Title: "Incidental"
Author: angel_grace
Rating: PG
Pairing: Cooper/Violet
Spoilers: Spoilers through "In Which Sam Receives An Unexpected Visitor".
Summary: They're best friends, and don't those always make the best lovers?
Disclaimer: Private Practice was created by Shonda Rhimes. The characters aren't mine, but they're the reason I keep watching.

People say that men and women can't be just friends, that it always turns into something sexual, but Cooper isn't buying it. He and Violet have been friends for years, and they've never so much as kissed. Sure, there have been friendly pecks on the cheek and the occasional comforting kiss on the forehead, but no honest to God, lip to lip contact.

It's not like he hasn't thought about it. He has. He's a guy, and she's beautiful, not to mention smart and funny and his best friend in the world. Sure, she's also a little crazy and not so good with the concept of closure, but he finds it endearing when she takes a hacksaw to a $6000-dollar bike that she bought for a man who got married less than two months after dumping her. He helps her, of course, because what are best friends for if not wielding hand tools in silent witness to the end of a relationship? And if, when it's all over, he wants to wrap his arms around her and never let go, never let anyone hurt her again, well, that's just what friends do.

In the end, he does let her go, because that's what she wants and that's what she expects. They finish the bottle of wine, and he makes her laugh with stories about his latest psychotic internet date. At least this one didn't steal his car. They sit on the couch and turn on the television, and she falls asleep halfway through Conan. He drapes a blanket over her, kisses her on the forehead, and goes home alone.


After The Bike Incident, as Cooper starts calling it in his head, Violet seems better. Almost back to normal. Fewer stalker tendencies. She hasn't spontaneously burst into tears in over a month, which he takes as a good sign.

They settle into a routine on Tuesday nights, eating takeout and drinking wine at her place, watching whatever lame chick flick she has from NetFlix. After a while, the routine spreads to more than just Tuesdays, and three months in it occurs to him that he can't remember his last date. He resists the urge to fall into a blind panic, choosing instead to cancel on Vi the following Tuesday. He spends the evening chatting online with "CandyKisses72" and wishing he was eating Chinese and watching Jennifer Garner.

The next day at work, Vi smiles at him and asks him how his night was, and it makes him feel even worse. He grins through the guilt and spins a tale about Candy and her myriad promises of sexual bliss. Violet rolls her eyes and laughs the way she always does, and he wants to bash his head against the wall.

That afternoon, Addison stops him in the hall and asks him if he's ever going to tell Violet he loves her. He laughs and tells her that all the rain in Seattle must've waterlogged her brain, and resists the urge to go throw up.

He makes it through the day without losing his lunch or making an idiot of himself with Violet, and at five o'clock he leans against the door of her office. She smiles and nods when he asks if she has anything starring Reese Witherspoon, and when he sits next to her on the couch that night, he tells himself he isn't pathetic for being her best buddy when he wants to be so much more.


It's been nearly a year since Addison joined the practice, and while some things have changed, most have stayed the same. Cooper can still make his patients laugh, or at least smile, even if it means bribing them with lollipops. Hell, he's not a dentist. He's had a few more meaningless relationships with women who are borderline psychotic, but at least none of them have committed any felonies. That he knows of, anyway. He still spends his Tuesday nights on Violet's couch, despite her insistence on watching the entire John Hughes-Molly Ringwald ouevre. He knows he'll never be Jake Ryan.

Jake Ryan would have told her he loved her by now.

It's another Tuesday when he walks out of his office and sees a couple standing by the reception desk. The woman is obviously pregnant, and he assumes they're here to see Addison. It's only when the man turns that he realizes who it is.

The patient file in his hand forgotten, he strides over to the man who broke Violet's heart. "What the hell are you doing here, Alan?"

The other man sighs. "Cooper. Of course. If you must know, we have an appointment with Dr. Montgomery."

"Find another doctor," he practically growls.

"Now be reasonable. We're all adults here..."

Cooper grabs his shirts and yanks. "Reasonable? After what you did to her? You broke her, Alan, and left me to pick up the pieces. And now you show up here and want me to be reasonable?"

His fingers are itching to punch the guy, but then he hears Violet say, "Alan? What are you doing..."

The words die on her lips when she catches sight of Cammi's pregnant belly. Releasing Alan, Cooper turns around and sees her stricken face.

"Let's just go," Cammi says quietly, and if Alan responds, Cooper doesn't hear it. All his attention is on Violet, her eyes wide and shocked. He walks over to her, wraps his arm around her shoulders, and guides her out of the building.

She doesn't say a word as they get in his car, or the entire drive to her house, and he can feel the panic bubbling up inside him. He'd thought it was over, that Alan was finally in the past, that Violet was healed.

He unlocks the front door with his key, because her purse is still back at the office. When they sit down on the couch, she finally says, "He always told me he didn't want kids."

His arm goes around her shoulders again, and he pulls her close. "Vi, don't do this to yourself. He's not worth it."

"I know. I know he's not. I just didn't expect this."

"I can't believe he showed up like that. What an ass."

"All that ever mattered to Alan was what he wanted. Everyone else be damned."

"He was an idiot to let you go."

"And I was an idiot to want him back."

She's not crying, which is a good sign. "So are you going to be okay?"

She tilts her head back to look at him. "Do I have a choice?"

He smiles and kisses her forehead. "Not on my watch."

They end up splitting a pint of Häagen-Dazs butter pecan and watching Pirates of the Caribbean for about the thirty-fifth time. It's an easy movie to agree on, since he gets to ogle Keira Knightley while she sighs dreamily over Johnny Depp. When the ice cream is gone, they order a pizza and put in the second movie, because they can never seem to watch one without turning it into a marathon.

It's nearly midnight by the time Captain Jack sets off on his next adventure, and Vi is asleep with her head on his shoulder. Cooper knows he should go home, but he doesn't want to leave her alone tonight. He gets off the couch without waking her, and gently shifts her body so she's lying down. Once he gets her covered with a blanket, he sets up camp in the easy chair, watching her sleep for nearly an hour before falling asleep himself.


When Cooper and Violet walk into the office together the next morning, Addison's eyebrows shoot up so fast they practically leap off her forehead. She allows enough time for them to get coffee and check e-mail before barging in on Violet.

Closing the door dramatically behind her, she says, "Okay, spill."

Violet looks up in surprise. "Excuse me?"

"Oh, come on. You and Cooper? You left together, you came in together, and I know those are the same pants he had on yesterday."

"Why are you paying attention to Cooper's pants?"

"Violet!"

"Nothing happened, Addison. We watched movies and ate junk food. I fell asleep on the couch. He slept in a chair. I mean, seriously. It's Cooper."

"Exactly. It's Cooper. And you."

"He's my friend, and you're imagining things."

"Am I? Because if I had a friend who looked at me the way Cooper looks at you, I'd be having sex with him. A lot of sex. Several times a day."

"Now you're just being ridiculous. And possibly horny."

"I'm serious, Violet. Cooper might be your best friend, but he looks at you like you're every internet dream girl he's ever met all rolled into one. He's not going to wait forever, though."

The look on Violet's face was a mixture of panic and fear, and Addison wondered if she had gone too far. It was obvious the two of them needed a swift kick in the ass, but maybe she had kicked a little too hard.

Violet didn't say anything, and Addison stood up. "I'll let you think about...everything. See you at the staff meeting."

Violet spent the rest of the day avoiding eye contact with Cooper, because she was afraid that if she looked at him she'd start picturing him naked. While she was studiously not looking at Cooper, she thought up a multitude of ways to kill Addison. One of them involved rabid ferrets.

Unfortunately, there was no avoiding Cooper when she came back from the break room and found him sitting at her desk.

"So I was thinking about picking up Thai on the way home. Care to join me, or will you still be busy pretending I don't exist?"

She grimaced. "You picked up on that?"

"Hard not to, with you refusing to talk to me earlier. What's going on, Vi?"

"Nothing. It's just something Addison said earlier."

"About me?"

"About us. She thought that when we came in together this morning, that we were...together."

He hesitated for a moment, twirling a pen absently between his fingers. "Is that really such a bad thing?"

She sat down hard in a chair. This was not good. Very, very not good. He was Cooper, and she was Violet, and they were so dysfunctional alone that together they could only be a disaster. "Cooper..."

"What? You're my best friend, Vi. Isn't that how the best love stories are supposed to start?"

He saw her flinch at the word "love." "Not this time. Please don't do this, Coop."

He stood up and walked around the desk, crouching down in front of her. "Is it that horrible of a thought?"

No. No, it wasn't horrible. It was incredibly tempting. This was Cooper, her best friend, the person she trusted most in the world. She already knew he loved her; why couldn't he be in love with her? "We can't," she said.

"Why not?"

"I've driven away every man I've ever loved. I won't risk losing you."

He brushed her hair out of her eyes. "You couldn't lose me if you tried, Vi."

"I'm not willing to take that chance. I'm sorry."

He straightened up, shoved his hands in his pockets. "Okay. So...Thai food?"

She blinked up at him. "That's it?"

"I told you, I'm not going anywhere. Except for Thai."

"Not tonight. Rain check?"

"Sure. Night, Violet."

"Night."


It's been two months since The Awkward Confession of Feelings Incident, which really doesn't roll off the tongue the same way as The Bike Incident. But Cooper isn't in this relationship to come up with snappy titles, so he sticks with the description.

They still have their Tuesday nights, but he knows it's not an accident that there's always a seat cushion between them on the couch. She makes sure not to fall asleep before the end of the movie, and he doesn't crash in the easy chair anymore.

In an odd twist, he met a woman online who seems pretty normal. She has an ex-husband and a three-year-old daughter, and they've been on four dates without having sex, kinky or otherwise. Last weekend they took Bailey to the zoo, and he watched the little girl watch the giraffes and remembered how much he wants to have kids.

She's not Violet, and he knows he's nowhere near over his best friend, but he thinks that maybe, in time, he could fall in love with Maggie. Which makes it sound an awful lot like work, and it really shouldn't be, because falling in love with Violet was the easiest thing in the world. And the hardest, once the whole rejection thing happened.

Violet knows about Maggie in a peripheral sense, but she doesn't ask and he doesn't offer, and it's just one more brick in the wall that they're slowly managing to build in between them. He won't walk away, he'd never walk away, but that doesn't mean things are the same.

It's a Thursday afternoon, and Violet pokes her head in his office. "You free for dinner tonight? I have a taste for Mexican."

"I can't, sorry."

She pauses, doesn't leave. "Plans with Maggie?"

"Yeah. We're taking Bailey out for pizza."

"It seems like things are going well between you two."

He's surprised; this is the most she's wanted to talk about his love life since before The Incident. "Yeah, she's great. No criminal record, either. And Bailey's a sweet kid."

She smiles, and the selfish part of him thinks there might be a little hurt behind it. "I'm happy for you, Coop."

"Thanks."

She turns to leave, and the words slip out before he can stop himself. "She's not you, Vi."

She keeps walking.


The pint of Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie is half-empty and starting to melt, and the credits are rolling on Pirates of the Caribbean. She doesn't have the heart to put in the second movie, not alone. She could barely focus on the first one, her mind wandering to the idea of Cooper and Maggie and Bailey eating pizza and laughing together. Instant family. The one thing he's always wanted.

The doorbell rings, and she grabs her purse off the table. She ordered a pizza with anchovies, because Cooper hates them.

When she opens the door, there's no pizza. There's just Cooper, his hands in his pockets and his gaze to the sky.

"What are you doing here?"

He looks at her, his eyes tired and sad. "I thought maybe you'd still like to get some Mexican."

"What about Maggie?"

"She's still not you, Vi."

He and Violet have been friends for years, and they've never so much as kissed. Sure, there have been friendly pecks on the cheek and the occasional comforting kiss on the forehead, but no honest to God, lip to lip contact.

Until today.