A/N- Let it stand before the record that I've had about the first thousand words of this piece finished for two weeks and then once again, at four thirty in the morning I decided I knew exactly how I was going to write the rest of it and boom. An hour later. This is for the lovely Josie, who celebrated her birthday last week! Hope you enjoy!
Based off the scene "We didn't technically have sex in my office."
She's always loved how he gets when he's worked up over something.
An angry William Paul Gardner is exactly the kind of controlled destruction bombs and bullets are meant to convey, the vein in his neck popping with every word he delivers in the cross examination; she knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the same kind of fury resonating through him could fuel a fire, something to burn down the forest of desire growing from the wood of the chair she's sitting in. It's been a difficult trial.
Murphy's Law is fickle, so at every turn they've been side swiped by some inconsistency. It was different, back in law school. Alicia was given the opportunity to watch as he came alive then, by the will of mock trial, can remember kissing him hard and desperate against the wall of her dorm room afterward, unable to shove down the first glimpse of watching him take root, able to get a preview of what kind of lawyer he would be one day. It was a little like watching a boy become a man.
But imagining a profession and working are worlds apart.
To put it simply: she's wiped. And she knows he is too, knows because he's got some scruff, knows because she's stayed late the past three nights, and never for the reasons she usually does, knows that they haven't met for lunch at the Fairmont in four days- time that they have spent working every detail, prepping witnesses. Every spare moment they could find- over other associates looking at paperwork, before entering the court room- being taken to exchange loaded looks. Their fingers lingering a millisecond too long with the pass of a file.
Alicia watches him pace as he speaks to a witness, strides over to the jury, watches the way his jaw clenches in thinly veiled frustration at the objections. There's something about him, when he's like this that makes her think of something wild and unattainable, something rattling around in a cage. She lets her eyes linger on the way the cut of his slacks hugs his backside. Zoning out isn't the norm for her, but she hasn't gotten much sleep, so it's excusable.
The judge decides to postpone ruling until the afternoon.
Alicia tries valiantly not to roll her eyes.
But then Will is by her side, touching her arm in a way that makes something pit in her stomach. "Jesus, Dunway just wants a sandwich," he mutters only loud enough for her to hear, steel in his voice.
It makes her eyes widen. She's seen him like this before, knows all the levies and bends of this mode- the difference between law school Will and lawyer Will is that this Will is drawn to the tightest notch, made to be unforgiving and stressed about serious matters. There's a measurable difference between making a grade for Crim and winning a case that could help pull the firm out of financial debt. A part of her wants to lean over and smooth the creases on his brow away, but she doesn't.
There's one key difference between law school and now, for them.
Her last name isn't Cavanaugh anymore.
Instead of giving into open comfort, she follows him to his car, rides with him back to the firm. Alicia acts as DJ, sets the radio to a station playing BeeGees and gives herself a mental pat on the back when he looks over at her, smiling softly. She releases a long, slow breath, and leans back in her seat. "I miss you," she admits, when they're stopped at a light.
It slips out before she has time to think about it, time to filter.
When he doesn't respond right away, she stutters. Affairs aren't something you miss.
"I mean-
"No. Alicia, I know."
Will reaches out, touches her hand perched on the console. She flinches away, but then she sees the hurt that flashes through his eyes before he can conceal it properly- she doesn't know why, but just the sight of it makes her heart jerk in her chest, ache. Alicia bucks up the courage, pushes her fingers through his and squeezes.
The way his expression goes, his lips parting in something like assurance, that's what she was going for. If she were to be honest with herself, she would say that he is her best friend before he is her lover, although both are titles he could wear proudly, at this point. He's her best friend, and even if this thing they have eventually goes up in flames around them- and it will, things like this aren't meant to last- even if it does, she's still there.
He is still the only person in the world who can reduce her to wordlessness. Even with Peter, even then, there was always something to say, but with Will sometimes she doesn't know if there is any word right enough, any word that would fit in the particular cranny she wants to fill- sometimes their silences are heady and thick with something, something, and she cannot name what that something is but-
"We have to go back to the firm, for appearances, at least," he confesses after a few minutes, his eyes on the road.
Alicia sighs, mind venturing to badgering she'll have later, the questions she doesn't know how to answer right now. "I would say we could do something after work, but it's the first night I'll be home early in days, and Owen is in town, so."
It hurts her, to watch the shadow that falls over his face, so much unspoken between them.
She wants things to be different, but they aren't. She wants to be able to give him her tender parts, give him everything he deserves, but Alicia has never been one to gamble, and Georgetown still has her heart beating a door marked exit with his name penned into the doorknob; she knows that he knows there isn't much they can do, knows that when he nods in agreement, it's because they're best friends, because he gets her in all the ways their silences construct. They are unrequited, in all the wrong ways.
She wonders if that's how they'll always be, waiting for the flames to go up around them.
She wonders who will light the match first:
He, as her boss. She, as a married woman.
The mere thought of it makes her want to start crying.
"Tomorrow? Lunch?"
His hand is warm clasped within her own, fingers long and deft. She's always loved the way his digits are twice as long as her own, loves the way just from bone structure it looks like he could swallow her whole, even with all her Amazonian height and wide shoulders. With him, she feels delicate. Not small, never weak, but something feminine, sleek- different from the dainty wife she feels with Peter's hulking form looming behind her, his arms bear and brute around her.
"Alicia?"
They've pulled into his parking space, and his voice gets her attention, husky in her ear.
She looks up from their hands, retracts her own and reaches for her purse.
"Yeah," she tells him, zoning again. "Tomorrow."
"Wait."
Alicia looks up, startled.
He's leaned over the console, eyes unfathomably dark. "Come 'ere."
They're in the middle of the parking garage, for God's sake, and anyone could see them, but suddenly she's leaning forward, letting him take her jaw in his hands, tongue slipping into his mouth.
They come together like tides, lips reddening from her lipstick, swollen. Her hand comes up to fist the hair at the back of his neck, and if it weren't broad daylight, middle of the morning, she would have the gall to throw her legs on over, straddle him. But it isn't after work, and people are too near. Too much of a chance she could be caught with the boss.
It ends too quick, leaves him hard, leaves her rubbing her thighs together.
"Will," she huffs, out of breath. He grins at her, all boy, before moving to get out of the vehicle.
"Wait!"
He stops, and she beckons him closer, wipes the makeup from his mouth with her fingers. They hold there, after, and he kisses her fingertips, eyes brown and unimaginably intimate fixing with her own. With a slight shake of his head, he opens his car door.
"Come on," Will encourages, but that same need has him too- it's encompassed in teasing, like the anger is kept in raw arguments- but it's there, and she knows it.
The way he pulls at his pants when he stands from the car is proof enough.
"Yes, sir." She lets the word have its due flourish, slamming the car door and moving fast to walk ahead of him, enough so that when she adjusts her skirt up on her waist a liberal amount, he sees the lace at the top of her thighs, sees the red.
He makes a choking sound, behind her.
"Alicia, God," he keeps his tone as even as he can, because he's not a bull, he's not an animal going after some color, but he does have a thing for it, likes the way it looks on her lips, on her breasts, on her thighs. To the passerby, they would look like boss and underling, walking into work, fresh from trial. Bags under their eyes, voices conversational.
He remains two paces behind her, through the revolving doors, past the front desk-
And then Kalinda gets into the elevator with them.
He notices the change in Alicia immediately- the way her back goes ramrod straight, even more meticulous than her usual posture, watches the way her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare. Alicia is far easier to read than most give her credit for. Despite the poker face, despite the façade she's built from politicians probing and reporters at her door, she's still the same Alicia she was half a lifetime ago, the one with curls all in her hair and a pen between her teeth. Will doesn't really know why Alicia is upset with Kalinda, doesn't think it's a good idea to ask.
If Alicia had a problem that he could help her with, she'd tell him, and they've never been the type to gossip about nonexistent variables. Still, the twenty six floor ride is tense, Alicia backed up against the wall, Kalinda remaining vigilant in her stance, not looking at the taller woman. Will reaches out a hand, grazes Alicia's arm.
To her credit, she doesn't shrink away.
The elevator dings, and they're free.
But not before he catches Kalinda's eye, and she gives him a knowing look, the kind that makes him feel paper thin.
Alicia watches the exchange, something brewing in her bones.
/
She's sitting at her desk, peeling an orange, when she hears the shouting.
Alicia isn't a snoop, doesn't fancy herself prone the kind of bystander that gathers around and stares, because memories of her being the object of attention are still too strong, but then some kind of recognition kicks in, and she stands from her desk fluidly, the fruit forgotten.
Will sounds pissed.
She moves to get a better view, sees that essentially everyone is peeking out as well, the secretaries openly gawking.
"You're telling me you overlooked this? This could have made this case solid, we've been picking at straws for months and this would have saved us a helluva- hours and hours spent on trying to find something viable, and this has been staring all of you in the face this whole goddamn time? Are you serious?"
He's holding a paper in his hand, waving it around. His chest puffing with the exertion, pure disgust in his expression. It nearly makes her stomach roll to see him so upset, because she knows the profit this client could bring if they win, knows when they've been in his bed, he's stroked her hair and confided that the firm is in deeper shit than any of them know.
It almost makes her angry at the associates too.
When they don't respond, it makes him more vehement.
"I have half a mind to fire all of your asses! You call yourselves fucking lawyers?"
Alicia's eyes widen, mouth parting. He stops too, comprehends what he's said, and she watches him reign it in, swallow back the fury and incline his head in an assertive fashion. His knuckles are still white, clenched by his side.
"You know what? No. Never mind. I hope all of you had a fun wasting your own time and working hours. The next time a case this huge comes to the firm, do not expect any of you to be on it."
He turns away from the three or four people he's speaking to and a way parts for him to move through the apex of people who have formed in the hallway. Alicia knows he was harsh, but can warrant the emotion- he's management. He's name partner. It's his job, and she respects him all the more for the way he cares about them enough to be lenient with them. Still, she knows his tone, knows that added bite at the end is Will Gardner's rough edges, sharp to prick a finger on.
He knows how to make people bleed.
She used to joke, at Georgetown, that he was a dog in human body.
Eyes forgiving and following when he's enraptured with someone, with her. When he's sad and disappointed, it's reminiscent of a kicked puppy. The playfulness to boot, the way he nips at her throat in bed. But even dogs have their moments when they snap, when they tear something whole apart and make mess. Even if it's not always their attention, especially if pushed to the brink, stressed and overworked. She knows he's all of these things.
Alicia empathizes with him. Alicia wants him.
So with a composure she's had since she was twenty two, the Georgetown library, Alicia checks the clock. Counts the minutes. Starts in the direction of Will's office.
On the phone last night, Owen told her he thought Will was about the fact she never rebelled in high school, that being with Will was somehow getting that heightened rush out of life.
She told Owen that Will wasn't about anything.
Fleetingly, as she nods at his secretary and opens his office door, Alicia wonders if that's true at all. He's lying on his couch, eyes closed, rubbing circles on his temple.
"I said I didn't want to be disturbed," he growls, all dominant, the timbre making her chest warm.
"Hey."
He comes to, abrupt. "Alicia?" he murmurs, moving into a sitting position, a ghost of smile on his face. There are lines around his eyes she's never seen before. "Hi. You saw?"
"I did," she acknowledges. They're silent for a moment, that unrequited, electric thing. Alicia inhales sharply through her nose, knows what needs to be done. More so, she wants to.
"I know what you need," she tells him, coy and soothing all at the same time.
She watches his Adam's apple bob. "Oh? And what might that be?"
Diane is out today, so Alicia doesn't even bother to check to see if anyone is paying attention. If she does, she knows she'll rethink, she'll give into logic, and logic is definitely not what he needs. Will's secretary goes out to lunch in three minutes.
"Go to the bathroom, and wait for me," she orders him low, husky.
He looks gutted, mouth a straight line. "Alicia, we don't have to-
"Will," she stops him, persuasive in speech like a professional. She walks over to lean up against his desk. "Will, this isn't up for negotiation."
/
Her lower back is pressed into the edge of porcelain sink, his mouth devouring the soft skin of her collarbone that can easily be covered by the fabric of her blouse, his grasp clenching the softness of her inner thighs. Groping, hard enough that she can feel it but not enough to bruise, like she wants. Then, his hands move away from her legs, go to her zipper and she thinks, no.
Says as much, firmly.
He stops kissing her, pulls back to fix her with a look that can only be interpreted as confusion, until something in those orbs jerks with realization. Or maybe it's just her that makes him spasm, her hand moving down to palm him through his slacks. He's straining up against her hand, and she knows he knows her intention.
She deliberatelylicks her lips.
Makes work of metal without every breaking gaze, pushes him back to help him slide his briefs and slacks off just enough, her eyes shifting downward to watch him spring free of confinement. His tip tinged purple, liquid beading there. The sight of it makes her throat feel tight.
Without a word, Alicia takes off her suit jacket and lets it drop to the floor.
Hikes up her skirt around her waist, lets him see her lacy panties, a small smile forming at the way he takes her in, his jaw clenched.
She proceeds to sink to her knees.
Kneecaps on the fabric, it's a material that won't wrinkle, thank God, and her heels shockingly cold against the flesh of her ass. It's okay, though. It only makes her lean up more, him in her face, ready, waiting.
Will moans hoarsely when she leans in and presses her lips to him.
"Shh," she hushes him, heartbeat loud in her own ears. He's throbbing for her, trying to stay still. She tells him, "Try to stay quiet."
And then she goes to work.
She hasn't technically done this in four years, but it's a little like riding a bike, and she licks him from base to tip, has him lubricated enough that she can wrap her hand around him and pump his flesh at a steady pace, twisting until his thighs begin to tremble with all the restraint he's attempting to maintain. Alicia doesn't want that.
Alicia doesn't want him to be the way with her that he is with court, with associates. She wants him to go full throttle. She wants him to take it out on her. She wants it now, some fray of desperation running in her veins. Pulling back from him completely, lipstick smeared, mouth wet. She makes him stop, look at her completely before she speaks.
"Will," she murmurs, slurring with sultry twine, but deadly serious. He watches her lips form the words, a keen demand. "Will, I want you to fuck my mouth."
A shudder rocks through him, and he's thinking of how much he wanted this for twenty years, thinking of her giving him blue balls when she'd walk around her dorm in a towel, thinks of how much it feels to have this beautiful, obscenely perfect woman kneeling before him, thinks of how he doesn't want to ruin that, doesn't want to make this into something it isn't because if he dares give himself over, he's not sure she could take it all. Not because she's incapable, but because he has too much he wants. And time, is there enough-
"Please," she practically pleads, and God, she's pouting.
Will swallows thickly, thinking he's close enough to come just from the visual. High school all over again, college all over again, can remember imagining this exact scenario when he was through with a study date, laying in his bed, entirely alone, a fist wrapped around himself.
He thinks this is better than he ever imagined.
Will finally, finally nods. Wordless, as always. Shifts so as to accommodate the weight he has braced up against the wall and frees his hip movement. Gently, with a quiet kind of ease, he threads his fingers through her hair. Guides her head back to him, her own hands braced against either side of his body.
She opens her mouth wide, and lets him slide himself forward.
Inch by inch, until he's resting just shy of her gag reflex. There's still a little more to go, but it's enough, because Alicia Florrick knows what William Paul Gardner needs.
She promptly hollows her cheeks and sucks. His ass muscles tighten, entire body heaving with the pleasure. Will lets his head drop against the drywall, eyes rolling back.
"Leesh. Oh," he gasps, tightening his hold on her hair, cluing her into what she's doing to him as she stays there, suctioning her mouth like she's sucking on a lollipop. Crude, but true.
But then she moves, crawls her hands over to forcibly drive his hips forward, a thrusting motion, and oh, right. That's what she wants. She takes the scissors to his control.
Makes him lose it.
Will gathers himself together, cock throbbing, watching her hair contrast against his fingers, pupils dilated. "You ready?" he asks her harshly.
Alicia hums with him in her mouth, something sparking in her expression as she looks up at him, some vague recognition. Prepares herself by mouthing against him, reaching up to wipe some saliva that's beaded on her chin. Will takes that as his cue.
Tightens his fingers against her scalp so that it's just painful enough.
Begins to move his hips steadily, a set to his jaw like he's determined to fix every indiscretion, every unsaid word. He cock hits the back of her throat, but by some miracle, Alicia doesn't gag, simply closes her eyes and relaxes enough that he can thrust like needs to, tongue swirling around him with every movement. His skin is a good, clean taste, and the precum that mixes in with her spit is salty. Her breasts bounce with the movement, nipples hard against the lace of her bra through her blouse.
God, she's getting wet.
His hands in her hair, the domination in his every pore, lapping against her like kerosene. The way he's showing her how, setting the pace. In an hour they'll be in court, all professional and real, he's her boss- she's on her knees before her boss, and there's some kind of fantasy she'd never admit to having being fulfilled right at this moment.
Her soft hand moves to cup his balls, and she knows what he needs, knows him.
Too well.
He cums without much warning. He stutters his hips harshly, tears his hand out of her mane of mussed curls to bite the heel of his palm. It feels like dying, like being pulled apart and remade. Bright white and blinding. Four or five spurts of warm liquid hit the back of her throat, and he thinks it at the same time she begins to-
"Fuck, Alicia," he almost whimpers, snapping to, expression one of surprise and regret. "Baby, let me get some toilet paper. Fuck, I'm sorry, I-
He goes to move, but it's her turn to stop him, to dig her nails into his hipbones and keeps him there.
Alicia Florrick swallows, expression unforgiving. She pulls off of him with a sloppy smack, face a mess, hair a mess. She's flushed. She's happy.
Her grin is positively devilish. "Will?" her voice cracks from being spent, eyes glazed with what he can only understand as blithe.
"Yeah?" He moves to get a piece of toilet paper to clean himself off, legs like gelatin.
"For the record," she smirks, blinking. "Real women swallow."
/
A little later, once they're fixed up and back in place enough for public view, Alicia taps him on the arm just as they're about to walk out into his office. Smiles softly.
"Feel better?" she asks.
Truth is, he'd forgotten. It's a rare feeling, one he relishes. Something warm rushes over him, a lot like love, because she gets it, gets him.
"You like it when I'm worked up," he accuses, narrowing his eyes and pulling her close. It's so teasing, easy.
"I do," Alicia admits after a pregnant pause.
He kisses her softly.
/
Two years later, and she realizes:
She likes an angry, passionate Will Gardner far more than she likes the other Will, the one who just stares at her like she's dug a grave with a shovel, like she's swallowed a bottle of pills. Like she's stolen his heart. (She never meant to.)
Two years later, and she realizes:
And angry Will Gardner is the closest thing to her Will Gardner that she will ever have again.