Fanfic: Cutting Costs - Alicia/Kalinda
Title: Cutting Costs
Author: schwarmerei1
Fandom/Pairing: The Good Wife, Alicia/Kalinda
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,300
Warning: Implied Abuse
Disclaimer: I mean no disrespect, CBS, Scott Free, and the Kings own them
Summary: When “The Good Wife” is Kalicia-lite, and denies us the chance to see Alicia and Kalinda alone in a hotel room, reactive fanfic is born! (On the other hand, everything about Alicia and Cary in this episode was fluffy kitten adorable.)
Spoilers: Through episode 4.07 “Anatomy of a Joke”
Author's Note: Thanks to hotladykisses for helpful suggestions as well as the usual.
“Right. Well, that didn’t go well.” Cary hefted his overnight case from the cab’s trunk onto the sidewalk.
“Yeah, I thought babysitter number three was supposed to make this party-crashing work?” Alicia looked at Kalinda.
“My instructions were to get her to show up to the Martinez meeting and not let her go on television.” Kalinda couldn’t decide if this entire venture had been a massive waste of her time (she did have other work to do!) or a welcome break from Chicago.
“Maybe you should have been in the meeting instead of loitering in the corridor.” Cary suggested.
“Really? Two grown lawyers couldn’t keep her in check? You noticed how little she is, right?”
“She’s the same height as you!” Cary retorted.
“Pffft. She’s at least an inch shorter.”
The three of them walked to the reception desk where Alicia fished out a printout of their booking reference. The clerk stabbed at his computer, gave the three of them an oddly suggestive look and then slid two key-cards back across the counter.
“507 and 508,” he offered.
“Wait... I think there’s a mistake.” Alicia countered.
“This is your boyfriend’s fault.” Kalinda accused, longing to kick Cary in the ankle, hard.
“Yeah...it probably is.” Cary conceded. “Part of Clarke’s cost-cutting, I guess someone needs to double-up.”
“Yes. Even if you wanted to take another room, we’re fully booked tonight.” The clerk provided unhelpfully.
The three of them entered the elevator.
“By the way, you can quit that whole ‘boyfriend’ thing okay?”
“Yeah right.” It was the most fun Kalinda had had in ages.
“So,” Alicia looked at Kalinda, “We can share. If that’s okay with you?”
“Sure.” This was stupid, whatever the underlying assumption was that said the two women should share (based on what: possibility of fucking?) seemed particularly invalid in their threesome. By that logic, Alicia and Cary should be sharing the room. Not that she didn’t want to be sharing Alicia’s room, but that wasn’t the point.
Alicia swiped her card as Cary headed one door up, then she entered the room holding the door for Kalinda. Kalinda stopped at the foot of the queen bed, the only bed in the room (the desk clerk’s expression made more sense now) and waited for Alicia to see.
“Right, so let’s see if Cary’s room is different.” Alicia turned heel and headed out the door to knock next door. “Hi,” when Cary opened it. “We’ve only got a queen bed, I was wondering if you were a twin room?”
“No, I’m a queen too.”
“Okay, yeah, Kalinda’s right, I bet Clarke booked it that way deliberately.”
“Not you too.”
Alicia just twinkled at him as she left. Cary wished that the door didn’t have a closer so he could slam it just a little. There was nothing weird about him and Clarke!
“Same setup next door.” Alicia told Kalinda who was still hovering, not able to start the task of unpacking.
Kalinda ducked her head laughing, of course it was.
“Sorry you got dragged into this.” Alicia was smiling too.
“It’s fine. We should drink the mini bar dry and expense it as revenge.” Kalinda opened the armoire to look. “Which won’t take long...and of course there’s no tequila.”
“We’ll survive. Can I have the wine?”
“Sure, can I have the beer?” Kalinda handed the single-serve bottle and a glass to Alicia.
“Fine by me. We should invite Cary over to hang out.”
“We should?” Kalinda looked sceptical.
“We talked last night, it was nice.”
“If you say so,” Kalinda watched Alicia pick up the phone. “Tell him to bring his own alcohol though.”
Cary did what he was told, showing up at the door with the contents of his mini bar on a tray. Kalinda took it and shoved the ice bucket at him. “Go make yourself useful.” Cary needed a little bit of punishment for hanging out in hotel rooms with Alicia, wasn’t it enough that he got to spend all day next to her in the office?
Alicia was pulling things out of her bag, “So I guess you want that side?” She gestured at the bed. This was kind of weird - that Kalinda and she knew who took which side of the bed.
“Sure.” This wasn’t strange in any way. Kalinda was just grateful that the emergency overnight bag she grabbed from the back of her car when she got thrown into this had a set of workout clothes she could sleep in, because Kalinda didn’t do pyjamas.
Cary returned, dutifully set the ice down and sank into the armchair. “So, room service?”
“Please, I’m wiped.” Alicia arranged pillows on her side of the bed. Kalinda was already seated, heels angled off over the edge.
Cary was looking at them. “Sometimes I wonder if you actually have feet.”
Kalinda rolled her eyes at him, flipping through the room service menu, before handing it to Alicia. She was actually enjoying herself, but she couldn’t let him know that.
Cary departed after dinner, the unexpected collision with his father’s world had exhausted him. Alicia walked him to the door and fished her pyjamas and toiletry case out of her bag on the way back.
“I think I’m going to get ready for bed.” She announced to Kalinda who was (apparently) immersed in her laptop.
It didn’t seem to require a response, which was just as well for Kalinda who was feeling unhelpfully warm about this entire situation.
Alicia shut the door of the bathroom, stripped, was grateful that she packed her traditional pyjamas rather than a camisole and shorts. Then she chewed over that relief while she washed off her makeup, cleaned her teeth, and brushed out her hair. This was not her first instance of wondering just how things should be negotiated between them now that Kalinda’s flexibility had been confirmed -- although she felt some measure of guilt that she was thinking that way when Kalinda had never tried anything on her -- on just about everyone else, but not on her.
“Bathroom’s all yours.”
It was just as well Kalinda had the privacy of the bathroom for her retreat, the sight of Alicia bare-faced in her mannish pyjamas and no bra was the sort of material that was going to fuel the fantasies of her weaker moments. No doubt tomorrow morning’s bed-head would be ever better. She leant her forehead against the cool tiled wall. She was an idiot, times like this definitely confirmed it. Most of the time she could tell herself that the way she felt about Alicia was a positive force in her life, but right now she felt hopelessly adolescent. Banging her head a few times didn’t actually help, but she did it anyway.
Kalinda changed her clothes (she put on her crop top under her tank - no way was she going unrestrained in front of Alicia) scrubbed at her face, did everything else she needed to and then paused for a truly insane amount of time, looking in the mirror with hairbrush in hand.
Alicia was fidgeting. She got up off the bed and sat in the armchair. Then stood up again and ferreted through her briefcase to pull out some files to review and went back to the bed. She was actually in a state of suspense waiting for Kalinda to come out of the bathroom, like this was some tacky reality television makeover show. While her mind was doing somersaults, a thought managed to wedge its way in to tell her that this was an interesting state to be in over the idea of a female friend in her nightclothes. Finally she heard the door crack open.
Alicia could hear Kalinda fiddling with the wardrobe in the hallway, presumably putting her day clothes away. She actually felt like Kalinda was deliberately drawing this out, although for what purpose she couldn’t guess.
Kalinda was stalling, eventually she ran out of excuses and slid shut the wardrobe. She was so pathetic she actually had to take a deep breath before heading back into the main room.
Alicia’s eyes were on her, staring in fact. Kalinda had to say something.
“So, we’re out of wine and beer, and Cary drank all the scotch. But I could make a Long Island Iced Tea, sort of, with what’s left.”
“You mix cocktails?” Alicia was startled out of her reverie.
“Sure -- fastest way to get smashed. So, that a yes?”
“Yeah, it is.” More alcohol sounded very necessary at this point.
There was an added benefit of being able to watch Kalinda turned away from her, unscrewing the tiny bottles in turn and tipping them into two glasses. Alicia had never seen Kalinda completely bare-armed but with legs covered up, and she had definitely never seen her face without makeup or her hair long and loose and falling down her back. Part of the shock had to be that without her boots Kalinda was a good five inches shorter (and she did in fact have feet) but it wasn’t just that. She looked soft and vulnerable and years younger out of uniform. And beautiful in a completely different way to how she looked in her immaculate persona at work. Yesterday Alicia had told Laura she was pretty, Kalinda wasn’t pretty, not even close -- she was gorgeous. And what Alicia felt looking at her was not akin to the objective noting of another woman’s physical appearance when she looked at Laura.
Kalinda stirred each glass, added ice and topped it off with cola. She took a sip. “It’s drinkable,” she declared as she turned around.
Alicia’s pretext of studying her papers was undermined by the fact that they had fallen to her lap and she was still staring at Kalinda.
“You look really different.” Stating the obvious: smooth. “Good different,” Alicia clarified. “I mean, not that you don’t look good all the time.” This was getting worse. “I like the way you look. Both ways...” Sweet mother-fucking Jesus Alicia, shut the fuck up!
Mercifully, Kalinda cut her off. “Thanks.” Then cautiously advanced to hand Alicia her drink and backed away to lean against the armoire.
Alicia looked at her glass, given her blabbering maybe more alcohol wasn’t a good idea. On the other hand maybe she could drink herself to oblivion. She swallowed a gulp of it, it was blessedly strong. “That’s actually kind of nice.”
Kalinda, feeling daring, decided that Alicia brought up the subject first. “I like your hair like this. It suits you.”
“Thanks,” Alicia tried to avoid going the ‘girlfriend’ route and needily asking if that meant that Kalinda didn’t like her previous haircut. “I like it too,” seemed safe enough.
“I didn’t like the bangs.” Apparently Kalinda didn’t play by those rules. “You have a beautiful brow, you shouldn’t cover it up.” Kalinda didn’t mention her association of Alicia’s bangs with being frozen out.
Alicia wondered if that amounted to Kalinda telling her that she was beautiful. Whatever it was affected her. If Laura had told her the same, she knew she wouldn’t be struggling to say something. Also, Kalinda’s eyelashes really were thick.
“I didn’t realise your hair was that long.” The alcohol was not helping obviously.
“I’ve been growing it.”
“How come?” It didn’t really make sense if Kalinda always wore it up.
“Secret.” Kalinda decided to tease.
“That’s a secret.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not telling.”
Kalinda shook her head and damn if Alicia wasn’t slightly mesmerised by the movement of all that ebony hair when she did so.
“What happened to ‘everything on the table’?” Alicia could remember that conversation vividly to a degree that frequently surprised her.
“Haircuts don’t count.”
Alicia laughed, “They don’t, huh? I didn’t realise they were an exception.”
“Alicia...” Kalinda knew she was on some borderline of flirting but couldn’t help herself, not when Alicia was looking at her like that. “You have to let me keep some secrets. How else will I maintain my mystique?”
Kalinda headed for her side of the bed, staring each other down didn’t seem to be helping salvage Alicia’s composure. She settled herself and took a drink from her glass. “Actually I do have something to tell you.” Kalinda paused.
Alicia was expecting to hear something about Nick, Kalinda had seemed her normal self the last few days, but anxiety over the other woman’s situation was gnawing at her frequently since their last time out drinking.
“I’ve been working for Eli - on the campaign.”
“Oh,” Alicia couldn’t deny she was having some reaction to that, but she wasn’t quite sure why Kalinda was formally confessing.
Kalinda turned to look at her. “He’s been having me look into Indira Starr. He said it was for you. But you didn’t actually ask him, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.” Alicia was worried now, Kalinda looked so serious.
“I didn’t actually take him literally, but...” Kalinda paused again and looked away. “Anyway, I lied to you once about it.”
Alicia’s eyebrows were raised now.
“You asked me what case I was on while we were working on that water-polo death, and I told you it was nothing.” Kalinda explained.
“Why did you feel the need to lie about it?”
Kalinda was obviously struggling to answer, but Alicia let her take her time. “I...it was reactive, I didn’t think you’d be happy about me working for him. I’m sorry, I should have just asked you about it.”
Alicia got it. The whole area was a minefield for them. “It’s okay, really...”
Kalinda interrupted her, and met her gaze but it was hesitant. “Alicia, you know how I said I had a new job and was leaving Lockhart Gardner?”
“Yes.” All of that time was so painful it would always be memorable, even if it was scabbed-over now.
“I didn’t take it because they were going to post me fulltime at the State’s Attorney.”
Alicia had wondered, but they weren’t on speaking terms then, so she’d tried to just ignore it even as it had enraged her for weeks every time she’d seen Kalinda in the office when she’d expected her to be gone.
“I know you wanted me away from you,” Kalinda was looking somewhere in the direction of her knees now. “But I thought it would look worse to you if I went there. And...” she swallowed again, “I didn’t want to be anywhere near...”
...him.
“Kalinda, it’s okay.” Alicia reached over to brush Kalinda’s hand briefly. “It’s okay,” she repeated.
Kalinda looked at her then, her eyebrows were furrowed. “This has a point. Eli keeps asking me to do more work, but at this point it doesn’t have anything to do with you even though he says it does. Do you want me to work on the campaign?”
Alicia was pondering the fact that Eli used her to lure Kalinda to work for Peter. “Do you want to work on the campaign?”
“I asked first.”
“I want him to win.” Alicia offered.
Kalinda decided to think on that. She drank another mouthful and then kept going. She was pretty sure she was going to need it to get to sleep. She put down the glass and took one of her pillows and wrapped herself around it as she reclined, eyes closed.
Alicia looked over at her before switching off the lamp on the nightstand. Kalinda and her pillow looked painfully lonely.
---------
Alicia woke from the sound of the crisp hotel sheets rustling. She heard it again, and felt it this time. A dreaming Kalinda was jerking periodically in her sleep. She wasn’t flailing around, or moaning and muttering words, but there was a frightening intensity to her small movements. Then Alicia heard the nauseating sound of Kalinda grinding her teeth. She switched on the bedside lamp. Kalinda was turned away from her, curled into herself. The side of her face that was visible knotted with tension.
“Kalinda,” got no response. “Kalinda!” Alicia wanted to reach over and squeeze her shoulder but was worried about the sleeping woman’s reaction. “Kalinda, wake up!” Alicia added more volume and authority.
It worked, she snapped awake, gasping and disoriented. Then she sat up rapidly, facing away from Alicia, she dry-swallowed repeatedly. Alicia could see sweat glistening along her hairline. She got out of bed and headed for the bathroom.
Kalinda pushed away the unwelcome heat of the bedclothes and scooted back so that she was sitting on the pillow with her back hard against the headboard. ‘Your voice on that phone was not work...Kalinda.’ And then Nick, gun in hand, pointing it at Alicia ‘I finally figured it out.’
He hadn’t followed her to D.C. He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t ever know she was sharing a room, a bed with Alicia. But...
Alicia came back into the room, a glass of water in one hand and a wet washcloth in the other. She gave over the washcloth first. Kalinda gratefully wiped her face and then her arms with the welcome coldness. Alicia exchanged it for the water glass and headed back for her side of the bed.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” Kalinda was absolutely sure of that.
Alicia propped her pillows up and sat back to join Kalinda. “Want to watch T.V. for a while?”
Kalinda shook her head. “Sorry for waking you up.”
“It’s alright. You okay?”
“Sure,” Kalinda replied unconvincingly.
“Want a hug?” Alicia joked.
Kalinda’s voice broke when she answered, “Yes.”
Oh! But Alicia opened her arms in invitation. She hadn’t expected Kalinda to come to her, and she certainly hadn’t expected Kalinda to melt against her, face buried in her neck. Alicia felt it then, not just the loneliness but the fear. The danger of presenting such a controlled public face was that Kalinda needed to be at breaking point before Alicia had more than an inkling there was a problem. She tightened one arm around the sharp lines of Kalinda’s shoulder-blades and used the other to stroke her hair.
Alicia, Alicia, Alicia... chanted Kalinda’s mantra. Alicia, warm, alive and present -- giving her strength.
Alicia could feel the frightening magnitude of Kalinda’s need for her as they held each other. But she couldn’t deny the connection that drew them to each other, it had called her back via Kalinda’s beseeching face even after she’d vowed to herself to never give this woman another chance to betray her.
“We’re going to figure something out. I promise.”
Kalinda suppressed the urge to sob, Alicia was a precious life-raft to cling onto if she could believe it. She steeled herself to find the strength to pull back.
“Thank you,” she proffered as she disengaged from Alicia’s arms and slid back to her side to lie down.
Alicia leant back to switch off the lamp.
--------
Kalinda woke first, grey light peeking in the edges of the hotel drapes. She had slept if fitfully, Alicia was sleeping still -- her face towards Kalinda. Kalinda adjusted her head on the pillow so she could gaze at her.
Her instinct, just as it was at the mention of F&E Construction was: run! And run far. But that was even more dangerous now. Nick knew, knew that she had stayed and knew that there was someone who kept her in Chicago.
There was a solution that kept Alicia safe, go back to Nick. But Kalinda’s lifelong fight for herself would be over, and she’d be better off dead.
She was smarter than Nick in every way. That had to count for something, even if he had the advantage of being unrestrained by anything in his actions. Kalinda told herself she was worth fighting for. Alicia’s concern helped to convince her. She was going to fight, she was better than him, she was not going to lose.
Alicia slept on. Kalinda kept looking at the source of her strength.