brittle she is, has seen all the scars of where she’s been broken before. By then it doesn’t scare her anymore that Annalise, who people say has no heart, holds Bonnie’s in her hand. She knows her demons, and Annalise isn’t one of them.
***
The Keatings know how to use people. They’ve been using each other for years; it’s not the steadiest foundation for a marriage. There’s enough self-delusion in the mix to maintain the sense of stability, but occasionally a real stab of recognition will break through and upset the balance.
Bonnie doesn’t know what this fight is about, only that it’s serious enough for Annalise to banish Sam. It’s the end of summer and the house is empty, no students from which to hide the secrets piling up in the corners like empty-eyed skulls. Annalise keeps taking cases as if nothing’s happened and Bonnie follows her lead, leaving Sam an uneasy presence, a lingering shadow that doesn’t quite fall where it should.
It’s one of those countless late nights, streetlamps radiating orange light through windows they’d been too preoccupied to close. The two of them are side-by-side, flicking through the reports, searching for that one discrepancy to tear down the prosecution. Bonnie shifts slightly. She doesn’t like casual intrusions into her space, not even from Annalise who is not quite her boss and not quite her friend but has been there longer than any other.
“Where are the original statements?” Annalise says. “I need to know when the mother went out.”
“You think she heard something?”
“Maybe,” Annalise says, “just find me what each of the brothers said in their first interviews.”
“They all claim it was before anything happened,” Bonnie says.
“How do they define ‘anything?’” Annalise says, sure she has found a line she could make work. (She’s running out of other options.)
“It’s hard to tell, the chronology is a mess. But these can’t all be right, on the stand - ”
“Someone’s lying.” Annalise grins like the Cheshire Cat, her teeth a disembodied flash of white in the darkness.
“It’s the youngest one,” Bonnie says, already on the same page. “Here.”
She pulls out the offending document, the last thing they need to cinch the case - a hellishly complicated one both will be glad to see the end of. Annalise delivers the crushing blow with the grim satisfaction of an executioner. She’s still in that mood when she tells Bonnie to come over that night to help her drink an expensive bottle of wine, never expecting she might decline. Annalise desperately needs something to celebrate, and someone to celebrate with; she’s only asking Bonnie because Sam isn’t there.
She knows, and she goes anyway. Annalise proves her right when, doubly drunk on the win and the wine, she kisses her. From there it’s only another sculled glass before they’re fumbling at hemlines, Annalise shoving aside stacks of paper to make room on the desk. They scatter across the floor like the debris of a hurricane. (Bonnie assumes it’s out of impatience. Later she realises they never use the bed; Annalise never lets sex be comfortable.)
“Annalise, what is this?” she asks after the fourth time, as she’s buttoning up her blouse. There’s a habit forming. She doesn’t want to break the enchantment by drawing attention to it, but she needs definition; they’ve broken so many boundaries she needs to know if there are any left, or if they are about to snap back into place the moment a better option presents itself.
“You need me to spell it out for you?” Annalise says. “You’re here, Sam’s not.”
“Is that all?”
“Bonnie, that’s everything,” Annalise says. “When have you ever betrayed me?”
(Right now, Bonnie thinks. Sam called her that morning, again, entreating her to talk to Annalise on his behalf.
“She won’t listen to me,” he’d said, “but she listens to you.”
“Not about this,” she’d replied, and hung up.
She wants to tell Annalise to be done with Sam instead of pretending time apart will solve anything, but she’s afraid that this, her and Annalise, exists only in the limbo between Sam and whoever comes next. Annalise never touches her in the light of day, and it is all too easy to consign to the night things that never fully exist – things one is afraid to speak of.)
(For Annalise, night is hallowed ground, the one place she can take off her armour. It is something she allows few to witness; now, only Bonnie.)