What I Need- a Hank Voight Chicago PD fanfiction

Stepped

Lana woke with a groan, face smushed into her pillow, light streaming through a poorly closed shade. Her hair had come lose and her top knot lay like a wet sock across her face.

She growled at it, pushed herself up and blinked at the sunlight that someone needed to turn off.

Panic hit her a moment later.

She was late.

Lana collapsed back in bed as another realization followed.

It was Saturday.

She rolled off of the comforter, watching the room wobble as she stood up. Normally she held her alcohol just fine. But she hadn't eaten before hitting the bar with Antonio, drowned her thoughts a little too fast and she was paying for it now.

She shuffled to the door, entire body feeling like it was getting pulled into the floor.

The coffee pot sputtered, dishes in the sink watching her and she pretended not to notice them. She wasn't in the mood to tidy up.

She poured a cup and downed half of it black, her face screwing up at the taste. A knock at her door had peering through the peephole. The uniformed back of a delivery guy walking away was all she saw and Lana tugged the door open.

A package lay in the hall. Odd, considering she hadn't ordered anything. She carried it in, setting her coffee down on the table by the door.

The return address read Sunset Cafe. A tiny little bakery near her old apartment in Miami. She would stop in before shift every morning. Grab a coffee and a pastry that Eric never approved of. Sugar, apparently, was not a breakfast item. But he would meet her there anyway. Order a coffee with the sandwich he had gotten down the street. They would walk to the precinct and start shift together.

She opened it slowly, inhaling that warm scent of vanilla. A card lay on top. A "thinking of you" note from the sender.

Hope they're as good as you remember. Try to wait until at least lunch.

It wasn't signed. It didn't need to be.

Eric had sent her her favorite pastry. A literal taste of home and Lana blinked at it uncomprehendingly. What in the actual-

"You aware you left your door open?"

Lana jerked, and uttered a word that would have had her mother taking off her sandal. Voight stood in her doorway, and his lips quirked at her outburst.

"Bad time?"

Lana pinched the bridge of her nose. There was a dull thud happening repeatedly in the back of her skull and she couldn't think.

"Why, uh, why are you here?"

Voight's arms folded, "After last night," his shoulders lifted. "We should talk."

Last night?... it was painfully difficult to understand what he was talking about.

Lana's hand dropped as she remembered.

Last night. She had told him everything. Eric. The accident. The pills.

She didn't remember him leaving, anything else she may have said. That had come after, after she had exhausted herself with the kind of tears you wished no one ever had to see. After he had held her. That she remembered. The sheer relief of having it out there. A secret fermented by how long she had kept it inside.

But now she was facing the consequences of that, and she had no idea what they were going to be.

Lana's brows tented, hands fingering the sides of her long t-shirt. It was the same one she had been wearing, the night he had showed up at her door. When she had learned about Justin. When Voight had shut down any ounce of compassion she wanted to show.