Author: Regency
Title: A Matter of State
Pairing: Evan/Hillary
Rating: PG for a temperamental Evan.
Word count: 3,275
Summary: Hillary makes the decision to trust
Evan. She just hopes she won’t regret it.
Author’s Notes: A one-shot from Win,
Lose, or Also-Ran. Takes places between chapter 5 and the epilogue, which I'll post someday. Swear.
~!~
“When are we going to be past this,”
Evan asked from the door of the Oval Office.
Hillary looked up from the final Iraq withdrawal report she’d received just this morning. They were out—one
more thing she could check off of her list of things to do with her administration.
“Past what?”
He came inside and shut the door firmly behind him. It was a message to Huma and just about everyone else. Stay
out, loud and clear.
“You said that we could move on. You told me to get past this, that there were priorities that needed my attention
now.”
Hillary nodded cautiously and set her work aside. Speaking of things that need to be dealt with... “I
did.”
“Was that just for me?” He sat his hands on the back of the office’s blue-striped couch.
“Was I really the one who needed to let go, Hillary? Because I seem to be the only one of us who has.”
Hillary wasn’t particularly surprised. She knew she’d been reserved following that thing
that had happened during the campaign. She knew he would have picked up on it eventually. It was a wonder to her that they
hadn’t had this confrontation sooner.
“What do you want me to say?” she inquired with a restless rolling of the shoulders. Someone
could have cut the tension in the Oval with a knife, but it would have been useless against the knots in her back.
She could have used one of his world-class massages right about now.
“I want you to say that we’re okay.”
She frowned solemnly and said, “We’re okay.”
He waved off her less-than-stellar effort and turned his back. “We’re not okay. Don’t
just go through the motions because you think that’s what’ll get this over with. We are not okay,” he declared,
emphasizing and punctuating each word with his hands.
She rested her hands on her desk flat. She hoped he couldn’t tell they were quivering over the distance.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do. The situation is what it is. We have responsibilities now and obligations
now. This isn’t about us. There’s no time--”
“There’s nothing but time, Hillary. We’re not running for re-election anymore. Everything you and
I want is set to be a reality. We overcame the Conspiracy. We overcame the electorate. At the worst points,
we overcame each other. We’re here now—just us.” He rounded the couch and dropped tiredly onto the cushions.
“Then, tell me. Why are we still fighting so hard?”
She exhaled slowly, trying to take the time to gather her thoughts. She didn’t know what he
wanted to hear. She couldn’t think of anything of value to say that would be a comfort to him.
When she didn’t respond, he continued, “Was it a waste to keep me on, Madame President? Do you trust me
so little that you can’t even keep confidence with me now that it no longer matters?”
She laced her fingers together and rested them under her chin. “We can’t keep blurring
the lines anymore.”
He laced his fingers together and let them hang between his knees. “I don’t remember the last time we had
lines.”
“Exactly my point.” She sat back and stood up, moving behind her chair to erect one more measly barrier
between them. “When we get angry, this is who are. We turn in the Commander-in-Chief and her lieutenant.
We stop being Hillary and Evan. We can’t do that. We can’t resort to our titles just when we get angry.”
Absently, she rubbed the back of her hand. “That’s who we’re supposed to be all
the time. That’s who we need to be at all times.”
She thought she saw comprehension dawning. “So, that’s all we can be to each other?”
“That’s all we ever should have been, yes.”
“If I refuse to accept that?”
“It wasn’t a request, Mr. Vice President.”
“I thought we made decisions together. That’s what I signed up for.”
“We have and we are. This is the deal now. We have a job to do and I will not allow any superfluous emotion to
get in the way of our doing the job well. This is the home stretch, make or break time.”
“So, your response to everything that happened during the campaign was to string me along and, then, break it
off?”
She clutched the back of the chair with whitening knuckles. She was holding it together with psychological
scotch tape. She hoped he couldn’t see. “My intent was never to hurt you. I lo-I care for you
very much. I told you that.”
“You told me you loved me,” he retorted accusingly. “You told me more than once.
Was that so I wouldn’t leave you in the lurch with Obama breathing down your back? Was I a means to an end to
you?”
She resisted the impulse to turn away from him. Of course he said that the thing that hurt the most. Of
course she made an enemy out of the only friend she still had. Of course.
“You were never a means to an end. This is your administration as well as mine. You deserved the chance to finish
what you started.”
“Why doesn’t that apply to my relationship with you?”
Hillary was brought up short. “I don’t…I mean,” she trailed off uncertainly. She
shook her head and cleared her throat. “We’re a bad idea. When we cross these lines and wires, things go wrong.
I nearly don’t run for re-election. We nearly don’t win. We owe the People more than a melodrama.”
He looked at her bemusedly. “I thought that was a part of our appeal.”
“What’s great for fiction isn’t so great for governing.”
“So, that’s another thing you lied about. Really, Madame President, I’m starting
to seem like the one who should hold a grudge. You lied to me about things that matter.” He dropped his eyes from hers
and rubbed his hands together. “Am I not supposed to care?”
“Of course you should care, but you should also put it behind you and keep going.” She couldn’t believe
she’d actually said it.
“And if I can’t?” He didn’t seem able to believe it either.
She dropped her hands from the back of the executive chair. It was time for some home truths. “Not
an option. We’ve been down this road, Evan. Your retreat to your corner to lick your wounds and things go up in smoke.
You want to withdraw your friendship, fine, but you don’t get to run away. Whatever happens between us personally needs
to be totally separate from what happens between us in this room. That’s what you signed up for and that’s why
I hired you. Whatever political expediency necessitates is what we’ll do.”
He seemed to stare right through her, yet she held her ground. The part of her that loved him and
the part of her that knew she should be cautious were at war. She’d been here, on the other
side of the desk, ceding everything and putting it all at risk. The stakes were higher now; they were at zero-hour.
What she wanted, what she needed couldn’t possibly matter as much as her mission.
“So, once again, Mr. Vice President, this is your call. Do you walk away and wait to see what disaster strikes
when I don’t have my best—and only—ally with me? Or, do you stand by me and get this thing done?”
Evan rubbed his jaw, eyes averted toward the floor. Can’t even look at me. She set
her shoulders and began to wait. She didn’t have this kind of time to waste, but she could give him
a moment—it was a tiny way in which she could show him her love.
“You’re exhausting,” he finally began, shattering the silence with the force of a sledgehammer.
She inclined her jaw passively. “Oh?” There was any number of ways
she could take the remark. She chose to believe that he meant it in a less than insulting way. She chose to believe that they
hadn’t already come to this. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her the way others did.
“One day, you’re so in love with me, you run—run!—away at the very notion that I might be intimate
with another woman.” She did not flush. The President of the United States didn’t turn colors when confronted
with her own jealousy. “Another day, you’re telling me to get out of your life.” She
couldn’t control the inquisitive eyebrow that jumped up of its own volition. “Yet another day,
you fuck me on the desk of my office like it’s something you always do.” She narrowed her eyes and it was not
a good sign. She was internally debating whether to hand him his ass or have the Secret Service mail it to him at a later
date.
“Next thing
I know you aren’t speaking to me beyond memos for weeks no matter how much I plead innocence to you about something
I never would have done. Never! Finally, you tell me that you can’t tell me not to miss my marriage
and you’re spending weeks and months’ of nights in my arms. Just when I think the nightmare
of my public life is at an end, you hit me with this.”
“The truth,” she replied with unconvincing lightness and re-took her seat with concerted effort. She didn’t
want to have a shouting match. Things were good, the press was manageable. Screaming of the angry sort
was not a story that could be muffled for long.
“How can I ever tell what the truth is with you, sweetheart? It’s always changing. Do you love me? Do you
hate me? My god, are you indifferent to me altogether?” He threw up his hands. “I have no idea, because the goalposts
are always moving with you.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “What
is this, Hillary? What did I get myself into with you?”
She picked up a pen and found something to sign her name to—very slowly. If she pressed the
treasured fountain pen to the page any harder, she would have broken it. And right now, she loved it more than she loved the
conversation she was having. It wouldn’t have been worth it in the end, but it would have felt good in the meantime.
She was the cooler head here, but damn if hers didn’t feel pretty hot right now.
“Who knows? It was good, and then it was bad.” She shrugged lackadaisically. “Now, it’s this.
This is what I wanted to avoid.”
He looked at her, incredulously. “You wanted to avoid having fights? You and Bill are famous
for having knock-down, drag-outs. You’re giving up on us to avoid fighting?” He sat his chin
on his hand. “That is not like you—at all.”
“People change. They get older, they get tired.”
He relaxed into the back of the couch with his arms crossed. “They get scared.”
She snorted. “I’ve endured four decades in politics. If I still managed to be scared,
I’m clearly a sadist who gets off on that sort of thing. I’m not afraid of the People, Evan.”
He nodded his head in concession. “Maybe not of the People, but you are afraid. I think you’re
scared that I’ll hurt you the way Bill hurt you.”
She waved dismissively at his speculation and looked for something else, preferably something innocuous but ego-boosting,
to sign. “You and Bill aren’t the same. I know that. It’s a non-issue.”
“That’s easy for you to say now that you’re calling it quits on us, once again.”
She smiled self-deprecatingly. “You should probably pursue someone less flaky next time.”
“In D.C.,” he teased. “I wouldn’t even know where to start looking.”
She giggled and he laughed with her. It was a sound that she’d come to love in four years.
Evan Bayh was the man for her. She knew it as surely as she could breathe. She just wished she could
be sure that falling in with him, really, finally, and for good wouldn’t cost her anymore of her self-respect.
She was so sick of giving pieces of herself away just to keep loving someone. The end, with Bill, had been good, but
it had come at a cost she couldn’t pay again; not at the start.
“But, in all seriousness, I think there’s a woman out there for you. She’ll make
you happy and stand with you at all of your crossroads. She won’t have my history—hopefully—or
my responsibilities. She’ll be good for you in ways I don’t think I can be.”
She idly tugged the wrinkles out of her sleeves to avoid looking at him when she was done. He was
right; they’d done this too many times to take it seriously anymore. She didn’t want to play
him and she didn’t want to get played. She just wanted to put them to rest after all this time.
“If she’s out there, she’s gonna be pretty lonely,” he opined. “I
don’t have any use for another woman when the only woman I want is right in front of me.” He got up and took his
old place at the chair beside the Resolute Desk. “I accept no substitutions. We don’t do that
here.” When she let her eyes drift back to him, his were waiting, twinkling in accompaniment to his signature smile.
“You’re scared, but I love you and I won’t leave until I know you don’t love me, too.”
“It’s not about love—,” she nearly said, but she never got the chance because he kissed her.
Held her face in his hands and kissed her, until she nearly slid out of her chair; until she would have slid out of
her chair if he hadn’t decided that having her in his lap was better. He’d
certainly learned to seduce her while she’d spent the months seducing him. The campaign had only
been his opening act.
He ended the kiss with a grin even bigger than the one he’d had before. “It’s
absolutely about love; otherwise, what’s the point?”
She tried to worm her way out of his arms lest she begin to enjoy it too much. Last night—of course—was
still on her mind and she dared not get used to this again. “The point is that we have a job to do.”
He wasn’t having it. “Funny you should say that, beautiful. I have no intention of doing my job badly simply
because I serve at the pleasure of Madame President during the night and the day.” He kissed
the side her neck and the fight in her became considerably less forceful. He was inching toward that spot
that could melt of her, that she both wanted him to kiss and hated that, inevitably, he would. Right as his bottom lip would
have grazed that erogenous target about an inch beneath her ear, he drew away, and she groused instead of rejoiced.
“That is,” he whispered, far nearer than even seduction dictated, “unless pleasure is a detriment
to presidential job performance.”
She leaned back to look down into his eyes and the challenge therein. “Are you baiting me?”
One cheek dimpled impishly. “I would never do that, Madame President. I’m
simply saying that we should consider forming a commission to investigate the influence of nightly orgasms on the executive
work ethic.”
She was being played. She knew she was being played. Dear God, I like how he’s playing
me. “Who exactly would head up this commission, Mr. Vice President?”
He tapped his lips with a mockery of a thoughtful expression on his face. “I was considering
John McCain, but since he lacks relevant experience in the area of executive toe-curling, I think it’d be best if I
sat in the big chair.”
She nodded. “Oh, I see.”
He looked surprised. “Do you? I’m so glad that you’re beginning to see things my way.
I was afraid I was going to have to beg and there’s nothing more pathetic than a man in love who has to beg to
be loved back.”
She poked him in the chest. “Aren’t you melodramatic?” She
couldn’t imagine saying no to him on his knees. She didn’t want to imagine him that desperate or herself that
cold. As cold as she might have been.
He caught her finger before she could prod him again. “I would have done it for you.
If I thought it’d convince you give us another go.” He reached up to brush his thumb
across her lips. “I will do any- and everything to make you see how devoted I am to you.
I will fly to North Carolina tonight and bring that girl to you so that she can tell you exactly what happened
and exactly why I ran.” He reflexively pulled her closer as she made to pull away. It had been months
and she didn’t want to know yet.
“I didn’t
run because I’d been caught in the arms of a girl too young to know better. I ran because that girl,
that woman, knew who I really loved, and I was terrified of what that would mean. I wasn’t afraid
of losing Susan, but of you losing everything you’d worked your heart out for because of my carelessness.”
She cupped her hand over his and wound their fingers together. “I wasn’t wearing my
ring, because I knew I didn’t belong with her anymore. It didn’t feel right to hold you in my arms with that ring
on my finger. You deserved, and deserve, a better love than that. The girl noticed and
she thought that I…she thought things that weren’t true and the whole situation snowballed.”
Hillary firmly shunted her skepticism aside to listen. Regardless of her intent, her instincts compelled her to inquire,
“And the dean?” Evan scowled and his President was only too glad not to be on the receiving end of it.
“The dean saw the makings of an interesting story and no reason not to tell it.” He
sighed. “I ran and I didn’t do damage control. I wasn’t calm and I wasn’t steady. I didn’t cover
you or us like I should have. Hell, the girl did more to cover our asses than I managed to do that day
or in the weeks that followed.” She rubbed his shoulder gently but hesitantly.
“So she didn’t talk because…she’s just that nice?”
Evan nodded with his own fair share of disbelief. “That and she’s probably not a little
embarrassed herself. It all might have been avoided if not for her misunderstanding.” He looked to her imploringly.
“This is what happened. This is the story. We can go at it thirteen more times if we need
to. I’m willing to fight this hard every time. That’s how much I love you.”
“You’re crazy,” she declared with absolute certainty, mostly to hide the fact that she was beginning
to believe him, to really believe him.
“Only for you, Hill,” he said with his fingers drifting toward her hair and his lips drawing her in.
The doubting voice in the back of her mind wasn’t deterred but it was rapidly decreasing in volume. She knew
she’d fallen hard and that this love was a done deal.
That didn’t mean she wouldn’t put in a call to North Carolina later tonight—just to check.
He was so sincere now that she loved him, but love had already made her its fool once upon a time. It wouldn’t
happen again.
Epilogue Pt. I
Last Part
