The Snugglefic
Title: The Snugglefic
Author: variousflumps
Pairing: Alicia/Kalinda
Rating: PG
Summary: Snuggling and a little bit of angst.
Author's note: The working title for this was The Snugglefic and then I went through 238 other titles to come up with a "proper" title, but it just wanted to be called The Snugglefic, so it is.
Alicia didn't know what she was doing.
She was always so careful, so controlled. It had taken a monumental betrayal to make her lose her cool entirely, and even then she had still acted carefully, making sure that Peter had a place to live and the kids would be protected. She always knew what she was doing because she always did the right thing. The proper thing. She was Alicia Florrick, the woman who never surprised you.
But she had been someone else entirely for the last six weeks. Every Friday night, once the kids had gone to Peter’s and the dishes had been cleared away, she had driven to Kalinda’s apartment. She had spent every Friday night for the last six weeks in the arms of the woman who had slept with her husband and lied about it.
She hadn’t got a clue what she was doing. She’d had plenty of time to think about what would happen if she eventually got divorced, and the answer was usually Will. They would finally be together after all this time, and she would be happy with someone who wanted only her.
Except that she had seen something change in Will’s eyes the moment he knew that she was single. She could see him backing away, closing himself off, and she knew that she was doing the same. They had been a lovely dream for a while - a favorite fantasy to get herself through the nightmare - but the reality was that they were great as friends, and would last about a week as lovers. So there was no happy ending there.
Instead, she was caught in a whole new storm of emotion, with someone who had never seemed to feel any emotion at all. She had been astonished by how upset Kalinda had been when her secret had been revealed and their friendship destroyed. At first, Kalinda had seemed completely, almost psychopathically unmoved, as if their friendship had been entirely disposable, and that had almost hurt more than the original betrayal. But as the weeks and then the months passed, Alicia began to realize that Kalinda’s poker face was hiding some very real pain.
One Saturday afternoon Alicia had come into work to take her mind off her empty apartment and found Kalinda working on the murder case that Alicia was dangerously close to losing. Which would have been unremarkable, if Will hadn’t deliberately assigned them to separate cases weeks ago. Kalinda had looked like she’d been caught doing something shameful; Alicia hadn’t known what to say.
On another day Alicia’s car had broken down and she’d reluctantly accepted a lift from Kalinda. On the drive they unexpectedly came across a prime suspect on Alicia’s case, meeting a second suspect for lunch, and they’d had no choice but to observe him and try to follow him when he left.
The icy silence of their stakeout had been broken by a call from Grace, who spent 20 minutes telling her mother how horrible her life was now her parents were divorced and how miserable she was with the world. Alicia had done everything in her power to calm her daughter, telling her she loved her repeatedly and that it was all going to be okay. At the end of the call she had dropped her cellphone, rubbed her temples and looked over at her colleague to see her crying silently, eyes fixed firmly on the restaurant.
Then Cary had called to say that he was worried about Kalinda. She was drinking too much, every night, every weekend, that he was driving her home, looking after her even, and Kalinda was actually letting him. He thought she was out of control. Kalinda never lost control.
She’d been stunned. This cool, smart, streetwise, independent woman had come apart at the seams. Over her.
It had touched something deep inside of her. A place that she thought Peter had burnt to a cinder; somewhere that had already been touched by supportive notes passed in court when she was terrified, and offers of protection when she was called by her husband’s prostitute, and hours and hours of listening to her moan about her problems.
Seeing Kalinda fall apart had made her ache. So, finally, when she couldn’t cope with her confusion any longer, she had gone to her apartment one Friday night, feeling lost and lonely and hurt and angry and awful. Kalinda had let her in immediately, offered her a drink in a small, nervous voice, and Alicia had burst into tears. And then hugged her.
She wasn’t sure quite what had happened then. Maybe she had seemed a bit hysterical, and maybe she had cried for a scary amount of time, because Kalinda had told her that she needed to lie down, and the next thing she knew they were in the bedroom, and Kalinda was laying her down on the bed, and then…she was pulling Kalinda to lie down with her. Putting her arms around her. Holding her. Spending the next five hours in her arms. And spending every Friday night since in the exact same way.
Alicia didn’t know what she was doing.
And yet somehow…Alicia knew exactly what she was doing. Late at night, when the kids were in bed and the apartment was silent and she couldn’t sleep, she would think about her life, and she knew exactly how she had arrived at this strange place.
Kalinda had a heart. A battered, maybe even broken, beating heart. And her own anger had dissolved into…
Alicia couldn’t be in love. That would mean being attracted to a woman, wanting a woman, and that was so out of her experience that she couldn’t deal with it. She couldn’t be in love with Kalinda. She just couldn’t.
But she loved her. It was the most unexpected love of her life, but oh, she loved her. She missed her the whole week, looking forward to Fridays with a fierce intensity, holding up the chance to be with her as a promise to herself when she was struggling with her kids or Peter or a demanding, lunatic client. Just wait a little longer and you’ll be holding her. Just a little more pain and there’ll be pleasure.
Whatever had happened during the week, whatever pain had been inflicted, however lonely she had been, Kalinda fixed it. Lying on her back in Kalinda’s immaculate apartment with that beautiful body in her arms; running her fingers over the silk of her shirt; feeling Kalinda move closer and closer to her as she gently stroked the back of her neck, over and over again until Kalinda sighed and murmured with pleasure, whispered a plea for more...This was what she wanted. What she needed. This was bliss.
They never went any further than holding each other. Alicia wasn’t even sure what ‘further’ would entail - they weren’t dating. They weren’t having an affair. They were in limbo between lovers and friends. But it was a limbo that felt like heaven.
Kalinda was so responsive to her that she could almost feel the other woman’s pleasure as keenly as her own. Every small sound or shiver of pleasure from Kalinda made her feel wonderful, and by the end of their time together Kalinda would be pressed against her so closely she could hardly bear to move away. From the way that Kalinda reacted to her touch, Alicia strongly suspected that she hadn’t experienced much tenderness in her life, and that just moved her more.
Sometimes Alicia worried that Kalinda was seeing other people, other women, but she couldn’t claim exclusivity if they were behaving like two 12 year-olds. She didn’t have the heart to ask her anyway. Besides, what exactly was she going to say? “Are you cuddling anyone else at the moment, Kalinda?”
So she never asked, and Kalinda never told. After all of this pain they still couldn’t talk to each other. But then it wasn’t understanding that they lacked - they had always, always understood each other, always talked without speaking, with a glance or a smile - it was trust. That’s what had been broken. That’s what they didn’t know how to fix.
And that’s why they didn’t talk. Eventually, they’d have to, eventually they’d need to open the wounds up again, but what would happen if the wounds were so deep they could never be healed? If Alicia couldn’t get past the hurt, they were finished. They’d never be friends again, let alone best friends, let alone…So they hid, and held each other close, and stayed silent in their shared understanding of the danger that lay ahead.
*****
Today, on this Friday, she had a problem. Peter had called to say that he had a vital case at work and couldn’t have the kids until Saturday. She’d felt anger immediately, but she’d read about the case in the papers and she knew that it was genuinely important. Besides, there was bound to be a day when she needed to change the childcare arrangements herself, so there wasn’t much point in arguing.
Since telling Jackie where to go she’d employed a part-time nanny to help out, and Alicia called her now but found that she was busy too. So that meant she’d need to be at home for the first Friday in six weeks. And that meant canceling with Kalinda without actually acknowledging what they were doing in any way, because if they admitted what they were doing, actually said it out loud, it would surely sound so bizarre that they could never do it again.
Damn.
Alicia took a deep breath and headed to the conference room, where she knew Kalinda was trawling through hard drives for a case. She knocked on the door (they’d become ridiculously polite with each other for some odd reason, as if all their problems stemmed from a shocking lack of manners) and saw Kalinda look up from her work.
Several emotions seemed to flicker over her face at once, although Alicia couldn’t identify them. She usually understood Kalinda, but she could rarely interpret her emotions.
“Hey.”
“Hi. How’s the case?”
“Fine. Think I have something on the father.”
“That’s great.”
An awkward pause.
“Um…I have an…issue. Peter called this morning.” She watched as Kalinda’s face registered emotion again, and this time she thought she saw fear.
“He has a big case, and he needs me to have the kids tonight. And the nanny can’t help, so…I have the kids tonight.” Why on earth was she talking like she was letting Kalinda down?
“Oh. Okay. Okay.”
“Okay. Well. That’s all I needed to say, so…see you later.”
“Okay.” Again, that unreadable face changed. Was she disappointed? Relieved? What in the world did she think they were doing?
Alicia reached for the door handle, and found that she couldn’t quite leave. She wanted to ask for a different night. She couldn’t help it - Kalinda made her feel wanted. She made her feel warm. She made her feel loved. She couldn’t wait another week. (What if Kalinda didn’t expect her next week anyway, if she had canceled on her this week? A rush of fear shot through her.)
“I, um…I’m free tomorrow.”
Alicia almost jumped, startled out of her thoughts. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I mean, you know…you probably don’t…”
“No, yeah, I mean, tomorrow’s good, tomorrow’s great, I mean that’s, if you’re free then, um,” she babbled. She forced herself to stop, take a breath, and then said, “Tomorrow’s good. See you then.”
“Okay.” And this emotion she could read. Kalinda was smiling, a cautious, nervous smile, but a genuine smile nonetheless. Once again Alicia felt a pull from that deep place inside of her that Kalinda touched so easily.
This might be crazy - of course it was crazy, it was ridiculous and stupid and somebody was going to get hurt - but it was also right. She couldn’t feel love like this without it being right. She was still doing the right thing, it’s just that the right thing had metamorphosed into something she couldn’t name, that was all.
She returned the smile, opened the door, and left the room.
*****
At quarter to eight on Saturday night, having spent the day willing it away, she drove to Kalinda’s apartment. The second time she’d gone to Kalinda’s apartment she’d had no idea what reaction would await her, but Kalinda had let her in immediately, just as she’d done the first time, and Alicia had walked to the bedroom, lied down on the bed, and held her arms open. Every week since had been the same.
Knocking on the door now, Alicia felt nervous. She always felt a little off balance during these meet-ups, a little light-headed and out of control and thrilled, but tonight felt worse - or maybe better, she wasn’t sure which. They had both had the chance to stop what they were doing, they’d both had an easy way out, and neither had chosen to use it. This was deliberate now - Kalinda wasn’t just comforting her out of guilt, Alicia wasn’t just here out of loneliness. They liked doing this. Wanted it.
Kalinda opened the door, greeted her, watched as she took off her shoes, and then followed her to the bedroom. Alicia lay on the bed as she always did, and Kalinda, avoiding eye contact as she always did, moved into her arms. Alicia briefly wondered whether Kalinda would prefer to hold her for a change, but she liked things this way round; the difference in their heights meant that they fit together perfectly.
They lay there silently for a little while, listening to the quiet of the night, and 20 minutes passed filled only with Alicia’s usual caresses and Kalinda’s quiet reactions. But Alicia was feeling brave tonight. She slowly, gently stroked her hand down to the small of Kalinda’s back, and kept her hand at the base of her spine.
She glanced down at Kalinda’s face. She had her eyes closed, and she looked so pretty and content that Alicia couldn’t help herself. She carefully started to pull on the bottom of Kalinda’s purple silk shirt, and then, when she had raised the shirt far enough, slid her hand underneath onto the warm, velvet-soft skin below.
She stopped all movement as Kalinda took a sharp intake of breath. Waited. But no protest came from the woman in her arms, just a quickening of her breathing and a slight tensing of her body. Alicia began to stroke Kalinda’s back like she had done so many times before, only this time without the barrier of the shirt.
Kalinda started to move slightly beneath her hand, just as she always did when she was receiving Alicia’s caresses, but something felt different this time. After a few minutes Kalinda moaned softly, and Alicia realized what the difference was. For the first time in the history of their comforting, strange Friday nights, she allowed herself to feel the electricity between them. Allowed herself to recognize the signs of Kalinda’s arousal. And the signs of her own.
She kept stroking Kalinda’s back, baby soft skin against her fingers. Kalinda shivered, and Alicia could sense now that she was trying to be quiet, trying not to respond so obviously to her touch. She looked down at her face and saw that her eyes were still closed, but her lips were parted and she looked tense instead of happily content. Alicia took a breath.
“Kalinda?”
“Yeah?” A breathless, soft reply.
“Will you kiss me?”
She wasn’t sure what she was doing, she just knew that suddenly their closeness wasn’t close enough.
A pause. Alicia waited, her heart thumping.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You have some weird kissing technique you need to tell me about?”
Kalinda smiled, and the tension was lifted a little, although the new crackle of sexuality still permeated the room.
Kalinda raised her head, slowly sitting up so that she was facing Alicia. Alicia searched her face as Kalinda searched hers. And then Kalinda leaned forward, ever so gently brushed her lips against Alicia’s, and pulled back, watching for a response.
“Again.”
Once again Kalinda leaned in, and this time Alicia cupped the back of her neck with one hand and placed the other on her cheek, not allowing Kalinda to escape. As their lips brushed together Alicia leaned forward, asking for more. Kalinda held herself rigid for a little longer and then, on an aching moan, melted into Alicia and kissed her with a passion that both shocked her and made her wet.
For a few minutes all she could do was return the kiss with equal passion, helpless in the wake of a deep wave of desire. When her lungs finally started begging for air she broke the kiss, clinging onto Kalinda’s body and panting. Kalinda looked equally breathless, but she’d stopped trying to hide what she was feeling. Alicia couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her like they wanted to devour her. She swallowed, brushed a few stray hairs back behind Kalinda’s ear, and tried to remember why it would be a bad idea to surrender to the hunger she could see in this woman’s eyes.
“We should probably talk.” The time-honored way to kill a mood. Kalinda immediately started to move away from her, but Alicia kept hold of her.
“No. Don’t run away. We’re going to talk, like adults, like mature adults who care about each other. Okay?”
No response. Kalinda stared at a pillow. “Okay?”
“You’ll get mad at me again.”
“Yes, probably. And we’ll probably hurt each other again. But we have to do this, Kalinda. There’s no other way.”
“I don’t like it when you’re mad at me.”
“I don’t like it either. You think I still have reason to be mad at you?” A nod. “Then you need to let me express it, or it will just fester away somewhere and come between us. Do you understand?”
Another nod.
“So. Tell me why you don’t have relationships.”
Kalinda looked up at her in surprise. “That…wasn’t what I thought you were going to ask.”
“What did you think I was going to ask?”
“About…you know. About Peter.”
“I think you had a one-night stand with my husband for the same reason you have one-night stands with other people. So I want to know why you do that.”
“It wasn’t….for exactly the same reason.”
“Tell me.”
Silence again. Maybe she’s fighting a losing battle. Kalinda never talks. If she talks this time, it will hurt. If she talks this time, it will finish them. But there’s no way out but through.
Alicia leaned forward to slide her arm around Kalinda’s waist, and pulled her backwards against her body. She kept her right arm firmly in place around Kalinda’s waist and wrapped her left arm just as firmly across Kalinda’s chest above her breasts.
“Tell me,” she said again.
And Kalinda talks. Haltingly, quietly, with long, uncomfortable pauses that are filled with nervous tension. She talks about her husband and why she left him. She talks about what her life was like before she moved to Chicago. She talks about what she was like before.
She talks about Leela. Young, trapped Leela, who led to Kalinda Sharma, who was never, ever, ever going to let herself be controlled again. Who made sure that she was always the one with all the power, and never relied on anyone. Who had one-night stands with people she didn’t care about because that was the best way to live.
And who…the longest pause of all. Who…fucked it up. Because she hurt somebody who should never have been hurt.
Kalinda stops talking. Alicia is a little stunned by all the new information, and amazed that Kalinda feels able to give it to her. She’s torn between empathy, tenderness and pain. She can’t process it all.
“You know what? Let’s just…take a break for a little while. Take a breather.”
“You want me to move?”
“No. Do you want to move?”
“No.” Alicia smiled. At least they agreed on the cuddling part. Alicia wondered vaguely if they could just go on forever like this, with Friday night snuggling, and then she remembered the highly charged kiss from before and knew that they couldn’t.
She tightened her arms around Kalinda, giving herself permission to bathe in the memories of that kiss after the seriousness of the last twenty minutes. She let herself think for a moment about what it would be like to make love to her. To undress her, kiss her for hours, touch her everywhere…and be touched by her in return. Although the rational part of her brain was still a little uneasy with the idea of being with a woman, there was no doubt that her body was ready. She was turned on from just the memory of a kiss. She wanted this woman. For hours. For days.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
“What? What do you mean?” Alicia tried to hide any trace of desire from her voice.
“You keep squeezing. Are you OK?”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to. I was just…”
“What?”
“Nothing, um, I was just…nothing.” She was pretty sure she sounded as guilty as all hell. And when Kalinda turned in her arms to face her with a wide grin on her face, she was positive that she did.
“What were you thinking about just then?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing, huh?”
“Yep.” And now she was blushing.
“The sexy kind of nothing?” Hearing Kalinda say the word ‘sexy’ was sexy in itself. She tried to calm herself down. Laundry, she thought. Tax returns. Her mother-in-law.
“Tell me what you were thinking about.”
“Laundry.”
“Alicia Florrick, are you being a very bad girl in there? Tell me, Alicia. Tell me the fantasy.”
Kalinda was practically whispering, and Alicia was finding it increasingly difficult to focus on anything other than how much she wanted to kiss her.
“Tell me your own fantasy.”
Kalinda’s eyebrows raised at the challenge. “You wanna hear my fantasy?”
“Yes.”
“I have thousands of fantasies about you. But my favorite fantasy is always the same. You come to me, Alicia. You say that you want me. You ask me to tie you to the bed and tease you. And when I do, you come so hard you scream.”
Alicia swallowed, eyes locked with Kalinda’s, heart racing. Apparently Kalinda could do more to her with a few words than Peter was able to do in the last five years of their marriage. And she would never have let him tie her down…not that she would ever let Kalinda do that either. Obviously not.
“How long have you fantasized about me?”
“Since the first day I met you.”
Alicia’s mouth fell open in surprise. “You’re joking.”
Kalinda just smiled.
“You weren’t very nice to me that first day.”
The smile faded. “I was…that was guilt. And arrogance. But I wanted you the first time I saw you.”
“You are completely unreadable, you know that? I had no idea.”
“Well, you were about as off-limits as it was possible to get. And for all I knew you might have been horrified if you’d known that a woman was fantasizing about you.”
“I wouldn’t have been horrified.”
“No? Would it have turned you on?”
“…Yes.”
“Like you’re turned on right now?”
“Yes.” The tiny part of Alicia’s brain that wasn’t flooded with hormones registered how easily Kalinda talked about sex when she could hardly bear to express an emotion.
“Am I the first woman you’ve kissed?”
“Yes.”
“When was the first time you wanted to kiss me?”
There was a question. Tonight? The first evening they held each other? Neither of those answers seemed quite true.
“I think, maybe…I don’t know. Maybe a while back. I’ve…wanted to be closer to you for a long time. You never let me close enough.”
“You mean the cuddling?” Said with a teasing grin.
“Don’t look at me like that, you like it just as much as I do.”
“You started it.”
“And I’ll stop it if you prefer. You want to stop?”
Kalinda looked down at the bed.
“Is that a no?” If she didn’t know better she’d have sworn she saw a blush. She leaned forward and kissed Kalinda’s cheek. “I’m glad you let me closer. You’re cute up close.”
Kalinda looked up, an expression of mild outrage on her face. “I’m not cute.”
“You are too.”
“Take that back.”
“Will not.”
Alicia grinned. She really was cute.
“Kalinda?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you want to…say…tell me, I mean…” She took a breath. “Do you want to talk about…how you feel about me?”
Kalinda looked fantastically uncomfortable, and stared resolutely at a pillow.
“Kalinda?”
Kalinda looked hugely, stupendously uncomfortable. Alicia wondered whether she was going to run. Or maybe faint.
“You don’t have to, at all, but I’d like to hear it, if you’d like to say it.”
Kalinda opened her mouth, and failed to make any words come out of it.
“Do you want me to go first?”
That got her attention. Alicia smiled at her as she searched her face, trying to figure out what she means, whether she means…that. Kalinda nodded almost immediately, much to Alicia’s surprise. She was expecting resistance to this, too.
“OK.” She put her hand on Kalinda’s cheek, and stroked gently with her thumb. “I love you.” She said it quietly, but put all the feeling of the last few months into it. It felt like the most heartfelt thing she’d said for years.
Silence. And then…
“Tell me again.”
“I love you. I love you.”
Without warning Kalinda got up from the bed and started walking. For a heart-stopping moment Alicia is sure that she’s going to leave and that will be it, they’ll be over, but then Kalinda turned around, eyes full of fire.
“How can you say that to me after everything that’s happened? You scare the living shit out of me, you walk around like everyone’s a good person and you trust people and you fucking love people you have no business loving! How can I ever protect you if you’re so trusting all the time, I can’t stop you getting hurt if you act like this…Alicia…”
She trailed off, angry and exasperated.
“Tell me how you feel.”
“This is absolutely crazy. You know it is.”
“I know. But it’s also real. Tell me how you feel.”
They stared at each other for a long, charged, intense 30 seconds. This is a battle that Alicia knows she has to win.
Finally, angrily, Kalinda surrendered. “You want to hear it? Fine. I love you. Are you happy? This is insane.”
“Say it again without yelling it at me. Come here, sit with me, and say it again.”
“This is crazy.”
“You’ve said that more than once. Come here.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
A long pause. Kalinda sighed, looked around the room a couple of times as if searching for a secret exit, pushed her hair back behind her ears, and then slowly walked back to sit on the bed. Alicia took her hand and pulled her closer, leaning her forehead against Kalinda’s. “Tell me again.”
A sigh. A long, long pause. And then, very quietly, but with a tone of earnest truth, Kalinda said, “I love you.”
Even though Alicia has known this for a while, even though she has seen it in Kalinda’s tears, it feels utterly amazing to hear it from her lips.
“I love you too.”
Alicia knows that just saying it doesn’t solve anything. Except…it kind of feels like it does.
“What do you want to happen now?”
Kalinda’s eyes were closed. “I want you to be happy.”
“You make me happy.”
“Then I want to keep doing that.”
“Then you’ll need to be my girlfriend.”
Kalinda opened her eyes, drew her head back a little. “How can you say that? How can you trust me?”
“Because of how you’ve acted these last few months. Because I’ve seen you cry over a phone call with my daughter. Because you carried on working on my cases behind my back. Because of the way you’ve always acted towards me. Because I don’t believe that you would ever have hurt me deliberately. And because I love you.”
Kalinda looked close to tears. She said fiercely, “I wouldn’t ever hurt you deliberately. I hate the fact that I hurt you.”
“I know.”
“Why aren’t you scared?”
“I am scared. But I’m more happy than scared.”
“I might…have some problems, being your girlfriend. I’m not good at the emotional stuff.”
“Oh dear,” Alicia deadpanned. “You could have told me that before.”
“Very funny.”
“It’s OK. I can help you with the emotional stuff. And you can help me with the lesbian sex part.”
Kalinda looked surprised, and then laughed. “There’s going to be lesbian sex?”
“There is. I might need a manual.”
“No…I’m pretty confident I can teach you.”
“I’m sure you can.”
“You wanna start the first lesson?”
“Easy there, tiger. We’re taking this slowly. Friday night cuddling is all you’re getting for a while.” She laughed at Kalinda’s pout. “So did you agree?”
“With what?”
“To be my girlfriend.”
Kalinda leaned in and kissed her gently. “Sure,” she said. “You can be in charge of the emotional stuff and I’ll be in charge of the sex.”
Alicia laughed, pulling Kalinda closer to her. “Well that sounds like a plan.”
They sat quietly together for a while, heads resting against each other. After a few minutes, Kalinda said, “Alicia?”
“Mmm?”
“I really love you.”
Alicia’s stomach flipped from the tenderness in her voice. “I know you do.”
“And I will kill anyone you tell, but I don’t hate the cuddling.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I knew that too.” She kissed Kalinda’s forehead, and Kalinda moved into the same position that she’d occupied for the last six Friday nights.
For the first time in forever, Alicia knows exactly what she’s doing.
Epilogue
Alicia reaches for the ringing phone without thinking, the lateness of the hour and the warm body in her arms dulling her senses. As soon as she picks up the phone she realizes it’s not hers - Kalinda’s phone is at least two years newer than hers, and does all kinds of things that she’s sure she’d find useful if she could figure out how they worked - but she sees who’s calling and answers it anyway.
“Hello?”
Kalinda has begun to stir in her arms.
“Hi Cary.”
Kalinda looks up at her with a mildly interested expression.
“I’m sorry, she can’t come to the phone right now, she’s being cuddled, can I help you?”
Kalinda lurches upwards and grabs the phone. The look she gives Alicia is so appalled that Alicia dissolves into a helpless fit of the giggles.
“Cary? Shut up. What do you want? Shut. Up. Fine, go to hell.” She hangs up and stares daggers at Alicia, who is trying to breathe through her giggles.
“You did not just do that.”
Alicia wipes her eyes.
“He’ll use that forever. I should kill you right now.”
Alicia manages a good gulp of air between laughs. She takes a few more breaths, wipes her eyes again, and finally calms down.
“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”
Kalinda shakes her head.
“What did he say?” asks Alicia.
“Nothing.”
“Come on. What did he say?”
“The word ‘adorable’ was used. And I am going to kill you, I’ve decided.”
“Nuh, you love me too much. Come here and give me a cuddle.”
Kalinda glares at her again, which sets Alicia off again, which makes Kalinda glare at her even harder.
“I should call Diane and tell her what you’re really like. Shatter a few illusions.”
Alicia tries to respond and just gasps.
“I’m going to bed. Don’t try anything when you come in.”
Alicia gets enough breath in her lungs to say, “Kalinda.”
“What?”
“Are you really mad?”
“I’m shocked by your immaturity.”
Alicia grins. “That means no.”
“That means, you’d better get Cary off my back or I’ll tell him you were so drunk you couldn’t see straight. Night.”
“Kalinda.”
“What?”
“You’re the most fun I’ve ever had in my whole life.”
Kalinda’s glare melts a little. “Yeah, well. No cuddling fun for you tonight.”
“Just sex then?”
“Not that either. Until you start behaving yourself.”
Alicia stands, walks over to her girlfriend and says, in her best pure-as-the-driven-snow good girl voice, “I’ll behave. Promise.”
Which has the desired effect. Kalinda has a definite thing for good girls, she’s discovered.
And cuddling, of course.
Author: variousflumps
Pairing: Alicia/Kalinda
Rating: PG
Summary: Snuggling and a little bit of angst.
Author's note: The working title for this was The Snugglefic and then I went through 238 other titles to come up with a "proper" title, but it just wanted to be called The Snugglefic, so it is.
Alicia didn't know what she was doing.
She was always so careful, so controlled. It had taken a monumental betrayal to make her lose her cool entirely, and even then she had still acted carefully, making sure that Peter had a place to live and the kids would be protected. She always knew what she was doing because she always did the right thing. The proper thing. She was Alicia Florrick, the woman who never surprised you.
But she had been someone else entirely for the last six weeks. Every Friday night, once the kids had gone to Peter’s and the dishes had been cleared away, she had driven to Kalinda’s apartment. She had spent every Friday night for the last six weeks in the arms of the woman who had slept with her husband and lied about it.
She hadn’t got a clue what she was doing. She’d had plenty of time to think about what would happen if she eventually got divorced, and the answer was usually Will. They would finally be together after all this time, and she would be happy with someone who wanted only her.
Except that she had seen something change in Will’s eyes the moment he knew that she was single. She could see him backing away, closing himself off, and she knew that she was doing the same. They had been a lovely dream for a while - a favorite fantasy to get herself through the nightmare - but the reality was that they were great as friends, and would last about a week as lovers. So there was no happy ending there.
Instead, she was caught in a whole new storm of emotion, with someone who had never seemed to feel any emotion at all. She had been astonished by how upset Kalinda had been when her secret had been revealed and their friendship destroyed. At first, Kalinda had seemed completely, almost psychopathically unmoved, as if their friendship had been entirely disposable, and that had almost hurt more than the original betrayal. But as the weeks and then the months passed, Alicia began to realize that Kalinda’s poker face was hiding some very real pain.
One Saturday afternoon Alicia had come into work to take her mind off her empty apartment and found Kalinda working on the murder case that Alicia was dangerously close to losing. Which would have been unremarkable, if Will hadn’t deliberately assigned them to separate cases weeks ago. Kalinda had looked like she’d been caught doing something shameful; Alicia hadn’t known what to say.
On another day Alicia’s car had broken down and she’d reluctantly accepted a lift from Kalinda. On the drive they unexpectedly came across a prime suspect on Alicia’s case, meeting a second suspect for lunch, and they’d had no choice but to observe him and try to follow him when he left.
The icy silence of their stakeout had been broken by a call from Grace, who spent 20 minutes telling her mother how horrible her life was now her parents were divorced and how miserable she was with the world. Alicia had done everything in her power to calm her daughter, telling her she loved her repeatedly and that it was all going to be okay. At the end of the call she had dropped her cellphone, rubbed her temples and looked over at her colleague to see her crying silently, eyes fixed firmly on the restaurant.
Then Cary had called to say that he was worried about Kalinda. She was drinking too much, every night, every weekend, that he was driving her home, looking after her even, and Kalinda was actually letting him. He thought she was out of control. Kalinda never lost control.
She’d been stunned. This cool, smart, streetwise, independent woman had come apart at the seams. Over her.
It had touched something deep inside of her. A place that she thought Peter had burnt to a cinder; somewhere that had already been touched by supportive notes passed in court when she was terrified, and offers of protection when she was called by her husband’s prostitute, and hours and hours of listening to her moan about her problems.
Seeing Kalinda fall apart had made her ache. So, finally, when she couldn’t cope with her confusion any longer, she had gone to her apartment one Friday night, feeling lost and lonely and hurt and angry and awful. Kalinda had let her in immediately, offered her a drink in a small, nervous voice, and Alicia had burst into tears. And then hugged her.
She wasn’t sure quite what had happened then. Maybe she had seemed a bit hysterical, and maybe she had cried for a scary amount of time, because Kalinda had told her that she needed to lie down, and the next thing she knew they were in the bedroom, and Kalinda was laying her down on the bed, and then…she was pulling Kalinda to lie down with her. Putting her arms around her. Holding her. Spending the next five hours in her arms. And spending every Friday night since in the exact same way.
Alicia didn’t know what she was doing.
And yet somehow…Alicia knew exactly what she was doing. Late at night, when the kids were in bed and the apartment was silent and she couldn’t sleep, she would think about her life, and she knew exactly how she had arrived at this strange place.
Kalinda had a heart. A battered, maybe even broken, beating heart. And her own anger had dissolved into…
Alicia couldn’t be in love. That would mean being attracted to a woman, wanting a woman, and that was so out of her experience that she couldn’t deal with it. She couldn’t be in love with Kalinda. She just couldn’t.
But she loved her. It was the most unexpected love of her life, but oh, she loved her. She missed her the whole week, looking forward to Fridays with a fierce intensity, holding up the chance to be with her as a promise to herself when she was struggling with her kids or Peter or a demanding, lunatic client. Just wait a little longer and you’ll be holding her. Just a little more pain and there’ll be pleasure.
Whatever had happened during the week, whatever pain had been inflicted, however lonely she had been, Kalinda fixed it. Lying on her back in Kalinda’s immaculate apartment with that beautiful body in her arms; running her fingers over the silk of her shirt; feeling Kalinda move closer and closer to her as she gently stroked the back of her neck, over and over again until Kalinda sighed and murmured with pleasure, whispered a plea for more...This was what she wanted. What she needed. This was bliss.
They never went any further than holding each other. Alicia wasn’t even sure what ‘further’ would entail - they weren’t dating. They weren’t having an affair. They were in limbo between lovers and friends. But it was a limbo that felt like heaven.
Kalinda was so responsive to her that she could almost feel the other woman’s pleasure as keenly as her own. Every small sound or shiver of pleasure from Kalinda made her feel wonderful, and by the end of their time together Kalinda would be pressed against her so closely she could hardly bear to move away. From the way that Kalinda reacted to her touch, Alicia strongly suspected that she hadn’t experienced much tenderness in her life, and that just moved her more.
Sometimes Alicia worried that Kalinda was seeing other people, other women, but she couldn’t claim exclusivity if they were behaving like two 12 year-olds. She didn’t have the heart to ask her anyway. Besides, what exactly was she going to say? “Are you cuddling anyone else at the moment, Kalinda?”
So she never asked, and Kalinda never told. After all of this pain they still couldn’t talk to each other. But then it wasn’t understanding that they lacked - they had always, always understood each other, always talked without speaking, with a glance or a smile - it was trust. That’s what had been broken. That’s what they didn’t know how to fix.
And that’s why they didn’t talk. Eventually, they’d have to, eventually they’d need to open the wounds up again, but what would happen if the wounds were so deep they could never be healed? If Alicia couldn’t get past the hurt, they were finished. They’d never be friends again, let alone best friends, let alone…So they hid, and held each other close, and stayed silent in their shared understanding of the danger that lay ahead.
*****
Today, on this Friday, she had a problem. Peter had called to say that he had a vital case at work and couldn’t have the kids until Saturday. She’d felt anger immediately, but she’d read about the case in the papers and she knew that it was genuinely important. Besides, there was bound to be a day when she needed to change the childcare arrangements herself, so there wasn’t much point in arguing.
Since telling Jackie where to go she’d employed a part-time nanny to help out, and Alicia called her now but found that she was busy too. So that meant she’d need to be at home for the first Friday in six weeks. And that meant canceling with Kalinda without actually acknowledging what they were doing in any way, because if they admitted what they were doing, actually said it out loud, it would surely sound so bizarre that they could never do it again.
Damn.
Alicia took a deep breath and headed to the conference room, where she knew Kalinda was trawling through hard drives for a case. She knocked on the door (they’d become ridiculously polite with each other for some odd reason, as if all their problems stemmed from a shocking lack of manners) and saw Kalinda look up from her work.
Several emotions seemed to flicker over her face at once, although Alicia couldn’t identify them. She usually understood Kalinda, but she could rarely interpret her emotions.
“Hey.”
“Hi. How’s the case?”
“Fine. Think I have something on the father.”
“That’s great.”
An awkward pause.
“Um…I have an…issue. Peter called this morning.” She watched as Kalinda’s face registered emotion again, and this time she thought she saw fear.
“He has a big case, and he needs me to have the kids tonight. And the nanny can’t help, so…I have the kids tonight.” Why on earth was she talking like she was letting Kalinda down?
“Oh. Okay. Okay.”
“Okay. Well. That’s all I needed to say, so…see you later.”
“Okay.” Again, that unreadable face changed. Was she disappointed? Relieved? What in the world did she think they were doing?
Alicia reached for the door handle, and found that she couldn’t quite leave. She wanted to ask for a different night. She couldn’t help it - Kalinda made her feel wanted. She made her feel warm. She made her feel loved. She couldn’t wait another week. (What if Kalinda didn’t expect her next week anyway, if she had canceled on her this week? A rush of fear shot through her.)
“I, um…I’m free tomorrow.”
Alicia almost jumped, startled out of her thoughts. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I mean, you know…you probably don’t…”
“No, yeah, I mean, tomorrow’s good, tomorrow’s great, I mean that’s, if you’re free then, um,” she babbled. She forced herself to stop, take a breath, and then said, “Tomorrow’s good. See you then.”
“Okay.” And this emotion she could read. Kalinda was smiling, a cautious, nervous smile, but a genuine smile nonetheless. Once again Alicia felt a pull from that deep place inside of her that Kalinda touched so easily.
This might be crazy - of course it was crazy, it was ridiculous and stupid and somebody was going to get hurt - but it was also right. She couldn’t feel love like this without it being right. She was still doing the right thing, it’s just that the right thing had metamorphosed into something she couldn’t name, that was all.
She returned the smile, opened the door, and left the room.
*****
At quarter to eight on Saturday night, having spent the day willing it away, she drove to Kalinda’s apartment. The second time she’d gone to Kalinda’s apartment she’d had no idea what reaction would await her, but Kalinda had let her in immediately, just as she’d done the first time, and Alicia had walked to the bedroom, lied down on the bed, and held her arms open. Every week since had been the same.
Knocking on the door now, Alicia felt nervous. She always felt a little off balance during these meet-ups, a little light-headed and out of control and thrilled, but tonight felt worse - or maybe better, she wasn’t sure which. They had both had the chance to stop what they were doing, they’d both had an easy way out, and neither had chosen to use it. This was deliberate now - Kalinda wasn’t just comforting her out of guilt, Alicia wasn’t just here out of loneliness. They liked doing this. Wanted it.
Kalinda opened the door, greeted her, watched as she took off her shoes, and then followed her to the bedroom. Alicia lay on the bed as she always did, and Kalinda, avoiding eye contact as she always did, moved into her arms. Alicia briefly wondered whether Kalinda would prefer to hold her for a change, but she liked things this way round; the difference in their heights meant that they fit together perfectly.
They lay there silently for a little while, listening to the quiet of the night, and 20 minutes passed filled only with Alicia’s usual caresses and Kalinda’s quiet reactions. But Alicia was feeling brave tonight. She slowly, gently stroked her hand down to the small of Kalinda’s back, and kept her hand at the base of her spine.
She glanced down at Kalinda’s face. She had her eyes closed, and she looked so pretty and content that Alicia couldn’t help herself. She carefully started to pull on the bottom of Kalinda’s purple silk shirt, and then, when she had raised the shirt far enough, slid her hand underneath onto the warm, velvet-soft skin below.
She stopped all movement as Kalinda took a sharp intake of breath. Waited. But no protest came from the woman in her arms, just a quickening of her breathing and a slight tensing of her body. Alicia began to stroke Kalinda’s back like she had done so many times before, only this time without the barrier of the shirt.
Kalinda started to move slightly beneath her hand, just as she always did when she was receiving Alicia’s caresses, but something felt different this time. After a few minutes Kalinda moaned softly, and Alicia realized what the difference was. For the first time in the history of their comforting, strange Friday nights, she allowed herself to feel the electricity between them. Allowed herself to recognize the signs of Kalinda’s arousal. And the signs of her own.
She kept stroking Kalinda’s back, baby soft skin against her fingers. Kalinda shivered, and Alicia could sense now that she was trying to be quiet, trying not to respond so obviously to her touch. She looked down at her face and saw that her eyes were still closed, but her lips were parted and she looked tense instead of happily content. Alicia took a breath.
“Kalinda?”
“Yeah?” A breathless, soft reply.
“Will you kiss me?”
She wasn’t sure what she was doing, she just knew that suddenly their closeness wasn’t close enough.
A pause. Alicia waited, her heart thumping.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You have some weird kissing technique you need to tell me about?”
Kalinda smiled, and the tension was lifted a little, although the new crackle of sexuality still permeated the room.
Kalinda raised her head, slowly sitting up so that she was facing Alicia. Alicia searched her face as Kalinda searched hers. And then Kalinda leaned forward, ever so gently brushed her lips against Alicia’s, and pulled back, watching for a response.
“Again.”
Once again Kalinda leaned in, and this time Alicia cupped the back of her neck with one hand and placed the other on her cheek, not allowing Kalinda to escape. As their lips brushed together Alicia leaned forward, asking for more. Kalinda held herself rigid for a little longer and then, on an aching moan, melted into Alicia and kissed her with a passion that both shocked her and made her wet.
For a few minutes all she could do was return the kiss with equal passion, helpless in the wake of a deep wave of desire. When her lungs finally started begging for air she broke the kiss, clinging onto Kalinda’s body and panting. Kalinda looked equally breathless, but she’d stopped trying to hide what she was feeling. Alicia couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her like they wanted to devour her. She swallowed, brushed a few stray hairs back behind Kalinda’s ear, and tried to remember why it would be a bad idea to surrender to the hunger she could see in this woman’s eyes.
“We should probably talk.” The time-honored way to kill a mood. Kalinda immediately started to move away from her, but Alicia kept hold of her.
“No. Don’t run away. We’re going to talk, like adults, like mature adults who care about each other. Okay?”
No response. Kalinda stared at a pillow. “Okay?”
“You’ll get mad at me again.”
“Yes, probably. And we’ll probably hurt each other again. But we have to do this, Kalinda. There’s no other way.”
“I don’t like it when you’re mad at me.”
“I don’t like it either. You think I still have reason to be mad at you?” A nod. “Then you need to let me express it, or it will just fester away somewhere and come between us. Do you understand?”
Another nod.
“So. Tell me why you don’t have relationships.”
Kalinda looked up at her in surprise. “That…wasn’t what I thought you were going to ask.”
“What did you think I was going to ask?”
“About…you know. About Peter.”
“I think you had a one-night stand with my husband for the same reason you have one-night stands with other people. So I want to know why you do that.”
“It wasn’t….for exactly the same reason.”
“Tell me.”
Silence again. Maybe she’s fighting a losing battle. Kalinda never talks. If she talks this time, it will hurt. If she talks this time, it will finish them. But there’s no way out but through.
Alicia leaned forward to slide her arm around Kalinda’s waist, and pulled her backwards against her body. She kept her right arm firmly in place around Kalinda’s waist and wrapped her left arm just as firmly across Kalinda’s chest above her breasts.
“Tell me,” she said again.
And Kalinda talks. Haltingly, quietly, with long, uncomfortable pauses that are filled with nervous tension. She talks about her husband and why she left him. She talks about what her life was like before she moved to Chicago. She talks about what she was like before.
She talks about Leela. Young, trapped Leela, who led to Kalinda Sharma, who was never, ever, ever going to let herself be controlled again. Who made sure that she was always the one with all the power, and never relied on anyone. Who had one-night stands with people she didn’t care about because that was the best way to live.
And who…the longest pause of all. Who…fucked it up. Because she hurt somebody who should never have been hurt.
Kalinda stops talking. Alicia is a little stunned by all the new information, and amazed that Kalinda feels able to give it to her. She’s torn between empathy, tenderness and pain. She can’t process it all.
“You know what? Let’s just…take a break for a little while. Take a breather.”
“You want me to move?”
“No. Do you want to move?”
“No.” Alicia smiled. At least they agreed on the cuddling part. Alicia wondered vaguely if they could just go on forever like this, with Friday night snuggling, and then she remembered the highly charged kiss from before and knew that they couldn’t.
She tightened her arms around Kalinda, giving herself permission to bathe in the memories of that kiss after the seriousness of the last twenty minutes. She let herself think for a moment about what it would be like to make love to her. To undress her, kiss her for hours, touch her everywhere…and be touched by her in return. Although the rational part of her brain was still a little uneasy with the idea of being with a woman, there was no doubt that her body was ready. She was turned on from just the memory of a kiss. She wanted this woman. For hours. For days.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
“What? What do you mean?” Alicia tried to hide any trace of desire from her voice.
“You keep squeezing. Are you OK?”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to. I was just…”
“What?”
“Nothing, um, I was just…nothing.” She was pretty sure she sounded as guilty as all hell. And when Kalinda turned in her arms to face her with a wide grin on her face, she was positive that she did.
“What were you thinking about just then?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing, huh?”
“Yep.” And now she was blushing.
“The sexy kind of nothing?” Hearing Kalinda say the word ‘sexy’ was sexy in itself. She tried to calm herself down. Laundry, she thought. Tax returns. Her mother-in-law.
“Tell me what you were thinking about.”
“Laundry.”
“Alicia Florrick, are you being a very bad girl in there? Tell me, Alicia. Tell me the fantasy.”
Kalinda was practically whispering, and Alicia was finding it increasingly difficult to focus on anything other than how much she wanted to kiss her.
“Tell me your own fantasy.”
Kalinda’s eyebrows raised at the challenge. “You wanna hear my fantasy?”
“Yes.”
“I have thousands of fantasies about you. But my favorite fantasy is always the same. You come to me, Alicia. You say that you want me. You ask me to tie you to the bed and tease you. And when I do, you come so hard you scream.”
Alicia swallowed, eyes locked with Kalinda’s, heart racing. Apparently Kalinda could do more to her with a few words than Peter was able to do in the last five years of their marriage. And she would never have let him tie her down…not that she would ever let Kalinda do that either. Obviously not.
“How long have you fantasized about me?”
“Since the first day I met you.”
Alicia’s mouth fell open in surprise. “You’re joking.”
Kalinda just smiled.
“You weren’t very nice to me that first day.”
The smile faded. “I was…that was guilt. And arrogance. But I wanted you the first time I saw you.”
“You are completely unreadable, you know that? I had no idea.”
“Well, you were about as off-limits as it was possible to get. And for all I knew you might have been horrified if you’d known that a woman was fantasizing about you.”
“I wouldn’t have been horrified.”
“No? Would it have turned you on?”
“…Yes.”
“Like you’re turned on right now?”
“Yes.” The tiny part of Alicia’s brain that wasn’t flooded with hormones registered how easily Kalinda talked about sex when she could hardly bear to express an emotion.
“Am I the first woman you’ve kissed?”
“Yes.”
“When was the first time you wanted to kiss me?”
There was a question. Tonight? The first evening they held each other? Neither of those answers seemed quite true.
“I think, maybe…I don’t know. Maybe a while back. I’ve…wanted to be closer to you for a long time. You never let me close enough.”
“You mean the cuddling?” Said with a teasing grin.
“Don’t look at me like that, you like it just as much as I do.”
“You started it.”
“And I’ll stop it if you prefer. You want to stop?”
Kalinda looked down at the bed.
“Is that a no?” If she didn’t know better she’d have sworn she saw a blush. She leaned forward and kissed Kalinda’s cheek. “I’m glad you let me closer. You’re cute up close.”
Kalinda looked up, an expression of mild outrage on her face. “I’m not cute.”
“You are too.”
“Take that back.”
“Will not.”
Alicia grinned. She really was cute.
“Kalinda?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you want to…say…tell me, I mean…” She took a breath. “Do you want to talk about…how you feel about me?”
Kalinda looked fantastically uncomfortable, and stared resolutely at a pillow.
“Kalinda?”
Kalinda looked hugely, stupendously uncomfortable. Alicia wondered whether she was going to run. Or maybe faint.
“You don’t have to, at all, but I’d like to hear it, if you’d like to say it.”
Kalinda opened her mouth, and failed to make any words come out of it.
“Do you want me to go first?”
That got her attention. Alicia smiled at her as she searched her face, trying to figure out what she means, whether she means…that. Kalinda nodded almost immediately, much to Alicia’s surprise. She was expecting resistance to this, too.
“OK.” She put her hand on Kalinda’s cheek, and stroked gently with her thumb. “I love you.” She said it quietly, but put all the feeling of the last few months into it. It felt like the most heartfelt thing she’d said for years.
Silence. And then…
“Tell me again.”
“I love you. I love you.”
Without warning Kalinda got up from the bed and started walking. For a heart-stopping moment Alicia is sure that she’s going to leave and that will be it, they’ll be over, but then Kalinda turned around, eyes full of fire.
“How can you say that to me after everything that’s happened? You scare the living shit out of me, you walk around like everyone’s a good person and you trust people and you fucking love people you have no business loving! How can I ever protect you if you’re so trusting all the time, I can’t stop you getting hurt if you act like this…Alicia…”
She trailed off, angry and exasperated.
“Tell me how you feel.”
“This is absolutely crazy. You know it is.”
“I know. But it’s also real. Tell me how you feel.”
They stared at each other for a long, charged, intense 30 seconds. This is a battle that Alicia knows she has to win.
Finally, angrily, Kalinda surrendered. “You want to hear it? Fine. I love you. Are you happy? This is insane.”
“Say it again without yelling it at me. Come here, sit with me, and say it again.”
“This is crazy.”
“You’ve said that more than once. Come here.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
A long pause. Kalinda sighed, looked around the room a couple of times as if searching for a secret exit, pushed her hair back behind her ears, and then slowly walked back to sit on the bed. Alicia took her hand and pulled her closer, leaning her forehead against Kalinda’s. “Tell me again.”
A sigh. A long, long pause. And then, very quietly, but with a tone of earnest truth, Kalinda said, “I love you.”
Even though Alicia has known this for a while, even though she has seen it in Kalinda’s tears, it feels utterly amazing to hear it from her lips.
“I love you too.”
Alicia knows that just saying it doesn’t solve anything. Except…it kind of feels like it does.
“What do you want to happen now?”
Kalinda’s eyes were closed. “I want you to be happy.”
“You make me happy.”
“Then I want to keep doing that.”
“Then you’ll need to be my girlfriend.”
Kalinda opened her eyes, drew her head back a little. “How can you say that? How can you trust me?”
“Because of how you’ve acted these last few months. Because I’ve seen you cry over a phone call with my daughter. Because you carried on working on my cases behind my back. Because of the way you’ve always acted towards me. Because I don’t believe that you would ever have hurt me deliberately. And because I love you.”
Kalinda looked close to tears. She said fiercely, “I wouldn’t ever hurt you deliberately. I hate the fact that I hurt you.”
“I know.”
“Why aren’t you scared?”
“I am scared. But I’m more happy than scared.”
“I might…have some problems, being your girlfriend. I’m not good at the emotional stuff.”
“Oh dear,” Alicia deadpanned. “You could have told me that before.”
“Very funny.”
“It’s OK. I can help you with the emotional stuff. And you can help me with the lesbian sex part.”
Kalinda looked surprised, and then laughed. “There’s going to be lesbian sex?”
“There is. I might need a manual.”
“No…I’m pretty confident I can teach you.”
“I’m sure you can.”
“You wanna start the first lesson?”
“Easy there, tiger. We’re taking this slowly. Friday night cuddling is all you’re getting for a while.” She laughed at Kalinda’s pout. “So did you agree?”
“With what?”
“To be my girlfriend.”
Kalinda leaned in and kissed her gently. “Sure,” she said. “You can be in charge of the emotional stuff and I’ll be in charge of the sex.”
Alicia laughed, pulling Kalinda closer to her. “Well that sounds like a plan.”
They sat quietly together for a while, heads resting against each other. After a few minutes, Kalinda said, “Alicia?”
“Mmm?”
“I really love you.”
Alicia’s stomach flipped from the tenderness in her voice. “I know you do.”
“And I will kill anyone you tell, but I don’t hate the cuddling.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I knew that too.” She kissed Kalinda’s forehead, and Kalinda moved into the same position that she’d occupied for the last six Friday nights.
For the first time in forever, Alicia knows exactly what she’s doing.
Epilogue
Alicia reaches for the ringing phone without thinking, the lateness of the hour and the warm body in her arms dulling her senses. As soon as she picks up the phone she realizes it’s not hers - Kalinda’s phone is at least two years newer than hers, and does all kinds of things that she’s sure she’d find useful if she could figure out how they worked - but she sees who’s calling and answers it anyway.
“Hello?”
Kalinda has begun to stir in her arms.
“Hi Cary.”
Kalinda looks up at her with a mildly interested expression.
“I’m sorry, she can’t come to the phone right now, she’s being cuddled, can I help you?”
Kalinda lurches upwards and grabs the phone. The look she gives Alicia is so appalled that Alicia dissolves into a helpless fit of the giggles.
“Cary? Shut up. What do you want? Shut. Up. Fine, go to hell.” She hangs up and stares daggers at Alicia, who is trying to breathe through her giggles.
“You did not just do that.”
Alicia wipes her eyes.
“He’ll use that forever. I should kill you right now.”
Alicia manages a good gulp of air between laughs. She takes a few more breaths, wipes her eyes again, and finally calms down.
“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”
Kalinda shakes her head.
“What did he say?” asks Alicia.
“Nothing.”
“Come on. What did he say?”
“The word ‘adorable’ was used. And I am going to kill you, I’ve decided.”
“Nuh, you love me too much. Come here and give me a cuddle.”
Kalinda glares at her again, which sets Alicia off again, which makes Kalinda glare at her even harder.
“I should call Diane and tell her what you’re really like. Shatter a few illusions.”
Alicia tries to respond and just gasps.
“I’m going to bed. Don’t try anything when you come in.”
Alicia gets enough breath in her lungs to say, “Kalinda.”
“What?”
“Are you really mad?”
“I’m shocked by your immaturity.”
Alicia grins. “That means no.”
“That means, you’d better get Cary off my back or I’ll tell him you were so drunk you couldn’t see straight. Night.”
“Kalinda.”
“What?”
“You’re the most fun I’ve ever had in my whole life.”
Kalinda’s glare melts a little. “Yeah, well. No cuddling fun for you tonight.”
“Just sex then?”
“Not that either. Until you start behaving yourself.”
Alicia stands, walks over to her girlfriend and says, in her best pure-as-the-driven-snow good girl voice, “I’ll behave. Promise.”
Which has the desired effect. Kalinda has a definite thing for good girls, she’s discovered.
And cuddling, of course.