Friendship, they rebuild slowly. It comes in the form of agreed upon truces and professional courtesies and, eventually, in drinks after a settlement conference.
It's one of those rare days when both of them feel as if they can legitimately claim victory and they laugh about it, leaning in close to be heard over the din of the music and the crowd of twenty-somethings celebrating God only knows what. He jokes and she laughs, then she teases and he shoots her the kind of smile that used to make her weak in the knees. The kind of smile that still–
"What?" he asks, still smiling. What's that look for?"
"I– What look?" She blinks, caught and embarrassed and nowhere near drunk enough not to care.
He laughs. "You're not as subtle as you like to think you are," he teases. "Leesh," he adds because he thinks he can get away with it, can still get away with it, even after the years and the hurt and the joy and–
She blinks. "You haven't called me that since–" she shakes her head, tries to shake the memories away. They were good together, once, but it never worked and she thinks that there must be a reason for that. Thinks that there must be some kind of explanation. The thing is, she's been looking for an explanation since she was twenty-three and she's never really found one.
"Do you mind?" he asks. He has his own memories, and he smiles, soft and sad, willing himself not to trace those paths, not to get so caught up in the distant past that he forgets the recent past, forgets the present. They were friends until they weren't, and now he doesn't know what they are. What he does know is that they're not twenty-three anymore and he has no right to the nickname, no right to anything that might let him claim her as his. He's not even sure he wants that, not anymore. Not after everything.
She considers for a moment, then shakes her head. "I always thought it was weird, back in school. Always wondered why no one else ever–"
"'Alicia' doesn't lend itself to easy nicknames," he says with a shrug.
"Maybe not," she admits, and in her mind she can still see him in that first semester of law school, all muscle and bravado, his voice a plaintive whine as he lay there on her sofa, begging her to stop working for just five minutes.
"Lee-eesh, It's gorgeous outside," he had tried. "First day in how long that it hasn't rained? Come on, please?"
She had laughed, then, had slammed her book closed and glared at him. "I can't focus if you keep talking," she thinks she said.
"Then I'm gonna keep talking until you go outside with me," he shot back. "I'm just gonna talk and sing and–"
She wanted to kiss him, just to shut him up, but this was before she figured out that she could do that, if she wanted to. She wanted to kiss him more than she'd ever wanted anything so she shook her head and closed her book and—
"You hated it, at first," Will says, and Alicia blinks her way out of memory.
"I didn't," she counters. "I– I was just pissed at you, that day. I wanted– " she shakes her head. "It doesn't matter."
"No, tell me," he urges.
The thing is, he remembers that day as if it was yesterday, and it doesn't matter how much he tries, he can't make himself forget any of it. Her arms were folded across her chest as he shortened her name to a soft whine and she glared at him. He remembers her glare and the slam of her book, remembers that her fingers were stained pink and grey by highlighter and graphite. She glared at him and rolled her eyes and he thought he might back down but then she sighed and muttered thirty minutes, as if she was giving him the world. He grinned and took her hand and dragged her outside as she tried so hard to pout but her irritation gave way to smiles as soon as the sun hit her face, to laughter when he released her hand and challenged her to race him to the end of the block. God, he used to love to make her laugh. Used to live for it.
She shakes her head. "I was wound up so tight back then," she says, and he doesn't know if the observation is meant to be self-aware or self-deprecating, doesn't know anything, really. Maybe he never did.
"Just back then?" he teases, and when she doesn't laugh he adds, "no, you weren't. I think you liked to think that you were. But you were just... You were focused. Organized. I used to be so in awe of the way you kept it together when everyone else was going nuts."
Alicia considers this for a moment. "I just hid it well," she admits, and she's careful with her choice of words, careful to say enough but not too much. "I just–"
"Didn't sleep," he supplies. "That's what that was, wasn't it?" He says that but he means I, and there was a time when he used to think that she'd know that, but he doesn't think that. Not anymore. His stomach churns.
"No," she says, softly. The sadness in his eyes is palpable and she looks away, tries to settle the ache building deep in her belly with a sip of her martini. "No," she says again. The alcohol burns but it doesn't settle anything and she turns back to look at him, to see the way his eyes are deep and soft and begging for something that she can't identify. "You were more than that," she says, and in the moment, she thinks that's what he's looking for.
He blinks. Once, twice. "I–"
She shakes her head, silently berates herself, wishes that she could still read him. Wonders if she ever could. "It was a long time ago," she murmurs.
"More than half a lifetime ago," he adds.
"I miss you," she admits, and her voice is barely more than a whisper. "Sorry, I just–"
Will nods. "How's Peter?" he asks, because there is always Peter, will always be Peter, and no matter how many times he thinks that maybe— He knows enough to know that hope is futile, knows enough to know that he will only be a passing diversion, a distraction when things get bad.
"I have no idea," she says, and the matter-of-factness of it throws him.
"Really?"
She nods, and, well, she doesn't. She starts to say more, wants to tell him that she's with Peter but not with Peter, that the last time they talked he gave her an ultimatum and she kicked him out of the apartment. She thinks about fighting with her husband, about the way that for all of her best efforts, she can't escape the years and just open her life to him again as if there was never an Amber or a Kalinda. She thinks about his next campaign, about the idea of standing next to him and holding his hand and smiling as if she has no ambition beyond seeing her Peter keep his job. She shakes her head. "We haven't talked in a few weeks," she admits, cautiously. "I need to call him, actually. Zach keeps complaining about money when he calls and I–" she cuts herself off and shakes her head. "Sorry, you can't possibly want to hear about my kid's college budget."
That stings, and Will takes a deep gulp of scotch to dull the sharpness of it. "Why do you do that?" he asks, before he can stop himself. "Why do you always act like I don't care about your life?"
"Why do I– ?" She stares at him, tries to put her thoughts together enough to explain that she doesn't, but she keeps coming back to it's not necessary and I think we should pause this, to it's too much and we would have lasted a week. "I think I just… I never wanted to scare you off," she says, finally, settling on a partial truth that she can believe, but after the words are out she thinks that maybe she's given too much away. She thinks that she's given too much away and it occurs to her that she's started to think of every conversation as a negotiation, of candor as synonymous with weakness. She feels exposed. Raw.
Will's quiet for a long time. "I don't know if I'm supposed to be flattered or offended," he says, finally. He makes himself look at her when he says it, makes himself meet her eyes and keep his own gaze steady. He doesn't really see her, though, not the Alicia who's sitting next to him in the bar. He sees her when she was twenty-three, curled up in a ball and fighting the demons that ate at the corners of her mind as she tried to sleep. He sees her at forty, trying so hard to put on a brave face as the world crumbled around her, remembers grasping at straws, trying to find something that he could do to convince David and Diane to bring her on, to make her life just a little bit easier. He sees her at forty-three, naked in his bed and at forty-five, insisting that it wasn't personal when it was never not personal, could never not be personal—
"What did I ever do to make you think I scare that easily?" he asks. "I've been trying to figure that out for more than twenty years now and I don't— "
"I don't know," she says, cutting him off. "I— " She shakes her head, tries to take control of the conversation back, tries to tuck herself back inside of her skin but it's out there, and it's the truest thing she's said in months. "I think that's the problem," she says before she can stop herself. "I don't know, Will." She feels the world spinning more out of control around her, feels the panic rising up into her chest and she thinks she might cry or laugh or scream. "I don't know what— I've never known." She's said too much and nothing at all and balls her hands into fists to stop them from shaking. "I have to go."
Will laughs, then, and it's cold and harsh but he can't help it, doesn't want to help it because of course, of course she's leaving. Of course she's pulling away because that's who she is, that's what she is, and whatever there might have been between them, once, she's slammed the door on it a hundred times over and he lets her get away with it, lets her do it every single time. "No," he says, and there's no warmth in his voice, no patience or understanding. They've been in the same holding pattern for two decades and maybe it's the scotch but he can't go back there, can't do it all over again. "No, you don't have to go. You want to go. Say that."
"I— " She takes a few deep breaths, tries to stop her hands from shaking, to quell the hysteria because it's stupid and there's no reason for it and she's better than this. "Please don't hate me," she whispers. "Will— " She can feel the way the tears are pricking at the corners of her eyes, turning them wet and glassy and she hates herself, she hates herself. "Please."
"You know what I think about, sometimes?" he asks, and he does his best to keep his voice flat and emotionless. "I think about 1L and the way you used to talk to me, late at night when you couldn't sleep. I think about the way you used to trust me, and I wonder what I did to lose that trust."
"Carla Templeton." The name comes quickly, without thought, and it surprises her. It surprises her but the panic starts to subside, and she latches onto it. She latches onto the memory of whispering to Will in the dark, telling him about her mother's alcoholism and Owen's drug use and the way her dad always retreated into work when things got bad. She remembers that, remembers the way he rubbed her shoulders and pressed kisses against the back of her neck and coaxed her to sleep. She remembers and lets the memory comfort her, lull her back into a place of safety, of security, of— The thing is, she felt safe in his arms but twelve hours later, he was eye-fucking Carla and he wasn't there to hold her, the next night. "I thought— I didn't think I had the right to say anything, then, but I should have had that right. I should have— I shouldn't have had to say anything."
"I wanted to make you jealous," Will says, ashamed. He's ashamed, but the thing is, he's not sure he has reason to be, has never been sure about that. He thinks about wanting to make her jealous, but he also thinks about the way she would never put a label on them, the way she spent all of second semester vacillating between acting like he mattered and acting like he was just a fuck buddy, like he was just a warm body to make the nights a little bit less lonely. "I wanted to be more than stress relief and I thought— I wanted to make you care."
"Now it's my turn to wonder if I should be offended," she mutters, responding out of instinct. She drains her glass and gestures to the bartender for another, wills the alcohol to break down some of her defenses, to allow her to give voice to words that she knows are best left unsaid. "I cared," she says. "That— It made me think you didn't."
"I still care," he says. "I— I never stopped, really." He takes a deep breath, waits for her to respond, imagines her leaning over and kissing him, imagines her smiling and saying I love you or we were such idiots back then or I should never have married Peter. When she doesn't say any of those things right away, he looks away, can hear her rejecting him again, hears I can't and we should pause this and this has to end. "Come on, Leesh, don't go silent on me," he whispers, and he didn't mean to say it aloud.
"I just… I feel like we keep coming back to the same place," she says. "And this is the point at which I say that I'm married, that I'm with Peter, that we can't— " She shakes her head, silently curses herself because even after everything, even after he cleared her desk and called her awful, even after the months of pointed barbs and efforts to undermine each other, even after deciding that they could be competitors but not friends, even after the poached clients and stolen furniture and claws displayed in open court— Even after all of that, they are back to where they were before she left, back to him permeating every piece of her life, running through her veins, and if he's still there then what was the point of any of it? "I left because no matter how many times I say it, it never sticks." She swallows, hard. "Why doesn't it stick?"
Will blinks, stares at her, tries to reconcile the woman who whispered this was never meant personally with the one sitting in front of him now, tries to sort the truth from the lies, to find some semblance of order in the chaos that Alicia Florrick has always managed to bring into his life. "Do you want it to stick?" he asks.
Alicia laughs, feels her control slipping away again and she shakes her head, tries to find solid ground but she's four martinis in and nothing about this has ever felt solid. "There are things about you that I don't like very much, sometimes," is what she says and after the words are out she frowns, considers them, decides that yes, they are right and true and even if they're not relevant, they still matter. It still matters.
Will snorts, refuses to let that hurt him. "Yeah, well, there are things about you that I don't like very much, either. You didn't answer the question."
"No," she admits. "I didn't."
They're both quiet for a long time, watching each other through the impasse. "Peter wants to live together again," she says, finally. "He wants everything to be normal again." She closes her eyes, tries to picture normal, tries to imagine being married and not just married, but she can't figure out how the pieces connect anymore. Hasn't been able to figure it out for a long time. "I don't remember what normal looks like."
Will sighs. "It always comes back to him, doesn't it?" He remembers the way she used to look at him, back when they were twenty-somethings and a part of him still believed that Peter was nothing more than a passing phase.
"That's not fair," she says, flatly.
"But it does," he presses, and there was a time when he wouldn't have said it but after everything— He won't— he can't let her off the hook that easily. "It always has. It might not be fair, but it's true."
"No," she says. "It's not." She wants to tell him that the problem isn't that it always comes back to Peter, the problem is that it always comes back to him, has always come back to him, even when she doesn't want it to. Even when it shouldn't. She wants to tell him, and she presses her lips together in an effort to keep the words inside but they spill out anyway and fill up the space between them and she can feel it, the moment that he hears them, processes them, understands—
"Leesh," he breathes, and suddenly the room feels too small and too big at the same time, as if it's the wrong shape to contain the years that are crashing down around him. He stares at her and he hears I want to be here and this is the happiest I've ever been and I can't figure my way out of this, and he wonders if it's possible that he really has had it wrong all of these years, wonders if he was so busy trying to keep her from breaking his heart that he never noticed that he was breaking hers.
Her phone rings, then, vibrating on the bar as it jingles, and he laughs because of course, of course it does, because the one thing that's still certain is that their timing sucks. He glances down at the screen, sees Eli's name and he leans back as if to give her the space she needs to answer, to concede all the ground they've travelled. She doesn't reach for the phone, though. She lets it continue to ring and vibrate between them.
"He'll text, if it's important," she says, and she doesn't know why she tells him this, doesn't know why she gives him a way to see through her the next time she uses a phone call to excuse herself from a conversation. "He thinks I drink too much," she adds, trying to make light of it, trying to set leave herself an out that she can use tomorrow when the regret inevitably sets in.
"Here's what we're going to do," Will says, studying her. "I'm going to put you in a cab and you're going to call Eli back. And a week from now, we're going to get dinner. We're going to keep talking."
She considers for a moment, then nods. "Okay," she says, but a part of her thinks that dinner is never going to happen, thinks that life will get in the way and a client or a child or Peter will need something and one of them will go running. She knows it will happen and she tells herself that it's for the best, really. Probably. "Except— " She takes a deep breath, tries to figure out how much of what's going through her mind is her and how much is the gin, tries to make herself believe that it doesn't matter. "Except you're getting in the cab with me," she says. "And I'm not calling Eli. And we're not getting dinner next week. We're making breakfast, tomorrow morning. And— "
He silences her with a kiss, the kind of kiss she can feel in her bones, the kind of kiss that makes her want to get lost in him, to stay lost in him. He tastes like scotch and salt and Will, but even though she's not really married, she's still married, still the wife of the governor, still the subject of gossip and speculation and she pushes him away, glares at him. "Dammit," she mutters. "You can't— " as she says the words, she is suddenly angry, suddenly furious, because whatever they are or were, they were never a public spectacle and she'll be damned if they become one now. "You– You can't just do that," she says, voice a bit louder than it should be.
"I'm sorry," he says, and he is but he isn't. He slams a hand against the bar, frustrated. He remembers a hundred stolen kisses on metro platforms, in the library, in stairwells and on side streets and in the back of empty classrooms. Remembers the way she used to move into his space, teasing and seductive, the way she never let him kiss her in public until she couldn't not.
"What are you looking at?" he had whispered once, looking up to see her staring at him, eyes bright and warm.
"You," she had said, simply, not looking away.
"Yeah? You weren't looking for a book?" He had smirked at her, clenched his fists to stop himself from reaching out to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. "I was looking for a book."
"You weren't," she breathed, hooking her fingers into his belt loops. "Were you?" She tugged a bit, pulled him against her, made him lightheaded.
"I was," he murmured, leaning in to kiss her as tilted her head back, out of reach.
He shakes his head, clears away the memory. It was a game with them, then. It's not, anymore. There are consequences now that he couldn't have imagined, and he shakes his head, apologizes again and this time he means it. God, he means it, because for all the hundreds of ways he's wanted her to turn her life upside down over the years, this isn't one of them. "I didn't think," he adds, and he wants to reach for her but he doesn't dare.
"I hate you sometimes," she says. She hates him for turning her life upside down, hates him for hating her, hates him for loving her, for making her love— She shakes her head. "I mean, I really, really—"
"Stop it," he snaps. "It was stupid, I'm sorry. So just stop. Let's just stop." His heart breaks open as he says the words, as he realizes that he doesn't mean stop talking or insulting or pushing him away. He means— "This has to end." His eyes are wet as he tosses a wad of bills down on the bar and walks away. He walks away, for once, and it feels right because it's wrong, feels like he might finally, finally be closing the book on the chapter of his life that is Alicia, that has always been Alicia.
He doesn't even notice that she's following him until he turns to hail a cab and spots a flash of red out of the corner of his eye. He turns away, doesn't look at her. He can't look at her.
"I can't," she says, coming to stand beside him. Her voice is soft and wistful and for all that nothing is under control, for all that he won't even fucking look at her— For all of it, she feels calmer than she has in months, centered and resolute and certain. "I wish I could, but I— "
A cab pulls up and he opens the door, hesitates for a moment before holding out a hand as if to say ladies first. She stares at him for a moment then nods, slides into the cab and bites her lip, doesn't know if she hopes he'll join her or close the door. Doesn't know anything. It's out of her hands, now, and she closes her eyes, counts the seconds that tick by until she feels his thigh pressing against hers, hears the slam of the car door. She clears her throat and offers Will's address to the driver without looking at him.
"Are we fighting or fucking?" he asks her when they're safely behind the closed door of his apartment. "Or both?"
"Drinking," she says, but she doesn't move from the doorway and he doesn't retreat into the kitchen to retrieve a bottle. "I don't want my children getting Google alerts about me," she says, after a moment. "You can't just— "
"I know." He takes a step towards her, reaches for her hand. "And I'm sorry. I didn't think, I just— I just look at you and I—"
She nods, hesitates, takes the hand. "Do you think that's all it is?" she asks, softly. "With us, I mean. Is it that, or is it…?" She closes her eyes, remembers hotel rooms that blur together in her mind, remembers the way he used to stare at her across conference tables and courtrooms, the way his fingers teased at her thigh in meetings, the way they never once made it past his front hallway without clothing being shed.
"I don't— " he frowns, uncertain, afraid. "I don't know what you mean," he admits, and it feels safer to admit that than to assume. It's as if he's buying time until the inevitable, until he answers and it's wrong and she walks out of his life all over again.
"I don't— Is this sex or stress relief or does it mean something?" she whispers. She keeps her voice soft, eyes down, and she wishes that she could bring herself to look at him but she can't, she can't because— She doesn't know why, exactly. Doesn't know—
"Alicia," he says, and she looks up at the sound of his voice. "I need— " It's his turn to look away, and he closes his eyes for a moment before looking back at her as he summons up all of his courage to say— "I've been in love with you since that night you drunkenly tried to explain the Battle of the Forms."
She freezes, stares at him, tries to remember– It was a Friday night before a three day weekend in October of 1L, she thinks. Danny Cooper kept buying pitchers of margaritas and Janice kept refilling her glass. "You need to lighten up," Janice had said to her. "Relax."
"I am relaxed," she had retorted, drink sloshing over the edge of her glass as she spoke. "I'm explaining. For Will." She might have giggled and Janice might have smiled in that knowing way she had but Alicia doesn't remember. She does remember the way her fingers felt sticky, remembers licking sour mix off of them before continuing to explain, "but that's only if there's actually a contract. If there's not, but you act like there is, then you get– " she thinks she frowned, then. "You go to 2-207(3) and you get what everyone agrees on, plus the UCC gap fillers. But that's stupid, because no one ever agreed on the gap fillers, and so if you don't have a valid contract then you end up with stuff that no one wants."
Will was watching her, she remembers, and he had nodded, then. "So when people don't make themselves clear, they don't get what they want," he had said. "But they might. Because maybe they like the status quo. No. That's not what I meant. The default. Maybe that's what they like."
"But if they like it, they should bargain for it," Alicia thinks she said. "If you want something, you should just say it. You shouldn't make the other person keep wondering or guessing because that's— It's rude and it's not fair and— "
"I want— " Will had started, moving towards her, but then Danny pushed between them to slam another pitcher of margaritas down on the table.
"Oh my God, do I have to separate you two? No more law school. No more contracts. Stop it."
Alicia stares at him, now, frozen in place as the years come crashing down around her. She remembers the sadness in his eyes and I broke up with Helena, remembers Peter's in love with you and he knows what it looks like. She remembers I wanted it and his smile that day in the elevator when he walked back into her life again. She remembers we always have options and I want to make something clear and—
"Please say something," he whispers. "Alicia, just say something." He doesn't know if he wants her to say goodbye or that she loves him back, doesn't know if he wants her to stay or walk out of his life forever. He needs something though, needs certainty and answers, needs to hear the words, needs to know—
"I— " She blinks, clears her throat, nods. "So it's more than– " She can feel the smile spreading, slow and warm and she can't help it, can't contain it. It's complicated and it's wrong and Peter's rings are still heavy on her hand but she is moving towards him, kissing him, touching him, wrapping her arms around him and resting her forehead against his. "So this is something."
"Yeah." Will takes a deep breath and pulls back, clutches her hands in his. "Yes." He remembers the way she deflected when she was twenty-three, remembers the way she refused to reassure him when he needed it, refused to tell him that he meant something, that whatever was between them was more than sex or stress relief, refused to tell him that any of it ever meant anything at all. He wonders what would have happened if he'd been more secure, more sure then, wonders what would have happened if she had been— The thing is, though, the past is the past and they aren't kids anymore. He isn't a kid anymore. He grew up the day he learned that his heart didn't stop beating just because Alicia broke it, and it makes him stronger, now, makes him secure even in the midst of his insecurity. It reminds him that he is brave. "For me," he adds. "It's always meant something to me."
"I— " She squeezes his hands through her hesitation and nods. "I don't want it to be an affair," she says, carefully. "Or just some thing that we do when we've been drinking. I need a plan. I need— I need a label."
"I love you," he says, and he's surprised by how easily the words come, how true they still are. "If that's not a good enough label, I don't know what to tell you." The thing is, he was never the one who had trouble putting a name to things, and the unfairness of that isn't lost on him. Then again, he wonders if maybe his labels are different from hers, have always been different from hers. He wonders if maybe his darkest, most uncharitable thoughts are right, wonders if maybe the reason it's never managed to work is that what is love for him isn't for her. "But that's my label," he adds. "I don't know what yours is."
Alicia's quiet for a long time. I've been trying not to let it be love for as long as I've known you, she thinks, but she doesn't say it. If it's love, it's complicated. "It's time," she says, finally. "It's time."
He smiles then, nods, and it's strange, the way he can't articulate what she means but can feel it anyway. "Okay," he says. "I love you. It's time."