[fic] Not Broken, Just Bent
Title: Not Broken, Just Bent
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Will & Alicia POV; Will/Alicia (some Will/Isabel)
Word Count: ~3900
Rating/Warnings: R
Spoilers: Everything through 5x10 "The Decision Tree."
Summary:
Author's notes: Because I always have, and always will, ship Will and Alicia, period. Title lifted from P!nk's "Just Give Me a Reason."
Will has never been successful in the love department.
Obviously.
In the sex department? Aces. In the getting a woman to come home with him? Check. In the having a fantastic time that doesn't extend past a few months? No problem.
And for all that he's "tried" with various women over the years, the only one he ever wanted to go the distance with is, well, being escorted from his building right this moment, and he's not sure if air coming in and going out of his lungs has ever been this painful.
He's not sure if he's walking around so much as floating from place to place, some sort of automatic pilot kicking in and self-preservation making his every decision so rapidly he feels like he's on fire.
Literally.
Alicia Florrick just wiped the floor with his heart, and her parting shot? This was never meant personally.
He's not sure he's ever heard a bigger lie, and he's a lawyer for Christ's sake.
Alicia's brother is one of those guys that Will has always liked but not been able to actually be friends with, for good reason. There had always been an invisible line, even when they were sleeping together--or perhaps especially when they were sleeping together. If any of Alicia's family came in, he wasn't really supposed to connect with them.
It was an unspoken rule.
(Like most of what was between them.)
But Owen, Owen was just someone he would have naturally gravitated to, regardless of the circumstances under which they met.
So when he comes and pleads Alicia's case, the case she wouldn't want him to plead, Will can barely listen to it. He can't take the words of a man he knows is pure, whose sole intention is just to deliver his sister to a happy place.
(He doesn't want to hear said aloud what he's always known, somehow.)
Because he has known it, always. When she broke things off with him; when she cried and said she was sorry. When she said she would miss him. It had never been what it should have been about--the break up that is. They were never apart because they wanted to be, and no matter how much he tried to convince himself that it was just him who wanted things back the way they had been, there had always been something in her eyes that told him she wanted it, too.
(And then there had been her lips on his, twice, and promises to talk it all out when time allowed.
And then there had just been anger unlike anything he'd ever known and Alicia alone in an elevator, going away from him forever.
Because there was no coming back from this. There isn't.)
Isabel is good in bed.
Will must tell himself this twenty times a day, as if thinking the mantra will somehow make what he's doing with her matter to him.
It doesn't matter. He doesn't give a flying fuck about her.
And he knows it. Since Alicia came back into his life, they've all just been placeholders. Every single one, even Tammy, even Laura. The ones he truly liked, the ones he could talk to for hours on end, the ones that he didn't just fuck.
They weren't her, they never would be her, and for all that's holy, he had to admit it, at least to himself.
(It was either that, or call Kalinda to have her come over and bullshit meter him, and he doesn't think he can survive that. She's always looked at him with a tinge of pity when it came to Alicia, as though she understood much too easily what it felt like to love someone from the depth of your guts and not be able to have them, at all.)
The thing was, when Alicia made partner at Lockhart Gardner, he did have her. In some weird way, she was his, she was bound to him, to the firm, and he knew the depth and breadth of her loyalty. She would do anything for him--for Lockhart Gardner. She would work harder than all the associates, and put everything she was into every case, and she would sit beside him in court and give him strength. In every way that mattered, in every way that he could have her, she was his.
Willingly.
She paid $150,000 to make it so.
When Diane began to make noises about leaving, it was obvious who would take her place. David Lee might have thought it was him, but Will had always known. If any name changed on the door, it would been Alicia's for Diane's, and nobody else's.
It would have been the partnership he could have had with her, the one that was respectable, legal, binding. Peter might have her nights, but he would have her days, her work ethic, her inability to do the wrong thing without discussing it with him first, to know that confidentiality was the creed and motto they held fast to.
It would have been enough.
(It would never have been what he wanted, but it would have been fucking enough.)
So, yeah, when Diane quietly pointed out all the evidence that showed just what Alicia was doing, the treachery was something more than the cliche of if she cheats on her husband with you, who will she betray you for?
Because Alicia wasn't an adulterer, not in the sense that other people were. Not in the way that Peter had been. Will's no king of ethics, but he knew what happened between them had not been that. He knew she hadn't been sleeping with Peter when she had been sleeping with him, and he knows she hasn't slept with anyone else in the interim. Only her husband, and only Will Gardner.
He just knows it, and he would swear to it in a court of law.
But leaving with Cary? Taking ChumHum? Saying it wasn't meant personally? Who the actual fuck did she think she was talking to when she said that?
Owen hadn't said anything that Will didn't already know; it was simply easier to hate her, because to understand her had crippled him. Would cripple him.
Hate gave him power and purpose; hate put him on a track to ruthlessness that put pep in his step and blood in his dick. He could fuck Isabel into the mattress and not give a shit that she wasn't brunette, and wide-lipped, and unbelievably beautiful as she declared how happy she was to be in his arms, in his lap, in his life.
Isabel leaves town the week of New Years, and Will gets dangerously drunk at the office party. When he wakes up at home, in his own bed, with no recollection of how he got there, he rolls over to find a Kalinda-esque note on his bedside table.
I got you home without too much embarrassment. Sleep it off, there's tomato juice in the fridge and ibuprofen on the counter. Also, the Governor took the kids skiing for the weekend. Alicia is home alone. Just FYI.
It isn't signed, but he's very familiar with her handwriting after all these years.
He limps into the bathroom and pukes.
Alicia spends New Years Day afternoon going over a brief and drinking a glass of red wine. Zach had texted her earlier to tell her they were having a great time at the ski lodge, and she could happily not worry about Grace interacting with some guy inappropriately since Peter's entourage had accompanied them. It would be the most guarded ski trip in the history of ski trips, and she was perfectly fine with that.
The brief is long and boring and the perfect distraction from any serious thought about the impact the last few months has had on her psyche. She had been craving some quiet time alone only to find that three days without her children gave her far too many moments of regret, and loneliness for something she couldn't quite identify.
It had been a very rough transition. Lockhart Gardner to Florrick, Agos, and Associates had not gone in any way that she envisioned. Then again, she hadn't spent much time thinking it through beyond the need to just not be there every day; to not see Will every moment, to not know that there was always another late night occasion awaiting her where she would be alone with him, where the emotion that boiled between them would have room to froth over and scald everything in its path.
At least now the destruction was purely work-related. That was something she could focus on, one case at a time, one more begrudging look of respect in his eyes at a time, one more moment where he was the enemy, not her comrade in arms. It hadn't been what she planned, but it had gone perfectly anyway. It had achieved what no discussion between them ever would.
It had severed everything for good.
She was glad.
She is glad.
(She is miserable.)
A knock at the door abruptly brings her back to the present moment, to the brief in her lap and the glass in her hand. She should call Peter and ask him to cut the trip short. Come home a day early so they can have one day together as a family before work and school obligations drag them away again. It's a perfectly logical request.
Besides, he'll do whatever she wants. That is the new and improved Peter Florrick, after all.
She sets her glass and brief down on the coffee table and gets up to answer the door. She's not expecting anyone, but her mother and Owen both are known for just turning up without an invitation, and at this point she'd be thankful for either of them.
Opening the door to Will Gardner is a shock, to say the least.
He doesn't look good; or rather, despite the fact that her heart tightens and starts beating faster at seeing him, it's not because he looks happy. He looks awful, his face drawn, his eyes sad. He looks like she feels, and all she wants to do is shut the door because whatever is about to happen will not be good.
(It might be wonderful, though.)
Maybe he can tell that's her wish, because one of his hands comes up to rest flatly against the wood, keeping the door wide open. "Can we talk?" he asks.
Alicia has a montage of all the times he excused her before, of all the times they said they would have this conversation, but he let her run from it. He had always been so deferential, and she realizes now, he was doing everything he could to ensure he never hurt her, in anyway. But ever since she hurt him, all bets had been off, and the times he had come at her full force, with the intention of ripping her heart out, the only pain she could feel was his.
She had done all of this so he could hate her, and in the end she had just managed to hate herself. Her regrets had never been about Will, or the time she'd been with him. She had loved every moment between them. Her regret was that it couldn't be, it never would be what it really should have been.
It would never be what he deserved.
She jerks awake, the wine glass long spilled on her rug and the boring brief ruined. She springs to her feet, the dream-Will in her mind so tangible, she wouldn't be surprised to whip her head around and see him standing in her living room.
But he's not there. She's alone. She's alone, but not, his face etched into her brain in the worst way, and a desire to wipe the abject devastation from it stronger than any feeling she's had in recent months.
Even stronger than the voice in her head that had told her to run fast and run hard, and do whatever she had to so that he would never want her again.
She's out the door with her coat over her arm before she even knows what she'll say to him.
In the dream, he had stood on her doorstep, but in reality, this is the way it should be. Her, there, hoping he'll even let her in once he realizes who has rung the bell. She wouldn't blame him if he didn't give her thirty seconds, much less five minutes, and she really doesn't know why she's doing this, other than to clear her own conscience, which is a less than stellar reason to do anything, ultimately.
She thinks of Peter, confessing only because his hand was forced, and she almost smiles in bitter reconciliation. In some ways, she is the Peter to Will's Alicia, if only in the vastness of the injury. Her crime was selfishness, and her recompense would be honesty.
(If he'll let her in.)
The door slowly opens, and she realizes he didn't check the peephole, because his eyebrows go up in surprise. He doesn't look like the Will in her dream; he looks worse, his eyes bloodshot, his skin carrying a faintly green tint.
Alicia can't help herself, she just blurts out, "Are you ill?" before he asks her what the hell she's doing here, or any other pleasantries can be exchanged.
His lips twist in the semblance of a grimacy-smile, and he nods. "A few too many at the office party. Nothing terminal." His eyes search her face, and she expects to see anger come over his features, but he looks curious more than anything else. His eyebrows go up again and he says, "I wasn't expecting you...like, ever."
Alicia feels her cheeks flame and she looks down at her hands which are gloved to fight the cold weather, but also clenching and unclenching in nervousness. She clears her throat. "Yes, I was afraid...if I called ahead, you wouldn't open the door. So I took a chance."
He leans his head on the edge of the door, and his expression grows thoughtful. "Been taking a lot of those lately," he murmurs. The words are conversational, almost intimate, and she's sure they're not supposed to make her stomach tighten, but they do anyway.
(This is why she'd left, this right here. It was nothing at all, and she wants him more than she's ever wanted anyone or anything.)
"Yes," she says, unable to come up with something more clever. She inclines her head, and he reads the question without her having to ask. Stepping back, he pulls the door further open and gestures for her to come in.
He follows her into the living room and as she's tugging off her gloves to shove them into her pockets, he asks, "I presume this isn't business? I mean, this is the first week since you left LG that we haven't seen each other in court for one reason or another." He chuckles softly as he moves around her to sit on the sofa. "Strange, how we've seen each other more since the break-up, huh? Ironic," he muses quietly, almost to himself.
Alicia has never felt more uncomfortable. This was definitely the worst idea she's ever had--ever. And she's had several of them lately. But this, this was so stupid, she almost can't remember why she had come.
Almost.
"Will," she begins, plunging in before she can chicken out. "I need to tell you something."
He leans back against the couch. As he's slouching down into the cushions, Alicia has a rather violent assault of memory; the two of them on that couch, Will beneath her, his fingers digging into her lower back as he brought her down hard on himself. It had been a busy week, and they hadn't had any alone time for several days. That encounter had been hard and fast, with her skirt around her waist and the zipper of his trousers gouging the soft skin of her inner thigh.
Neither of them had cared, though, and Will had just used the red mark as an excuse to thoroughly explore her with his tongue after they had recovered from round one.
(With them, there were always multiple rounds.)
Alicia closes her eyes as the full memory invades her mind. She had bitten her bottom lip bloody in an effort not to say the words that teetered on the edge of her tongue. Will had just thought he was extremely good at giving head.
(Which he was.)
"Alicia?" he asks now, and her eyes pop open. From his uneasy expression, she can tell an odd amount of time has passed.
"What?" she says automatically, which just causes his eyebrows to go up again, and she shakes her head. "No, I'm sorry, never mind. I just..." She glances around frantically, trying to find something to steady herself. What was she thinking, coming here? What did she think she could achieve? Did she really think it would make things better if she confessed?
It was too late now to back out, even if Will had no idea what had drawn her here in the first place. She takes a deep breath and smooths her hand down flat against her stomach, the buttons of her winter coat pressing back into her palm.
"This is probably going to do more harm than good, but I just need to say it. To tell you, to explain. I hurt you, I know. I never intended things to go the way they have, but to be completely honest, I wanted it to be severe enough that you'd never--that we'd never be able to go back. And as crazy as it sounds, and trust me, I know it sounds insane, I left Lockhart Gardner because I love you. I love you, Will, and I know all my actions speak otherwise, but that's the base of it."
She takes an agonizing breath at the end, not even realizing how the air had been trapped in her lungs long before she started her speech. Her head is still spinning, and it could be lack of oxygen, or just a general aversion to the truth that she laid down.
(She still has no idea what she's doing here.)
Will straightens his stance on the couch, but remains where he is. His face morphs back and forth between pure incredulity and resigned acknowledgement, and Alicia feels more exposed than she did that day she stood in front of twenty cameras and held her husband's hand as he told Chicago, and all the world, just how he'd betrayed her.
In fact, suddenly she feels nausea rising up the back of her throat, and without a word, she turns and runs for his bathroom, because she knows this apartment quite well, even if it's been almost two years since she set foot in it. The remnants of the sandwich she had for lunch and half a glass of red wine hit the bottom of the toilet and Alicia hangs over it, unsure of what, if anything, might come up next.
Then she hears quietly behind her, "That's the last thing I expected to hear, and from the looks of it, it was the last thing you intended to say?"
His voice is kind, somehow, and she loves him all the more for it. Will can be mean when he wants to, or when he needs to, but he's not cruel.
That's why she fell in love with him.
Dragging her hand across her mouth, she sits back, sliding from her knees to her ass in a sideways movement that allows her to turn so their eyes can meet. "I'm sorry," she whispers. The tears are so sudden, all she can process is the abject humiliation of this moment. When he kneels next to her, she only feels gratitude that he doesn't try to take her in his arms, he simply reaches his hand out and squeezes her shoulder.
There are several long, quiet moments as she calms herself and blinks back her tears. Then when the silence has become loud and their eyes reconnect, he says very softly, "I love you, too, Alicia. Always have, always will, apparently."
Then his hand moves to caress her cheek, and he asks, "What does this mean, you coming here to say that?"
Without her planning it, Alicia's own hand comes up to cover his. "I'm not sure," she says, clearing her throat nervously. "I just...I just needed you to know."
Will has been in some dire situations in his lifetime. Most were his own fault; some were a hazard of the job.
None of them compared with Alicia Florrick sitting on his bathroom floor looking like death warmed over just because she loved him.
And yet, this might be the happiest he's ever felt.
(He probably won't tell her that, though.)
He wants to be noble and self-sacrificing. He wants to be able to say, Take all the time you need and I'll be here when you need me, but when he opens his mouth, what actually comes out is, "This is a one time offer: what you just said means something, and we're gonna do something about it, or you're going to leave, right now, and we're never going to talk about it ever again."
Then he adds the kicker: "You have five minutes to decide."
Why he's being a dick about it, he can't explain. He's only waited like four years for this moment, and he's totally ruining it. But at some point self-preservation became the only thing he had left, and he's holding on to it with everything he's got.
Alicia, for her part, sits silently, looking at him with so much trepidation, he knows that if he has to maintain eye contact with her for long, he's going to crumble. He's going to tell her he'll do whatever she wants, be whatever she needs, her piece on the side, her secret lover, the one that never gets to claim her openly; he'll do anything, just to have her, even a little bit, just like he did before. It's actually the perfect cover, two warring law firms, the senior partners of each at the others' throats for misappropriated clients, funds, and deeds; no one would ever guess that after hours they find their peace of mind in an orgasmic frenzy in each other's arms.
(Okay, Kalinda will know, but she's the only one.)
"Alicia--"
"I'm filing for divorce," she says suddenly, cutting him off. "Tomorrow." She nods her head emphatically, and scrambles back from his hand against her face. "First thing tomorrow, I'll file for divorce. That's what I'm doing about it."
She presses both her hands to her mouth, and tears suddenly appear in her eyes and tumble down her cheeks.
And then a huge smile overtakes her face, and she launches herself across the floor of his bathroom, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. She laughs joyfully in his ear, and asks, "Okay?"
Will would speak, but somehow the tears in his own eyes have clogged his throat.
So he just nods.
Author: badboy_fangirl
Characters/Pairings: Will & Alicia POV; Will/Alicia (some Will/Isabel)
Word Count: ~3900
Rating/Warnings: R
Spoilers: Everything through 5x10 "The Decision Tree."
Summary:
Author's notes: Because I always have, and always will, ship Will and Alicia, period. Title lifted from P!nk's "Just Give Me a Reason."
Will has never been successful in the love department.
Obviously.
In the sex department? Aces. In the getting a woman to come home with him? Check. In the having a fantastic time that doesn't extend past a few months? No problem.
And for all that he's "tried" with various women over the years, the only one he ever wanted to go the distance with is, well, being escorted from his building right this moment, and he's not sure if air coming in and going out of his lungs has ever been this painful.
He's not sure if he's walking around so much as floating from place to place, some sort of automatic pilot kicking in and self-preservation making his every decision so rapidly he feels like he's on fire.
Literally.
Alicia Florrick just wiped the floor with his heart, and her parting shot? This was never meant personally.
He's not sure he's ever heard a bigger lie, and he's a lawyer for Christ's sake.
Alicia's brother is one of those guys that Will has always liked but not been able to actually be friends with, for good reason. There had always been an invisible line, even when they were sleeping together--or perhaps especially when they were sleeping together. If any of Alicia's family came in, he wasn't really supposed to connect with them.
It was an unspoken rule.
(Like most of what was between them.)
But Owen, Owen was just someone he would have naturally gravitated to, regardless of the circumstances under which they met.
So when he comes and pleads Alicia's case, the case she wouldn't want him to plead, Will can barely listen to it. He can't take the words of a man he knows is pure, whose sole intention is just to deliver his sister to a happy place.
(He doesn't want to hear said aloud what he's always known, somehow.)
Because he has known it, always. When she broke things off with him; when she cried and said she was sorry. When she said she would miss him. It had never been what it should have been about--the break up that is. They were never apart because they wanted to be, and no matter how much he tried to convince himself that it was just him who wanted things back the way they had been, there had always been something in her eyes that told him she wanted it, too.
(And then there had been her lips on his, twice, and promises to talk it all out when time allowed.
And then there had just been anger unlike anything he'd ever known and Alicia alone in an elevator, going away from him forever.
Because there was no coming back from this. There isn't.)
Isabel is good in bed.
Will must tell himself this twenty times a day, as if thinking the mantra will somehow make what he's doing with her matter to him.
It doesn't matter. He doesn't give a flying fuck about her.
And he knows it. Since Alicia came back into his life, they've all just been placeholders. Every single one, even Tammy, even Laura. The ones he truly liked, the ones he could talk to for hours on end, the ones that he didn't just fuck.
They weren't her, they never would be her, and for all that's holy, he had to admit it, at least to himself.
(It was either that, or call Kalinda to have her come over and bullshit meter him, and he doesn't think he can survive that. She's always looked at him with a tinge of pity when it came to Alicia, as though she understood much too easily what it felt like to love someone from the depth of your guts and not be able to have them, at all.)
The thing was, when Alicia made partner at Lockhart Gardner, he did have her. In some weird way, she was his, she was bound to him, to the firm, and he knew the depth and breadth of her loyalty. She would do anything for him--for Lockhart Gardner. She would work harder than all the associates, and put everything she was into every case, and she would sit beside him in court and give him strength. In every way that mattered, in every way that he could have her, she was his.
Willingly.
She paid $150,000 to make it so.
When Diane began to make noises about leaving, it was obvious who would take her place. David Lee might have thought it was him, but Will had always known. If any name changed on the door, it would been Alicia's for Diane's, and nobody else's.
It would have been the partnership he could have had with her, the one that was respectable, legal, binding. Peter might have her nights, but he would have her days, her work ethic, her inability to do the wrong thing without discussing it with him first, to know that confidentiality was the creed and motto they held fast to.
It would have been enough.
(It would never have been what he wanted, but it would have been fucking enough.)
So, yeah, when Diane quietly pointed out all the evidence that showed just what Alicia was doing, the treachery was something more than the cliche of if she cheats on her husband with you, who will she betray you for?
Because Alicia wasn't an adulterer, not in the sense that other people were. Not in the way that Peter had been. Will's no king of ethics, but he knew what happened between them had not been that. He knew she hadn't been sleeping with Peter when she had been sleeping with him, and he knows she hasn't slept with anyone else in the interim. Only her husband, and only Will Gardner.
He just knows it, and he would swear to it in a court of law.
But leaving with Cary? Taking ChumHum? Saying it wasn't meant personally? Who the actual fuck did she think she was talking to when she said that?
Owen hadn't said anything that Will didn't already know; it was simply easier to hate her, because to understand her had crippled him. Would cripple him.
Hate gave him power and purpose; hate put him on a track to ruthlessness that put pep in his step and blood in his dick. He could fuck Isabel into the mattress and not give a shit that she wasn't brunette, and wide-lipped, and unbelievably beautiful as she declared how happy she was to be in his arms, in his lap, in his life.
Isabel leaves town the week of New Years, and Will gets dangerously drunk at the office party. When he wakes up at home, in his own bed, with no recollection of how he got there, he rolls over to find a Kalinda-esque note on his bedside table.
I got you home without too much embarrassment. Sleep it off, there's tomato juice in the fridge and ibuprofen on the counter. Also, the Governor took the kids skiing for the weekend. Alicia is home alone. Just FYI.
It isn't signed, but he's very familiar with her handwriting after all these years.
He limps into the bathroom and pukes.
Alicia spends New Years Day afternoon going over a brief and drinking a glass of red wine. Zach had texted her earlier to tell her they were having a great time at the ski lodge, and she could happily not worry about Grace interacting with some guy inappropriately since Peter's entourage had accompanied them. It would be the most guarded ski trip in the history of ski trips, and she was perfectly fine with that.
The brief is long and boring and the perfect distraction from any serious thought about the impact the last few months has had on her psyche. She had been craving some quiet time alone only to find that three days without her children gave her far too many moments of regret, and loneliness for something she couldn't quite identify.
It had been a very rough transition. Lockhart Gardner to Florrick, Agos, and Associates had not gone in any way that she envisioned. Then again, she hadn't spent much time thinking it through beyond the need to just not be there every day; to not see Will every moment, to not know that there was always another late night occasion awaiting her where she would be alone with him, where the emotion that boiled between them would have room to froth over and scald everything in its path.
At least now the destruction was purely work-related. That was something she could focus on, one case at a time, one more begrudging look of respect in his eyes at a time, one more moment where he was the enemy, not her comrade in arms. It hadn't been what she planned, but it had gone perfectly anyway. It had achieved what no discussion between them ever would.
It had severed everything for good.
She was glad.
She is glad.
(She is miserable.)
A knock at the door abruptly brings her back to the present moment, to the brief in her lap and the glass in her hand. She should call Peter and ask him to cut the trip short. Come home a day early so they can have one day together as a family before work and school obligations drag them away again. It's a perfectly logical request.
Besides, he'll do whatever she wants. That is the new and improved Peter Florrick, after all.
She sets her glass and brief down on the coffee table and gets up to answer the door. She's not expecting anyone, but her mother and Owen both are known for just turning up without an invitation, and at this point she'd be thankful for either of them.
Opening the door to Will Gardner is a shock, to say the least.
He doesn't look good; or rather, despite the fact that her heart tightens and starts beating faster at seeing him, it's not because he looks happy. He looks awful, his face drawn, his eyes sad. He looks like she feels, and all she wants to do is shut the door because whatever is about to happen will not be good.
(It might be wonderful, though.)
Maybe he can tell that's her wish, because one of his hands comes up to rest flatly against the wood, keeping the door wide open. "Can we talk?" he asks.
Alicia has a montage of all the times he excused her before, of all the times they said they would have this conversation, but he let her run from it. He had always been so deferential, and she realizes now, he was doing everything he could to ensure he never hurt her, in anyway. But ever since she hurt him, all bets had been off, and the times he had come at her full force, with the intention of ripping her heart out, the only pain she could feel was his.
She had done all of this so he could hate her, and in the end she had just managed to hate herself. Her regrets had never been about Will, or the time she'd been with him. She had loved every moment between them. Her regret was that it couldn't be, it never would be what it really should have been.
It would never be what he deserved.
She jerks awake, the wine glass long spilled on her rug and the boring brief ruined. She springs to her feet, the dream-Will in her mind so tangible, she wouldn't be surprised to whip her head around and see him standing in her living room.
But he's not there. She's alone. She's alone, but not, his face etched into her brain in the worst way, and a desire to wipe the abject devastation from it stronger than any feeling she's had in recent months.
Even stronger than the voice in her head that had told her to run fast and run hard, and do whatever she had to so that he would never want her again.
She's out the door with her coat over her arm before she even knows what she'll say to him.
In the dream, he had stood on her doorstep, but in reality, this is the way it should be. Her, there, hoping he'll even let her in once he realizes who has rung the bell. She wouldn't blame him if he didn't give her thirty seconds, much less five minutes, and she really doesn't know why she's doing this, other than to clear her own conscience, which is a less than stellar reason to do anything, ultimately.
She thinks of Peter, confessing only because his hand was forced, and she almost smiles in bitter reconciliation. In some ways, she is the Peter to Will's Alicia, if only in the vastness of the injury. Her crime was selfishness, and her recompense would be honesty.
(If he'll let her in.)
The door slowly opens, and she realizes he didn't check the peephole, because his eyebrows go up in surprise. He doesn't look like the Will in her dream; he looks worse, his eyes bloodshot, his skin carrying a faintly green tint.
Alicia can't help herself, she just blurts out, "Are you ill?" before he asks her what the hell she's doing here, or any other pleasantries can be exchanged.
His lips twist in the semblance of a grimacy-smile, and he nods. "A few too many at the office party. Nothing terminal." His eyes search her face, and she expects to see anger come over his features, but he looks curious more than anything else. His eyebrows go up again and he says, "I wasn't expecting you...like, ever."
Alicia feels her cheeks flame and she looks down at her hands which are gloved to fight the cold weather, but also clenching and unclenching in nervousness. She clears her throat. "Yes, I was afraid...if I called ahead, you wouldn't open the door. So I took a chance."
He leans his head on the edge of the door, and his expression grows thoughtful. "Been taking a lot of those lately," he murmurs. The words are conversational, almost intimate, and she's sure they're not supposed to make her stomach tighten, but they do anyway.
(This is why she'd left, this right here. It was nothing at all, and she wants him more than she's ever wanted anyone or anything.)
"Yes," she says, unable to come up with something more clever. She inclines her head, and he reads the question without her having to ask. Stepping back, he pulls the door further open and gestures for her to come in.
He follows her into the living room and as she's tugging off her gloves to shove them into her pockets, he asks, "I presume this isn't business? I mean, this is the first week since you left LG that we haven't seen each other in court for one reason or another." He chuckles softly as he moves around her to sit on the sofa. "Strange, how we've seen each other more since the break-up, huh? Ironic," he muses quietly, almost to himself.
Alicia has never felt more uncomfortable. This was definitely the worst idea she's ever had--ever. And she's had several of them lately. But this, this was so stupid, she almost can't remember why she had come.
Almost.
"Will," she begins, plunging in before she can chicken out. "I need to tell you something."
He leans back against the couch. As he's slouching down into the cushions, Alicia has a rather violent assault of memory; the two of them on that couch, Will beneath her, his fingers digging into her lower back as he brought her down hard on himself. It had been a busy week, and they hadn't had any alone time for several days. That encounter had been hard and fast, with her skirt around her waist and the zipper of his trousers gouging the soft skin of her inner thigh.
Neither of them had cared, though, and Will had just used the red mark as an excuse to thoroughly explore her with his tongue after they had recovered from round one.
(With them, there were always multiple rounds.)
Alicia closes her eyes as the full memory invades her mind. She had bitten her bottom lip bloody in an effort not to say the words that teetered on the edge of her tongue. Will had just thought he was extremely good at giving head.
(Which he was.)
"Alicia?" he asks now, and her eyes pop open. From his uneasy expression, she can tell an odd amount of time has passed.
"What?" she says automatically, which just causes his eyebrows to go up again, and she shakes her head. "No, I'm sorry, never mind. I just..." She glances around frantically, trying to find something to steady herself. What was she thinking, coming here? What did she think she could achieve? Did she really think it would make things better if she confessed?
It was too late now to back out, even if Will had no idea what had drawn her here in the first place. She takes a deep breath and smooths her hand down flat against her stomach, the buttons of her winter coat pressing back into her palm.
"This is probably going to do more harm than good, but I just need to say it. To tell you, to explain. I hurt you, I know. I never intended things to go the way they have, but to be completely honest, I wanted it to be severe enough that you'd never--that we'd never be able to go back. And as crazy as it sounds, and trust me, I know it sounds insane, I left Lockhart Gardner because I love you. I love you, Will, and I know all my actions speak otherwise, but that's the base of it."
She takes an agonizing breath at the end, not even realizing how the air had been trapped in her lungs long before she started her speech. Her head is still spinning, and it could be lack of oxygen, or just a general aversion to the truth that she laid down.
(She still has no idea what she's doing here.)
Will straightens his stance on the couch, but remains where he is. His face morphs back and forth between pure incredulity and resigned acknowledgement, and Alicia feels more exposed than she did that day she stood in front of twenty cameras and held her husband's hand as he told Chicago, and all the world, just how he'd betrayed her.
In fact, suddenly she feels nausea rising up the back of her throat, and without a word, she turns and runs for his bathroom, because she knows this apartment quite well, even if it's been almost two years since she set foot in it. The remnants of the sandwich she had for lunch and half a glass of red wine hit the bottom of the toilet and Alicia hangs over it, unsure of what, if anything, might come up next.
Then she hears quietly behind her, "That's the last thing I expected to hear, and from the looks of it, it was the last thing you intended to say?"
His voice is kind, somehow, and she loves him all the more for it. Will can be mean when he wants to, or when he needs to, but he's not cruel.
That's why she fell in love with him.
Dragging her hand across her mouth, she sits back, sliding from her knees to her ass in a sideways movement that allows her to turn so their eyes can meet. "I'm sorry," she whispers. The tears are so sudden, all she can process is the abject humiliation of this moment. When he kneels next to her, she only feels gratitude that he doesn't try to take her in his arms, he simply reaches his hand out and squeezes her shoulder.
There are several long, quiet moments as she calms herself and blinks back her tears. Then when the silence has become loud and their eyes reconnect, he says very softly, "I love you, too, Alicia. Always have, always will, apparently."
Then his hand moves to caress her cheek, and he asks, "What does this mean, you coming here to say that?"
Without her planning it, Alicia's own hand comes up to cover his. "I'm not sure," she says, clearing her throat nervously. "I just...I just needed you to know."
Will has been in some dire situations in his lifetime. Most were his own fault; some were a hazard of the job.
None of them compared with Alicia Florrick sitting on his bathroom floor looking like death warmed over just because she loved him.
And yet, this might be the happiest he's ever felt.
(He probably won't tell her that, though.)
He wants to be noble and self-sacrificing. He wants to be able to say, Take all the time you need and I'll be here when you need me, but when he opens his mouth, what actually comes out is, "This is a one time offer: what you just said means something, and we're gonna do something about it, or you're going to leave, right now, and we're never going to talk about it ever again."
Then he adds the kicker: "You have five minutes to decide."
Why he's being a dick about it, he can't explain. He's only waited like four years for this moment, and he's totally ruining it. But at some point self-preservation became the only thing he had left, and he's holding on to it with everything he's got.
Alicia, for her part, sits silently, looking at him with so much trepidation, he knows that if he has to maintain eye contact with her for long, he's going to crumble. He's going to tell her he'll do whatever she wants, be whatever she needs, her piece on the side, her secret lover, the one that never gets to claim her openly; he'll do anything, just to have her, even a little bit, just like he did before. It's actually the perfect cover, two warring law firms, the senior partners of each at the others' throats for misappropriated clients, funds, and deeds; no one would ever guess that after hours they find their peace of mind in an orgasmic frenzy in each other's arms.
(Okay, Kalinda will know, but she's the only one.)
"Alicia--"
"I'm filing for divorce," she says suddenly, cutting him off. "Tomorrow." She nods her head emphatically, and scrambles back from his hand against her face. "First thing tomorrow, I'll file for divorce. That's what I'm doing about it."
She presses both her hands to her mouth, and tears suddenly appear in her eyes and tumble down her cheeks.
And then a huge smile overtakes her face, and she launches herself across the floor of his bathroom, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. She laughs joyfully in his ear, and asks, "Okay?"
Will would speak, but somehow the tears in his own eyes have clogged his throat.
So he just nods.