The "Plan B" Summer 2013 TGW Ficathon
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Title: Over and Over Again (I)
They go to D.C. together. It’s November and it’s dark and it’s cold out in Chicago and he talks her into going with him, catch a breath somewhere far.
Will’s been there before. She hasn’t, not since school, not without Peter. It’s a networking thing; he talks his way in and out of the room and likes to be reminded every time he crosses the look on someone else’s face that he’s still the first one in their class to have ever made partner, gotten his own firm all to himself.
They keep separate rooms for discretion’s sake. Because she’s Alicia Florrick. And that no matter the divorce and whatever might or might not survive this marriage she’ll always be Alicia Florrick. She kept his name and when she tells Will she booked a room in D.C. for the Georgetown reunion and he tells her he’ll book his on Monday, she doesn’t object.
.
She spends Saturday night in a dark blue dress and black and silver heels. The fabric is tight and it closes in on the breaths she draws through her chest; she feels the trail of his stare over her body all night. They don’t come as a couple but they associate like mud and rainwater and he makes a point of standing far too close without ever actually grazing an inch of her skin. She closes her eyes and shivers.
He also makes her laugh. His presence spares her from all the “I was sorry to hear about Peter and you” and the “I hope your kids are alright” comments she usually gets. Instead people are stunned that they’re still friends and that they still seem to talk to each other, especially after Will beat the crap out of her and Cary in court about a year ago. She smiles and she doesn’t say anything, really, because these people don’t know. They don’t know about the hurt and the scars they still bear and the bitter looks and knives they threw at each other’s backs. They weren’t there when Will showed up on her doorstep in the middle of the night after his shining, stunning victory and just sat there, silent, in her doorway, tired and wounded and wondering if he’d ever be able to forgive her, look her in the eye and live without them either being in love or at war.
“Peter’s seeing someone else.”
It’s all she told him that night.
“Peter’s seeing someone else.”
.
She’s glad to see the ‘old gang’ again. She’s thankful for the fun, familiar faces, the fresh air that pumps inside her lungs and the way they all seem to remember her for something else than having become the ex-first lady of Illinois. It’s Mary and Eric and Don and Mark and they all hang out at hotel bar after the reception, drink a bit too much and laugh a bit too loud, over memories of naïve legal enthusiasm and how they all got drunk in the library one night, on vodka smuggled into Will’s bottle of water.
Don and Mark decide to go for a smoke around midnight, Will lends her his jacket as they walk down the block (he’s drunk enough to feel the thick alcohol coat wrapped around his shoulders). The boys walk upfront all gentlemanly stumbling and shoving themselves out of the way from time to time and she and Mary stay back, laugh at Mark when he fails to climb over the fence around a small park.
“So, do you want to -” Will asks on the way back. And it’s not that he leaves the question unfinished, it’s that she quickly cuts him midsentence.
“- Yeah.”
She likes to think that they talk, now. They talk a lot, often, on the phone and in cafés, sometimes in the middle of the night. They talk about the weather and about Peter, and about how she left Lockhart/Gardner and it kills her to know how hard he’s trying to move on. They’ve slept together six times in the last four months; it makes it often enough that it’s a thing that exists, but not often enough that it really amounts to anything.
He fishes inside his pocket and hands her a white magnetic card with his room number scribbled on it. “Got you a spare key,”
“Thanks.”
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She thinks about it a lot, about what she should or shouldn't do, up until the very last minute when Will gets out of the elevator and she doesn’t, makes it to her floor with Mary instead.
“Everyone knows, you know?” Mary says as the cabin climbs up the last couple floors.
“What?”
“That you’re going back down as soon as I’m out of sight. It’s not like you guys were ever really able to hide it.”
The elevator dings and the doors slide open, Alicia steps out and heads right. Mary turns left. Alicia smiles.
“Goodnight,” she just says.
She's going back. Of course, she's going back. But it's not something Alicia Florrick ever says. So, Mary smirks and whispers “Goodnight, Alicia,” and it’s what annoys her the most.
People don’t know. But they think that they do. And this truce with Will, it’s crystal, beautiful and fragile and if she makes it public she’ll fuck it all up. If she makes it real, she'll fuck it all up. She doesn’t want to fuck it all up. She doesn't want to move back. So, she doesn’t tell anyone and pretends nobody knows and they remain a secret and she pays the price of not being able to move forward. She remembers Georgetown as being such a small world. Chicago really isn't that much bigger. So, it’s probably what's best.
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