Disclaimer:Not mine, don't sue. Except for Angela, she's mine, I just created her because I wasn't sure Kristin Chenoweth's character was coming back.

A/N:Yay! I'm writing again, settled in Ireland and everything! As suggested by the bad title though, this is very far from perfect, (believe me, I know and I'm not happy about it) but, honestly, it's 2 a.m. and I'm tired and I want to post this before Two Girls, One Code airs tomorrow/tonight/whatever so please, don't hold it against me, okay? Also, this is not a happy fic, so beware. I've got a nice Owen-and-Will-finally-have-an-Alicia-conversation one coming up next though, so that should be fun, right?

Of Phones, Wants and Needs

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It's done.

Will texts Peter with the stereotypical, $9.99 Nokia phone he bought a couple of hours ago and flicks through the papers on his desk. At least, he thanked Angela when she gave him the file. 'No copies?' He said.

'No copies.'

'And I'm supposed to believe that?'

'I don't think you have much of a choice.' With her purse on one arm and her coat hanging loosely from the other, he supposed she was kind of right. 'Anyway, like you said, without tapes, without witnesses, it's just a hotel bill, isn't it?'

He blinked then stared into her eyes, fingers absentmindedly tracing the outline of the file. Angela was young, she already had a pretty decent poker face, one those that were naturally enhanced by dark, short, bobbed haircuts and dared him not to think she was his type. 'I'd like to say it was nice meeting you but –'

She shrugged, smiled, waved it off, balancing her bag on her thigh. 'Will,' she said, lowering her head; he wondered if she was actually going to congratulate him for buying off her source. Instead, she told him she'd never have done that. 'Not for someone I've slept with for five months anyways,' she laughed, 'I have to say, I'm quite impressed.'

Her eyes focused on his office chair before settling back on Will, giving him the disagreeable sensation of being studied. This would have been bad for him too, right? He got investigated for judicial bribery, suspended for stealing from a client's account, the firm is going bankrupt and his affair with a married employee was threatening to be exposed. There wasn't any reason for him not to be acting selfishly, was there? 'You do know I'll be after you now, right?' Angela went on. 'Everything you do, everywhere you go, there'll always be reports –'

'Are you threatening me, Ms. Snisky?'

She kept silent for a while, her mouth closing and opening up again. Finally, she shook her head. 'No, I don't think so. There's just this thing I hate, though, people getting in the way of my job, especially when it's not worth it. Florrick's the State's Attorney of Cook County, not the President of the United States. His wife having an affair?' She smirked, 'it'd have been big for two weeks. But when I find something serious, something that proves you scared or paid that guy away or something on Florrick – and it seems that there's always something on Florrick, isn't it? - I want you to know you'll be entirely responsible for it.'

'Yeah? I think we're done, here.'

'Yeah, I believe we are.' She walked a couple of steps to the door and turned back to him, 'you know, you should get that nose checked, you never know how bad a bruise can be, can you?'

'Oh yeah? You should see the other guy,'

She stopped him by holding her forefinger in the air, pointing at the ceiling, 'you know what? Actually, I actually did. On TV. Looks better on him though, with the whole bad boy prison past thing and everything.'

Will's jaw clenched and he looked outside. The sky was dark, late evening rain tapping its way onto the windows, he thought maybe in the next couple of weeks, they should be expecting snow.

'I'll take your word for it,'

Angela eyed the phone on his desk; he wondered how much she suspected. There would never be any proof of this though (he wasn't the young, stupid, Baltimore kid he had once been), there only was the solution he found to Peter's 'fix this'.

Yet, Angela held his gaze for as long as she could, as if he'd forgotten you make enemies with people who think they've lost a battle but not the war. Fifteen minutes after she leaves, he finds a box of matches, sets fire to the file on his desk and watches it burn in the trashcan.

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He's about to head out when K gives him her version of a friendly wave: she makes eye contact and slightly moves her head to the right. The door of his office opens to the pressure of her hand and the sound of her heels subdue over his thick carpet. 'I'm heading out,' she says. He's got a thoughtful look on his face and he's not sure what she'll make of it - or if she'll make anything of it, for that matter.

'So how is Rafael Torres's bank account doing?'

Will would compare him to the prosecution's witness, the one who spied on them that night. 'Much better than mine I suppose,'

'Well, at least someone had a good day, didn't they?'

He closes his eyes, shrugs. The silence gets so thick he can hear the sound of his own heartbeat. 'You should call her,' she says, because Kalinda's never helping him with Alicia except when she is. 'Tell her it's not going to come out after all.'

'She was going to Peter's tonight, he'll tell her.'

'So?'

He sighs. 'She'll ask why the source backed out, and I can't talk about that.'

'She knows better.'

He shakes his head again, not entirely sure what that's supposed to mean. Should he be honest with Alicia or is Alicia just too smart to even ask? As soon as K's gone, he dials her cell anyway, but it goes straight to voicemail and he doesn't leave a message. He tries not to do that kind of thing anymore.

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He's at home, heading for a nice basketball game with himself when the phone rings.

'Will?' She sounds worried. 'You called?'

He nods before he realizes she can't see him, asks her where she is instead.

'I just reached Peter's. I was about to get out of the car when -'

She starts rambling about realizing she missed his call and he cuts her off midsentence. It might just be his chance. 'Snisky's not going to press, Alicia.'

The silence is so strong on the other side he can't even hear her breathing.

'What?' She says.

'Her source backed out.'

'So, it's not coming out?'

She didn't even ask. For some reason, there's a bitter taste lingering at the back of his throat. 'No,' he says and swallows it just like everything else.

There's some more silence and a 'Will, I –' and then she just stops and he's not sure what to say. He feels like the day has just drained the life out of his body, like if he tries to throw a three-pointer now, he'll just collapse on the floor. 'Thank you,' she simply says.

'Don't worry about it,' he answers.

She takes a long breath; her voice suddenly lightens. 'By the way,' she says and he can hear her grinning. 'How's your nose doing?'

He bursts out laughing, even more when she does, too. 'It's doing pretty good considering the circumstances, thank you very much,' he smiles, can't help but think about Tammy and how she found it sexy.

He watches the rain fall with the sound of Alicia's laugh nestled in his ear, imagines her in her car, exhausted but relieved; he wonders how he could ever regret that. He never lets himself wonder if it was worth it. It probably was, to him, and that tells way too much about how much he cares.

'I'm glad, Will,' she says, lingering on the sound of his name and before he can stop himself, he invites her for a drink, dinner, sometime, when things settle. Her silence on the other end clashes with his hopeful, eager tone and he suddenly wants to kick himself for being so stupid. They're never going to get better at this, are they? 'Will,' she sighs and he doesn't even blink.

'Alicia, it's me, don't – I shouldn't have asked -'

He thinks he can imagine a sympathetic smile drawing on her face and doesn't know how he should feel about that, really. She tells him not to worry about it; he wonders when exactly they started stealing each other's lines.

'Alicia?' To his defense, he doesn't really know what he's going to say until the words escape his mouth. 'Are you getting back with Peter?'

'Will -'

'Alicia -'

'The campaign –' she starts.

'Leesh –'

It might be quite cowardly but yes, he knows he's pressing in a way she can't ignore. It's been years, decades since he's last called her that and he can hear her breath as it stumbles against his ear. He doesn't like to play tricks on her, doesn't like the fact that sometimes, he feels like he can manipulate her just as easily as she always manipulates him. It's nothing conscious, of course, but maybe love makes him do stupid things.

'Yeah,' she mutters, 'I think I am.'

He imagines her looking down at her feet and biting her lip and his head falls hard against the window. Life's moving outside, with cabs and cars honking at each other in the freezing cold and the only thing he can think of is how nice she looked when they were twenty-three, heading for the Big Apple for New Year's, the snowball fights they had and the warm comfy boots she would never take off. He feels like a thousand years have passed by and there are still about a thousand things he wants to tell her. He won't though - of course not, not anymore, - because she needs him to be her friend, not the selfish bastard he wants to be. He's not her husband, he's not the father of her children, and they've got the nastiest case of bad timing, starting when he stubbornly decided to keep his mouth shut in law school.

'Will?'

'Yeah?' He's prepared himself for this moment and yet, it's like he doesn't have anything to say. 'I'm fine, Alicia, really, don't worry about it.'

She does though, (she always does) and he suddenly wishes they weren't having that conversation over the phone, that he could look at her and make her understand that it's okay, that he's trying to move on, too.

'Will?' This time her voice is tentative and his heart is playing the drums in his chest. 'We're good, right?'

He hesitates for a bit. 'Yeah, yeah, I think we're good,' he settles on and wonders if she knows that part of him is still lying through his teeth. He wonders if he would want her to know. Maybe, he just forced an answer out of her, maybe she has yet to figure out what she wants, and maybe she never will.

'Look, I,' he sighs, 'I got to go, home but -'

'Oh yeah, of course,' she laughs nervously, 'I'll see you at work, then,' she says. And after the couple more seconds it takes her to hang up, she's gone.

He doesn't feel like basketball anymore and Callie's in Minneapolis so he ends up sitting on a stool in a bar a couple blocks away from his house. His tie is hanging loose around his neck and the bartender leaves scotch on the counter; he notices a girl smiling at him a couple seats to his right. Sure, something shouts inside him, why the fuck not? He discovers she's twenty-eight and called Abby, that she's a waitress/actress who he's not entirely sure knows what law school even is. He pretends to still be the kind of guy who doesn't give a damn.

It's probably what he's supposed to need. And want. Or want.

Whatever.

The End.

Thanks for reading!

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