(no subject)
Title: Untold Stories
Rating: R
Fandom: The Good Wife
Pairing: Alicia/Will, Alicia/Eli if you squint
Summary: "Why aren't you pissed at me?" Post 5x15. Mostly.
Notes: A thousand thank yous to pebblysand
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
-Maya Angelou
After Will dies, the word fuck enters her vocabulary and, much to her surprise, she finds a great deal of pleasure, of solace, in the speaking of it.
Fuck rolls off her tongue easily, these days, starting soft fluid on the f, catching in her throat on the vowel, then attacking her enemies with the plosive k.
"You’ve got to be fucking kidding me," she mutters to Cary over the phone as she slides a tray of frozen enchiladas into the oven.
"Yeah, well, fuck you too," she shouts at the pickup truck that honks at her when she stops for a yellow light.
"Oh, fuck off," she says to Owen, laughing into the phone.
"Woah," he says, and in her mind, she can see the shock in his expression. "Learning new words, are we?"
"Shut up," she says, still laughing. "I know all sorts of words."
"Since when?" he asks.
"Doesn’t matter," she mutters, smile disappearing, laughter fading. She doesn’t want to think about that. Doesn’t want to think about when.
("Fuck," she had groaned that night in New York, his fingers- No. That’s a different story.)
"Your brother tells me that you’ve learned to swear," her mother says over dinner with the kids a few weeks later.
"Mom!" Alicia glares at her mother, indignant. "She’s kidding," she adds, shooting a glance at her own children who aren’t really children anymore. "I haven’t. I don’t."
The thing is, all of the things Alicia Florrick never had the courage to say can be traced back to the years Alicia Cavanaugh spent deliberately excising every piece of herself that might have been passed down from her mother. There are words that she’s kept inside, things that she’s refused to allow to pass through her lips, but now she finds herself unable to hold them back. It’s not just fuck but other things, too. Things like stop it, Peter and you’re too valuable to me and I want.
(That’s not strictly true. There was that one night when I want spilled out before she could stop herself but, again, that’s a different story.)
She thinks, sometimes, that her life might have been happier if she’d done what her mother wanted, become the person her mother wanted her to be. She closes her eyes at night sometimes and tries to imagine what hedonism must feel like, lets herself indulge for a few moments in the fantasy that the fingertips tracing circles against her skin belong to someone else.
She thinks about it during daylight, too, when she’s negotiating schedules and traffic and office politics. She wonders what would happen if she just walked away from her life, booked a trip to some exotic location and spent a week lying on white sand and sipping drinks with umbrellas poking out of them. The thing is, the more she thinks about it, the more certain she becomes that she’d get bored. Even her fantasies feel empty.
"I think I’ve spent my whole life wanting the wrong things," she tells Owen one night after they’ve drained a pitcher of margaritas.
"I don’t think it works like that," he says, then on her look adds, "What are the right things?"
"Fuck if I know," she mutters.
(Of course, that’s a lie, because there’s a different story to tell, one about the time when she took exactly what she wanted, about a night when everything was wrong but the universe had never felt so right.)
Peter, meanwhile, still wants her. She sees it sometimes, when he catches her eye across a table or a ballroom. He looks at her the way he did the first night they met, like she was some fascinating, unattainable creature, like he wanted to pounce.
"Come on," he had begged her that night. "If you won’t give me your number, at least take mine."
"What makes you think I’ll use it?" she had asked, smiling and flirtatious as she considered the business card he pressed into her palm.
"An endless supply of optimism," he had said.
When she was twenty-three, his confidence made her stomach clench and as much as she fought it, she knew that he was right, that in spite of her better judgment and whatever thing might or might not be happening with Will, she knew that she would call, that it would just be a matter of when.
(What she didn’t know then was that the thing that wasn’t happening with Will wouldn’t happen for twenty years and when it did, it didn’t last. It didn’t last, but it didn’t end, either, and a week before he died that door opened again and for a moment she let herself think that- No. Different story.)
Now, though. Now, when she sees the desire in Peter’s eyes, all raw and animalistic, now the knot in her stomach is heavy and leaden, filled with sadness. Regret. She may not know what she wants anymore, but she knows what she doesn’t want and she doesn’t want him. He is a bastard, and Will could be a bastard, and in her head it is jumbled and confused. Her hands shake with the effort of trying to untangle those threads and when she interrupts a donor at a fundraising dinner, she can see Peter’s eyes shoot to the ceiling, can see his jaw clench in a hard, angry line as she releases his arm and drops the pose.
"Excuse me," she murmurs, putting on her warmest smile and offering apologies she doesn’t mean. "I just need a moment to powder my nose."
She moves through the ballroom easily, snatches a glass of wine from a passing waiter’s tray and doesn’t stop when she feels Peter’s hand at the small of her back, still so familiar, so recognizably him. "Don’t follow me," she whispers, tilting her head back. "You can’t afford to make a fucking scene."
(She felt his presence without looking up, felt him hesitate for a moment before sliding onto the stool next to hers at the bar.
"Are you following me?" she asked him.
"No," he said, simply, watching her as she drained her martini glass.
"Did you want another one?" he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He flagged the bartender down and glanced over at her. "More of the same?" he murmured. "Or did you want to try something different?")
She pushes out onto the balcony and her skin goes tight in protest as she swaps the air conditioning for the oppressive humidity of summer. She takes a sip of wine and does her best to ignore it, to ignore the beads of sweat already forming at the back of her neck. Half a dozen yards away, half-hidden behind a potted juniper, she spots a state senator whose name she can’t recall sucking on the end of a cigarette and she shakes her head, amused.
"Don’t mention this to your husband," he says, shooting her a smile that’s all sheepish guilt and practiced finesse.
"Why would I tell my husband?" she asks, expressionless.
"We’re duking it out over the tobacco tax hike," he says. "I just assumed…."
Senator Kendell, maybe? Or Jackson? She tries to remember which names the press is linking to which issues, to which sides of the political dividing lines. She tries to care.
"Ah." Alicia hesitates, just for a moment. "Do you have another one of those?" She doesn’t know why she asks, but she needs to do something, needs-
The senator arches an eyebrow at her, clearly as surprised by the request as she is. "I do," he says, dipping his hand into his jacket pocket. "They’re menthols," he adds, and there’s something apologetic in his tone.
"Don’t mention this to my husband," she teases, flashing him a tiny smile.
She presses the cigarette between her lips, crosses her eyes to look down at it as the senator flicks open an ornate silver lighter and holds the flame forward, cupping his hand to block the wind. The cigarette doesn’t take, at first, and he smiles. "Breathe in as I'm lighting it," he says, and she does.
The taste is harsh and unplaceable, at once foreign and familiar, disgusting and yet somehow not. She exhales without inhaling much, a thin stream of white escaping from her lips.
"You don’t smoke much, do you?" Kendell asks, knowing and amused.
"Never," she confirms. "Am I too old to start?" She brings the cigarette to her lips again, then washes the taste away with a gulp of wine.
The senator shrugs. "I started during my first campaign, back in seventy-eight" he says. Must be Kendell, then, Alicia thinks. "I think politics makes smokers of us all."
"Maybe," Alicia says. "Peter quit, God, more than twenty years ago," she adds. "Before our first date, I told him I didn’t want to date a smoker. So he quit." She smiles at the memory, rests her elbow on the railing and looks out over the skyline, past the buildings and the lights to the vast darkness of Lake Michigan. "And look at me now," she murmurs, forcing herself to take another drag.
"I keep trying," he says. "I managed it for about six months, when my wife was pregnant. After the twins were born, I picked it up again. Only outside, though," he adds, and she thinks she detects a note of pride in his voice, as if not smoking cigarettes inside the house is some great accomplishment. Maybe it is. She wouldn’t really know.
"I’ve been picking up new vices, lately," she says, still looking out into the night. "There aren’t that many open to me."
"Sure there are," Kendell says. "Look, not for nothing, but I never bought into that Saint Alicia crap the press throws around. And I get it, the image is good for you because it’s good for the governor, but if you want to be bad, be bad. You’re smart enough not to get caught."
("You wanna say bitch, say bitch," Will said that evening.
"Bitch," she had said. It felt good, saying it, and it wasn’t until later that evening that it occurred to her that the only reason she said it at all was because he goaded her, pushed her, gave her permission.
He gave her permission to do other things, too, pushed and pushed until- No.)
"I-"
Eli steps out onto the balcony, then. "Senator," he says with a nod to Kendell. "Alicia- "
Alicia doesn’t turn, doesn’t look at him. She takes a deliberate, careful drag of the cigarette and as her lungs fill with smoke she feels as if she’s choking. Her eyes well up with the effort of not coughing, not giving Eli that satisfaction.
"It was a pleasure, Mrs. Florrick," Kendell says before making a hasty exit.
Alicia swallows what’s left in her wine glass and tries to breathe. She feels dizzy and light-headed, as if there isn’t enough oxygen reaching her brain. Eli doesn’t say anything, just comes to stand beside her, eyes following hers out across the city.
"Yes?" she says, after a few moments of silence.
"Nothing," Eli says with a shrug. "Nice night."
Alicia barks out a laugh, harsh and bitter, then shakes her head. "I’m sorry," she says, and she’s surprised to realize that she is, that she actually means it, means something for the first time in a long time. "I- Can I ask you something?"
Eli turns to face her and nods.
Alicia takes one last drag from the cigarette, wills herself not to choke on it before she drops the butt onto the concrete and crushes it under her shoe. "Why aren’t you pissed at me?" she asks.
Eli blinks, then smiles that shy little smile of his, the one she tends to think of as being all eyelashes his ducked head, as if he’s a kid embarrassed to have been called out for keeping secrets. "Alicia," he says, then he sighs and shakes his head. "I don’t get pissed." His tone is patient and a bit condescending, as if she’s four-years-old, and it takes them both a moment to realize how ridiculous the assertion is. "I mean-" he says over her laughter. "I mean at you."
"No, I know, but I just- why not?" she presses, eyes on him now. "I know it’s not because you actually think I'm a saint."
It’s his turn to laugh, and he shakes his head. "You’re smart," he says, after a moment. "I- I like you."
"Plenty of smart people in the world," she counters. "And I'm not very likable."
("So you’re being nice to me now?" she asked. "Or trying to get me drunk to keep me off my game?"
"You’re already drunk," he murmured into his scotch. "But I don’t know if it’s nice. I think it’s more… polite. You should try it some time."
"Being polite?" she asked, amused. "I did try it. Doesn’t work out that well for me."
"Yeah," he admitted. "You used to be. I think I like you better, this way."
"You don’t like me," she countered. "You don’t get to just rewrite everything to suit your-"
"Neither do you," he said, pointed and cold. "You don’t get to change the story just because you don’t like how it ended.")
"Maybe I don’t like likable," Eli says, softly. "No, that’s cheap. I don’t get pissed at you because… " he trails off, waits until she’s looking at him before turning his head to meet her eyes. "I respect you," he says. "And I think you’re doing the best you can," he adds, after a moment.
"Hunh." She looks away, wishes she had another cigarette so she had something to do with her hands.
"Do you want me to be pissed at you?" he asks, following her gaze.
"Do I want- ?" She blinks, considers the question, has no idea how to answer it. "You’re the only one who isn’t."
"That’s not an answer," he counters, lowering his voice. "I can fake it," he offers. "If it would make you happy."
"Are you happy, Eli?"
"No," he says, and there’s no sadness or hesitation in his voice. It’s matter-of-fact, as if she’d asked him for directions. "I don’t think I should fake it," he adds, contemplative. "I think you’d see through my bullshit anyway."
"Probably," she admits. "The thing is, it’s easier," she says, after a few moments of silence. "People don’t- they don’t want anything from you when they’re-"
"Yeah," Eli agrees. "Lonely, though," he adds, tentatively.
"Yes," she says. "But easier."
"Until they forgive you," he points out. "Then it’s just-"
"But they don’t," she interrupts. They never do.
(His mouth was hot and hungry against hers and he pushed her down onto the bed, pushed her skirt up around her waist, pushed her panties aside and then- nothing.
"What’s wrong?" she breathed, unsure if she was afraid he’d stop or afraid he’d keep going.
"I'm still pissed at you," he said, slowly, deliberately, careful to articulate every word. "I’m so pissed at you."
"I know," she whispered, looking away. "And I don’t know how to make you forgive me."
He pushed three fingers inside of her without warning, pressed his thumb hard against her clit.
"Fuck-" she groaned.
The thing is, changing the ending doesn’t change the story.)
Cary has begun to treat her as if she’s made of glass, as if he’s afraid that saying the wrong thing will start an argument or make her fall apart. It’s not that he lets her win so much as he leaves her out of the loop, goes to Carey and Clarke and Robin, instead, and by the time word gets back to her, decisions have already been made. It’s an effective way to fight, but it leaves her unsatisfied, unfulfilled. The harder she pushes, the more he pulls back, but the more he pulls back the more she pushes. They need to have it out but they don’t. Won’t, maybe. He doesn’t like her much, these days. She doesn’t know if she cares.
She’s come to suspect that just as Cary is avoiding her, Eli is actively seeking her out, even as fewer hours in her schedule are taken up with playing wife in public. She doesn’t ask him why, and he doesn’t say, but in a strange way it’s comforting, having one person in her life who doesn’t react to her shifting moods, who neither advances nor retreats.
"What do you need, Eli?" she asks when she spots him hovering by the reception desk, waiting for her to hang up her phone. She waves him over and he sinks into the chair across from her desk.
"You’re in a good mood," he says when she returns his smile.
"You’re here," she teases. "Why on Earth wouldn’t I be?"
"The Governor’s Association meeting," he says. "Peter really needs-"
Alicia blinks. "Sondra could have put that on the calendar," she says. "You didn’t need to-"
"It’s in Washington," Eli says. "Three days."
"No," she says, expression turning to stone. "No, I’m not doing that."
"Okay, help me out," he says. "Is this one of those times when you say 'no' and I say 'yes' and you eventually agree, or one of those times when-"
"No," she says. "This is one of those times when 'no' means abso-fucking-lutely not." Her voice is brittle and for a split second, she’s afraid that she might break. Then she puts herself back together.
He blinks, stares at her for a moment, then nods. "Okay," he says. "Can I ask- ?"
Alicia’s eyes dart from Eli to Cary and back, and she shakes her head. "No," she says. "I have to go," she adds. "Court."
("I have to go," she murmured, wrapping the sheet around her body and fumbling in the dark for her clothes.
"Do you?" He wasn’t looking at her, wouldn’t look at her, and it hurt.
"No," she said, realizing it as she spoke. "No, I suppose not."
"Then stay," he said, still refusing to face her. "If you want."
"I- I want to," she whispered. "I want- Dammit, Will, look at me."
He did, turning towards her then. His eyes bored into hers but he didn’t speak, just watched as she let the sheet fall to the floor, stood in front of him, naked and raw. Vulnerable.
"I want you," she said, softly. "I want you." She settled herself onto his lap, straddling him. "I want you."
"I want to believe you," he breathed against her breast. "I want to forgive you."
In that moment, she let herself believe that stories could have happy endings.)
"It’s because she wanted to merge," Alicia hears Carey say and she hangs back, stays in the elevator to listen.
"No, it’s not," Cary shoots back.
"She’s conservative," Clarke offers. "About money, I mean, Carey has a- "
"It’s about Will," Cary snaps, clearly irritated.
"Will Gardner?" Clarke sounds confused, and Alicia wonders if he’s the only one who doesn’t think-
"So, she was sleeping with him," Carey says, and he sounds so cocksure, as if he’s just won some kind of bet or office pool or-
"No," Cary says. "That’s not what-"
Alicia is at once pissed and grateful and just so over it, so over all of it. She steps out of the elevator and clears her throat and she can’t help but smile at the way they quickly go silent.
"Mrs. Florrick, hello!" Clarke says, a bit too loudly, too cheerfully.
"They heard me," Alicia says, and her voice sounds hollow inside her head. "They know to stop gossiping."
Later, she goes to Cary’s desk, sits down in the chair across from him. "Thank you," she says, softly.
Cary blinks. "For what?" he asks, and she wonders if he’s genuinely confused or if he wants to make her say the name.
"For earlier," she supplies. "With Carey. I-"
"Alicia… " Cary sighs, then hesitates for a moment. "We need to talk."
Alicia nods. "I know." You were right, she wants to say, she almost says. It’s about Will. He was wrong, too. Because she was sleeping with him again. Maybe. Slept with him again, anyway, and she doesn’t know if the past perfect or imperfect is proper, doesn’t know which is more accurate. "I’ve been… "
"Off your game," Cary supplies.
"I was going to say that I’ve been a real bitch," she says and it’s a testament to how much she’s put Cary through that he doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh, just nods in agreement.
"That too," he says. "Look, Alicia… I get it. But I-"
"Are you pushing me out, Cary?" she asks, too tired of the bullshit to go ten rounds with him, too tired of everything to let him sit there and try to be kind, as if kindness could make a difference. It’s funny, she thinks. She’s been pushing them towards this moment for months, pushing towards being able to talk or fight or something and now that they’re here, now that there’s a conversation he’s willing to have, now she is impatient, irritated, and her skin feels like it’s stretched to tightly over her bones. She twists her rings around on her finger, taps her foot against the floor, waits for his response.
"What? No!" He stares at her and she stares back, right through his bullshit. "We’ve talked about it," he admits, after a moment. "But as a last resort, as a how-do-we-survive-without-"
"Don’t sugarcoat it," she says, wearily. "Don’t- Don’t act like you-"
"We can’t afford to push you out," Cary blurts out, as irritated as she is and, well, there it is. "Your name is too valuable."
Alicia blinks, grateful for his honesty. "Thank you," she says. "For at least being-"
"Being a bitch won’t bring him back," Cary says, and it never occurred to her until this moment that he sees through her bullshit as much as she does his. "And he didn’t die because of anything-"
"Don’t," she snaps, and the harshness of her voice surprises her. "Don’t fucking-"
"Yeah." Cary leans back, raises his hands in a gesture of defeat.
("The feds are coming after me," he said to her back. "About Peter."
"Me too," she said, rolling over to stare at the ceiling. "Nelson Dubeck came to my office."
"I’m not going to jail to protect your husband," Will said. "If it comes down to that-"
"I would never ask you to." She closed her eyes, refused to wonder if he would risk jail to protect her, to protect her children. "He doesn’t have anything," she said, instead. "Dubeck. He doesn’t-"
"On Peter," Will said. "He’s got me on a security camera talking with Jim Moody this afternoon."
"And now he’s got me in your hotel room," she said, realization dawning. She rolled over on her side, staring at him. "Will-"
He barked out a harsh, humorless laugh. "No," he says. "No, Alicia, I didn’t sleep with you to set you up. But good to know that’s what you think of-"
"That’s not what I meant," she said, but the thing is, it might have been. "Fuck."
"Tell yourself whatever story helps you sleep at night," he muttered before getting up to shower.)
There is water boiling on the stove when the doorbell rings and she answers with a glass of wine in hand. "Eli," she says, smiling in surprise. "You look-" she takes him in for a moment, the way his brow is clear of worry lines, his shoulders almost relaxed. "Is it possible you’re not here to deliver bad news?"
"The feds are dropping the investigation," he says. "Dubeck’s dropping the investigation."
Alicia blinks. "Because without Will… "
Eli nods. "He doesn’t have enough to go on." He wants to grin, she can tell, but he won’t let himself out of respect or sensitivity or-
She smiles, makes herself smile. "Good," she says, as if she’s giving Eli permission to smile as well. "That’s… At least it’s something." She drains her glass and retreats into her kitchen, lets Eli close the door and follow her in.
He leans in the doorway to the kitchen, watches as adds pasta and salt to the water, as she roots through the cabinets for a jar of tomato sauce to add to a saucepan. It feels oddly invasive, oddly intimate, but she’s surprised to realize how little she minds. If anything, there’s something comforting in his presence, cutting through the loneliness.
"Have you eaten?" she says, after a moment. "Grace is at a friend’s, and I’ll probably have leftovers, so if you wanted to-"
"I haven’t," Eli says, and his voice is soft and surprised. "Okay."
She pours herself some more wine, nods to the glasses resting in the drain rack as if to say help yourself.
"I loved DC, when I was younger," she says after they’ve finished one bottle and most of a second. "If I hadn’t met Peter, I might have stayed, after law school." She thinks she’s probably a bit drunk, but Eli doesn’t judge her for it. Hasn’t judged her for anything since-
"The Governor’s Association meeting," Eli says, and she nods.
"Will really loved DC," she says. "He used to-" she swallows, hard, and reaches for the bottle. "He used to drag me out of the library and take me around to see the city," she says. "He said- He said we only had a few years, we might as well live them." She looks away, closes her eyes against tears that she knows won’t come because she won’t let them come. Hasn’t let them come in months. "I told him to testify, if it came to that," she says. "Told him not to go to jail for Peter."
"He wouldn’t have," Eli says, softly. "He- It would have hurt you, and Zach, so he wouldn’t have."
"He might have," she counters. "We weren’t exactly-"
"He loved you," Eli says, cutting her off. "He- I overheard him on the phone with someone, once. He said that he’d probably loved you ever since Georgetown."
She shakes her head. "Life is more complicated than that, Eli," she says. She takes a gulp of wine, tries to keep her mind foggy, tries not to process the words.
"He never told you, did he?"
"Once," she admits. "But it was an accident, and he took it back."
Eli says nothing, and they sit there at her dining room table, drinking slowly and watching each other.
"He was pissed at me," she says, finally. "He didn’t know how to forgive me."
"He loved you," Eli counters, reaching over the table to cover her hand with his own. "That trumps the rest of it. So let yourself be forgiven."
("A trial is about the story, not the facts," he told her, once, in her first year at Lockhart Gardner. "Now, we can’t change the facts, but we can change the story. So find one that the jury will believe.")
"Okay," she says. She slides her fingers through Eli's and closes her eyes, lets a little bit of the fog clear. She squeezes his hand. "Okay."
Rating: R
Fandom: The Good Wife
Pairing: Alicia/Will, Alicia/Eli if you squint
Summary: "Why aren't you pissed at me?" Post 5x15. Mostly.
Notes: A thousand thank yous to pebblysand
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
-Maya Angelou
After Will dies, the word fuck enters her vocabulary and, much to her surprise, she finds a great deal of pleasure, of solace, in the speaking of it.
Fuck rolls off her tongue easily, these days, starting soft fluid on the f, catching in her throat on the vowel, then attacking her enemies with the plosive k.
"You’ve got to be fucking kidding me," she mutters to Cary over the phone as she slides a tray of frozen enchiladas into the oven.
"Yeah, well, fuck you too," she shouts at the pickup truck that honks at her when she stops for a yellow light.
"Oh, fuck off," she says to Owen, laughing into the phone.
"Woah," he says, and in her mind, she can see the shock in his expression. "Learning new words, are we?"
"Shut up," she says, still laughing. "I know all sorts of words."
"Since when?" he asks.
"Doesn’t matter," she mutters, smile disappearing, laughter fading. She doesn’t want to think about that. Doesn’t want to think about when.
("Fuck," she had groaned that night in New York, his fingers- No. That’s a different story.)
"Your brother tells me that you’ve learned to swear," her mother says over dinner with the kids a few weeks later.
"Mom!" Alicia glares at her mother, indignant. "She’s kidding," she adds, shooting a glance at her own children who aren’t really children anymore. "I haven’t. I don’t."
The thing is, all of the things Alicia Florrick never had the courage to say can be traced back to the years Alicia Cavanaugh spent deliberately excising every piece of herself that might have been passed down from her mother. There are words that she’s kept inside, things that she’s refused to allow to pass through her lips, but now she finds herself unable to hold them back. It’s not just fuck but other things, too. Things like stop it, Peter and you’re too valuable to me and I want.
(That’s not strictly true. There was that one night when I want spilled out before she could stop herself but, again, that’s a different story.)
She thinks, sometimes, that her life might have been happier if she’d done what her mother wanted, become the person her mother wanted her to be. She closes her eyes at night sometimes and tries to imagine what hedonism must feel like, lets herself indulge for a few moments in the fantasy that the fingertips tracing circles against her skin belong to someone else.
She thinks about it during daylight, too, when she’s negotiating schedules and traffic and office politics. She wonders what would happen if she just walked away from her life, booked a trip to some exotic location and spent a week lying on white sand and sipping drinks with umbrellas poking out of them. The thing is, the more she thinks about it, the more certain she becomes that she’d get bored. Even her fantasies feel empty.
"I think I’ve spent my whole life wanting the wrong things," she tells Owen one night after they’ve drained a pitcher of margaritas.
"I don’t think it works like that," he says, then on her look adds, "What are the right things?"
"Fuck if I know," she mutters.
(Of course, that’s a lie, because there’s a different story to tell, one about the time when she took exactly what she wanted, about a night when everything was wrong but the universe had never felt so right.)
Peter, meanwhile, still wants her. She sees it sometimes, when he catches her eye across a table or a ballroom. He looks at her the way he did the first night they met, like she was some fascinating, unattainable creature, like he wanted to pounce.
"Come on," he had begged her that night. "If you won’t give me your number, at least take mine."
"What makes you think I’ll use it?" she had asked, smiling and flirtatious as she considered the business card he pressed into her palm.
"An endless supply of optimism," he had said.
When she was twenty-three, his confidence made her stomach clench and as much as she fought it, she knew that he was right, that in spite of her better judgment and whatever thing might or might not be happening with Will, she knew that she would call, that it would just be a matter of when.
(What she didn’t know then was that the thing that wasn’t happening with Will wouldn’t happen for twenty years and when it did, it didn’t last. It didn’t last, but it didn’t end, either, and a week before he died that door opened again and for a moment she let herself think that- No. Different story.)
Now, though. Now, when she sees the desire in Peter’s eyes, all raw and animalistic, now the knot in her stomach is heavy and leaden, filled with sadness. Regret. She may not know what she wants anymore, but she knows what she doesn’t want and she doesn’t want him. He is a bastard, and Will could be a bastard, and in her head it is jumbled and confused. Her hands shake with the effort of trying to untangle those threads and when she interrupts a donor at a fundraising dinner, she can see Peter’s eyes shoot to the ceiling, can see his jaw clench in a hard, angry line as she releases his arm and drops the pose.
"Excuse me," she murmurs, putting on her warmest smile and offering apologies she doesn’t mean. "I just need a moment to powder my nose."
She moves through the ballroom easily, snatches a glass of wine from a passing waiter’s tray and doesn’t stop when she feels Peter’s hand at the small of her back, still so familiar, so recognizably him. "Don’t follow me," she whispers, tilting her head back. "You can’t afford to make a fucking scene."
(She felt his presence without looking up, felt him hesitate for a moment before sliding onto the stool next to hers at the bar.
"Are you following me?" she asked him.
"No," he said, simply, watching her as she drained her martini glass.
"Did you want another one?" he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He flagged the bartender down and glanced over at her. "More of the same?" he murmured. "Or did you want to try something different?")
She pushes out onto the balcony and her skin goes tight in protest as she swaps the air conditioning for the oppressive humidity of summer. She takes a sip of wine and does her best to ignore it, to ignore the beads of sweat already forming at the back of her neck. Half a dozen yards away, half-hidden behind a potted juniper, she spots a state senator whose name she can’t recall sucking on the end of a cigarette and she shakes her head, amused.
"Don’t mention this to your husband," he says, shooting her a smile that’s all sheepish guilt and practiced finesse.
"Why would I tell my husband?" she asks, expressionless.
"We’re duking it out over the tobacco tax hike," he says. "I just assumed…."
Senator Kendell, maybe? Or Jackson? She tries to remember which names the press is linking to which issues, to which sides of the political dividing lines. She tries to care.
"Ah." Alicia hesitates, just for a moment. "Do you have another one of those?" She doesn’t know why she asks, but she needs to do something, needs-
The senator arches an eyebrow at her, clearly as surprised by the request as she is. "I do," he says, dipping his hand into his jacket pocket. "They’re menthols," he adds, and there’s something apologetic in his tone.
"Don’t mention this to my husband," she teases, flashing him a tiny smile.
She presses the cigarette between her lips, crosses her eyes to look down at it as the senator flicks open an ornate silver lighter and holds the flame forward, cupping his hand to block the wind. The cigarette doesn’t take, at first, and he smiles. "Breathe in as I'm lighting it," he says, and she does.
The taste is harsh and unplaceable, at once foreign and familiar, disgusting and yet somehow not. She exhales without inhaling much, a thin stream of white escaping from her lips.
"You don’t smoke much, do you?" Kendell asks, knowing and amused.
"Never," she confirms. "Am I too old to start?" She brings the cigarette to her lips again, then washes the taste away with a gulp of wine.
The senator shrugs. "I started during my first campaign, back in seventy-eight" he says. Must be Kendell, then, Alicia thinks. "I think politics makes smokers of us all."
"Maybe," Alicia says. "Peter quit, God, more than twenty years ago," she adds. "Before our first date, I told him I didn’t want to date a smoker. So he quit." She smiles at the memory, rests her elbow on the railing and looks out over the skyline, past the buildings and the lights to the vast darkness of Lake Michigan. "And look at me now," she murmurs, forcing herself to take another drag.
"I keep trying," he says. "I managed it for about six months, when my wife was pregnant. After the twins were born, I picked it up again. Only outside, though," he adds, and she thinks she detects a note of pride in his voice, as if not smoking cigarettes inside the house is some great accomplishment. Maybe it is. She wouldn’t really know.
"I’ve been picking up new vices, lately," she says, still looking out into the night. "There aren’t that many open to me."
"Sure there are," Kendell says. "Look, not for nothing, but I never bought into that Saint Alicia crap the press throws around. And I get it, the image is good for you because it’s good for the governor, but if you want to be bad, be bad. You’re smart enough not to get caught."
("You wanna say bitch, say bitch," Will said that evening.
"Bitch," she had said. It felt good, saying it, and it wasn’t until later that evening that it occurred to her that the only reason she said it at all was because he goaded her, pushed her, gave her permission.
He gave her permission to do other things, too, pushed and pushed until- No.)
"I-"
Eli steps out onto the balcony, then. "Senator," he says with a nod to Kendell. "Alicia- "
Alicia doesn’t turn, doesn’t look at him. She takes a deliberate, careful drag of the cigarette and as her lungs fill with smoke she feels as if she’s choking. Her eyes well up with the effort of not coughing, not giving Eli that satisfaction.
"It was a pleasure, Mrs. Florrick," Kendell says before making a hasty exit.
Alicia swallows what’s left in her wine glass and tries to breathe. She feels dizzy and light-headed, as if there isn’t enough oxygen reaching her brain. Eli doesn’t say anything, just comes to stand beside her, eyes following hers out across the city.
"Yes?" she says, after a few moments of silence.
"Nothing," Eli says with a shrug. "Nice night."
Alicia barks out a laugh, harsh and bitter, then shakes her head. "I’m sorry," she says, and she’s surprised to realize that she is, that she actually means it, means something for the first time in a long time. "I- Can I ask you something?"
Eli turns to face her and nods.
Alicia takes one last drag from the cigarette, wills herself not to choke on it before she drops the butt onto the concrete and crushes it under her shoe. "Why aren’t you pissed at me?" she asks.
Eli blinks, then smiles that shy little smile of his, the one she tends to think of as being all eyelashes his ducked head, as if he’s a kid embarrassed to have been called out for keeping secrets. "Alicia," he says, then he sighs and shakes his head. "I don’t get pissed." His tone is patient and a bit condescending, as if she’s four-years-old, and it takes them both a moment to realize how ridiculous the assertion is. "I mean-" he says over her laughter. "I mean at you."
"No, I know, but I just- why not?" she presses, eyes on him now. "I know it’s not because you actually think I'm a saint."
It’s his turn to laugh, and he shakes his head. "You’re smart," he says, after a moment. "I- I like you."
"Plenty of smart people in the world," she counters. "And I'm not very likable."
("So you’re being nice to me now?" she asked. "Or trying to get me drunk to keep me off my game?"
"You’re already drunk," he murmured into his scotch. "But I don’t know if it’s nice. I think it’s more… polite. You should try it some time."
"Being polite?" she asked, amused. "I did try it. Doesn’t work out that well for me."
"Yeah," he admitted. "You used to be. I think I like you better, this way."
"You don’t like me," she countered. "You don’t get to just rewrite everything to suit your-"
"Neither do you," he said, pointed and cold. "You don’t get to change the story just because you don’t like how it ended.")
"Maybe I don’t like likable," Eli says, softly. "No, that’s cheap. I don’t get pissed at you because… " he trails off, waits until she’s looking at him before turning his head to meet her eyes. "I respect you," he says. "And I think you’re doing the best you can," he adds, after a moment.
"Hunh." She looks away, wishes she had another cigarette so she had something to do with her hands.
"Do you want me to be pissed at you?" he asks, following her gaze.
"Do I want- ?" She blinks, considers the question, has no idea how to answer it. "You’re the only one who isn’t."
"That’s not an answer," he counters, lowering his voice. "I can fake it," he offers. "If it would make you happy."
"Are you happy, Eli?"
"No," he says, and there’s no sadness or hesitation in his voice. It’s matter-of-fact, as if she’d asked him for directions. "I don’t think I should fake it," he adds, contemplative. "I think you’d see through my bullshit anyway."
"Probably," she admits. "The thing is, it’s easier," she says, after a few moments of silence. "People don’t- they don’t want anything from you when they’re-"
"Yeah," Eli agrees. "Lonely, though," he adds, tentatively.
"Yes," she says. "But easier."
"Until they forgive you," he points out. "Then it’s just-"
"But they don’t," she interrupts. They never do.
(His mouth was hot and hungry against hers and he pushed her down onto the bed, pushed her skirt up around her waist, pushed her panties aside and then- nothing.
"What’s wrong?" she breathed, unsure if she was afraid he’d stop or afraid he’d keep going.
"I'm still pissed at you," he said, slowly, deliberately, careful to articulate every word. "I’m so pissed at you."
"I know," she whispered, looking away. "And I don’t know how to make you forgive me."
He pushed three fingers inside of her without warning, pressed his thumb hard against her clit.
"Fuck-" she groaned.
The thing is, changing the ending doesn’t change the story.)
Cary has begun to treat her as if she’s made of glass, as if he’s afraid that saying the wrong thing will start an argument or make her fall apart. It’s not that he lets her win so much as he leaves her out of the loop, goes to Carey and Clarke and Robin, instead, and by the time word gets back to her, decisions have already been made. It’s an effective way to fight, but it leaves her unsatisfied, unfulfilled. The harder she pushes, the more he pulls back, but the more he pulls back the more she pushes. They need to have it out but they don’t. Won’t, maybe. He doesn’t like her much, these days. She doesn’t know if she cares.
She’s come to suspect that just as Cary is avoiding her, Eli is actively seeking her out, even as fewer hours in her schedule are taken up with playing wife in public. She doesn’t ask him why, and he doesn’t say, but in a strange way it’s comforting, having one person in her life who doesn’t react to her shifting moods, who neither advances nor retreats.
"What do you need, Eli?" she asks when she spots him hovering by the reception desk, waiting for her to hang up her phone. She waves him over and he sinks into the chair across from her desk.
"You’re in a good mood," he says when she returns his smile.
"You’re here," she teases. "Why on Earth wouldn’t I be?"
"The Governor’s Association meeting," he says. "Peter really needs-"
Alicia blinks. "Sondra could have put that on the calendar," she says. "You didn’t need to-"
"It’s in Washington," Eli says. "Three days."
"No," she says, expression turning to stone. "No, I’m not doing that."
"Okay, help me out," he says. "Is this one of those times when you say 'no' and I say 'yes' and you eventually agree, or one of those times when-"
"No," she says. "This is one of those times when 'no' means abso-fucking-lutely not." Her voice is brittle and for a split second, she’s afraid that she might break. Then she puts herself back together.
He blinks, stares at her for a moment, then nods. "Okay," he says. "Can I ask- ?"
Alicia’s eyes dart from Eli to Cary and back, and she shakes her head. "No," she says. "I have to go," she adds. "Court."
("I have to go," she murmured, wrapping the sheet around her body and fumbling in the dark for her clothes.
"Do you?" He wasn’t looking at her, wouldn’t look at her, and it hurt.
"No," she said, realizing it as she spoke. "No, I suppose not."
"Then stay," he said, still refusing to face her. "If you want."
"I- I want to," she whispered. "I want- Dammit, Will, look at me."
He did, turning towards her then. His eyes bored into hers but he didn’t speak, just watched as she let the sheet fall to the floor, stood in front of him, naked and raw. Vulnerable.
"I want you," she said, softly. "I want you." She settled herself onto his lap, straddling him. "I want you."
"I want to believe you," he breathed against her breast. "I want to forgive you."
In that moment, she let herself believe that stories could have happy endings.)
"It’s because she wanted to merge," Alicia hears Carey say and she hangs back, stays in the elevator to listen.
"No, it’s not," Cary shoots back.
"She’s conservative," Clarke offers. "About money, I mean, Carey has a- "
"It’s about Will," Cary snaps, clearly irritated.
"Will Gardner?" Clarke sounds confused, and Alicia wonders if he’s the only one who doesn’t think-
"So, she was sleeping with him," Carey says, and he sounds so cocksure, as if he’s just won some kind of bet or office pool or-
"No," Cary says. "That’s not what-"
Alicia is at once pissed and grateful and just so over it, so over all of it. She steps out of the elevator and clears her throat and she can’t help but smile at the way they quickly go silent.
"Mrs. Florrick, hello!" Clarke says, a bit too loudly, too cheerfully.
"They heard me," Alicia says, and her voice sounds hollow inside her head. "They know to stop gossiping."
Later, she goes to Cary’s desk, sits down in the chair across from him. "Thank you," she says, softly.
Cary blinks. "For what?" he asks, and she wonders if he’s genuinely confused or if he wants to make her say the name.
"For earlier," she supplies. "With Carey. I-"
"Alicia… " Cary sighs, then hesitates for a moment. "We need to talk."
Alicia nods. "I know." You were right, she wants to say, she almost says. It’s about Will. He was wrong, too. Because she was sleeping with him again. Maybe. Slept with him again, anyway, and she doesn’t know if the past perfect or imperfect is proper, doesn’t know which is more accurate. "I’ve been… "
"Off your game," Cary supplies.
"I was going to say that I’ve been a real bitch," she says and it’s a testament to how much she’s put Cary through that he doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh, just nods in agreement.
"That too," he says. "Look, Alicia… I get it. But I-"
"Are you pushing me out, Cary?" she asks, too tired of the bullshit to go ten rounds with him, too tired of everything to let him sit there and try to be kind, as if kindness could make a difference. It’s funny, she thinks. She’s been pushing them towards this moment for months, pushing towards being able to talk or fight or something and now that they’re here, now that there’s a conversation he’s willing to have, now she is impatient, irritated, and her skin feels like it’s stretched to tightly over her bones. She twists her rings around on her finger, taps her foot against the floor, waits for his response.
"What? No!" He stares at her and she stares back, right through his bullshit. "We’ve talked about it," he admits, after a moment. "But as a last resort, as a how-do-we-survive-without-"
"Don’t sugarcoat it," she says, wearily. "Don’t- Don’t act like you-"
"We can’t afford to push you out," Cary blurts out, as irritated as she is and, well, there it is. "Your name is too valuable."
Alicia blinks, grateful for his honesty. "Thank you," she says. "For at least being-"
"Being a bitch won’t bring him back," Cary says, and it never occurred to her until this moment that he sees through her bullshit as much as she does his. "And he didn’t die because of anything-"
"Don’t," she snaps, and the harshness of her voice surprises her. "Don’t fucking-"
"Yeah." Cary leans back, raises his hands in a gesture of defeat.
("The feds are coming after me," he said to her back. "About Peter."
"Me too," she said, rolling over to stare at the ceiling. "Nelson Dubeck came to my office."
"I’m not going to jail to protect your husband," Will said. "If it comes down to that-"
"I would never ask you to." She closed her eyes, refused to wonder if he would risk jail to protect her, to protect her children. "He doesn’t have anything," she said, instead. "Dubeck. He doesn’t-"
"On Peter," Will said. "He’s got me on a security camera talking with Jim Moody this afternoon."
"And now he’s got me in your hotel room," she said, realization dawning. She rolled over on her side, staring at him. "Will-"
He barked out a harsh, humorless laugh. "No," he says. "No, Alicia, I didn’t sleep with you to set you up. But good to know that’s what you think of-"
"That’s not what I meant," she said, but the thing is, it might have been. "Fuck."
"Tell yourself whatever story helps you sleep at night," he muttered before getting up to shower.)
There is water boiling on the stove when the doorbell rings and she answers with a glass of wine in hand. "Eli," she says, smiling in surprise. "You look-" she takes him in for a moment, the way his brow is clear of worry lines, his shoulders almost relaxed. "Is it possible you’re not here to deliver bad news?"
"The feds are dropping the investigation," he says. "Dubeck’s dropping the investigation."
Alicia blinks. "Because without Will… "
Eli nods. "He doesn’t have enough to go on." He wants to grin, she can tell, but he won’t let himself out of respect or sensitivity or-
She smiles, makes herself smile. "Good," she says, as if she’s giving Eli permission to smile as well. "That’s… At least it’s something." She drains her glass and retreats into her kitchen, lets Eli close the door and follow her in.
He leans in the doorway to the kitchen, watches as adds pasta and salt to the water, as she roots through the cabinets for a jar of tomato sauce to add to a saucepan. It feels oddly invasive, oddly intimate, but she’s surprised to realize how little she minds. If anything, there’s something comforting in his presence, cutting through the loneliness.
"Have you eaten?" she says, after a moment. "Grace is at a friend’s, and I’ll probably have leftovers, so if you wanted to-"
"I haven’t," Eli says, and his voice is soft and surprised. "Okay."
She pours herself some more wine, nods to the glasses resting in the drain rack as if to say help yourself.
"I loved DC, when I was younger," she says after they’ve finished one bottle and most of a second. "If I hadn’t met Peter, I might have stayed, after law school." She thinks she’s probably a bit drunk, but Eli doesn’t judge her for it. Hasn’t judged her for anything since-
"The Governor’s Association meeting," Eli says, and she nods.
"Will really loved DC," she says. "He used to-" she swallows, hard, and reaches for the bottle. "He used to drag me out of the library and take me around to see the city," she says. "He said- He said we only had a few years, we might as well live them." She looks away, closes her eyes against tears that she knows won’t come because she won’t let them come. Hasn’t let them come in months. "I told him to testify, if it came to that," she says. "Told him not to go to jail for Peter."
"He wouldn’t have," Eli says, softly. "He- It would have hurt you, and Zach, so he wouldn’t have."
"He might have," she counters. "We weren’t exactly-"
"He loved you," Eli says, cutting her off. "He- I overheard him on the phone with someone, once. He said that he’d probably loved you ever since Georgetown."
She shakes her head. "Life is more complicated than that, Eli," she says. She takes a gulp of wine, tries to keep her mind foggy, tries not to process the words.
"He never told you, did he?"
"Once," she admits. "But it was an accident, and he took it back."
Eli says nothing, and they sit there at her dining room table, drinking slowly and watching each other.
"He was pissed at me," she says, finally. "He didn’t know how to forgive me."
"He loved you," Eli counters, reaching over the table to cover her hand with his own. "That trumps the rest of it. So let yourself be forgiven."
("A trial is about the story, not the facts," he told her, once, in her first year at Lockhart Gardner. "Now, we can’t change the facts, but we can change the story. So find one that the jury will believe.")
"Okay," she says. She slides her fingers through Eli's and closes her eyes, lets a little bit of the fog clear. She squeezes his hand. "Okay."