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sweetjamielee's The Good Wife Summer Comment Fix-athon (which was, needless to say, amazing).
AN: Ratings range from PG to R. All RPF fics are, of course, complete fabrications.
Lay me on the table, put flowers in my mouth [prompt: Alicia/Kalinda, 18 times]
(Wish fulfillment, takes place in magical pre-Ham Sandwich AU world)
“Peter fucked the hooker eighteen times,” Alicia says, apropos of nothing.
Kalinda opens her mouth. Closes it. Finally settles on, “Oh?”
Alicia’s fussing with her drink, her napkin, anything that doesn’t involve eye contact. She’s shy, Kalinda realises with a jolt, low and pulling. Blushing and anxious and shy, and Kalinda has absolutely no idea where this is going—
“Well,” Alicia says, straightening out her spine.
—Until she does.
1. “I just want to be even,” Alicia says (slurs) in the bathroom stall. “Before– before he and I start up again.”
“Okay,” Kalinda agrees, halfway out of her blouse and unaccountably, stupidly nervous. Earlier she’d said “yes” before Alicia could finish stumbling through her explanations about Will and baggage and complications, about how she was angry, so angry whenever she looked at Peter and maybe after this— “Yes,” Kalinda had blurted out, meaning shut up shut up (but also just yes) and Alicia blushed all the way to her hairline.
(Still. She’d smiled).
2. “Are we counting by orgasms then?” Kalinda says afterwards, when it’s awkward, when they’re leaning against opposite walls catching their breath. “And if so, is it individual or collective or—”
Alicia’s pealing laughter is what finally gets management knocking on the door.
3. There’s three weeks of nothing, normal. Just two platonic friends having drinks, all move-along-gentlemen and nothing-to-see-here and Kalinda thinks, well, that’s that.
But.
Alicia knocks on her office door late one Friday night, eyes wide and startled, blazer off, lipstick freshly applied.
Something goes click in the back of Kalinda’s mind.
4. Still: “Are you sure?”
Alicia all but growls at her.
“…Right,” Kalinda says, starts moving her fingers again. “Got it.”
5. (Somehow, eventually, it gets so they only have a cursory shot of tequila each.)
6, 7, 8. What Kalinda realises, very quickly: Alicia really, really, really does it for her.
It’s ridiculous. Like Kalinda’s some teenaged boy, sweaty palms and desperate erections, embarrassing herself in someone’s back seat.
(Except then Alicia slides her fingers under Kalinda’s skirt. Keeps going and keeps going and keeps going, until Kalinda’s biting her own hand to stay quiet, nails scratching uselessly at the upholstery, and it isn’t embarrassing, it isn’t embarrassing at all.)
9. “You know, when I said I’d help you with Amber Madison—” Kalinda starts, and Alicia laughs and says, “shut up, shut up, I have to concentrate on this part.”
10. (She really doesn't.)
11. After a while, it becomes pretty clear they’re going to need a bed.
12. “Well,” Alicia says, examining Kalinda’s breakfast nook. “I think it’s lovely. Boxes aside.” She won’t stop smiling, wide and knowing. I’ll put this in my copy of Eat, Pray, Love.
Kalinda ignores her. “Bedroom’s this way.”
Alicia’s hands find her hips, laughing. “Oh, is that how it’s going to be?” Her palms are warm, even through two layers of cloth.
“I’ll give you a tour,” Kalinda promises. “After.”
“Sure, sure.” Even Alicia’s kiss feels indulgent. Kalinda closes her eyes.
13. “Okay, yes,” Alicia says later, wrapped up in Kalinda’s throw blanket like she belongs and gloriously, heart-stoppingly, completely naked, “but is scissoring actually a thing?”
Kalinda falls off the bed laughing.
14. (No one’s laughing when they try it.)
15. After Kalinda sees Alicia out the lobby of her apartment (out the lobby of her apartment, actually walked down the fucking stairs with her, and what kind of idiot–) she spends five minutes berating and congratulating herself by turns. She wants to quit, change her address, skip town. She wants to buy a cat and settle down. She wants to make Alicia breakfast, or never speak to her again. This is the worst mistake she’s ever made. She’s never been happier. She wants to see other people. She never wants to speak to anyone else again.
“Do you finally have a fella then?” the elderly man from 6B asks by the mail slots.
Kalinda resists throwing her coffee cup at his head.
16. “So, two more times,” Alicia says.
“Uh-huh.”
They aren’t looking at each other.
17. They make out against the door, and it’s the longest Kalinda’s kissed anyone without going further since she was seventeen.
“We should—”
“—Yeah,” Alicia says. “Yeah.”
That time, the apartment stays too quiet.
18. Alicia’s laying on top the bedspread, breasts and hips and legs and legs for miles, beautiful and still. Kalinda wants to kiss the inside of her elbow, bite along her hipbone. She’s never done either, hasn’t had Alicia in the shower or laid her out on a table, hasn’t paid enough attention to her breasts or her ears or the mole on her ankle and now there isn’t time.
“So,” Kalinda starts, and yes, yes, this is the stupidest thing she’s ever done. “It was eighteen confirmed times—”
“I love you,” Alicia says, all in a rush.
There is a long silence.
“Oh,” Kalinda breathes. Then: “Thank god.”
Alicia kisses her, laughing through her tears, gasping you are the worst, this is the worst I’ve ever, ever, and Kalinda agrees.
Finds a convenient streelight, steps out of the shade [prompt: Alicia/Kalinda, the shivers]
Alicia can’t remember the first kiss. It was so quick and new and strange – a mess of emotions, and all that’s left now is the suggestion of lipstick, the idea of a mouth. She can’t picture where hands went, doesn’t know how long or how hard or how much. She remembers afterwards: Kalinda leaning back against the desk, a head rush, vertigo, "does this mean we’re friends now?" and how easy it was to say yes.
(The way Kalinda’s mouth looked then, soft and open and shocked— but nothing, nothing about actually kissing her.)
Maybe that’s why. Why it hits Alicia so hard, each new time they try this.
—At the bar, when Kalinda pecks her lightly, carefully, ending the awkward silence that was their attempt at drinks, and Alicia nearly slides off her stool (Kalinda smirks like her old self, crooked and pleased).
—In the parking garage, when Alicia means it to be quick, fast before she loses her nerve; when she misjudges and only gets the corner of Kalinda’s mouth (Kalinda pulls her back in, laughing, a finger hooked around the strap of her purse).
—Late at night, when Kalinda drives her home, cups the back of her neck, and Alicia can’t remember the mechanics of French kissing, her apartment number, her name. Her heartbeat is that loud. That fast.
It’s ridiculous. Worse, maybe, than when they weren’t talking. (Than when they were, and it was stilted and awkward, angry.) Kalinda’s summer wardrobe is all bare shoulders and collarbones, boots with no stockings. Alicia has never, ever noticed another woman’s anything, and now the curve of Kalinda’s knee makes her tongue-tied. Makes the palms of her hands itch. All this and they haven’t decided anything¸ solved anything. Put any of the broken pieces of their friendship back together. Alicia spends her days marvelling at her own stupidity and daydreaming about the lines of Kalinda’s neck.
Case in point: Kalinda comes by her office with surveillance photos, eight o’clock on a Friday and the sun just setting. She smells like cut grass and apples, goosebumps down her arms from the air conditioning, and Alicia kisses her without checking her blind spot. Kalinda inhales against her mouth, sharp and surprised.
“Alicia.” Pupils blown wide and nervous, hand still clutching at the manila envelope. The hair at her temples is damp. “Someone could see.”
Alicia feels like she has heatstroke, altitude sickness, a concussion. She thumbs the inside of Kalinda’s elbow, gone hot and smooth with sweat. Presses in until Kalinda shudders, lets the envelope slide through her fingertips.
“I think,” says Alicia, Kalinda’s pulse coming fast and strong under her thumb. “I think we’re going to be fine. We’re going to be fine.”
Kalinda raises an eyebrow. “Are you an oracle now?” she says. She says, “What makes you think that?” Her pulse goes fast fast faster.
She says, “Alicia are you sure?”
This time, neither of them checks the blind spot.
Darling Why Don't We [prompt: Matt/Archie, dancing at the wrap party]
She practices accents on him sometimes. Normally Kalinda’s, but occasionally she branches out – Scottish or Australian, the Indo-British one from Bend It Like Beckham. Right now she’s doing a truly ridiculous French… something. He can’t tell if it’s bad because she’s drunk, or because she means it to be.
(Of course, when he starts hearing things that sound suspiciously like “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”…)
“God, why are you bothering?” he laughs. “We don’t have filming for weeks.”
“You don’t know,” she slurs in her own Archie-voice, jabbing a finger at him, and god, sometimes he can’t even— “I could be doing a fantastic French biopic over the hiatus.”
They’re ignoring everyone, probably behaving horribly. Matt’s smile is starting to hurt his face. At least Alan’s also drunk. “Right. An Indian girl doing a French biopic.”
“Racism!” she gasps, shoving at his arm. (Four drinks in, and she’s still careful not to slosh her wine, mess her dress. He doesn’t understand how he can find literally everything about her endearing.)
“Smile you guys!” someone calls, and Matt gets a kick out of that, how everyone always asks them to pose together. It’s like – well, it’s nice, is all. Pictures with her are fun; no angling for the camera, no carefully-timed posing. She pushes into his hip roughly, still punishing him for doubting her marketability as a biopic actress (which—he bets she could successfully portray Ray Orbison if she put her mind to it, so.)
(Her smile suggests she knows this about him.)
She’s wearing a strappy cocktail dress; as they say cheese his hand is cupping her shoulder blade, hot and smooth.
“Dance?” she says an hour later, when everything’s starting to get sloppy and absurd, and Matt really, really hopes that isn’t tequila someone’s just handed Mackenzie.
“To this?” he asks, waving his arm at the insistent bass line. The DJ doesn’t really seem to know what to do, is alternating between Motown and electro-pop that probably won’t be popular until next year (and maybe not even then).
She smiles. “Yeah.” Low and deliberate; Kalinda’s ‘yeah’. Whenever she flirts with him, it’s always in other people’s voices. Matt doesn’t know what to think about that, so normally he doesn’t think about it at all.
“Please,” she adds as herself, “I haven’t been dancing in ages.”
Probably, probably it should be her husband amending that. But he’s in London and Matt’s here, watching her knees bump up against his in shitty ambient lighting. Matt’s here, handing her drinks and steering her through crowds and making her laugh until she snorts rum and coke through her nose, throws her straw at his head.
“Sure,” he says. And she actually claps her hands because she is that adorable and he is that fucked.
He doesn’t especially mind.
When he finally kisses her, another hour and two drinks later, she gasps into his mouth.
They’re in the wheelchair bathroom because there’s wine on his tie, and he’s kissing her because she wouldn’t stop saying sorry and then smirking like she didn’t mean it. (Also: because he loves her.)
“Matt,” she says, soft and breathless in her own accent, “Matt”, and it’s so weird and awesome that he laughs. And then they’re smiling too hard to kiss, big, stupid grins, and she ducks her head into his shoulder like she’s embarrassed, and it hurts, it actually hurts to be this happy.
I'm seeking girls in sales and marketing [prompt: Matt/Archie, ...and no one will know]
Probably, actually, everyone knows. Julianna gives him this look sometimes, three parts pity, one part oh you idiot. Which— you know. Fantastic.
“So we’re thinking Cary’s thing for Kalinda goes a bit beyond attraction,” Michelle tells him. “Unrequited, of course.”
“Of course,” Matt says. Considers the merits of pouring coffee over his own head. “Sounds perfect.”
They talk about it sometimes:
“Someday, Cary’ll get over her. Find a younger woman.” Matt settles on the shitty prop couch. “Better legs.”
Archie mock-tackles him, sharp elbows and knees and chin; other, softer things he’s trying to ignore. “Oh really?”
Matt catches her wrists. “Really.”
It’s a lie, of course. He has a thing for her legs.
(He has a thing for her everything.)
The kiss scene is the worst. Everyone from the sound guy to the continuity girl conscious, watching. (At least, that’s what it feels like.) Archie wears Kalinda’s blank face between takes, steady and unsmiling. Matt messes up his lines twice.
Her cheek is warm under his thumb.
She’s not supposed to kiss back.
(One time, when he’s drunk:
“You know that I—”
Her eyes go wide with understanding before he even finishes.
So yeah. That obvious.)
When they give Kalinda a secret husband, Matt laughs so hard he has to leave the script reading.
Archie follows him out. Off his look she shrugs. “Remember that time with the origami frogs? Now they just assume I have something to do with it.”
She does, of course, but not like they’re thinking.
“Art imitates life,” Chris says. Still, he’s hardly ever on the set, so. Matt tries not to take it the wrong way.
(Everyone.)
Except—
When he kisses her (finally finally; she’s been teasing him for hours, won’t leave his dressing room, won’t stop touching him, and he’s done, he’s fucking done), she gets the giggles.
“What?” he asks, smiling. He'd been half-expecting a slap.
“Oh Matt,” she says, and laughs again.
He ducks his head, trying to catch her eye. “'Oh Matt’ what?”
“‘Oh Matt, thank god.’” Her breath puffs against his neck, hot.
He pulls back slowly. “But— you knew. You had to, I mean—“ It feels like his brain is stuck. “You knew.”
“I wasn’t sure,” she cries, throwing up her hands. He feels himself start to grin. “I wasn’t. You never said.” She bats at his shoulder, accusing. “And it’s really presumptuous to just—”
“Okay,” Matt says, shaking his head. “Well, just so we’re clear: I really, really love you. Like. A lot.”
“A lot?” she asks, and yeah, now they’re just grinning stupidly at each other. “As opposed to just the standard amount?”
“I can’t believe—” he says, and she says, “I didn't want to assume—” and he kisses her because he can.
sweetjamielee's The Good Wife Summer Comment Fix-athon (which was, needless to say, amazing).AN: Ratings range from PG to R. All RPF fics are, of course, complete fabrications.
Lay me on the table, put flowers in my mouth [prompt: Alicia/Kalinda, 18 times]
(Wish fulfillment, takes place in magical pre-Ham Sandwich AU world)
“Peter fucked the hooker eighteen times,” Alicia says, apropos of nothing.
Kalinda opens her mouth. Closes it. Finally settles on, “Oh?”
Alicia’s fussing with her drink, her napkin, anything that doesn’t involve eye contact. She’s shy, Kalinda realises with a jolt, low and pulling. Blushing and anxious and shy, and Kalinda has absolutely no idea where this is going—
“Well,” Alicia says, straightening out her spine.
—Until she does.
1. “I just want to be even,” Alicia says (slurs) in the bathroom stall. “Before– before he and I start up again.”
“Okay,” Kalinda agrees, halfway out of her blouse and unaccountably, stupidly nervous. Earlier she’d said “yes” before Alicia could finish stumbling through her explanations about Will and baggage and complications, about how she was angry, so angry whenever she looked at Peter and maybe after this— “Yes,” Kalinda had blurted out, meaning shut up shut up (but also just yes) and Alicia blushed all the way to her hairline.
(Still. She’d smiled).
2. “Are we counting by orgasms then?” Kalinda says afterwards, when it’s awkward, when they’re leaning against opposite walls catching their breath. “And if so, is it individual or collective or—”
Alicia’s pealing laughter is what finally gets management knocking on the door.
3. There’s three weeks of nothing, normal. Just two platonic friends having drinks, all move-along-gentlemen and nothing-to-see-here and Kalinda thinks, well, that’s that.
But.
Alicia knocks on her office door late one Friday night, eyes wide and startled, blazer off, lipstick freshly applied.
Something goes click in the back of Kalinda’s mind.
4. Still: “Are you sure?”
Alicia all but growls at her.
“…Right,” Kalinda says, starts moving her fingers again. “Got it.”
5. (Somehow, eventually, it gets so they only have a cursory shot of tequila each.)
6, 7, 8. What Kalinda realises, very quickly: Alicia really, really, really does it for her.
It’s ridiculous. Like Kalinda’s some teenaged boy, sweaty palms and desperate erections, embarrassing herself in someone’s back seat.
(Except then Alicia slides her fingers under Kalinda’s skirt. Keeps going and keeps going and keeps going, until Kalinda’s biting her own hand to stay quiet, nails scratching uselessly at the upholstery, and it isn’t embarrassing, it isn’t embarrassing at all.)
9. “You know, when I said I’d help you with Amber Madison—” Kalinda starts, and Alicia laughs and says, “shut up, shut up, I have to concentrate on this part.”
10. (She really doesn't.)
11. After a while, it becomes pretty clear they’re going to need a bed.
12. “Well,” Alicia says, examining Kalinda’s breakfast nook. “I think it’s lovely. Boxes aside.” She won’t stop smiling, wide and knowing. I’ll put this in my copy of Eat, Pray, Love.
Kalinda ignores her. “Bedroom’s this way.”
Alicia’s hands find her hips, laughing. “Oh, is that how it’s going to be?” Her palms are warm, even through two layers of cloth.
“I’ll give you a tour,” Kalinda promises. “After.”
“Sure, sure.” Even Alicia’s kiss feels indulgent. Kalinda closes her eyes.
13. “Okay, yes,” Alicia says later, wrapped up in Kalinda’s throw blanket like she belongs and gloriously, heart-stoppingly, completely naked, “but is scissoring actually a thing?”
Kalinda falls off the bed laughing.
14. (No one’s laughing when they try it.)
15. After Kalinda sees Alicia out the lobby of her apartment (out the lobby of her apartment, actually walked down the fucking stairs with her, and what kind of idiot–) she spends five minutes berating and congratulating herself by turns. She wants to quit, change her address, skip town. She wants to buy a cat and settle down. She wants to make Alicia breakfast, or never speak to her again. This is the worst mistake she’s ever made. She’s never been happier. She wants to see other people. She never wants to speak to anyone else again.
“Do you finally have a fella then?” the elderly man from 6B asks by the mail slots.
Kalinda resists throwing her coffee cup at his head.
16. “So, two more times,” Alicia says.
“Uh-huh.”
They aren’t looking at each other.
17. They make out against the door, and it’s the longest Kalinda’s kissed anyone without going further since she was seventeen.
“We should—”
“—Yeah,” Alicia says. “Yeah.”
That time, the apartment stays too quiet.
18. Alicia’s laying on top the bedspread, breasts and hips and legs and legs for miles, beautiful and still. Kalinda wants to kiss the inside of her elbow, bite along her hipbone. She’s never done either, hasn’t had Alicia in the shower or laid her out on a table, hasn’t paid enough attention to her breasts or her ears or the mole on her ankle and now there isn’t time.
“So,” Kalinda starts, and yes, yes, this is the stupidest thing she’s ever done. “It was eighteen confirmed times—”
“I love you,” Alicia says, all in a rush.
There is a long silence.
“Oh,” Kalinda breathes. Then: “Thank god.”
Alicia kisses her, laughing through her tears, gasping you are the worst, this is the worst I’ve ever, ever, and Kalinda agrees.
Finds a convenient streelight, steps out of the shade [prompt: Alicia/Kalinda, the shivers]
Alicia can’t remember the first kiss. It was so quick and new and strange – a mess of emotions, and all that’s left now is the suggestion of lipstick, the idea of a mouth. She can’t picture where hands went, doesn’t know how long or how hard or how much. She remembers afterwards: Kalinda leaning back against the desk, a head rush, vertigo, "does this mean we’re friends now?" and how easy it was to say yes.
(The way Kalinda’s mouth looked then, soft and open and shocked— but nothing, nothing about actually kissing her.)
Maybe that’s why. Why it hits Alicia so hard, each new time they try this.
—At the bar, when Kalinda pecks her lightly, carefully, ending the awkward silence that was their attempt at drinks, and Alicia nearly slides off her stool (Kalinda smirks like her old self, crooked and pleased).
—In the parking garage, when Alicia means it to be quick, fast before she loses her nerve; when she misjudges and only gets the corner of Kalinda’s mouth (Kalinda pulls her back in, laughing, a finger hooked around the strap of her purse).
—Late at night, when Kalinda drives her home, cups the back of her neck, and Alicia can’t remember the mechanics of French kissing, her apartment number, her name. Her heartbeat is that loud. That fast.
It’s ridiculous. Worse, maybe, than when they weren’t talking. (Than when they were, and it was stilted and awkward, angry.) Kalinda’s summer wardrobe is all bare shoulders and collarbones, boots with no stockings. Alicia has never, ever noticed another woman’s anything, and now the curve of Kalinda’s knee makes her tongue-tied. Makes the palms of her hands itch. All this and they haven’t decided anything¸ solved anything. Put any of the broken pieces of their friendship back together. Alicia spends her days marvelling at her own stupidity and daydreaming about the lines of Kalinda’s neck.
Case in point: Kalinda comes by her office with surveillance photos, eight o’clock on a Friday and the sun just setting. She smells like cut grass and apples, goosebumps down her arms from the air conditioning, and Alicia kisses her without checking her blind spot. Kalinda inhales against her mouth, sharp and surprised.
“Alicia.” Pupils blown wide and nervous, hand still clutching at the manila envelope. The hair at her temples is damp. “Someone could see.”
Alicia feels like she has heatstroke, altitude sickness, a concussion. She thumbs the inside of Kalinda’s elbow, gone hot and smooth with sweat. Presses in until Kalinda shudders, lets the envelope slide through her fingertips.
“I think,” says Alicia, Kalinda’s pulse coming fast and strong under her thumb. “I think we’re going to be fine. We’re going to be fine.”
Kalinda raises an eyebrow. “Are you an oracle now?” she says. She says, “What makes you think that?” Her pulse goes fast fast faster.
She says, “Alicia are you sure?”
This time, neither of them checks the blind spot.
Darling Why Don't We [prompt: Matt/Archie, dancing at the wrap party]
She practices accents on him sometimes. Normally Kalinda’s, but occasionally she branches out – Scottish or Australian, the Indo-British one from Bend It Like Beckham. Right now she’s doing a truly ridiculous French… something. He can’t tell if it’s bad because she’s drunk, or because she means it to be.
(Of course, when he starts hearing things that sound suspiciously like “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”…)
“God, why are you bothering?” he laughs. “We don’t have filming for weeks.”
“You don’t know,” she slurs in her own Archie-voice, jabbing a finger at him, and god, sometimes he can’t even— “I could be doing a fantastic French biopic over the hiatus.”
They’re ignoring everyone, probably behaving horribly. Matt’s smile is starting to hurt his face. At least Alan’s also drunk. “Right. An Indian girl doing a French biopic.”
“Racism!” she gasps, shoving at his arm. (Four drinks in, and she’s still careful not to slosh her wine, mess her dress. He doesn’t understand how he can find literally everything about her endearing.)
“Smile you guys!” someone calls, and Matt gets a kick out of that, how everyone always asks them to pose together. It’s like – well, it’s nice, is all. Pictures with her are fun; no angling for the camera, no carefully-timed posing. She pushes into his hip roughly, still punishing him for doubting her marketability as a biopic actress (which—he bets she could successfully portray Ray Orbison if she put her mind to it, so.)
(Her smile suggests she knows this about him.)
She’s wearing a strappy cocktail dress; as they say cheese his hand is cupping her shoulder blade, hot and smooth.
“Dance?” she says an hour later, when everything’s starting to get sloppy and absurd, and Matt really, really hopes that isn’t tequila someone’s just handed Mackenzie.
“To this?” he asks, waving his arm at the insistent bass line. The DJ doesn’t really seem to know what to do, is alternating between Motown and electro-pop that probably won’t be popular until next year (and maybe not even then).
She smiles. “Yeah.” Low and deliberate; Kalinda’s ‘yeah’. Whenever she flirts with him, it’s always in other people’s voices. Matt doesn’t know what to think about that, so normally he doesn’t think about it at all.
“Please,” she adds as herself, “I haven’t been dancing in ages.”
Probably, probably it should be her husband amending that. But he’s in London and Matt’s here, watching her knees bump up against his in shitty ambient lighting. Matt’s here, handing her drinks and steering her through crowds and making her laugh until she snorts rum and coke through her nose, throws her straw at his head.
“Sure,” he says. And she actually claps her hands because she is that adorable and he is that fucked.
He doesn’t especially mind.
When he finally kisses her, another hour and two drinks later, she gasps into his mouth.
They’re in the wheelchair bathroom because there’s wine on his tie, and he’s kissing her because she wouldn’t stop saying sorry and then smirking like she didn’t mean it. (Also: because he loves her.)
“Matt,” she says, soft and breathless in her own accent, “Matt”, and it’s so weird and awesome that he laughs. And then they’re smiling too hard to kiss, big, stupid grins, and she ducks her head into his shoulder like she’s embarrassed, and it hurts, it actually hurts to be this happy.
I'm seeking girls in sales and marketing [prompt: Matt/Archie, ...and no one will know]
Probably, actually, everyone knows. Julianna gives him this look sometimes, three parts pity, one part oh you idiot. Which— you know. Fantastic.
“So we’re thinking Cary’s thing for Kalinda goes a bit beyond attraction,” Michelle tells him. “Unrequited, of course.”
“Of course,” Matt says. Considers the merits of pouring coffee over his own head. “Sounds perfect.”
They talk about it sometimes:
“Someday, Cary’ll get over her. Find a younger woman.” Matt settles on the shitty prop couch. “Better legs.”
Archie mock-tackles him, sharp elbows and knees and chin; other, softer things he’s trying to ignore. “Oh really?”
Matt catches her wrists. “Really.”
It’s a lie, of course. He has a thing for her legs.
(He has a thing for her everything.)
The kiss scene is the worst. Everyone from the sound guy to the continuity girl conscious, watching. (At least, that’s what it feels like.) Archie wears Kalinda’s blank face between takes, steady and unsmiling. Matt messes up his lines twice.
Her cheek is warm under his thumb.
She’s not supposed to kiss back.
(One time, when he’s drunk:
“You know that I—”
Her eyes go wide with understanding before he even finishes.
So yeah. That obvious.)
When they give Kalinda a secret husband, Matt laughs so hard he has to leave the script reading.
Archie follows him out. Off his look she shrugs. “Remember that time with the origami frogs? Now they just assume I have something to do with it.”
She does, of course, but not like they’re thinking.
“Art imitates life,” Chris says. Still, he’s hardly ever on the set, so. Matt tries not to take it the wrong way.
(Everyone.)
Except—
When he kisses her (finally finally; she’s been teasing him for hours, won’t leave his dressing room, won’t stop touching him, and he’s done, he’s fucking done), she gets the giggles.
“What?” he asks, smiling. He'd been half-expecting a slap.
“Oh Matt,” she says, and laughs again.
He ducks his head, trying to catch her eye. “'Oh Matt’ what?”
“‘Oh Matt, thank god.’” Her breath puffs against his neck, hot.
He pulls back slowly. “But— you knew. You had to, I mean—“ It feels like his brain is stuck. “You knew.”
“I wasn’t sure,” she cries, throwing up her hands. He feels himself start to grin. “I wasn’t. You never said.” She bats at his shoulder, accusing. “And it’s really presumptuous to just—”
“Okay,” Matt says, shaking his head. “Well, just so we’re clear: I really, really love you. Like. A lot.”
“A lot?” she asks, and yeah, now they’re just grinning stupidly at each other. “As opposed to just the standard amount?”
“I can’t believe—” he says, and she says, “I didn't want to assume—” and he kisses her because he can.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-06-16 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-16 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-16 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-16 10:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-18 11:26 am (UTC)Favourite parts:
Lay me on the table - Kalinda's bipolar reaction after 15.
Finds a convenient streetlight - the poetry of the line "Worse, maybe, than when they weren’t talking. (Than when they were, and it was stilted and awkward, angry.)"
Darling Why Don't We - "his hand is cupping her shoulder blade, hot and smooth."
I'm seeking girls - I actually laughed out loud at this: "Considers the merits of pouring coffee over his own head."
Keep 'em coming.
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Date: 2011-06-18 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-26 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-26 02:25 am (UTC)Logan Huntzberger + Pinky = fabulous, fabulous times. :D