threeguesses | FIC: Frankly, My Dear, I Don't [the good wife, kalinda, kalinda/alicia]

Word Count: 1 000+
Disclaimer: Disclaimed!
Rating: R-ish.
Summary: Kalinda does.

AN: Spoilers. Spoilers for everything.

Frankly, My Dear, I Don’t

The first time Kalinda really gets a look at Alicia Florrick, it’s on tv, that frozen mask of the press conference. Not that Peter didn’t have pictures in his office, first birthdays and soccer uniforms, but Kalinda didn’t bother looking (before) and avoided looking (after).

Alicia’s blank stare fills the screen. The press are milking it, close ups of her every blink. She looks like Peter, their dark hair and eyes and wide, handsome faces. The news ticker wraps itself around her throat.

Kalinda thinks: ‘pretty’. She thinks: ‘god, I can’t believe she hasn’t left him’.

The station cuts back to the local anchor, a grey still of Alicia hovering in the upper right-hand corner. She’s even more striking in black and white. Kalinda thinks ‘pretty little doormat’ and changes the channel.

It’ll be a long time before she thinks about Alicia Florrick again.

When Diane tells her who the new first year is (a twist of the wrist, an ironic smile, Will’s friend from law school) Kalinda doesn’t even blink.

“I suppose she has to support the family now,” Diane murmurs, low and conspiratorial, a secret-handshake for the eighties working-girl; no rings, no children, no men. We are better, Diane’s smile says. We are not her.

(Kalinda was in diapers in the eighties.)

She smiles back anyways.

Later, it will make her sick to remember it. Later, later—

Too late.

(“I don’t meet many nice people,” says the nurse.

Kalinda doesn’t laugh in her face.)

(She should.)

In person, the first thing Kalinda thinks about Alicia Florrick is: ‘you don’t look like anyone’s mother’.

Alicia makes a liar out of her immediately, fumbling for her phone in the courthouse and telling a daughter (Clare? Kalinda thinks, Grace?) that no, the hookers were all of age. And even though Kalinda is unimpressed – Alicia’s barely competent in court, nervous hands and a hideous pantsuit – she decides to be extra helpful for this first trial. She doesn’t believe in karma, but— just in case.

And then she is impressed. “You’re making it up,” Alicia says, and Kalinda says no, no, tradition, just do the shot, and it’s the way Alicia tips her head back, how it takes so little persuasion.

“Yeah, I made it up,” she admits, and it’s the way Alicia laughs, how fucking nice she is. And Kalinda thinks: ‘why would he ever—’

(She doesn’t believe it’s her fault yet, you see.)

“You won,” she tells Alicia later, on the way to their cars.

“We won,” Alicia says. Her smile is completely guileless.

“So what’s she like?” Donna asks. She’s stretched out on the bed, cautiously, sheet tucked over her breasts and still shy, even after all these months. “Does she bake cookies and espouse epithets from the fifties?”

Donna’s a gay socialist who was raised by second-wave hippies; the idea of Alicia probably hurts her on some fundamental level.

Kalinda shrugs. “She’s… quiet.”

Donna eases closer, but not close enough to touch. “Well. Let me know if she, I don’t know, shows up wearing a pink Channel suit. Clutching at actual pearls.” Her fingers curl around Kalinda’s ankle. “Etcetera.”

Kalinda rolls her eyes. “I’ll keep you posted.”

(For the record: Kalinda was going to keep her distance.

She was.)

She doesn’t have to drop by Alicia’s apartment. It could have been handled over the phone; in the morning, maybe. (But: Cary’s still at the office when she leaves, lamp burning and Diane’s approving smile, no pictures on his desk, and Alicia needs this win.

Kalinda can give it to her.)

The daughter – Emily? Grace? – has dishwater blonde hair and sharp elbows, none of her mother’s drama. Kalinda hovers in the doorway while she screams over her shoulder for Alicia.

(“Never went through that horse craze,” Peter told her once. “You know, like little girls do? She used to catch worms in our garden, bring them in as pets.” He smiled. “Drove Alicia insane.”

Kalinda flipped to page three of the report. “The witness has priors. We should decline to prosecute.”)

Inside, the apartment is crowded; too many boxes, too much expensive furniture, not enough room. There are bowls in the sink and bills on the table, Clare or Grace or Emily hovering in the doorway.

No garden here.

“Do you want to do this later?” Kalinda asks. Her palm slips against the folder. The kitchen lights are too bright.

But Alicia shakes her head, no, no. She adds something about her son and porn, tone lowered, leaning forward like a secret. (And she may need this job, this win, but it’s clear what she really wants is a friend).

Kalinda doesn’t take the bait.

(She does. Of course she does.)

The thing with Peter wasn’t memorable, but Kalinda remembers it anyways. (It seems that she remembers it more and more the longer she knows Alicia.)

He wasn’t drunk, not really. Came too soon, got Kalinda off with hands and mouth, didn’t talk. (And she’d always thought he would be a talker, dirty, deeming things and validation, but.) “Like this?” he'd said, and left it at that.

She smokes on the hotel balcony, afterwards. Kalinda doesn’t smoke, but Leela did, and Peter knows Leela now.

“I love my wife,” he tells her.

“Yeah,” Kalinda/Leela says, tossing her cigarette over the railing. “I know.”

It’s the saddest sex she’s ever had.

Alicia asks once. Not straight-out; hedging, implying, pauses and threats in her voice. She’s so cold. She’s so angry.

Kalinda lies.

(But later. Later, later—

So many excuses.)

Months and years and soon it's drinks after work once, twice a week, Alicia's hair and her smile and her perfume, and Kalinda cannot, cannot be this stupid.

(She is.)

She'd thought it was ironic when Alicia first came to work for Lockhart-Gardener. She didn't, couldn’t have understood—

(The second time Peter Florrick tells her he loves his wife, Kalinda chokes on her answer.)

She does now.

She calls the nurse.

“Look,” she says. “I’m an investigator.”

The answering machine purrs static into her ears.

“I work for Lockhart-Gardener,” she says. “I didn’t mean—”

“I lied,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry.

She drops the phone.

What it comes down to:

“I wish I had known you back then,” Kalinda says, and she means it, she means it, would have sat in Alicia’s too-big house and discussed yoga, the real-estate market, the weather they’ve been having lately.

“I was different,” Alicia says. “We would have hated each other,” Alicia says. And Kalinda thinks, no, I would have liked you, I would have liked you anywhere, I was different too.

The thing is, though: sometimes, she doesn’t know if that’s true.

(She wants it to be.)