Work Text:
It was supposed to be him, until suddenly it wasn’t. He wasn’t quite sure how to forgive her for that.
Six months of work, three years of law school (including the correct politically connected summer internships), four years undergrad (top of his class) and he ends up. Here.
Not that the State’s Attorney’s office is the worst place in the world, but it isn’t like private practice-no one here is willing to get him a latte, and though his college roommates keep sending him midnight texts asking if it's so, it's nothing like Law & Order. For one thing, no one on Law & Order dealt with this much paperwork.
He’d had it all worked out. Six months probation was nothing, a fluke. Something he could laugh about 10 years from now. Hey, remember when...? Competing against someone who hadn’t been in a courtroom in 15 years was just a bonus. It didn’t matter who he was up against, he knew he was good. He knew he would win.
What he hadn’t counted on was the fact that she was good. Not as good as him, not as many billable hours, not as much potential. But it turned out that while Cary thought he played the game well, he had just been a small fish in a small pond. In the big pond, he was a rank amateur. Over his head, hiding at the bottom of the pond to avoid the big fish. He wouldn’t always be like that but right now, he couldn’t compete, no matter how many people his father had introduced him to.
But six months of chinese food during late nights, complaining about senior associates who treated them like they were brain dead, trading gossip about judges and staring at Kalinda’s ass (He was professional, he wasn’t blind) is gone and he’s fish food.
He hadn't counted on liking her. He had thought that his competition (that's how he'd thought of her before he met her and how he'd thought about her even after he knew her) would be boring and uncreative-a law drone. He hadn't counted on the fact that she was whip smart, that she was nice to everyone from the mail room interns on up, that her hair smelled of Chanel N5 (He had bought his girlfriend a bottle once.) and her skin tasted like rainwater.
Sneaking into bathrooms after she came back from dinner with the kids and it was just the two of them. Stress relief after the pressures of a job that never stopped, a desire to be the best that warred with the fact that they were friends, of a sort, and friends want to see each other succeed. Sneaking around, trying not to let her get under his skin (the way she already was). Knowing that his mom, his eighth grade therapist and every single law school friend he had would think he was crazy for sleeping with someone's mom. Moms were boring but she wasn't. Glint in her eye, hands on his back, stubble burn that always disappeared before she sat back down at her desk.
That's how life used to be, that's how work used to be. It's different these days, at work and with her. These days it's stilted conversations at work and silence from her. Now he’s got a girlfriend that he can take home to his parents. They go out for dinner in public and she’s met his friends. The most exciting person in the office was Phil, who everyone suspected of stealing lunches from the communal refrigerator. It’s not bad, but there's nothing as interesting, no one as interesting.
The phone rings, enough introspection. He has. He needs. There is work to be done.
END