All the thanks to Pebblysand and DickWhitmansCat
Finn doesn't like what ifs and interesting and maybe-or-maybe-not. He doesn't play the uncertainty game, doesn't enjoy the endless are-we-or-aren't-we that passes for flirtation, these days. He likes to know where he stands, to say what he wants, and so when she cancels on him for drinks, he drains his bourbon and hails a cab.
She opens her door in oversized pajamas and sighs when she sees him, but she's smiling.
"I feel like you've been avoiding me," he says, and she doesn't deny it.
He closes the door behind him and steps up to her, right up to her, so close that he can feel her breasts pressing against his chest, can finger the silk of her shirtsleeve for a moment before he whispers, lips almost touching hers, "I'm going to kiss you now."
He gives her a moment to think about it, to step away or tell him to leave and, when she doesn't, he does.
She kisses him, too, opens her mouth to his and wraps an arm around his neck, holds him close. "Grace is—" she whispers, jerking her head across the apartment in the direction of her daughter's room.
He nods, and takes a step back, prepared to go, because they can work out the details later, he thinks, now that he knows that he's not crazy, at least. She reaches for his hand, though, and he looks down at her fingers, at the rings that he knows mean something but that, somehow, don't mean what they should.
"No, stay," she whispers, and she takes a step backwards, still holding his hand, tugs him into her bedroom. "We just have to be quiet."
She kisses him again, then, and his hands move to her hips, fingers toying with the hem of her top for a moment before he lets one hand venture up to touch the bare skin of her back. She shivers at the contact, tugs at his lower lip with her teeth and he tries, he really, really tries, not to groan out loud, but he can't help himself.
"Shhh," she chastises, but her eyes are dancing and she looks as alive as he's ever seen her. He thinks, maybe, he's finally figured her out. Thinks that maybe this is the thing that's been pushing her towards him and pulling her away for the past few months, and it's kind of flattering, really, thinking that maybe she's not complicated at all, maybe she's just wanted him but been afraid to say it, afraid to act on it.
"TV?" he suggests, and she looks confused, for a moment, as if he's asking if she wants to watch something, and he shakes his head. "Background noise," he adds. His fingers are sliding up her back, moving along her spine.
She shakes her head, but she walks him back towards her dresser anyway. Her hips press against his and keep him pinned there as she fumbles with the stereo. He thinks it must be deliberate, the way she shifts against him, a subtle back and forth as she turns the dial from NPR to some jazz station.
"Better," she announces, and she takes a step back towards the bed and Finn, he follows, swallows thickly as she reaches for the buckle of his belt.
"Do you want to talk about this?" he asks her, and he can't believe he's saying it. He's pretty sure that talking about it will scare her off, will make it not happen.
She unzips his fly, fingers quick and careful, and God, he's so fucking hard already, as if his body knows that this is what the past few months, alone in the shower, have been about.
"No," she says, simply. She touches him, then, through his boxers, and even with the fabric between them, he twitches in her hand. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asks.
He does, actually, but then she peels his boxers away and he's standing there with his pants and shorts around his ankles and she's touching him, skin on skin, and she does this thing, twists her wrist and he can't think. "Yeah," he breathes, and it's an answer, and an encouragement, and he's pretty sure that he needs to clarify. She's stroking him, though, and her lips are against his throat and he didn't mean for his hand to slip past the waistband of her pajama pants, didn't mean to curl his fingers inside of her and Christ, she's already so wet. "Yes," he says, when she moans against his skin. "Yes, I want to talk—"
It takes a lot, forcing those words out, and she withdraws her hand, once he's said it.
"So talk," she says, fingers moving to the buttons of her PJ top.
"I think this can be simple," he tells her, and he moves his own hand, though not away. He drags his fingers out of her and up, slightly, traces slow circles against her clit as he continues. "I like you," he tells her, smiling. She nods, unfastening a button. "I'm a little crazy about you, actually." Another button, and she gasps, as his fingers speed up, just a little. "I'm not into games," he adds, and his fingers still, just touching her, not moving.
"Okay," she says, squirming a bit, moving herself against his fingers and it's really cute, but also really, really hot, greedy, almost, and he begins moving again in earnest, fingers working in quick, deliberate circles.
"I don't hide the ball," he says, and her shirt is still half buttoned but it's hanging open, gaping, and he tries to keep watching her face, but it's distracting, and his gaze wanders, for a moment, to all of the skin he can see now. "I just really, really like you, and I think you're incredibly sexy, and I just—"
He's not even sure that she's listening, really, and that's probably his own damn fault. It's just as well, anyway, because he's kind of babbling because— He doesn't know her well enough to know how close she is, but he thinks she might be getting there, and he wants to watch that, wants to push her over the edge and catch her when she falls. "I just don't want you to run away," he admits, and it makes him feel strangely vulnerable, saying it. It's not even that he's asking her to stay, really, just not to– he's not sure what, exactly. Not to retreat, not to play whatever game it is that she plays.
"Don't stop," she gasps.
He chuckles and leans in to press his lips to her collar bone, and keeps going. "Are you—?" he asks. He doesn't want to rush her, but the angle is weird, and he didn't plan on getting her off, like this, when he started, so his hand is starting to cramp.
"Talking," she grits out. "Don't stop talking."
"I think it can be simple," he says again, and he brings his free hand up to her breast, pinches her nipple between his fingers. "Discrete, yeah, but screw other people's expectations. They're not living your life, and I'm not going to let them live mine, so—"
She falters, then, bites down on her bottom lip and lets go, and it's incredible to see, to watch, and he steadies himself as she leans into him, head against his chest, her whole body shaking. He keeps going until she nudges his hand away, then he wraps his arms around her and holds her close.
"You're beautiful," he whispers into her hair, and the words have been on the tip of his tongue a hundred times, but it's never been more true than it is now.
"It's been a while," she admits, and it sounds more like an apology than an admission. "I mean—" She looks at him, and there's something wild and worried in her eyes, and Finn thinks that she would run, if there was anywhere for her to go.
"Hey," he whispers, nudging her back towards her bed. "It's been a while for me, too." He doesn't like the way it sounds, like he's asking for something, and that's not what he's doing, it's not. It's not about quid pro quo, it's about lightening the mood, about easing whatever nerves or anxieties are taking over for her. And, maybe, a little, it's about asking her not to send him away. "So screw expectations," he says. "This is just good clean fun."
She laughs, and it worked, whatever he said, because then she's kissing him, and his tie goes flying over his shoulder, his jacket and shirt to the floor, and he, finally, peels her shirt over her head. She really is beautiful.
When she starts to tug upwards on his undershirt, he panics, just for a second, and covers her hands with his own. "Hey–" It's kind of embarrassing, actually, being forty-years-old and still nervous about being naked. It's not still, though, it's specific, and for all that he knows the scar isn't as bad as he thinks it is, he knows that she'll see it, that she'll look for it, and he wants— He wants her not to run away, really.
"I know," she says, nodding. "Do you—Do you want to leave it on?" she asks, but her fingers are snaking up under the shirt, now, against his belly, and his chest, and fuck, he wants to feel her skin against his.
"No," he says. Screw expectations, he thinks, and he pulls the shirt off himself.
She looks, because of course she does, and because how could she not, what with the way he brought it up, and then she laughs. It's basically the last thing in the world he was expecting.
"Wow, you really know how to make a guy feel comfortable," he mumbles, and he's teasing, but—
"No, no, no" she insists. "It's just, with the way you built it up, I thought—" She smirks. "I thought it would be bigger," she says, and she laughs again, then, and he's laughing.
Everything happens pretty quickly, after that, but when she sinks down onto him, for the first time, he holds her still for just a moment, leans in to whisper, "Big enough, for you?" into her ear and then they're both laughing, until they're gasping, until she clenches and spasms around him and he grunts out her name as he comes, until she collapses against his chest and presses her lips against the scar.
"Well that's a relief," he says, after a moment, and he giggles. "Everything still works," he says, and he's giddy and lightheaded.
"Funny," she mumbles, grinning at him.
"Hey, I was kinda worried," he admits, even though he wasn't, not really. "It's just been me and my hand, since I got shot, so you never know."
"The last time I did that, I was in a hotel in Times Square," she says. It's all very matter-of-fact, and he wonders if she's telling him for a reason, or if she's telling him just to tell him. It's one of the things about her that draws him in, the way she talks around what she wants to say, but it drives him crazy, too.
"I'm pretty sure that's the first time we've done that," he teases, and he twists a bit of hair around his finger. "And I always tried to avoid Times Square. Too many midwestern tourists."
"No, I meant—"
He knows what she meant, and he's pretty sure that she knows he knows it, too. "Go on," he urges her, gently. He's still not really sure why she's telling him this, but she says so little, sometimes, that he wants to hear it, wants to understand why it matters to her that he know. She's talking, anyway, and that's an improvement.
She turns her head away from his, rests her ear against his heart. "It was over, by then," she murmurs. "And it was probably a mistake, but we were both a little drunk, and we used to spend so much time in hotels together that I think we both forgot, for a moment, that we didn't do that anymore, and then it just—" She shakes her head. "He was so alive," she whispers.
Finn blinks, and it takes him a moment to process the words. He's heard the gossip, obviously, because everyone has heard the gossip. He didn't pay much attention to it, when he first moved to Chicago, because all the players were new to him and it didn't matter, anyway. He was the new kid, so by the time he first heard that she'd been sleeping with Will, he thought he knew her pretty well, thought that sleeping with her boss seemed unlike her. They had been friends for twenty years, she and Will, so by the time he heard the rumors, it was pretty easy to discount them.
It made sense to him, that they were friends, that she was so intensely affected by his death because Alicia didn't have many friends, and how do you replace the one that you've held onto for two decades? He chalked the gossip up to sexism, to men who saw a smart, capable, powerful woman and muttered sleeping with her boss to undercut her. The truth is, he didn't want to believe it, either, because by the time he heard it for the first time, she was already a regular figure in his fantasies, and it wasn't something he wanted to think about.
The thing is, though, hearing her say it, it makes all the pieces fall into place and he wonders how he could have possibly let himself ignore the rumors because Will mattered to her, and he watched her grieve like a widow, not a friend. It makes her hesitation make sense, too, the way she keeps drawing him in and pushing him away. It's not simple, for her, and he wonders if the reason things with Will were ever over was because it got complicated, because she didn't know how to make things simple.
"I'm sorry," he murmurs against her hair. "I didn't realize—"
"The only thing we never got wrong was the sex," Alicia says.
It breaks him a bit, hearing that, and he wants to ask, but—It's none of his business. Not really. He also doesn't tell her that, as far as he's concerned, the sex is the part he cares least about getting wrong. The rest of it, whatever it is, that's what matters to him. They don't have twenty years of history, though, and he really, really doesn't want to compare himself to Will. Doesn't want her to make the comparison, either.
"My apartment," he announces. "Since we're trading sexual histories. With Maria, my old assistant. Two, maybe three days before. There's no story, there. Just two horny people getting less horny." He still feels guilty about that, actually, about being such a cliché, then ending things, as abruptly as he did. He did get shot, though, and he thinks it's a pretty valid excuse.
Alicia nods. "Peter's office," she supplies, and she shifts, rests her chin against his chest and smiles up at him. "But don't tell Eli. He spends a lot of time sitting on that couch."
"Mmm," Finn nods, fingers dancing along her spine. "My ex-wife's apartment," he says. "When it was still my apartment and she was still my wife."
"Are we talking about people or places?" she asks.
Finn shrugs. "Up to you," he says. "But I never cheated on my wife, so it was just eighteen years of our bed. And the shower." And their fertility doctor's office, once, when he was having a hard time getting his head in the game to produce a sample and Ann—he's not about to tell Alicia that, though.
Alicia blinks, and she moves off of him, stares up at the ceiling as she says, "I'm not—It's just been on paper, for a long time, even when we were still— He's seeing someone else, too," she says.
"I didn't mean it like that," Finn tells her, and he didn't. It's funny, he thinks, the way he has to remind himself that she's married at all. "Is that what we're doing?" he asks. In the grand scheme of her life, it's probably the least important part of what she just said, but he latches onto it anyway, because, well. "Seeing each other?"
She blinks. "I—I don't know," she admits. It's a bit charming, he thinks, the way her eyes dart back and forth when she's unsure, as if the answers she's looking for are hiding, somewhere, just outside of her peripheral vision.
"Well," Finn smiles, rolls over on his side and props his head up on his elbow, watching her. "I… want to see you," he says. She's half-covered under her sheet, and he nudges the fabric away, lets his eyes wander for a moment before finding hers, again. "I want to see a lot of you," he adds, smirking.
"Haha," she says, and she's rolling her eyes, now, but he can see the color in her cheeks, and he's pretty sure he's got her.
"It's only complicated if you want it to be," he tells her. "But I think that we're both adults, and we can act like adults. I think we can get a drink after work or a sandwich at lunchtime, and if you care about what people expect, just remember that people expect friends to do those things," he says. "And I think that it's no one's business what we do behind closed doors."
"I can't—I can't be at your beck and call," she says. "My life is—It's way too busy for that."
He sighs, and it's frustrating, the way she does that, the way she deliberately misunderstands so that she can say no to a request he never made. "I'm not asking to be your whole life, Alicia," he says. "Just one little part of it." He smirks, and leans in to press a kiss between her breasts. "Well, maybe not little," he adds, and he grins up at her.
"I want—" She closes her eyes and sighs, heavily, and he kisses his way down to her belly button, tries to keep her from insisting that it's too complicated, too reckless, too anything, really.
"Hold that thought," he breathes, and he shifts in her bed, tosses the blankets away so he can crawl between her legs, can press a kiss against her thigh. "You were saying?" he murmurs.
"That's not fair," she says, but she's grinning.
"You want it, though," he insists. "I mean, if you didn't, there wouldn't be anything unfair about this at all, right?" He nudges her legs open wider, spreads her open but doesn't touch, doesn't taste, doesn't even let himself look.
"So you're saying that if I admit that I want to see you, you'll—?"
"Yep." He swipes his tongue against her, just once, makes her breath catch. "I'm using oral sex to manipulate you into telling me that this isn't just a one-off," he says. "But, even if you decide that it is, and you don't wanna see my face anymore, I'll probably keep going, because if this is the only chance I'll ever get, I'll regret it, if I don't, and I don't like regrets, so— Up to you, really. I'll even stop if you tell me to." He grins at her, and she grins back.
"I want to see you," she admits, fingers sliding down into his hair. "Grow this out again," she adds, and he chuckles against her before he goes to work, all lips and tongue and fingers. She really is something, when she comes apart.
He finally slips out at four in the morning, with a kiss to the back of her neck and a promise to call, later. On his way out of the building, he waves at the security camera and grins to himself before hailing a cab. He wonders how long it will be until the image finds its way to her desk, can already see her rolling her eyes at the crassness of politics. She thinks she's above it, still, and he wonders if it can last.
He does call, a little before noon, standing in his office and watching the first flakes of the season fall over the city. "Hungry?" he asks.
"Tired," she says, after a moment, and it's crazy, but he swears he can hear her smile.