3.
"You shouldn't be here," Kalinda says softly.
"I am here." Alicia stands in the doorway, statuesque as usual. "Will you let me in?"
Kalinda steps aside, and Alicia brushes past her, takes the setting in while Kalinda shuts the door. She watches Alicia look at the walls, look at the furniture. She watches Alicia. She watches Alicia and almost forgets the week, the news, the inevitable.
Alicia turns to Kalinda and quirks an eyebrow. "I like what you've … done with the place?"
Her poker face is too perfect to be true, and, helplessly, Kalinda laughs, letting it spill into the room. The day has been long and silent, and there's something welcoming about the sound. Alicia joins her. Still, again, the sound of Alicia's laughter mingling with her own loosens the tension in Kalinda's chest, just a little, a few knots slipping out. She leans into it, leans towards Alicia.
"She said it wasn't over," Alicia says when their breathing calms.
"Hmm?"
"Your FBI friend." An odd expression crosses Alicia's face at the words. "She said I should tell you this wasn't over. I probably should have told you that."
Yes, she should have. And maybe Kalinda could have headed this all off at the pass.
"It's never over," says Kalinda, exhaling a little.
They wait in silence for a second. Kalinda doesn't have anything else to say.
"It was strange," Alicia says. "Not to have you there today."
"Strange not to be there," Kalinda says.
Yesterday afternoon Diane had called Kalinda into her office. Given how the firm had suffered with Will's suspension, their reputation simply couldn't handle the weight of another scandal. Already they had begun to lose clients. "You understand, Kalinda," Diane said.
And she did, of course she did.
Alicia could continue to represent her, Diane said, but until all of this resolved Kalinda could not be working their cases. The clients. Kalinda understood.
Kalinda had nodded, numbly, the grand jury subpoena still itching beneath her bra strap. She'd left Diane's office, left the building, gone home, found herself lost with nothing to do. Several times today her phone buzzed with Alicia's strategic emails (the only sounds Kalinda heard all day), but Kalinda knows they don't have a ham sandwich's chance in hell. This is endgame.
"Will missed you," Alicia says.
Kalinda smiles a little. "Of course. Someone has to keep him entertained."
"He says he can't offer legal advice, but …"
They both laugh, and then Kalinda says, a little too eagerly, "But what?"
"But you should call him if you need him."
Kalinda says, "Oh." She's disappointed; she was hoping Will had imparted some miraculous trial strategy to Alicia, not that Alicia wouldn't come up with it herself. And she won't call Will. She can't imagine calling Will. "How are you two?" she says, and is then shocked that she asked it.
Alicia is probably equally surprised, but she swallows it. "Fine. We're all right."
"Good."
Alicia looks thoughtful. Her face is calm, at ease in a way she hasn't been in Kalinda's presence for so long, so long. Kalinda studies the lines in her face, the swoop of her bangs over her eyebrow, loves, even in the middle of all this, that she can look at Alicia without sadness streaking through her throat. "I guess I was expecting—"
The phone buzzes.
Kalinda's. She snatches it up reflexively, snaps, "Hello?"
"There she is."
The breath flies from Kalinda's body. Answer. She has to answer.
"There I am," she chokes out. The sound of her voice makes Alicia look at her sharply.
"I've missed you, Leela." His voice is low, laced with the confidence that he has all the cards. She wishes he weren't right.
"Can't—can't say the same."
"That's a shame," he says. "I'll see you soon."
Kalinda barely hears the click as he ends the call. With her free hand she claws for the wall as she stumbles backward against it, catches the startled look on Alicia's face before her vision blacks out.
She's dizzy. Does he know where she lives? Lana wouldn't have gone that far, would she? But she wouldn't have known how far he would go.
"Kalinda!"
Her vision fades back in and Alicia's face is hovering in front of her, marred with concern and fear. For her, for Kalinda. She's hurting Alicia again. Kalinda can't look at Alicia like that, so she kisses her.
The room, the apartment, the universe still for a moment. Kalinda's about to pull her lips away, attribute it to a moment of panic, but she can't, she can't. And then Alicia's lips are responding, her tongue reaching out for Kalinda's, first gently and then with greater urgency. She tastes of bread and wine.
Alicia grasps the back of Kalinda's neck, pulls their faces together more firmly. Kalinda's hand slides down Alicia's back, starts to untuck her blouse.
Alicia breathes into Kalinda.
Kalinda's nerve endings are lighting up like sparklers. She knows, she knows, this isn't safe, in a way Alicia can't understand. But Kalinda can't think of anything else she wants right now, is having a hard time thinking of anything else she's ever wanted. Her panic flows into her kisses: if she doesn't have this now, she will never have this. The sweet, slightly chemical smell of Alicia's hair, the salt of the flesh on her shoulder, the crisp silky edge of her bra as Kalinda unbuttons her shirt—all of these things are Kalinda's, Kalinda's, as she is pretty sure nothing else will be again.
They stop for a second, only to breathe, only to look at each other's eyes, only to wait.
"Are you sure?" Alicia says quietly as her fingers thread through Kalinda's hair.
Kalinda swallows, nods. This may be the last thing she will ever be sure of. "Yeah. Are you?"
She expects some hesitation, but Alicia just says, "Yes," and Kalinda doesn't need to be told twice. She unhooks Alicia's bra and fixes her lips to her breast; Alicia gasps as Kalinda's tongue circles her areole.
"Mmmm," Kalinda murmurs, anchoring one hand to Alicia's shoulder, the other to her hips. Alicia leans against the wall, her breath ragged when the tips of Kalinda's fingers come to rest just below the waistline of her trousers. She loves the texture of Alicia's nipples, the sounds of her sighs. She brushes her fingers gently across Alicia's lower belly.
If Kalinda can only have one thing before Nick comes back and makes her Leela, she wants this. She wants tonight. She kisses Alicia's navel, undoes the button on her pants.
Then suddenly, fiercely, Alicia pulls her up and kisses her, a kiss that makes Kalinda forget everything that happened before it. "Not yet," Alicia whispers into her hair, pulling down the zipper on her jacket, taking the whole of Kalinda's breast into her hand. "We have to take care of you, too."