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threeguessesWord Count: ~2000
Disclaimer: Disclaimed!
Pairing/Characters: Kalinda/everyone and Kalinda/no one, I guess.
Summary: Kalinda has never trusted well.
Rating: R
Five Friends Kalinda Sharma Couldn’t Keep (And One She Did)
1. age four
“Late” says Mum, rushing them through the door while still braiding Leela’s hair. Her fingers move fast fast fast and her mouth moves faster, a mantra of “hurry up” and “move Anuja” and “don’t you dare touch that Pranav”. Snow is sliding in the tops of Leela’s boots, soaking her churidars. The hair at her temples pulls tight. (But “late” means breakfast in the car, which means pop tarts, which means Leela keeps her mouth shut even when it hurts, a sharp yank on her scalp.)
At temple, everything is rush rush rush. An auntie unzips Leela’s coat while another one pulls at her mittens. Off come her boots and she is sent across the tiled entryway, socks wet and heavy.
Prianka is waiting for her, neatly cross-legged on the carpet. Her socks are dry. Her braids are neat and shiny and tied with ribbons. She has a new kameez, gold-shot embroidery winding down the sleeve, even though it isn’t Diwali for weeks and weeks.
She also has a colouring book. Leela likes to read the labels on the pencil crayons. Today there is laser lemon and magic mint, wisteria and wild watermelon, periwinkle and plum. Each one is sharp and new. Prianka spreads the book across the carpet, creasing its spine smartly. Together they colour-in a picture of a puppy, a princess in a field.
“I wanna do the hair,” whispers Prianka. She always whispers. She’s a good girl, says Leela’s Mum. She is po-lite.
Leela spreads her fingers out, meaning ‘go ahead’. Meaning ‘I don’t care anyway’.
Prianka colours it yellow. Leela fingers her own black braid. Looks around at all the dark heads bent in prayer. Watches Prianka’s double plaits shift over her shoulder.
Leela reaches out and yanks. Hard.
2. age fifteen
“I’m thirsty,” Allison whines, tugging her uniform skirt straight and batting her pale eyelashes. “S’hot, Leela.”
It isn’t the greatest idea to be skipping without a change of clothes; they stick out like sore thumbs, keep getting dirty looks from the lunch crowd. Leela casually flips off a stern-looking business man.
“I don’t have any mo-oney,” Allison says, rolling onto her back to watch Leela upside-down. She sticks out her tongue, crosses her eyes. Her silky hair falls across Leela’s lap.
“Fuck, fine,” Leela grumbles, standing up and brushing grass off her skirt. “But you’re coming with me.”
Inside the store, Allison sashays up to the clerk and leans over the counter, smacking her gum obnoxiously. Leela slips around back, looking for a small enough bottle. (Another reason why they should have changed; nowhere to hide anything in this fucking uniform.)
When she walks up to the front, Allison is talking to the confused clerk in an accent not unlike Katherine Hepburn’s. Leela bites away a smile.
“As I was saying,” Allison continues through her teeth, oblivious, “there was just no room in the lakeshore house—” So Leela tangles their fingers together, whispers in the shell of her ear—
“mission accomplished”
—and then Allison is smiling and not saying anything at all.
They drink the vodka in a nearby parking lot, kicking at the wheels of people’s cars. Allison keys a couple with her pink and purple Sailor Moon keychain.
After half the bottle, Allison starts touching her arm, playing with her hair, and Leela is well and truly done. They kiss up against the brick wall, sticky and slow and tasting of Allison’s lipgloss. It’s not like kissing boys, nothing like kissing boys, and Leela’s head swims.
(At school on Monday, Leela starts spreading the rumour. Scrawls “dyke” across Allison’s locker.
Guarantees it’ll never be written on her own.)
3. age twenty-three
“So,” Leela’s sister shuffles across to the counter, “how are you?” She’s moving slowly, just had a baby and still won’t let Leela touch anything; not the mismatched cutlery from the wedding, not the second-hand stove. Nothing.
“I can make my own tea,” Leela says in lieu of an answer. Anuja just shushes her, filling the tiny copper kettle and flicking on the element (even though Leela gave her an electric one at the baby shower, saved for months and months). Anuja’s proud to be a hostess, the lady of the house; Leela can tell. It doesn’t seem to matter that the house is a shitty apartment east of Don River and her kitchen table is a cheap patio set.
“Let me see the ring,” Anuja demands, ushering Leela to sit down.
Leela holds out her hand obediently, but the phone starts ringing and Anuja shuffles off toward the hall.
“I can get that!” Leela yells after her, exasperated. The only telephone is in the bedroom, a hideous teal contraption with a rotary dial.
Anuja waves her off. “Watch the baby,” she calls.
Leela watches. The baby’s in a bassinet on the counter, a tiny, nebulous blob Leela witnessed Anuja push out two weeks ago. It made her sick to see it, the blood and the shit and her reserved sister screaming on the delivery table.
“Hi,” she tries, looking into the baby’s milky eyes. She touches a foot, a tiny curled fist. The baby squints, sucking in its lips. They watch each other in mutual disbelief for a long time.
“One day you’ll have one too, you know.”
Anuja is wearing her brand-new maternal face, out of synch with her wide eyes and girlish mouth. Her t’s and d’s are thicker, the way they always get after speaking with Mum and Dad.
“Sure,” Leela says, enunciating crisply on purpose; Anuja rolls her eyes. “One day.”
“That was Mum,” Anuja adds unnecessarily. “She wants you to pick out a suit for the wedding later.”
As they’re saying goodbye on the threadbare welcome mat, Anuja pauses. Takes Leela’s hand. “You do love him though, eh? You’re happy?”
Leela blinks, surprised.
“Because I’d kill any man who didn’t make you happy,” Anuja says seriously, and it sounds so strange and foreign coming out of her sister’s quiet mouth that Leela laughs, sharp and pealing and only once.
(A year later, as she’s pouring the gasoline around the house, she thinks about leaving a note. Just one, just for Anuja.
She doesn’t.)
4. age thirty-one
Detective Jim Barrows is Kalinda’s first contact in Chicago. Before Lockhart-Gardner, before the State’s Attorney’s office— Kalinda is still living in a shitty tenth floor walk-up and working three jobs, looking over her shoulder and jumping at shadows.
“Jesus, you’re a skittish little thing,” he remarks the second time they meet.
“Fuck you,” Kalinda says, and he says “anytime”, only they never do. She sees him through his divorce and his custody battle and suddenly it's seven years later and he’s still feeding her good tips. They go out drinking sometimes, crappy Irish dive bars that Jim likes, or to the shooting range. She’s there when his partner dies, when he celebrates his 50th birthday. When he loses visitation rights, throws the picture of his daughter clear across the precinct.
“So there’s someone then, huh Kay?” he asks, three weeks after she starts seeing Donna.
Kalinda whips around to look at him. "What?"
He holds up both hands in a gesture of surrender, laughing. “Easy now, I’m not prying. It’s just nice to see you smile more, is all.”
“Whatever,” Kalinda says warningly. But she pays for his coffee.
The night after Donna says “I love you”, Kalinda meets Jim at his favourite bar. Buys him drink after drink, even though she knows he’s been quitting and rejoining AA for the past two years. Lets him keep going until last call, even when the bartender starts giving her dirty looks.
(Takes him up to the hotel room, even though once he called her Sarah on a bender, told her she had eyes just like his daughter’s.)
She should know better, knows better (because she knows him, she does); he looks at her afterwards like it hurts, like it hurts him to see her.
So Kalinda stops visiting the 12th District.
5. age thirty-two
“Agent Delaney,” Kalinda nods, leaning over the cubicle. Lana ignores her and continues thumbing through the thick folder on her desk, circling a word here, a sentence there. Kalinda doesn’t bother looking closely; Lana will already have hidden anything important.
“Kalinda,” Lana says at last, smiling her tiny crooked smile. “What can I do for you?”
She’s young and green, not high up in the FBI, but Kalinda likes her style. Likes the way her wheeling and dealing is always a little forced, a little heavy-handed.
“What, a girl can’t visit?” Kalinda asks; Lana’s smile just gets more crooked. Kalinda relents with a sigh. “Fine. Know anything about Edgewater?”
“You mean the sting gone wrong?” Lana twirls a pencil. She has long piano-fingers, bitten nails. “I might. If you buy me a drink.”
“I might buy you a drink if you tell me something,” Kalinda shoots back.
Lana drops the flirt and smiles properly, all teeth and good-natured exasperation. “Of course,” she groans, rolling her eyes. “We-ell,” she considers, “I’d look into the police’s motives for going in so early. If I was you.”
Kalinda sucks in a breath, surprised. The partners have been operating under the assumption that it was just a poorly-conceived manoeuvre. But if the police had done it purposefully, knowing it was too soon—
“Gotta go,” Kalinda says, already pulling out her phone.
“Lovely to see you,” Lana sing-songs after her. “As always.”
Later, Kalinda does take Lana out for that drink. Because while Lana may be quick to smile and quicker at giving up information, she’s still surprisingly shrewd. Exacting.
Besides, it’s not like her terms are steep. A couple of drinks and some harmless banter – all well within Kalinda’s abilities. After her second Lemon Drop, Lana’s watching the dance floor with a pretty flush, hair loose and swinging and Kalinda isn’t finding this a chore at all.
“We could dance,” Lana says. Her hand is on Kalinda’s knee— high on Kalinda’s knee. Apparently alcohol makes Lana even less subtle; Kalinda finds the lack of finesse endearing.
“We could,” she murmurs, “or—” she tilts her head back further than is strictly necessary to finish her drink, “—we could… go.”
“I pick door number two, Monty,” Lana says. She is watching Kalinda’s throat.
Outside at the taxi stand she ducks Kalinda’s kiss, playfully turning her head away.
“This is better when you help,” Kalinda whispers. One of Lana’s elfin ears is poking through the straight slide of her hair; Kalinda brushes her mouth against it.
“Mmm,” Lana says, laughing. “Should I also whistle if I want you?”
Kalinda smiles into her neck. “‘Just put your lips together and blow.’”
So: Lana’s easy. She doesn’t mind when Kalinda doesn’t show up for months at a time, doesn’t pout if Kalinda leaves right after sex. It’s fun and convenient, a fallback when Kalinda strikes out with the police, when she needs a quick favour for Alicia.
But then:
Things with Blake start getting close and dangerous, and Kalinda’s looking over her shoulder like she hasn’t since she was twenty-four, jumping at shadows. She starts asking for favours Lana can’t give.
One day Lana shakes her head, says she can’t help anymore (the investigation’s too high-up, there’s too much heat, it’s my job; it’s not you, it’s me), exactly the same way Cary did, and then Kalinda’s alone.
1.
“Come on,” Alicia says, cupping Kalinda’s elbow outside the courtroom. “I’m taking you to lunch.”
After they’ve ordered, Alicia collects Kalinda’s hands in both of hers. Puts her palms to Kalinda’s palms and interlaces their fingers.
“Now,” she commands. “Tell me what’s happening.”
Her eyes are warm and her hands are cool and dry.
Kalinda opens her mouth.
Disclaimer: Disclaimed!
Pairing/Characters: Kalinda/everyone and Kalinda/no one, I guess.
Summary: Kalinda has never trusted well.
Rating: R
Five Friends Kalinda Sharma Couldn’t Keep (And One She Did)
1. age four
“Late” says Mum, rushing them through the door while still braiding Leela’s hair. Her fingers move fast fast fast and her mouth moves faster, a mantra of “hurry up” and “move Anuja” and “don’t you dare touch that Pranav”. Snow is sliding in the tops of Leela’s boots, soaking her churidars. The hair at her temples pulls tight. (But “late” means breakfast in the car, which means pop tarts, which means Leela keeps her mouth shut even when it hurts, a sharp yank on her scalp.)
At temple, everything is rush rush rush. An auntie unzips Leela’s coat while another one pulls at her mittens. Off come her boots and she is sent across the tiled entryway, socks wet and heavy.
Prianka is waiting for her, neatly cross-legged on the carpet. Her socks are dry. Her braids are neat and shiny and tied with ribbons. She has a new kameez, gold-shot embroidery winding down the sleeve, even though it isn’t Diwali for weeks and weeks.
She also has a colouring book. Leela likes to read the labels on the pencil crayons. Today there is laser lemon and magic mint, wisteria and wild watermelon, periwinkle and plum. Each one is sharp and new. Prianka spreads the book across the carpet, creasing its spine smartly. Together they colour-in a picture of a puppy, a princess in a field.
“I wanna do the hair,” whispers Prianka. She always whispers. She’s a good girl, says Leela’s Mum. She is po-lite.
Leela spreads her fingers out, meaning ‘go ahead’. Meaning ‘I don’t care anyway’.
Prianka colours it yellow. Leela fingers her own black braid. Looks around at all the dark heads bent in prayer. Watches Prianka’s double plaits shift over her shoulder.
Leela reaches out and yanks. Hard.
2. age fifteen
“I’m thirsty,” Allison whines, tugging her uniform skirt straight and batting her pale eyelashes. “S’hot, Leela.”
It isn’t the greatest idea to be skipping without a change of clothes; they stick out like sore thumbs, keep getting dirty looks from the lunch crowd. Leela casually flips off a stern-looking business man.
“I don’t have any mo-oney,” Allison says, rolling onto her back to watch Leela upside-down. She sticks out her tongue, crosses her eyes. Her silky hair falls across Leela’s lap.
“Fuck, fine,” Leela grumbles, standing up and brushing grass off her skirt. “But you’re coming with me.”
Inside the store, Allison sashays up to the clerk and leans over the counter, smacking her gum obnoxiously. Leela slips around back, looking for a small enough bottle. (Another reason why they should have changed; nowhere to hide anything in this fucking uniform.)
When she walks up to the front, Allison is talking to the confused clerk in an accent not unlike Katherine Hepburn’s. Leela bites away a smile.
“As I was saying,” Allison continues through her teeth, oblivious, “there was just no room in the lakeshore house—” So Leela tangles their fingers together, whispers in the shell of her ear—
“mission accomplished”
—and then Allison is smiling and not saying anything at all.
They drink the vodka in a nearby parking lot, kicking at the wheels of people’s cars. Allison keys a couple with her pink and purple Sailor Moon keychain.
After half the bottle, Allison starts touching her arm, playing with her hair, and Leela is well and truly done. They kiss up against the brick wall, sticky and slow and tasting of Allison’s lipgloss. It’s not like kissing boys, nothing like kissing boys, and Leela’s head swims.
(At school on Monday, Leela starts spreading the rumour. Scrawls “dyke” across Allison’s locker.
Guarantees it’ll never be written on her own.)
3. age twenty-three
“So,” Leela’s sister shuffles across to the counter, “how are you?” She’s moving slowly, just had a baby and still won’t let Leela touch anything; not the mismatched cutlery from the wedding, not the second-hand stove. Nothing.
“I can make my own tea,” Leela says in lieu of an answer. Anuja just shushes her, filling the tiny copper kettle and flicking on the element (even though Leela gave her an electric one at the baby shower, saved for months and months). Anuja’s proud to be a hostess, the lady of the house; Leela can tell. It doesn’t seem to matter that the house is a shitty apartment east of Don River and her kitchen table is a cheap patio set.
“Let me see the ring,” Anuja demands, ushering Leela to sit down.
Leela holds out her hand obediently, but the phone starts ringing and Anuja shuffles off toward the hall.
“I can get that!” Leela yells after her, exasperated. The only telephone is in the bedroom, a hideous teal contraption with a rotary dial.
Anuja waves her off. “Watch the baby,” she calls.
Leela watches. The baby’s in a bassinet on the counter, a tiny, nebulous blob Leela witnessed Anuja push out two weeks ago. It made her sick to see it, the blood and the shit and her reserved sister screaming on the delivery table.
“Hi,” she tries, looking into the baby’s milky eyes. She touches a foot, a tiny curled fist. The baby squints, sucking in its lips. They watch each other in mutual disbelief for a long time.
“One day you’ll have one too, you know.”
Anuja is wearing her brand-new maternal face, out of synch with her wide eyes and girlish mouth. Her t’s and d’s are thicker, the way they always get after speaking with Mum and Dad.
“Sure,” Leela says, enunciating crisply on purpose; Anuja rolls her eyes. “One day.”
“That was Mum,” Anuja adds unnecessarily. “She wants you to pick out a suit for the wedding later.”
As they’re saying goodbye on the threadbare welcome mat, Anuja pauses. Takes Leela’s hand. “You do love him though, eh? You’re happy?”
Leela blinks, surprised.
“Because I’d kill any man who didn’t make you happy,” Anuja says seriously, and it sounds so strange and foreign coming out of her sister’s quiet mouth that Leela laughs, sharp and pealing and only once.
(A year later, as she’s pouring the gasoline around the house, she thinks about leaving a note. Just one, just for Anuja.
She doesn’t.)
4. age thirty-one
Detective Jim Barrows is Kalinda’s first contact in Chicago. Before Lockhart-Gardner, before the State’s Attorney’s office— Kalinda is still living in a shitty tenth floor walk-up and working three jobs, looking over her shoulder and jumping at shadows.
“Jesus, you’re a skittish little thing,” he remarks the second time they meet.
“Fuck you,” Kalinda says, and he says “anytime”, only they never do. She sees him through his divorce and his custody battle and suddenly it's seven years later and he’s still feeding her good tips. They go out drinking sometimes, crappy Irish dive bars that Jim likes, or to the shooting range. She’s there when his partner dies, when he celebrates his 50th birthday. When he loses visitation rights, throws the picture of his daughter clear across the precinct.
“So there’s someone then, huh Kay?” he asks, three weeks after she starts seeing Donna.
Kalinda whips around to look at him. "What?"
He holds up both hands in a gesture of surrender, laughing. “Easy now, I’m not prying. It’s just nice to see you smile more, is all.”
“Whatever,” Kalinda says warningly. But she pays for his coffee.
The night after Donna says “I love you”, Kalinda meets Jim at his favourite bar. Buys him drink after drink, even though she knows he’s been quitting and rejoining AA for the past two years. Lets him keep going until last call, even when the bartender starts giving her dirty looks.
(Takes him up to the hotel room, even though once he called her Sarah on a bender, told her she had eyes just like his daughter’s.)
She should know better, knows better (because she knows him, she does); he looks at her afterwards like it hurts, like it hurts him to see her.
So Kalinda stops visiting the 12th District.
5. age thirty-two
“Agent Delaney,” Kalinda nods, leaning over the cubicle. Lana ignores her and continues thumbing through the thick folder on her desk, circling a word here, a sentence there. Kalinda doesn’t bother looking closely; Lana will already have hidden anything important.
“Kalinda,” Lana says at last, smiling her tiny crooked smile. “What can I do for you?”
She’s young and green, not high up in the FBI, but Kalinda likes her style. Likes the way her wheeling and dealing is always a little forced, a little heavy-handed.
“What, a girl can’t visit?” Kalinda asks; Lana’s smile just gets more crooked. Kalinda relents with a sigh. “Fine. Know anything about Edgewater?”
“You mean the sting gone wrong?” Lana twirls a pencil. She has long piano-fingers, bitten nails. “I might. If you buy me a drink.”
“I might buy you a drink if you tell me something,” Kalinda shoots back.
Lana drops the flirt and smiles properly, all teeth and good-natured exasperation. “Of course,” she groans, rolling her eyes. “We-ell,” she considers, “I’d look into the police’s motives for going in so early. If I was you.”
Kalinda sucks in a breath, surprised. The partners have been operating under the assumption that it was just a poorly-conceived manoeuvre. But if the police had done it purposefully, knowing it was too soon—
“Gotta go,” Kalinda says, already pulling out her phone.
“Lovely to see you,” Lana sing-songs after her. “As always.”
Later, Kalinda does take Lana out for that drink. Because while Lana may be quick to smile and quicker at giving up information, she’s still surprisingly shrewd. Exacting.
Besides, it’s not like her terms are steep. A couple of drinks and some harmless banter – all well within Kalinda’s abilities. After her second Lemon Drop, Lana’s watching the dance floor with a pretty flush, hair loose and swinging and Kalinda isn’t finding this a chore at all.
“We could dance,” Lana says. Her hand is on Kalinda’s knee— high on Kalinda’s knee. Apparently alcohol makes Lana even less subtle; Kalinda finds the lack of finesse endearing.
“We could,” she murmurs, “or—” she tilts her head back further than is strictly necessary to finish her drink, “—we could… go.”
“I pick door number two, Monty,” Lana says. She is watching Kalinda’s throat.
Outside at the taxi stand she ducks Kalinda’s kiss, playfully turning her head away.
“This is better when you help,” Kalinda whispers. One of Lana’s elfin ears is poking through the straight slide of her hair; Kalinda brushes her mouth against it.
“Mmm,” Lana says, laughing. “Should I also whistle if I want you?”
Kalinda smiles into her neck. “‘Just put your lips together and blow.’”
So: Lana’s easy. She doesn’t mind when Kalinda doesn’t show up for months at a time, doesn’t pout if Kalinda leaves right after sex. It’s fun and convenient, a fallback when Kalinda strikes out with the police, when she needs a quick favour for Alicia.
But then:
Things with Blake start getting close and dangerous, and Kalinda’s looking over her shoulder like she hasn’t since she was twenty-four, jumping at shadows. She starts asking for favours Lana can’t give.
One day Lana shakes her head, says she can’t help anymore (the investigation’s too high-up, there’s too much heat, it’s my job; it’s not you, it’s me), exactly the same way Cary did, and then Kalinda’s alone.
1.
“Come on,” Alicia says, cupping Kalinda’s elbow outside the courtroom. “I’m taking you to lunch.”
After they’ve ordered, Alicia collects Kalinda’s hands in both of hers. Puts her palms to Kalinda’s palms and interlaces their fingers.
“Now,” she commands. “Tell me what’s happening.”
Her eyes are warm and her hands are cool and dry.
Kalinda opens her mouth.
