FIC: The dice were loaded from the start [the good wife, alicia/kalinda]
Word Count: ~3000
Disclaimer: Disclaimed!
Summary: The hotel room is freezing.
Rating: Hard R
AN: For sweetjamielee, who is awesome and lovely and spamtacular and requested Kalinda/Alicia sharing-a-bed!porn. Um. Obviously the story kind of got away from me.
The dice were loaded from the start
The hotel room is freezing.
Kalinda curls her toes against the carpet, flicking on the complimentary coffee maker. She wants to take the chipped mug back to bed, but:
(“Will somebody please explain to them the value of last-minute discovery?” Diane hissed. Her necklaces clinked together warningly. “Or perhaps the concept of basic common sense?”
“To be fair,” Will said amiably, “they did raise the rather salient point of how useful a Chicago in-house will be in New York.” He spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Come on, Diane - would you want to foot the bill for a seventh person?”
“Oh, salient my ass,” Diane spat, turning to Kalinda. “Will you be helpful in New York?”
Kalinda considered. “I hail a great cab.”
To her left, Alicia stifled a laugh.
“We need her, Will,” Diane continued, as if Kalinda hadn’t spoken (Kalinda didn’t mind: the Will-Diane double act needed no third parties). “We always do, and as much as I love saying ‘I told you so’-”
The fight only lasted five minutes. Will supplied all the route answers - “fine, you pay for it” and “yeah well, explain that to the client” and “no, David, we cannot bill her as legal counsel” - but he was smiling too much for it to be truly effective.
“Alright, alright,” he said finally, laughing. He and Diane had been getting along sickeningly well since Bond left, like watching a second honeymoon. “Put it on the company Air Miles and, I don’t know, Kalinda will just have to share a room with someone.”
A beat. Then:
“She can double up with me.”)
So. Kalinda sips her coffee in the stiff armchair instead.
“How on earth did you get up and ready without waking me?”
Alicia is wearing her mom-look, tired and harassed. Kalinda pokes half-heartedly at the breakfast selection, shifting so Alicia can duck behind her in line. “I’m just that good.”
“Apparently,” Alicia says, grabbing a banana. “I’m a light sleeper.”
(She is not. She sleeps messily, legs akimbo and fingers twisted in the sheets, face flushed and focused on the serious task of sleeping. It is the sleep of the determined.
Kalinda doesn’t mention it.)
“I hate these things,” Alicia continues distractedly, scooping up some fruit salad. “The pineapple always soaks into everything and then you’re just eating a pineapple-flavoured berry assortment.”
Kalinda smirks. Alicia has a habit of babbling before important opening statements, third-chair or no. “You should write a letter.”
Alicia’s answering smile starts out rueful, then melts sideways into a crooked-grin. “I should,” she says, piling a bagel and a yogurt onto her plate (Will and Diane’s respective breakfast options). “Find me a list of names to send it to.”
“I’ll get right on that.”
“Do.” A handful of napkins, a plastic knife, two spoons; Alicia heads off across the lobby for last-minute prep, balancing the load carefully. “See you tonight,” she calls over her shoulder.
Kalinda stares at her plate of pineapple-flavoured strawberries. Right. That.
Much as Kalinda would like to watch Diane put on a show for the New York lawyers (she’s willing to bet a cool hundred it will involve multiple strings of statement pearls and the red glasses), time is not a luxury she has. Class action, intimidating New York skyscrapers and people getting cold-feet all over the place - your basic nightmare. She spends her day brow-beating and cajoling and flirting a witness into testifying. She has a headache by noon, needs a drink by five. By the time she drags herself back to the hotel, she’s ready to collapse.
“It went well,” Alicia announces. She’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing pyjamas and frowning at her laptop, and Kalinda absolutely refuses to be stupid about this. She ducks into the bathroom.
“The judge passed our first motion,” Alicia calls through the door. “Not the second, but that was always a long shot.”
“Great,” Kalinda tells the soap assortment.
“Yeah. Will’s worried about the cross-examine on Alvarez, but…”
But it has to be a woman and Diane is too obvious, too much bright makeup and flash. Kalinda would tell Alicia her still-lake face was half the battle if she didn’t think it would cause offence. “You’ll do fine.”
“I hope so,” Alicia says, like they’re talking about someone else, like it’s beyond her control. Kalinda crushes the soap wrapper in her hand.
“You will,” she insists, stepping into the doorway to meet Alicia’s eyes. “Alright?”
Alicia smiles her camera-smile, tight and brittle. “Thanks.”
They don’t go to bed until half-past twelve, but it's obvious Alicia’s still wired - she’s lying neatly, quietly, arms and legs and everything to herself, but Kalinda can feel the tension vibrating through the mattress. After ten long minutes of it, she throws off the scratchy duvet, flicks on the lamp.
In the sudden light, Alicia looks wide-awake and exhausted, like a Christmas child. She blinks but doesn’t protest when Kalinda says, “come on”. Just grabs their keycards and a sweater, pausing to knot her hair in the cloudy mirror over the dresser.
Finally, at the elevators: “Kalinda. Where are we going?”
Kalinda points. “Up.”
“Ah. Well.” Alicia pulls her sweater closer. She’s not quite smiling, but it curves at the corner of her mouth like a promise that makes the palms of Kalinda’s hands burn. “Whatever you feel is best. Still - I don’t think the situation is quite so desperate as to warrant throwing myself off the roof.”
The elevator doors open with a subtle chime. “I don’t know,” Kalinda says mildly, “quick way to get a continuance.” Alicia swats at her in mock-horror, expression finally breaking open into a laugh.
The doors chime again on the top floor. “‘Penthouse Pool,’” Alicia reads. “Are we going swimming?”
Kalinda shrugs. “More like wading.” When Alicia raises an eyebrow: “Come on - you can practice the cross on me.”
The double doors are a quick enough jimmy (Kalinda bends her keycard horribly, but they have a spare). Inside it’s dark and quiet, no light except the watery refraction from the pool built-ins. Kalinda can taste the chlorine in the back of her throat, feel the humidity on her arms. Everything is warm and wet.
Alicia rolls up her pyjamas and dangles her feet in the deep end. Her hair is curled from an earlier shower; Kalinda stares-without-staring at the way it’s coming loose at her neck.
“Aren’t you going to sit?”
Kalinda sits. (On the deck. Three metres away.) “So hit me.”
They practice for nearly an hour. Alicia articulates her points clearly, letting just the right amount of condescension creep into her tone, looking over at the diving-board jury at all the appropriate moments. Her voice echoes eerily off the tile.
“I think we’re good here,” Kalinda says finally, when Alicia starts yawning every fourth word. “Just - imagine everyone in bathing suits if you get nervous.”
“Thanks,” Alicia murmurs.
Kalinda is brushing her teeth again to get rid of the metallic taste of sleep deprivation. Alicia is leaning against the sink and smiling, her deer-in-the-headlights look gone. “I mean it, Kalinda. Thank you.”
Leaning on the sink and smiling and too close - Kalinda realizes Alicia’s intent a split-second before it’s carried through. Has time to freeze, meet her own shocked eyes in the mirror.
Alicia’s hand is warm and friendly on her arm. Sisterly. (But: roads, good intentions, etc., etc.) The kiss is poorly-aimed - the edges of their mouths brush, quick and glancing, and there are just not enough sisterly-gestures in the world to unring that bell. Everything tastes like toothpaste and Kalinda closes her eyes against the burn of the fluorescent lights.
“Dammit,” Alicia hisses, jerking away after a minute. Her voice is rough from overuse. From the chlorine, from the shock. “That was- not what I meant.” She wipes the foam off her mouth.
Kalinda thinks about asking, What did you mean? Thinks about apologising or offering reassurance, kissing Alicia again. The bathroom smells like chlorine and peppermint and Kalinda’s head swims.
(It is so very very late.)
In the end, Kalinda doesn’t do any of those things. She finishes brushing her teeth and rinses out her mouth, washes her hands with the hard hotel soap. Walks Alicia back to bed and tells her, “you need sleep for tomorrow”. Flicks off the lamp and lies down and doesn’t doesn’t doesn’t think.
“So,” Alicia says, ducking into the breakfast line. “Apparently you’ve really mastered this whole silent-getaway routine.”
Kalinda, who is deliberating between grapes or strawberries, doesn’t answer.
Alicia leans a hip against the table, blocking Kalinda’s view of the fruit selection. "What would you have done if I'd woken up?"
Kalinda considers. Alicia sounds curious, not angry; looks tired, not upset. “Smothered you with a pillow.”
Alicia’s answering laugh is bright and goofy. Two businessmen by the croissants crane their necks, trying to get a better look at her. “Also a great way to get a continuance?”
“I have the firm’s best interests at heart.”
Alicia smiles, hands Kalinda a napkin. And then Will’s coming over to discuss the relevance of their second witness’s medical history, and Diane’s suggesting they switch the order of questioning and that, thinks Kalinda, is that.
(Of course it isn’t.)
“Fuck,” gasps Alicia.
Kalinda isn’t sure what surprises her more, the swearing or the sounds Alicia makes. She actually says “oh” (under her breath, because this is Alicia) but actually says it, like an actor or a pantomime, Meg Ryan faking an orgasm. Kalinda kisses it off her lips, aiming for something with fewer letters and more breath.
Alicia’s back is against the hotel room door, Kalinda pinning her with hands and legs and hips. They are both slightly drunk. (But only slightly. Not enough to be an excuse, and Kalinda would have just done shots if-)
Alicia’s cross examination went beautifully, of course. Kalinda was in court this time (because she had a tip that might help Diane, not- not) and somehow the day ended with them all sitting at the hotel bar - Kalinda and Alicia, Will and Diane and Julius, laughing and toasting opposing council’s dumbstruck faces.
Which-
(Kalinda clinks her gin and tonic against a smiling Alicia’s. Their knees are bumping together beneath the bar, elbows touching over it. Underneath Alicia’s perfume, Kalinda imagines she can still smell faint hints of chlorine. She downs her drink, doesn’t lean closer to check.)
-mistake.
And now, this: Alicia panting softly against Kalinda’s cheek, letting her legs fall open just enough. Kalinda could get on her knees, but Alicia seems like the kind of woman who would balk - too much light, not enough balance - and besides, Kalinda wants to watch. One finger, two, and Alicia’s hips come up off the door.
“God, Kalinda-”
They’re still wearing nearly all of their clothes. Kalinda sweeps the edge of Alicia’s blouse aside, bites at her collarbone.
“Please, I-”
Alicia stops talking then, stops saying ‘oh’ and starts making noise. Kalinda pins her against the door as the tremors start.
Alicia goes rigid for a long moment, sighs as she comes down. Normally this would be Kalinda’s cue to back off - head to the bathroom, wash her hands - but Alicia sinks forward, into Kalinda instead of against the door, and Kalinda finds herself smoothing back mussed hair, settling into a lazy kiss.
“Oh,” Alicia says again. Her eyes are still closed.
Kalinda smirks, pressing its edges into Alicia’s lips. “Mm-hmm.”
“We have a bed, you know,” Alicia murmurs, smiling back. “Or were you just showing off?”
Kalinda bites at her ear, her neck. “I show off better with more room.”
Alicia laughs. “I bet. Give me five minutes?”
(Actually, Kalinda first knew she was in trouble about a year into their friendship.
Two weeks after Christmas and the 18th district station still had their decorations up, tinsel winding around the security barriers. They’d needed a photo array, were sitting in the waiting area, still in their coats and overheating.
It happened all at once, like a landside, like a flash flood, and Kalinda remembers the exact moment.
Alicia been talking to her while looking away, something about one kid or the other. Kalinda hadn’t been listening, was watching her, covertly, when suddenly Alicia looked over and caught her at it. Her smile was quick and devastating and she’d looked away again almost immediately.
Oh, Kalinda thought. Then, more clearly: fuck.
Alicia had continued talking, oblivious, while Kalinda sat stock-still, a terrible, sickening certainty flooding through her. It was like watching a car crash. She knew how this was going to end; she’d seen this movie, she’d read this play, and it was all over but the carnage.
Fuck, she thought.)
So.
Kalinda sits on the bed, listening to the water run in the bathroom. She considers breaking open the liquor cabinet, serving up a better alibi than three watery gin and tonics. (But. She wants to remember. Payoff after three nights of sleeping beside Alicia, smelling her hair and her skin, after months, years- Yeah. Kalinda wants to remember.)
Alicia comes out of the bathroom, stripped to her underwear and a pale blue shell. She’s nervous, shy, arms folded across her body and hands cupping her elbows. Possibly they are too sober for this.
Kalinda doesn’t care.
The hotel sheets are cool and slippery, crisp housekeeping corners. Alicia is warm and pliant, lying on her stomach and rounding her back into Kalinda’s caresses. She has beautiful collar bones, matching dimples at the base of her spine, and Kalinda is never, ever going to be able to look at her again without remembering this- the curve of her back, her knuckles on the headboard, her choked-off whine.
(“Who - oh - who has the room next door?”
“Julius, I think.” Kalinda twists her fingers, and Alicia’s mouth rounds out into a gasp. “Shhh,” Kalinda murmurs into her neck, into the new-grass smell behind her ear. They are both panting now. “Alicia, honey, you have to be quiet-”
“I can’t-”)
Eventually they pause, buy overpriced pretzels from the minibar, lie lengthwise across the bed considering the chocolate. It’s midnight, witching hour. They’ve opened a window and New York spring filters through, taxi horns and sirens. The breeze smells like wet asphalt.
“Now I’m wide awake,” Alicia whispers into Kalinda’s mouth. Her smile tastes salty.
Kalinda cannot see how their professional relationship will recover from this.
Kalinda wakes up on autopilot, is halfway out of bed before she remembers. Not Chicago. Not a faceless one night stand. No escape routes, not even a couch she can sleep on.
“Time is it?” Alicia mumbles, all messy hair and half-opened eyes, of course, of course a light sleeper when it’s most inconvenient.
“A little after three,” Kalinda says automatically.
Alicia’s eyes are too shrewd for someone who just woke up. “Well then. We can be weird about this in the morning.” Her fingers are firm on Kalinda’s arm.
Kalinda eases back between the sheets, half-resigned and half something else. Alicia doesn’t let go of her wrist.
(In the 18th district station, what Kalinda meant by “fuck”: that Alicia had a beautiful smile, a beautiful smile and straight and married and yes, Kalinda was in love with her, probably, yes, but worse, worse, it was also a crush, hopeless and adolescent and stupid.)
“Flight’s at four,” Alicia says, materializing next to the scones. “Three million is a good settling price.”
“Better than we hoped,” Kalinda answers. The strawberries still taste like pineapple. Over by the elevators, Will and Diane are entertaining the group with their strange, two-man show.
“Yeah. Listen, everyone’s going out for brunch to celebrate but-” Alicia twists a plastic spoon, looking off across the lobby and avoiding Kalinda’s eyes. “But there’s coffee in our hotel room, plus that seven dollar chocolate we never did eat.”
Kalinda sets down her plate carefully. “Breakfast of champions.”
Alicia’s smile is like the sun.
Later, in the hotel bathtub, shallow and too-small and the water getting cold: “So, when we get back to Chicago-”
Alicia is biting her lip. She has shampoo in her hair. Earlier, she pulled Kalinda’s legs over her lap and slid a hand between, poured palmfuls of water over Kalinda’s neck and arms until Kalinda tipped her head back with a gasp.
Kalinda could kiss away the question. Could keep her mouth open against Alicia’s until it retreated to the backs of their throats.
But.
Kalinda traces her fingers up and down the groove of Alicia’s spine. Her hands are not shaking. “I’ve never been one for the whole ‘happens in New York, stays in New York’ thing,” she says, and pulls back to wait for Alicia’s answer.
Disclaimer: Disclaimed!
Summary: The hotel room is freezing.
Rating: Hard R
AN: For sweetjamielee, who is awesome and lovely and spamtacular and requested Kalinda/Alicia sharing-a-bed!porn. Um. Obviously the story kind of got away from me.
The dice were loaded from the start
The hotel room is freezing.
Kalinda curls her toes against the carpet, flicking on the complimentary coffee maker. She wants to take the chipped mug back to bed, but:
(“Will somebody please explain to them the value of last-minute discovery?” Diane hissed. Her necklaces clinked together warningly. “Or perhaps the concept of basic common sense?”
“To be fair,” Will said amiably, “they did raise the rather salient point of how useful a Chicago in-house will be in New York.” He spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Come on, Diane - would you want to foot the bill for a seventh person?”
“Oh, salient my ass,” Diane spat, turning to Kalinda. “Will you be helpful in New York?”
Kalinda considered. “I hail a great cab.”
To her left, Alicia stifled a laugh.
“We need her, Will,” Diane continued, as if Kalinda hadn’t spoken (Kalinda didn’t mind: the Will-Diane double act needed no third parties). “We always do, and as much as I love saying ‘I told you so’-”
The fight only lasted five minutes. Will supplied all the route answers - “fine, you pay for it” and “yeah well, explain that to the client” and “no, David, we cannot bill her as legal counsel” - but he was smiling too much for it to be truly effective.
“Alright, alright,” he said finally, laughing. He and Diane had been getting along sickeningly well since Bond left, like watching a second honeymoon. “Put it on the company Air Miles and, I don’t know, Kalinda will just have to share a room with someone.”
A beat. Then:
“She can double up with me.”)
So. Kalinda sips her coffee in the stiff armchair instead.
“How on earth did you get up and ready without waking me?”
Alicia is wearing her mom-look, tired and harassed. Kalinda pokes half-heartedly at the breakfast selection, shifting so Alicia can duck behind her in line. “I’m just that good.”
“Apparently,” Alicia says, grabbing a banana. “I’m a light sleeper.”
(She is not. She sleeps messily, legs akimbo and fingers twisted in the sheets, face flushed and focused on the serious task of sleeping. It is the sleep of the determined.
Kalinda doesn’t mention it.)
“I hate these things,” Alicia continues distractedly, scooping up some fruit salad. “The pineapple always soaks into everything and then you’re just eating a pineapple-flavoured berry assortment.”
Kalinda smirks. Alicia has a habit of babbling before important opening statements, third-chair or no. “You should write a letter.”
Alicia’s answering smile starts out rueful, then melts sideways into a crooked-grin. “I should,” she says, piling a bagel and a yogurt onto her plate (Will and Diane’s respective breakfast options). “Find me a list of names to send it to.”
“I’ll get right on that.”
“Do.” A handful of napkins, a plastic knife, two spoons; Alicia heads off across the lobby for last-minute prep, balancing the load carefully. “See you tonight,” she calls over her shoulder.
Kalinda stares at her plate of pineapple-flavoured strawberries. Right. That.
Much as Kalinda would like to watch Diane put on a show for the New York lawyers (she’s willing to bet a cool hundred it will involve multiple strings of statement pearls and the red glasses), time is not a luxury she has. Class action, intimidating New York skyscrapers and people getting cold-feet all over the place - your basic nightmare. She spends her day brow-beating and cajoling and flirting a witness into testifying. She has a headache by noon, needs a drink by five. By the time she drags herself back to the hotel, she’s ready to collapse.
“It went well,” Alicia announces. She’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing pyjamas and frowning at her laptop, and Kalinda absolutely refuses to be stupid about this. She ducks into the bathroom.
“The judge passed our first motion,” Alicia calls through the door. “Not the second, but that was always a long shot.”
“Great,” Kalinda tells the soap assortment.
“Yeah. Will’s worried about the cross-examine on Alvarez, but…”
But it has to be a woman and Diane is too obvious, too much bright makeup and flash. Kalinda would tell Alicia her still-lake face was half the battle if she didn’t think it would cause offence. “You’ll do fine.”
“I hope so,” Alicia says, like they’re talking about someone else, like it’s beyond her control. Kalinda crushes the soap wrapper in her hand.
“You will,” she insists, stepping into the doorway to meet Alicia’s eyes. “Alright?”
Alicia smiles her camera-smile, tight and brittle. “Thanks.”
They don’t go to bed until half-past twelve, but it's obvious Alicia’s still wired - she’s lying neatly, quietly, arms and legs and everything to herself, but Kalinda can feel the tension vibrating through the mattress. After ten long minutes of it, she throws off the scratchy duvet, flicks on the lamp.
In the sudden light, Alicia looks wide-awake and exhausted, like a Christmas child. She blinks but doesn’t protest when Kalinda says, “come on”. Just grabs their keycards and a sweater, pausing to knot her hair in the cloudy mirror over the dresser.
Finally, at the elevators: “Kalinda. Where are we going?”
Kalinda points. “Up.”
“Ah. Well.” Alicia pulls her sweater closer. She’s not quite smiling, but it curves at the corner of her mouth like a promise that makes the palms of Kalinda’s hands burn. “Whatever you feel is best. Still - I don’t think the situation is quite so desperate as to warrant throwing myself off the roof.”
The elevator doors open with a subtle chime. “I don’t know,” Kalinda says mildly, “quick way to get a continuance.” Alicia swats at her in mock-horror, expression finally breaking open into a laugh.
The doors chime again on the top floor. “‘Penthouse Pool,’” Alicia reads. “Are we going swimming?”
Kalinda shrugs. “More like wading.” When Alicia raises an eyebrow: “Come on - you can practice the cross on me.”
The double doors are a quick enough jimmy (Kalinda bends her keycard horribly, but they have a spare). Inside it’s dark and quiet, no light except the watery refraction from the pool built-ins. Kalinda can taste the chlorine in the back of her throat, feel the humidity on her arms. Everything is warm and wet.
Alicia rolls up her pyjamas and dangles her feet in the deep end. Her hair is curled from an earlier shower; Kalinda stares-without-staring at the way it’s coming loose at her neck.
“Aren’t you going to sit?”
Kalinda sits. (On the deck. Three metres away.) “So hit me.”
They practice for nearly an hour. Alicia articulates her points clearly, letting just the right amount of condescension creep into her tone, looking over at the diving-board jury at all the appropriate moments. Her voice echoes eerily off the tile.
“I think we’re good here,” Kalinda says finally, when Alicia starts yawning every fourth word. “Just - imagine everyone in bathing suits if you get nervous.”
“Thanks,” Alicia murmurs.
Kalinda is brushing her teeth again to get rid of the metallic taste of sleep deprivation. Alicia is leaning against the sink and smiling, her deer-in-the-headlights look gone. “I mean it, Kalinda. Thank you.”
Leaning on the sink and smiling and too close - Kalinda realizes Alicia’s intent a split-second before it’s carried through. Has time to freeze, meet her own shocked eyes in the mirror.
Alicia’s hand is warm and friendly on her arm. Sisterly. (But: roads, good intentions, etc., etc.) The kiss is poorly-aimed - the edges of their mouths brush, quick and glancing, and there are just not enough sisterly-gestures in the world to unring that bell. Everything tastes like toothpaste and Kalinda closes her eyes against the burn of the fluorescent lights.
“Dammit,” Alicia hisses, jerking away after a minute. Her voice is rough from overuse. From the chlorine, from the shock. “That was- not what I meant.” She wipes the foam off her mouth.
Kalinda thinks about asking, What did you mean? Thinks about apologising or offering reassurance, kissing Alicia again. The bathroom smells like chlorine and peppermint and Kalinda’s head swims.
(It is so very very late.)
In the end, Kalinda doesn’t do any of those things. She finishes brushing her teeth and rinses out her mouth, washes her hands with the hard hotel soap. Walks Alicia back to bed and tells her, “you need sleep for tomorrow”. Flicks off the lamp and lies down and doesn’t doesn’t doesn’t think.
“So,” Alicia says, ducking into the breakfast line. “Apparently you’ve really mastered this whole silent-getaway routine.”
Kalinda, who is deliberating between grapes or strawberries, doesn’t answer.
Alicia leans a hip against the table, blocking Kalinda’s view of the fruit selection. "What would you have done if I'd woken up?"
Kalinda considers. Alicia sounds curious, not angry; looks tired, not upset. “Smothered you with a pillow.”
Alicia’s answering laugh is bright and goofy. Two businessmen by the croissants crane their necks, trying to get a better look at her. “Also a great way to get a continuance?”
“I have the firm’s best interests at heart.”
Alicia smiles, hands Kalinda a napkin. And then Will’s coming over to discuss the relevance of their second witness’s medical history, and Diane’s suggesting they switch the order of questioning and that, thinks Kalinda, is that.
(Of course it isn’t.)
“Fuck,” gasps Alicia.
Kalinda isn’t sure what surprises her more, the swearing or the sounds Alicia makes. She actually says “oh” (under her breath, because this is Alicia) but actually says it, like an actor or a pantomime, Meg Ryan faking an orgasm. Kalinda kisses it off her lips, aiming for something with fewer letters and more breath.
Alicia’s back is against the hotel room door, Kalinda pinning her with hands and legs and hips. They are both slightly drunk. (But only slightly. Not enough to be an excuse, and Kalinda would have just done shots if-)
Alicia’s cross examination went beautifully, of course. Kalinda was in court this time (because she had a tip that might help Diane, not- not) and somehow the day ended with them all sitting at the hotel bar - Kalinda and Alicia, Will and Diane and Julius, laughing and toasting opposing council’s dumbstruck faces.
Which-
(Kalinda clinks her gin and tonic against a smiling Alicia’s. Their knees are bumping together beneath the bar, elbows touching over it. Underneath Alicia’s perfume, Kalinda imagines she can still smell faint hints of chlorine. She downs her drink, doesn’t lean closer to check.)
-mistake.
And now, this: Alicia panting softly against Kalinda’s cheek, letting her legs fall open just enough. Kalinda could get on her knees, but Alicia seems like the kind of woman who would balk - too much light, not enough balance - and besides, Kalinda wants to watch. One finger, two, and Alicia’s hips come up off the door.
“God, Kalinda-”
They’re still wearing nearly all of their clothes. Kalinda sweeps the edge of Alicia’s blouse aside, bites at her collarbone.
“Please, I-”
Alicia stops talking then, stops saying ‘oh’ and starts making noise. Kalinda pins her against the door as the tremors start.
Alicia goes rigid for a long moment, sighs as she comes down. Normally this would be Kalinda’s cue to back off - head to the bathroom, wash her hands - but Alicia sinks forward, into Kalinda instead of against the door, and Kalinda finds herself smoothing back mussed hair, settling into a lazy kiss.
“Oh,” Alicia says again. Her eyes are still closed.
Kalinda smirks, pressing its edges into Alicia’s lips. “Mm-hmm.”
“We have a bed, you know,” Alicia murmurs, smiling back. “Or were you just showing off?”
Kalinda bites at her ear, her neck. “I show off better with more room.”
Alicia laughs. “I bet. Give me five minutes?”
(Actually, Kalinda first knew she was in trouble about a year into their friendship.
Two weeks after Christmas and the 18th district station still had their decorations up, tinsel winding around the security barriers. They’d needed a photo array, were sitting in the waiting area, still in their coats and overheating.
It happened all at once, like a landside, like a flash flood, and Kalinda remembers the exact moment.
Alicia been talking to her while looking away, something about one kid or the other. Kalinda hadn’t been listening, was watching her, covertly, when suddenly Alicia looked over and caught her at it. Her smile was quick and devastating and she’d looked away again almost immediately.
Oh, Kalinda thought. Then, more clearly: fuck.
Alicia had continued talking, oblivious, while Kalinda sat stock-still, a terrible, sickening certainty flooding through her. It was like watching a car crash. She knew how this was going to end; she’d seen this movie, she’d read this play, and it was all over but the carnage.
Fuck, she thought.)
So.
Kalinda sits on the bed, listening to the water run in the bathroom. She considers breaking open the liquor cabinet, serving up a better alibi than three watery gin and tonics. (But. She wants to remember. Payoff after three nights of sleeping beside Alicia, smelling her hair and her skin, after months, years- Yeah. Kalinda wants to remember.)
Alicia comes out of the bathroom, stripped to her underwear and a pale blue shell. She’s nervous, shy, arms folded across her body and hands cupping her elbows. Possibly they are too sober for this.
Kalinda doesn’t care.
The hotel sheets are cool and slippery, crisp housekeeping corners. Alicia is warm and pliant, lying on her stomach and rounding her back into Kalinda’s caresses. She has beautiful collar bones, matching dimples at the base of her spine, and Kalinda is never, ever going to be able to look at her again without remembering this- the curve of her back, her knuckles on the headboard, her choked-off whine.
(“Who - oh - who has the room next door?”
“Julius, I think.” Kalinda twists her fingers, and Alicia’s mouth rounds out into a gasp. “Shhh,” Kalinda murmurs into her neck, into the new-grass smell behind her ear. They are both panting now. “Alicia, honey, you have to be quiet-”
“I can’t-”)
Eventually they pause, buy overpriced pretzels from the minibar, lie lengthwise across the bed considering the chocolate. It’s midnight, witching hour. They’ve opened a window and New York spring filters through, taxi horns and sirens. The breeze smells like wet asphalt.
“Now I’m wide awake,” Alicia whispers into Kalinda’s mouth. Her smile tastes salty.
Kalinda cannot see how their professional relationship will recover from this.
Kalinda wakes up on autopilot, is halfway out of bed before she remembers. Not Chicago. Not a faceless one night stand. No escape routes, not even a couch she can sleep on.
“Time is it?” Alicia mumbles, all messy hair and half-opened eyes, of course, of course a light sleeper when it’s most inconvenient.
“A little after three,” Kalinda says automatically.
Alicia’s eyes are too shrewd for someone who just woke up. “Well then. We can be weird about this in the morning.” Her fingers are firm on Kalinda’s arm.
Kalinda eases back between the sheets, half-resigned and half something else. Alicia doesn’t let go of her wrist.
(In the 18th district station, what Kalinda meant by “fuck”: that Alicia had a beautiful smile, a beautiful smile and straight and married and yes, Kalinda was in love with her, probably, yes, but worse, worse, it was also a crush, hopeless and adolescent and stupid.)
“Flight’s at four,” Alicia says, materializing next to the scones. “Three million is a good settling price.”
“Better than we hoped,” Kalinda answers. The strawberries still taste like pineapple. Over by the elevators, Will and Diane are entertaining the group with their strange, two-man show.
“Yeah. Listen, everyone’s going out for brunch to celebrate but-” Alicia twists a plastic spoon, looking off across the lobby and avoiding Kalinda’s eyes. “But there’s coffee in our hotel room, plus that seven dollar chocolate we never did eat.”
Kalinda sets down her plate carefully. “Breakfast of champions.”
Alicia’s smile is like the sun.
Later, in the hotel bathtub, shallow and too-small and the water getting cold: “So, when we get back to Chicago-”
Alicia is biting her lip. She has shampoo in her hair. Earlier, she pulled Kalinda’s legs over her lap and slid a hand between, poured palmfuls of water over Kalinda’s neck and arms until Kalinda tipped her head back with a gasp.
Kalinda could kiss away the question. Could keep her mouth open against Alicia’s until it retreated to the backs of their throats.
But.
Kalinda traces her fingers up and down the groove of Alicia’s spine. Her hands are not shaking. “I’ve never been one for the whole ‘happens in New York, stays in New York’ thing,” she says, and pulls back to wait for Alicia’s answer.