Fic: Sidebar - This Boat Is Sinking
Title: Sidebar - This Boat Is Sinking
Author: poeelektra
Fandom/ Pairing: The Good Wife, Will/Alicia
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1784
Summary: The one with the graduation booze cruise.
Author's Note: For The Good Wife Comment Fic Meme being hosted by sweetjamielee. Exceeded the comment character limit. Prompt from lowriseflare: Will/Alicia - graduation booze cruise. Typos abound, I'm sure.
Alicia stumbles the few steps from the top of the stairs to clutch the 2nd deck railing. She inhales deeply on the vague hope that fresh air will clear some of the spiderwebs in her head, will resolve the current difficulty her brain is having with keeping the world in a state of one-ness.
There’s no reprieve from the Cuervo sloshing around in her stomach in perfect rhythm with the bob of this boat in the water, a bobbing that seems more dramatic to her now, from up here.
She’s usually more the ‘glass of white wine and an ice water, please’ type than the ‘tequila shooters, keep ‘em comin’ sort of girl; this is what she gets for caving to Sarah’s accusation that she needed to remember what it was like to have fun one last time before launching in to the serious adulthood she’s so eager to embrace.
There was also a fight, a real shitfest between she and Peter last night before he left for New York, and she maybe sort of boarded this boat with every intention of drinking her feelings . . . but Sarah’s her plausible deniability. And anyway, she deserves one night of delinquency after three years of grueling diligence, doesn’t she?
They pitch and her stomach rolls, and Alicia twists and flops herself down on the boat deck before the earth can weave off its axis again. It’s not solid ground, but for now it’ll suffice.
Jesus Christ this was a terrible idea.
Even as that thought staggers through her mind at a reckless pace, she giggles at the unreality of this moment: of being here, in the middle of the ocean, completely untethered.
She is still giggling when a group of guys troop past her toward the stairwell, arms slung around one another and singing loudly to the Bon Jovi coming from speakers that seem far away. Alicia squints half-heartedly, but can’t make out the features on their blurry faces. That, too, is funny, and another round of giggles bubbles forth and floats away on the cool breeze.
Then a solid male form is slumping down next to her, soft t-shirt rubbing her shoulder, scent of boy and booze thick in her nostrils. The booze she identifies as gin; the boy, as Will. She might not be able to see straight, but all her other senses are zinging fast and hot.
“Aliiiicia Cavanaugh. So this is where you’ve been hiding out.”
Her mind can’t accurately trace the events that led either of them here-isn’t overly concerned with them anyway-so Alicia just smiles at him, a simple, unfettered grin at the pleasure of finding him by her side.
“Will, Will, Will. Congratulations.”
She nudges him with an elbow.
“We made it. We’re actually lawyers.” Then, in drunken addendum: “Practically. Almost.”
He meets her grin with a crooked one of his own, the kind that always causes a flittering at the edge of her brain (her heart), in the outer reaches that are beyond her control.
“That we did! But ‘lawyers’ lacks a certain flare, doesn’t it? We’re doctors of justice! Purveyors of truth! We’re superheroes of the first order now, Alicia--we have the power to bring peace and order to all the land.”
He punctuates his words with a sloppy fist pump, then collapses back. When their laughter subsides, they are slack against each another from shoulder to ankle, the sort of bodily support that isn’t strictly necessary when they’re sitting down.
“Sarah’s looking for you downstairs.”
“Sarah can’t possibly remember she’s looking for me. I left her and Cori doing kegstands in the aft ballroom.”
Will pauses for a moment, cocks his head like he’s trying to grab hold of thought that won’t be grasped.
“Wait. Sarah? In the leather mini. And kegstands?”
The thought has been caught and a wide-eyed expression of dubious intent takes over. She gives him another elbow, making firmer contact with his ribs this time.
“Yes Will, in the miniskirt. Stop perving on Sarah in your mind.”
“Ow!” He feigns pain at the strike to his side, to his pride, and grabs the offending elbow.
“Have these actually gotten sharper since we started school?”
Will inspects it closely for good measure, runs his fingers over the bony angle testingly. Her senses flash again, and she imagines the nerve endings at her skin's surface sparking visibly in the dark. Heat travels from the tip of her elbow up her arm, then down her body where it settles low and heavy.
Her first sober thought in awhile dawns: it’s dangerous, this talking to him when all her feelings are surging around, like ghosts on All Hallow’s Eve given free run of the place for one night. But this awareness dances at her periphery, and her body is in too languorous a state to react with anything but a snort.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, William. My elbows haven’t changed. Just my brain has gotten sharper.”
She says it with all kinds of delight, like a toddler who’s discovered they can manipulate their legs for a fantastic purpose.
“Must have been all those candy bars I fed you.”
“Or all the hours camped out at the library, studying our asses off.”
“That, too.”
They fall silent then, lulled by the rocking of the boat. Alicia’s head lolls against the wall behind her, and her thoughts drift and swirl around the caress that has moved to the inside of her elbow, light and surreal on the sensitive skin there.
For a few moments it feels like it did before: before whatever their thing was tried and whatever their thing was failed; before Peter; before their 1L summer and the strange almost-but-not-quite friendship that came after.
But though the thick blanket of intoxication keeps any real panic at bay, her conscience won’t shut up, not even for one night. The thought seeps out before she can stop it; she drank all her normal filters in to oblivion.
“I have a boyfriend.”
There is a pause. She feels his body tense alongside hers, then slowly his thumb resumes its stroking, drawing her back in to the trance.
“That why you stopped calling?”
His voice is low and gruff when he responds, and maybe it’s the late hour or the cigarettes she can smell he’s been sneaking. But she senses through the haze, in that intangible way they have always known each other, that it’s neither of those things.
She straightens a bit, but doesn’t turn to him. There’s a song floating up to them, tinny from distant speakers. It’s been all over the radio this year. Oddly, she knows Will hates it with a passion he usually reserves for admin law and the Syracuse Orange.
“You stopped calling too, Will.”
And it’s true. After Christmas, their tenuously re-built friendship had faltered, then fizzled altogether. She’d thought maybe it was too much to hope, that they could keep their strings knotted up in one another’s after what they’d been. Five minutes ago she’d have said having him close again was a blessing, and the excuse of liquor for talking to him a relief.
But this, this is too serious. She wants back the buzz she was so thoroughly enjoying before Will came along. But she doesn't want him gone, exactly, and that confusion is starting to make her head hurt. He must sense her rising tension because his response comes in a placating tone, and his arm (thicker than it was, a little heavier than she remembers) slides around her shoulders in a soothing gesture. He tugs her closer.
“I did. I had to. I’m sorry.”
Fatigue and inebriation make her trip, confused, over his second statement, but even liquid courage doesn’t allow her to ask for clarification. Maybe because, deep down, she knows what he’s saying.
So she says nothing. They sit, slotted together, watching moving stars and listening to one track fade in to another, to the merriment dance on without them.
*
When Sarah shakes them it’s hours later. The impending dawn has painted the sky a diffuse pink. Meatloaf champions on through the speakers, but the sounds of the party below have faded.
“Hey,” delivered softly. Will isn’t roused. “We wondered where you guys disappeared to.”
Sarah has swapped the leather skirt and baby doll tee for some windbreaker pants and an oversized hoodie. Alicia’s got goosebumps everywhere her body isn’t touching Will’s, and as she extricates herself from their tangled hold, the chill spreads. She’s bleary-eyed and her head aches; she squints in defense against the light.
“C’mon, there’s breakfast downstairs, we’re an hour out from the docks. God Alicia, you need a sweater or something?”
It’s then she realizes she’s shaking, and she wraps her own arms around her. They’re a poor substitute for the ones that held her minutes ago-and that thought brings her up short, sets the bulwarks rising.
“Yeah, let’s--” She motions needlessly toward the stairs.
“Should we wake him?”
But he twitches then, and with a groan, raises his fists to scrub down his face.
“Oh dear god, I think something died in my mouth.”
His voice sounds that way, too.
Sarah grunts and pokes him with a toe.
“Up and at ‘em, Gardner. We’ve got a graduation to attend, laws to start circumventing.”
Alicia follows her to the stairs, then pauses. “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” drones on, epic and endless. They slept on it; she owes him an answer in the morning.
“You go on, I’ll meet you downstairs in a sec.”
Sarah shrugs, too partied out to care.
When she returns to the outer deck, Will is upright, hands braced on the brass rail. He seems lost in thought and she’s reluctant to disturb him, but-
“Will? I’m sorry.”
She touches his arm, the gesture a tacit apology and tentative request for understanding. His profile shows the trademark half-smirk and under it, resignation.
“Me too, Alicia. Me too.”
There is a deep, gathering breath, then he turns, and he is so beautiful, so human in that moment-looking like shit and backlit by the orange streaks that are taking over the sky-that she wants to wrap her arms around him.
It never felt so good
It never felt so right.
Instead she holds out a hand.
“Coming? I think there are some crappy scrambled eggs with our names on them down there.”
Will fixes her with an appraising look and she counts off the seconds, holds her breath.
Then his warm hand is grabbing hers and, after a perfunctory squeeze, tugging her toward the lower deck.
“Let’s just break in to the kitchen and make our own.”
(end)
Author: poeelektra
Fandom/ Pairing: The Good Wife, Will/Alicia
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1784
Summary: The one with the graduation booze cruise.
Author's Note: For The Good Wife Comment Fic Meme being hosted by sweetjamielee. Exceeded the comment character limit. Prompt from lowriseflare: Will/Alicia - graduation booze cruise. Typos abound, I'm sure.
Alicia stumbles the few steps from the top of the stairs to clutch the 2nd deck railing. She inhales deeply on the vague hope that fresh air will clear some of the spiderwebs in her head, will resolve the current difficulty her brain is having with keeping the world in a state of one-ness.
There’s no reprieve from the Cuervo sloshing around in her stomach in perfect rhythm with the bob of this boat in the water, a bobbing that seems more dramatic to her now, from up here.
She’s usually more the ‘glass of white wine and an ice water, please’ type than the ‘tequila shooters, keep ‘em comin’ sort of girl; this is what she gets for caving to Sarah’s accusation that she needed to remember what it was like to have fun one last time before launching in to the serious adulthood she’s so eager to embrace.
There was also a fight, a real shitfest between she and Peter last night before he left for New York, and she maybe sort of boarded this boat with every intention of drinking her feelings . . . but Sarah’s her plausible deniability. And anyway, she deserves one night of delinquency after three years of grueling diligence, doesn’t she?
They pitch and her stomach rolls, and Alicia twists and flops herself down on the boat deck before the earth can weave off its axis again. It’s not solid ground, but for now it’ll suffice.
Jesus Christ this was a terrible idea.
Even as that thought staggers through her mind at a reckless pace, she giggles at the unreality of this moment: of being here, in the middle of the ocean, completely untethered.
She is still giggling when a group of guys troop past her toward the stairwell, arms slung around one another and singing loudly to the Bon Jovi coming from speakers that seem far away. Alicia squints half-heartedly, but can’t make out the features on their blurry faces. That, too, is funny, and another round of giggles bubbles forth and floats away on the cool breeze.
Then a solid male form is slumping down next to her, soft t-shirt rubbing her shoulder, scent of boy and booze thick in her nostrils. The booze she identifies as gin; the boy, as Will. She might not be able to see straight, but all her other senses are zinging fast and hot.
“Aliiiicia Cavanaugh. So this is where you’ve been hiding out.”
Her mind can’t accurately trace the events that led either of them here-isn’t overly concerned with them anyway-so Alicia just smiles at him, a simple, unfettered grin at the pleasure of finding him by her side.
“Will, Will, Will. Congratulations.”
She nudges him with an elbow.
“We made it. We’re actually lawyers.” Then, in drunken addendum: “Practically. Almost.”
He meets her grin with a crooked one of his own, the kind that always causes a flittering at the edge of her brain (her heart), in the outer reaches that are beyond her control.
“That we did! But ‘lawyers’ lacks a certain flare, doesn’t it? We’re doctors of justice! Purveyors of truth! We’re superheroes of the first order now, Alicia--we have the power to bring peace and order to all the land.”
He punctuates his words with a sloppy fist pump, then collapses back. When their laughter subsides, they are slack against each another from shoulder to ankle, the sort of bodily support that isn’t strictly necessary when they’re sitting down.
“Sarah’s looking for you downstairs.”
“Sarah can’t possibly remember she’s looking for me. I left her and Cori doing kegstands in the aft ballroom.”
Will pauses for a moment, cocks his head like he’s trying to grab hold of thought that won’t be grasped.
“Wait. Sarah? In the leather mini. And kegstands?”
The thought has been caught and a wide-eyed expression of dubious intent takes over. She gives him another elbow, making firmer contact with his ribs this time.
“Yes Will, in the miniskirt. Stop perving on Sarah in your mind.”
“Ow!” He feigns pain at the strike to his side, to his pride, and grabs the offending elbow.
“Have these actually gotten sharper since we started school?”
Will inspects it closely for good measure, runs his fingers over the bony angle testingly. Her senses flash again, and she imagines the nerve endings at her skin's surface sparking visibly in the dark. Heat travels from the tip of her elbow up her arm, then down her body where it settles low and heavy.
Her first sober thought in awhile dawns: it’s dangerous, this talking to him when all her feelings are surging around, like ghosts on All Hallow’s Eve given free run of the place for one night. But this awareness dances at her periphery, and her body is in too languorous a state to react with anything but a snort.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, William. My elbows haven’t changed. Just my brain has gotten sharper.”
She says it with all kinds of delight, like a toddler who’s discovered they can manipulate their legs for a fantastic purpose.
“Must have been all those candy bars I fed you.”
“Or all the hours camped out at the library, studying our asses off.”
“That, too.”
They fall silent then, lulled by the rocking of the boat. Alicia’s head lolls against the wall behind her, and her thoughts drift and swirl around the caress that has moved to the inside of her elbow, light and surreal on the sensitive skin there.
For a few moments it feels like it did before: before whatever their thing was tried and whatever their thing was failed; before Peter; before their 1L summer and the strange almost-but-not-quite friendship that came after.
But though the thick blanket of intoxication keeps any real panic at bay, her conscience won’t shut up, not even for one night. The thought seeps out before she can stop it; she drank all her normal filters in to oblivion.
“I have a boyfriend.”
There is a pause. She feels his body tense alongside hers, then slowly his thumb resumes its stroking, drawing her back in to the trance.
“That why you stopped calling?”
His voice is low and gruff when he responds, and maybe it’s the late hour or the cigarettes she can smell he’s been sneaking. But she senses through the haze, in that intangible way they have always known each other, that it’s neither of those things.
She straightens a bit, but doesn’t turn to him. There’s a song floating up to them, tinny from distant speakers. It’s been all over the radio this year. Oddly, she knows Will hates it with a passion he usually reserves for admin law and the Syracuse Orange.
“You stopped calling too, Will.”
And it’s true. After Christmas, their tenuously re-built friendship had faltered, then fizzled altogether. She’d thought maybe it was too much to hope, that they could keep their strings knotted up in one another’s after what they’d been. Five minutes ago she’d have said having him close again was a blessing, and the excuse of liquor for talking to him a relief.
But this, this is too serious. She wants back the buzz she was so thoroughly enjoying before Will came along. But she doesn't want him gone, exactly, and that confusion is starting to make her head hurt. He must sense her rising tension because his response comes in a placating tone, and his arm (thicker than it was, a little heavier than she remembers) slides around her shoulders in a soothing gesture. He tugs her closer.
“I did. I had to. I’m sorry.”
Fatigue and inebriation make her trip, confused, over his second statement, but even liquid courage doesn’t allow her to ask for clarification. Maybe because, deep down, she knows what he’s saying.
So she says nothing. They sit, slotted together, watching moving stars and listening to one track fade in to another, to the merriment dance on without them.
*
When Sarah shakes them it’s hours later. The impending dawn has painted the sky a diffuse pink. Meatloaf champions on through the speakers, but the sounds of the party below have faded.
“Hey,” delivered softly. Will isn’t roused. “We wondered where you guys disappeared to.”
Sarah has swapped the leather skirt and baby doll tee for some windbreaker pants and an oversized hoodie. Alicia’s got goosebumps everywhere her body isn’t touching Will’s, and as she extricates herself from their tangled hold, the chill spreads. She’s bleary-eyed and her head aches; she squints in defense against the light.
“C’mon, there’s breakfast downstairs, we’re an hour out from the docks. God Alicia, you need a sweater or something?”
It’s then she realizes she’s shaking, and she wraps her own arms around her. They’re a poor substitute for the ones that held her minutes ago-and that thought brings her up short, sets the bulwarks rising.
“Yeah, let’s--” She motions needlessly toward the stairs.
“Should we wake him?”
But he twitches then, and with a groan, raises his fists to scrub down his face.
“Oh dear god, I think something died in my mouth.”
His voice sounds that way, too.
Sarah grunts and pokes him with a toe.
“Up and at ‘em, Gardner. We’ve got a graduation to attend, laws to start circumventing.”
Alicia follows her to the stairs, then pauses. “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” drones on, epic and endless. They slept on it; she owes him an answer in the morning.
“You go on, I’ll meet you downstairs in a sec.”
Sarah shrugs, too partied out to care.
When she returns to the outer deck, Will is upright, hands braced on the brass rail. He seems lost in thought and she’s reluctant to disturb him, but-
“Will? I’m sorry.”
She touches his arm, the gesture a tacit apology and tentative request for understanding. His profile shows the trademark half-smirk and under it, resignation.
“Me too, Alicia. Me too.”
There is a deep, gathering breath, then he turns, and he is so beautiful, so human in that moment-looking like shit and backlit by the orange streaks that are taking over the sky-that she wants to wrap her arms around him.
It never felt so good
It never felt so right.
Instead she holds out a hand.
“Coming? I think there are some crappy scrambled eggs with our names on them down there.”
Will fixes her with an appraising look and she counts off the seconds, holds her breath.
Then his warm hand is grabbing hers and, after a perfunctory squeeze, tugging her toward the lower deck.
“Let’s just break in to the kitchen and make our own.”
(end)