Author's Note: This is my first songfic for The Good Wife, and it's also my longest. Bear with me as I try to get the characters to stay in character, and remember, any review is a good review (as long as you don't flame me). Enjoy, and look for updates in the future!

Disclaimer: I don't own The Good Wife. Or Kalinda Sharma's clothes. Or, unfortunately, Matt Czuchry. *fans self*

Memory Serves

It's not a remarkable day by any means. Former State's Attorney Glenn Childs's protégé is first chair on a capital murder case (again). To the cocky (or appropriately confident, as Cary likes to call himself) Assistant State's Attorney, it looks like the case, though it's a high-profile one, isn't going to be groundbreaking. All he has to do is push the evidence and crack down on the wife of the victim, and he'll have his conviction. He's not worried about the cross-examination; there's a reason he is known in certain Harvard Law circles as Cary "The Intimidator" Agos. But he's going up against, surprise, surprise, Lockhart Gardner on this case. He still doesn't understand why Childs assigned him to all criminal cases handled by his former employer, but it is what it is. It's a new dawn and a new day for him. Or it would be, if not for the one weapon they use against him. The scary part is they need to do nothing but unleash its power on a laptop and in a file covertly handed to Will Gardner in a courthouse, hips swishing and stiletto heels clacking away softly as she smirks with satisfaction.

His day starts out unremarkably and ends predictably. He's about to win and put away a vicious killer when all of a sudden, Will comes up with "new" (meaning likely untrue and definitely illegal) evidence to give to the jury. Cary's head snaps back as he hears the familiar sound of stiletto boots traveling further away. As usual, everyone acts as if Lockhart Gardner's sexiest in-house investigator doesn't exist. (He mentally slaps himself for just thinking that.) As Will presents his little story, Cary gives the lead to his partner for a minute and looks back. He allows his eyes to travel to her toned legs, to her ass, and then looks away so that the ache in his pants shuts up before it gets any real blood pumping. Then, he vaguely remembers that he has a job and gets into a back-and-forth argument with Will about the merits of this so-called evidence. When the judge calls a fifteen-minute recess an hour later, he locks eyes with Kalinda, who's perched on the edge of her seat in the second row, her legs crossed and her face etched with that god-awful smirk, her eyes dancing as if she had just put a hand over her mouth and said, "Oops. Guess I just fucked with your case of the year. Have fun with that one."

When the trial shuts down for the day, Cary catches her on the way out. "What the hell was that?" he hisses as he jogs to keep up with her cheetah-like gait.

"Don't know what you're talking about," she says calmly.

"You fucked with my case."

"And that's unusual because…"

"It's not. And that's the point." He catches her chin and turns her face toward him so that she can't look away. "Stop injecting fake evidence into my cases. I don't exactly like letting murderers walk away on a defense completely composed of lies."

"They're not all lies," she quips, turning away and continuing her stride down the sidewalk.

Cary smirks in spite of his deep desire not to. Her sly, dry sense of humor is the missing component to his day at the State's Attorney's. Standing in the same place she left him, he says, "You're making a career off of ruining mine."

She stops in her tracks and sends him a look. Poor baby. Want me to kiss it and make it better? "I'm making a career," she says slowly, "off of investigating. If it means that an innocent person goes free, okay. If it means that I mess with the State's Attorney's office…even better."

"And I just happen to be in the way of your vendetta against Peter."

Her eyes harden. "Who says it has to do with Peter?"

"Maybe everything you've ever said to me about him."

She shakes her head and her mouth twitches, stretching an uncomfortable half-grin across her face. "If this bothers you so much, Cary, do something about it."

It's a challenge extended on a silver platter, and he'll be damned if he doesn't take a challenge that Kalinda Sharma puts in his way. Still, what comes out of his mouth is enough to shock both of them, and it's something that will have lasting repercussions.

"All right, fine. Let me buy you a drink."

She stares at him for a second, but she doesn't disagree, pull away, or claim that she has more work she has to complete for the trial. Plus, it's not like she has much of a social life left anyway after losing Alicia's respect and friendship (because no matter how much you try to explain it away, it's never good to sleep with your friend's husband). A minute later, she calls a taxi cab and gives the driver directions to their bar.

It would be so nice to take you
I only ever try to make you smile
No matter what, we're gonna keep you occupied
But only at your place
Only at your place

It's taken Cary twenty-seven years to get to this point, but he's finally realized work has taken over his life. By the time the cab drops him and Kalinda off at O'Malley's, he's worked so late that the bar has closed. He repeats this bizarre bit of information to himself: the bar is closed. He doesn't have time to mull over this pain-in-the-ass turn of events, though; he invited Kalinda out for drinks, and since this is an opportunity he will probably never get again, he needs to tweak it just enough so that he can play his cards right.

"I guess those drinks aren't going to work out," she says.

"We could go to your place."

"You already know where I live, Cary. That's enough. You're not coming up and getting familiar."

He resists the urge to make a comeback and pauses for a second. "Come to my place."

She narrows her eyes.

"I promise," he continues sotto voce, "all I want is to give you what you wanted. No more, no less."

She hums for a second and makes a snap decision. "Fine. We'll do what I wanted at your apartment. Guess you'd better catch that taxi."

Damn tease, he thinks to himself as he lets Kalinda slink into "their" cab and gives the cabbie directions to his apartment.

An hour later, they sit in his apartment, listening to an old Sinatra record. They're both more hammered than either of them would prefer. The shot glass wobbles in Cary's hand. He knows Kalinda has the advantage; she can probably drink a full-grown man under the table and still safely avoid a bitch of a hangover.

"So you wanted to get me drunk all night," Kalinda says out of nowhere.

"No," Cary snorts, chuckling to himself. "I… just wanted to offer you a fun time."

Kalinda smiles and lets out a long giggle that is more suitable on a six-year-old girl. It's high-pitched, nasally, and odd enough that everyone in their circle would be noticeably creeped out. He's more creeped out that the stone-faced woman he's known his entire professional life is even capable of anything beyond a smirk. Still, it's the cutest thing that's ever escaped her lips thus far. She must be drunker than he'd expected. Small as she is, she's no lightweight.

"What drink are you on?" he asks with a wide grin as the song changes.

"Eighth, I think," she says. "What about you?"

He holds up five fingers, snickering. "Fourth."

She snorts and presses his thumb into his palm. "That's four, Cary," she chuckles. "I think I'd better get going."

He suddenly feels a needier urge than he's felt for any woman in years. "Don't," he pleads.

"You're drunk, Cary," she says gently. "You do things you'll regret later when you're drunk."

"Speaking from experience?"
She bites her lip, her eyes almost begging him to stop. "I'm going now," she reinforces. She stands up and wobbles a little on her heels as she attempts to make an escape from his apartment. She hears him lumbering after her and turns around. His eyes are animal-like and hungry (for what?), but they have a tinge of sorrow. The empty shot glass turns in his hand as it clenches.

"Don't leave," he begs. "Please?"

"Why not?" she asks him, her face a smidge apprehensive as he steps forward and wraps a hand gently around the back of her neck, massaging it lightly. The last time he did this, he'd kissed her outside her apartment and run away with a stupid little comeback about normality. This time, he's not letting her get away that easily.

"Because you… are the only friend I have in this whole damn town. And I don't let go of people I care about."

Against his better judgment, he leans down and brushes a soft kiss against her lips. Maybe the vodka really has loosened her up, because as he pulls away, thinking he's really fucked things up this time, she goes in for the kill. Her lips crash against his, slowly at first, then picking up speed and urgency as she comes back more forcefully, again and again. He backs her up and pins her between him and the closed door as he bites her bottom lip and she opens her mouth to him. Her arms wrap around his neck, and as they battle for dominance in the kiss, she runs her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. He nips at the soft skin at the base of her throat, knowing there'll be a mark in the morning, knowing that he's finally branded her somehow. A shudder runs through her body, and suddenly, as his hands find her whittled waist, neither one can stand how many layers of clothes separate him from her. Maybe it's the tequila pounding in his veins, but all Cary knows is that he won't stop until they both collapse. As he locks eyes with her, he rips her leather jacket off her body, leaving her in a skin-hugging black dress. Kalinda unbuttons his dress shirt as quickly as she can without ripping the damn thing. Once they're sort of satisfied, Cary lifts her legs around his waist, pushes the dress above her hips, and does his best to back up into his bedroom without getting them both killed. He's so dizzy from both the alcohol and the fact that Kalinda is actually in his arms that he almost trips over the rug in the hall. She chuckles as he steadies himself. He touches her cheek reverently, almost worshipping the feel of her skin on fire. They somehow manage to make it to his bedroom, and as they make one of the best- and one of the worst- decisions of the past few years, Cary knows he can't be drunk, because if he was, sleeping with her wouldn't bring him the incredibly high amounts of both ecstasy and emotional pain.

They do it a second time and even manage to go back for thirds, and by that time, she's just as wiped out as he is. When he wakes up a mere two hours later, his head pounding, her side of the bed (he can't believe he already thinks of it as her side) is empty. He bolts upright, puts his hand down on it, and shakes his head, chuckling emotionlessly.

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." He can't believe he was stupid enough to let her into his home, and then his bed, and then his heart, though not in that order.

The side of the bed she vacated is still warm to the touch.

It would be no price to pay
I only ever lie to make you smile
All kinds of dust are gonna keep me satisfied
But only at your place
Only at your place

Kalinda's always held a belief: if something terrifies you or threatens you, kill it. The theory has been time-tested over the years, and it always succeeds. Still, the theory never accounts for when you scare the living shit out of yourself. Does it make her suicidal, the fact that her actions are bothering her so much?

She stands at the full-length mirror in her apartment and shudders. No matter how she acts in court today, nothing will change the fact that last night, she was in Cary's bed, doing the type of thing that she swore to herself she would never do. Even worse, she knows that she can't blame her slight tipsiness for the stumble. She would only ever admit it to herself (and even that was a little iffy), but she might have actually enjoyed herself last night. Cary wasn't a horndog like Lana or violent and aggressive like Blake had been in their one brief encounter. Cary wasn't overconfident and verbal, like Peter had been, like she'd thought he might be. (Well, it's not like she'd ever thought about what he would be like in bed. Right. Pssh.) He was as passionate as he was in the courtroom, but he was almost… sweet. And sweet was not something she ever thought she could attribute to Cary Agos, or that she would ever be able to tolerate. She's still not sure she wants to. Because as much as last night was an eye-opener to how great things with Cary could be, it also reminds her of how she will crack his fragile little heart in two.

Kalinda is brutally honest with herself: she doesn't fall in love. Ever. Kalinda Sharma has never once met a man (or woman) who satisfied her few needs. They all wanted sex, every single one of them, and they thought that a good fuck meant that you were intimate with someone. From her old life as Leela Sen, she knows that sex never means anything in a relationship, especially when all that the person wants is to control you and make you theirs. It is a sad fact of life that the only way she could escape from an abusive relationship was to set her own house on fire and fake her death so that her husband couldn't find her.

The fact that she had sex with Cary doesn't intimidate her (does sex ever, really?), although if anyone found out, it could cause a few problems in the circles the friends run in. What makes her tremble, just a little bit, is that Cary acted as if it was all a… natural progression in their relationship. As if he could ever bring her anything close to the normalcy he knew she secretly craved. He is seeping into that corner of her brain reserved for intimacy, and if she ever wants to retain her freedom and spare the kid the heartache she knows will come from being anywhere near her, she needs to cork the flow, and sooner rather than later.

Thus, Kalinda turns her attention to her petite closet in order to solve two problems: the first, how to cover the hickeys on her throat, and second, how to convince Cary that she's not interested in his world of "normal". She reaches for one of her many leather jackets and chooses a black one that comes up high on the back and sides of her neck. Since it is January, she slips on a purple turtleneck that emphasizes her figure but hides any evidence of last night's encounter. She doesn't have much choice when it comes to the pencil skirt, but she chooses fishnets and a pair of over-the-knee leather boots (her beloved "hooker heels"). She quickly fixes her bun and reapplies the makeup that rubbed off last night, hoping to cover the half-moons under her eyes. She looks at the mirror, taps her foot, and nods her head once, satisfied with herself.

She walks out the door to her apartment building and short. She finds him against the side of the building, as if he's been waiting for a while.

"Hey, stranger," he says dryly.

"Cary," she says calmly, refusing to take the bait. "What a surprise."

"Cut the crap, Kalinda," he snaps, his hangover evident as he rubs his temple, sulking in a way that only he can. "What the hell happened?"

"I woke up… and I left."

"You don't see a problem with that?"

"I…"

"Do you really think you can get away with what you did?"

"I don't know what you're talking about..."

"It's my turn, Kalinda," he says, turning into Lawyer Cary. "You screwed me over. It's not going to happen again. The way I see it, we have several options. The first is that we walk away and never talk to each other again. No favors, no drinks, no nothing. That's disappointing and impractical on a number of levels. The second is to make this a regular thing. And no, it's not what you think," he says, seeing her start to protest. He chuckles emotionlessly. "I don't want anything from you, Kalinda. Let's be realistic here: neither of us is looking for a relationship or any of the fallout that would come from it. So let's keep it simple: we're friends. Occasionally, we have a night. A moment. Then we move on."

He can't be serious, she thinks to herself. He can't seriously be proposing that they become fuck buddies. And to think she was convinced he'd be the one clinging on for dear life. He's the one with the open heart, he's the one who wanted something to happen, he's the one who invited her into his home and begged her not to ever walk away from him. He's lying. He must be, must be doing this because he thinks it's what she wants. She nods her head yes, because at least it gives her back her mental clarity. He is no longer wrestling for intimacy, and to her, whether or not she wants him to fight for her is irrelevant. He's set her free from all the anguish last night caused. And that's what she's wanted all along. Isn't it?

A/N: Let me know what you think. Reviews are like crack to a writer, and I'm not ashamed to admit I'm a review addict. So... the button is right there. :D