2.

Outside the restaurant Kalinda turns, faces Lana. "Thanks for dinner."

"You should really consider it," Lana says again, but her voice sounds flat.

"No, I'm good," Kalinda says, her breath visible on the night air. "Sleep well." She kisses Lana's cheek, and it's worse than if she hadn't touched her. Lana watches her march off towards her SUV, and Kalinda's hips say she knows Lana's watching. Lana sighs and waits for the valet, shifting her weight from one leather heel to the other.

The first call came out of the blue ten months ago. Kalinda slipped into conversation as she had slipped out of Lana's bed, as if it didn't make a difference. She was now an investigator with Stern, Lockhart, and Gardner, a downtown law firm, and was working a case the Feds had had a hand in, defending a man accused of running a safe house for a ring of heroin dealers. Would Lana be willing to give Kalinda just a few minutes with her files?

Her voice was the same, low and smooth and impossibly seductive, and it still did all the same things to Lana.

She wanted to tell Kalinda her life had changed too. She had bought a house on the North Shore, small, but a luxury unimaginable to her sixteen-year-old self, and the wealth and convention of the suburb made her feel both conspicuous and safe. She'd led two small-scale task forces, significant enough to place her on the more serious political investigations. She'd even had a few girlfriends, though of course she kept that under wraps at the Bureau.

But even hearing Kalinda speak brought that all crashing down, and it's all Lana can do to keep a poker face during their interactions, even though she knows Kalinda can see right through it.

The valet pulls up with her car, and Lana slides a five into his palm and slides behind the wheel, where her seat has already begun to heat up. This luxury too—automatic seat warmers, buying a car new—makes her feel like at any moment she could wake up from this dream seventeen years old, still in a sleeping bag behind a Dumpster. On Lake Shore she drives a little too fast, turns a little too sharply as she heads up to Lake Forest. She slides into the driveway crooked, and hates herself as she crashes into her house and opens the well-thumbed file at the upper right-hand corner of her desk.

By now Lana has quite a file on Kalinda Sharma.

It wasn't her decision, she'll swear to that if Kalinda ever demands to know. It's completely defensible, or at least, it was at first. It was just luck that Lana was assigned to the Florrick and Childs investigation, luck that she had been noticed enough to supervise some delicate surveillance but was still junior enough that her focus, per her superiors, was not always on the central figures in the scandals. Finding the name Kalinda Sharma among her assignments was a complete coincidence.

But even the simplest questions—When did Kalinda start working for Florrick?—were labyrinthine, and the twists and turns so intrigued Lana that she continued to research on the side, long after her superiors decided that few of the bit players in the scandal were likely to bear fruit, long after they stopped asking questions.

The research felt like betrayal after betrayal to Lana, at first. It hurt that Kalinda had lied to her even that very first night they met, tainted Lana's memory of their meeting. It hurt that Kalinda slept with men, that she was just another bi girl who had used Lana and tossed her out, that Lana couldn't even think herself unique. It hurt that in all likelihood Kalinda had had some kind of dalliances with both Florrick and Childs, that Lana couldn't count on her judgment or her ethics.

Even her name probably wasn't real—the records of "Kalinda Sharma" before 2007 were flimsy enough that even Lana, with her limited experience in identity theft and computer crimes, could poke holes in them with relative ease.

It worried Lana, to think she had been so easily taken in.

And of course, it worried her for Kalinda, too. She had become irrelevant to the investigation pretty quickly—Lana knew that no one but she was really looking at Florrick's sidekicks anymore—but if even a hint of scandal were to resurface, Kalinda was vulnerable. More vulnerable than she thought Kalinda understood. There are people out there, including more than one who Lana has worked with, who will stop at nothing to get a chokehold on Peter Florrick. It doesn't matter who's trampled along the way. And Childs, in his quest to isolate Chicago's legal system from the rest of the state's, has made an equal number of enemies. Kalinda Sharma would be the right person to leverage against both of them.

It horrifies Lana to think of taking Kalinda into federal custody, just the sort of task that would be likely to fall to Lana in this case. Every now and then Lana even has dreams about it. She doesn't think she could stand the way Kalinda would look at her.

Not that she can really stand the way Kalinda looked at her tonight.

Lana slaps the file closed and goes to pour herself a drink. That was the point of this whole night, of course. To offer Kalinda some kind of safe harbor. To be the person who could offer Kalinda a safe harbor.

The deep, dark secret is that Lana is pretty sure she will continue to keep the file, that there are numerous paths her research has not yet taken. What was Kalinda's name before? Lana wonders, swirling the vodka in her glass. Where did she come from, and why did she want a different name? What does any of that have to do with Florrick?

She downs the rest of the vodka in a single swallow and tosses her shoes off as she goes into her room. She peels her stockings down forcefully enough to rip them.

The deeper, darker secret is that Lana wouldn't mind seeing Kalinda in handcuffs. That she thinks about it even now, as she slides between sheets, thinks about anything that could take down Kalinda's power.

/

"I guess I could just be confused." Kalinda barely breathes the words along the skin of Lana's neck, and when she steps forward and Lana leans down all words become unnecessary.

Kalinda had forgotten. She'd forgotten what it was like to kiss Lana, the thousand-volt jolt. Lana reaches around Kalinda to pull the door to the storage unit all the way down; when she stands up, she holds Kalinda's shoulders as she kisses her, pressing her back against the corrugated metal. She reaches one hand down and fingers the hem of Kalinda's skirt.

This isn't a good idea. She knows it while Lana's fingers rub the tops of her thighs, while Lana slides Kalinda's panties down over her hips and boots, while Lana sinks to her knees in front of Kalinda.

She knew it weeks ago, when they parted company in the courthouse. Kalinda walked away from the conversation with her heart drumming. It wasn't that the supposed tapes, the federal prosecution of Florrick and Childs, frightened Kalinda exactly. If it came down to it, it was clear what she'd have to do, who she'd have to support and protect. Alicia Florrick is a friend. Lana Delaney is … confusing.

But she can't shake the feeling that Lana knows—Kalinda doesn't even know what. Knows something. And she can't have Lana knowing anything.

But oh, Lana knows how to do this, even better than Kalinda remembered. Kalinda pants, clawing at the ridges of metal at her back, while the flat of Lana's tongue slides along Kalinda's clit, while Lana's thumbs slide along the edge of Kalinda's moist curls. It's better than needy, domestic Donna, better than that crooked bastard Tony, better than—holy shit. Kalinda twists a hand into Lana's hair, but Lana pulls back. Kalinda stares at her, not wanting to give Lana the satisfaction of pushing her head forcefully.

"Tell me you want me," Lana says quietly. Her tongue flicks out, licking remnants from her lower lip.

Kalinda would, if she had enough breath in her body to do anything but whimper.

"Tell me you want me," Lana says, soft and sure and steady, a little threatening.

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"I want you."

Lana nods, reaches her still-wet fingers back out. She rubs along Kalinda slowly, steadily, delicious but nowhere near what Kalinda needs. Kalinda watches her, incredulous, desperate. Lana leans her head towards Kalinda and kisses her mound.

"Tell me you need me," she murmurs.

"Mmmmm," Kalinda says, shaking her head and thrusting her hips towards Lana. But Lana just keeps up her sure stroke and tilts her head back to look at Kalinda's face.

"Kalinda. Tell me you need me."

This penetrates the fog of Kalinda's brain just enough for her to realize she won't say it.

She sighs, hoping that will be enough, knowing it won't be. She pulls on Lana's hair, just a little. Lana just strokes smooth and gentle, overlooking Kalinda's wriggles and thrusts.

Finally she puts her hand back, presses her lips too gently against Kalinda's clit. Her breath is warm and fine as she says it once more. "Tell me you need me." Her tongue shoots out just once. Kalinda gasps and doesn't say anything.

Lana stands up. Kalinda's eyes open. Lana thrusts her bag over her shoulder and slides the door halfway up Kalinda's thighs.

"I'll see you," Lana says softly in her ear before ducking underneath the rippling metal. She at least has the grace to slide it back down behind her.

Kalinda slides her phone out of her jacket pocket. Her hands are trembling, but she manages to dial Will. It's a full three minutes before she moves any other part of her body.