AN: my first Good Wife fic, so anything you have to say is useful, because I do plan to write more for my favourite show! Something inside of me needed some Christmas Good Wife, but it kind of progressed as I started writing. Hope you enjoy, and happy holidays!
Alicia Florrick does not get drunk at the office Christmas party. She doesn't. Ask anybody who knows her, and they will tell you. Yet she's standing, no, leaning, with a drink in her hand giggling at something Will just said. With Kalinda at her side, a little too close, and her suit jacket lying in her office somwhere, there is something very un-Alicia about the way she's acting tonight. She walks away from her boss, her potential flame, her friend without a word and the twinkle in her eye says she knows exactly what she's doing to every man in the room. A few more buttons undone than usual, her white, fitted blouse untucked, her hair slightly unkempt. Tonight she had the beauty and charm of Alicia Florrick, with the sex appeal of somebody the Lockhart, Gardner and Bond staff had never met before. Will makes a mental note to plan more office parties. More "no plus one", alcohol fuelled, seasonal, everyone-in-the-holiday-spirit, kind of office parties.
Alicia Florrick has never kissed under the mistletoe. It's a dumb tradition. Well, she'd done it once when a photographer wanted a picture of the hot new couple on the Chicago politics scene. A direct quote. Up until that moment, Alicia had never heard the words "hot" and "politics" put together. She'd found it so amusing that the pictures in the paper next day showed her broad smile during that unwanted kiss. They'd captioned them with various nauseating comments about how in love the couple were. If only they'd known that Alicia's smile was due to the fact that they were practically forcing her to kiss a man she wasn't sure she loved, even after five years. That the smile on her face was a mixture of laughter, awkwardness and the fact that Peter had just whispered something unspeakably dirty in her ear.
Alicia Florrick would never consider sex without emotion. She doesn't remember the name of the guy who took her virginity, she was too concerned with not being the only eighteen year old in the country who didn't have the experience. To this day, she counts that as her biggest regret. She couldn't care less about being distracted from her studies, about quite possibly marrying the wrong guy, about staying with a man who humiliated her in front of the nation, she just wishes she hadn't fucked a nameless guy at a high school party. She at least wishes she remembered what the party was for. No. All she remembers is pain, blurred vision, an unfamilar bassline, and the mother of all headaches in the morning. The regret, shame and despair she felt the next day was enough to make her swear to never have a one night stand again.
Alicia Florrick doesn't do anything unless she wants to. Even when her brother, her new-found friends, and her own mind questioned her lack of revenge, she couldn't bring herself to hurt Peter for the sake of it. It wasn't that she'd never been tempted to cheat. She saw the way Will looked at her. Hell, she'd seen the way Kalinda looked at her, and there was no doubt in her mind that she could hurt Peter and have some fun all at once, but there was no point in stooping to his level. She'd never deny that the temptation had been there. Very few people see lust in Kalinda Sharma's eyes and feel nothing. She'd just never been sure that lust was enough to betray the sacred vows she'd made, not only to God, not only to Peter, but to herself, all those years ago.
Alicia Florrick does not believe in fixed sexuality. She never has. She'd fantasized about her high school French teacher in the same way as many of her male classmates had, she'd just hidden it well. Aged nine, she realised that not everybody is sexually attracted to both genders. Publicly, she'd conformed to what was "normal" for a girl her age. Privately, she'd spent her teenage years fantasising about her peers, her teachers, and the celebrities gracing the screen of her family's television set. She had, on occasion, sweet-talked her way into local clubs and bars simply to see if she had the power, and the looks, to seduce another woman. Although she found that she undoubtedly had such powers, she took it no further until her college years. Her reluctance to enter into a relationship with Will was partly due to her growing feelings for Jessica Alexander, a girl she'd met in the library in her first semester, and had entered into an increasingly complex "friends with benefits" deal with months before either Will or Peter had made their move. The summer Alicia had planned to make her decision, her brother came out, her mother took to drink, and getting in touch with Will was near impossible. She let Peter take her out, and convinced herself she had feelings for him. She couldn't break that one night stand rule of hers.
Alicia's never had a best friend. Well, that's a lie. She'd had one for about a week when she was five. Laura Ryder had swapped her orange juice drink for Alicia's apple, and they'd been inseperable until the day Alicia had decided apple wasn't all that bad, and all common ground was lost. In the years that had passed, Alicia had seen friends come and go. Her high school friends, the only connection between them being the "outsider" factor. Her college friends, out-of-towners who made her feel unintelligent, other than Will, who'd never patronised her. His major fault was that Alicia could never tell if he was a real friend, or if he just wanted to get her into bed. She looks back on that now and laughs. Maybe he did want to get her into bed, but he'd wanted it to be their bed. It seemed that was all Will had ever wanted. This was the only reason Alicia would never class him as a best friend. You couldn't be best friends with somebody if you'd had a sex dream about them. This was another of Alicia's rules. This is why she can't call Kalinda her best friend.
Alicia Florrick hadn't seen it coming. She'd never imagined that she was anybody's fantasy.
Although Alicia Florrick doesn't get drunk at office parties, kiss under the mistletoe, have sex with somebody she's not 100% sure she loves, do anything she's not sure she wants, or have a best friend, she knows that sex has the ability to rid the mind of all logical thought. She thinks about this as she is dragged away from the conference room, and as she is carefully guided down the stairs to her office, where her jacket lies haphazardly across the back of her chair. She tries to be logical, she tries to remember her own rules, but she struggles as her back presses against the cold glass of her office door. She can't even find the definition of logic in her mind as she feels warm breath travel down her neck, and she manages a smile as soft hands find their way under her shirt. The butterflies in her stomach make her forget about Alicia Florrick. The heat and passion surging inside of her as she feels the smile against her bare stomach is entirely Alicia Cavanagh. The nails that softly scrape her skin are not painful, the bassline is familiar this time, the headache she suffers the next day won't be mixed with nausea and regret. This isn't an act of revenge. This is more than fantasy. This is more than holiday spirit. This is very un-Alicia.