AN: I didn't really want to post this here as a drabble but then I got some ideas and now I'm making this a few chapters long thing. It shouldn't take long for me to post the actual first chapter.

Also, thanks to everyone who reviewed my other fic, I really appreciate it.

Prologue

Sometimes she wonders if they're doing it all wrong. It happens when she's sitting alone in the dark of her apartment, a wine glass in her hand. It happens when her mother calls and asks if there are news to tell but she just cannot wait to hung up the phone. Mostly it happens when he sneaks out of her bed, in the very first hours of the morning, without nothing more than a smirk and a whispered 'see you later'.

(She remembers pretending to be asleep the first few times that happened but despite her acting skills she knew she couldn't fool him so she just stopped.)

They like to pretend they are friends. She tells herself they are not. If they were, they wouldn't be able to do this without consequences. But they're not lovers either, that she knows.

Sometimes she thinks about the first few months of working together. Things were easier and lighter, he was just a boy and she was just a girl. Their lives were uncomplicated. How they got to this point, she does not know, but none of them is keen to put a label on what they are doing so she'll just have to bear with that.

And it's not like she has the strength to stop, even if she'd want.

She tried once. When he asked at what time he had to stop by, she had told him she was having a date. She got dressed, she went out and had fun but then she took a cab just outside her condo and told the driver his address. On the way up she kept thinking about the chances of finding some other woman in those same sheets her body had been tangled in that morning, she knocked on his door and bit her lower lip while waiting. He opened the door and laughed. He knew the night was going to end like that, he said. She hated herself a little for being so easy to read but as he pushed her on his bed and his tongue made her body shudder, she decided that was something she could live with.

They never talked about the possibility of a relationship, of a life together. They still get to wake up in their own beds when the alarms go off in the morning.

They are not in love. And they are aware they even stopped being friends at some point.

He thinks about telling her he wants more but he's afraid she'll run away and he found out years before he is not able to function without her besides him. But sometimes he dreams about this garden and him waiting at the end of an aisle wearing a tuxedo. Sometimes he gets to see her, dressed in white, as she walks down the aisle with her father. Her dress is exactly the same in every dream. There is also this red-headed baby fantasy which he has been having since he met her and he remembers how scared he was about that because he never thought he would have ever settled down before her. He thinks she would make a great mom and he would make a great dad (with her around).

When she told Rachel about her night activities she had gasped, shaken her head and said she was going to get hurt.
She felt injured by the younger woman's comment. "I do not have feelings for him."
When the paralegal didn't even answer she added that maybe he was the one who was going to get hurt.

What they both know is that they have reached a point where they're codependent. He can't be a lawyer without her and she can't even consider the idea of getting another job.

But they also need each other at night. He needs to feel her grip on his hair, her touch on his skin, to hear her gasping and screaming his name as she reaches her high. She needs to feel his hands on her hips, his fingers in her locks, to hear his whisperings between her lips.

They fear the moment they will have to come clean with their feelings. They tell themselves they are not in love even if they know they are lying. They are not even friends anymore but pretending to be is a thing they silently agree on.