Author: Regency
Title: The Art
of Not Engaging
Pairing: HRC/Evan
Bayh
Timeline: Any
day after May 6th.
Summary: Anybody
who’d said Hillary Rodham Clinton wasn’t beautiful, hadn’t met her.
~~~
For
some odd reason her office door was open. It never was, even when she was in
town. It wasn’t so much that Hillary didn’t like to make herself
available to her colleagues, it was that they never knew when to stop showing up. Eight
years as a Senator and people still hadn’t stopped thinking of her as the First Lady they wanted to have a photo-op
with. Now that she was a real—if deeply hindered—contender for the
presidency, they really wanted to see their names next to hers in lights. So,
the door? Was always closed.
But,
for some reason, not today.
Two dark-suited men stood sentry on each side, which as far as Senator Evan Bayh was concerned
was as good as a Do Not Disturb sign. He
even contemplated continuing on his way to lunch when he saw her standing at her office window. There she was, the junior Senator from New York.
She
was caught in the setting sun, her eyes trained like heat-seeking missiles toward the Potomac.
A band of light lit up her hair and her brow and her lips, and cast her nose and cheeks in shadow. She wore nature’s mask and yet, not for the first time, he was given a chance to see her as she was:
all light eyes and Mona Lisa smiles.
Her
stance was tight and defensive as though there were a blow just waiting to rain down on her head. Her hands were clasped in front of her the way they always were.
It was a ploy as old as her life had been long; disarm yourself and you’ve disarmed them—you hope. She was waiting for a judgment from someone invisible to Evan.
For
the umpteenth time, he felt the intrinsic urge to come to her defense. Over and over he’d watched her vilified, defiled
in name, and insulted in spirit. Who stood up for her? Who could when none of
the bullies dared to face her friends and make their remarks. They were always
done in the safety of cliques and groups. He ached for the things Chelsea must
have heard her mother called. He ached for the things Hillary must’ve internalized through sheer repetition. She was as strong a woman as he’d ever known and his mother had broken the mold.
But
there she was anyway, holding her head up in a Primary that made no sense, losing even after
emerging victorious from his home state. Officially, that win had been by a nose,
but his gut told him and his constituents told him more dire tales that he doubted would ever see the light of the media. He almost wanted to tell her that, despite the fact that she probably already knew. It boggled his mind some days the things that this woman could hold in her head and
not go insane. It more than boggled his mind that anyone in this nation that
he loved could not want her. He wanted her.
And
had for a long time.
She
took a deep breath and shook her head tiredly, seeming to wistfully pay respect to the dying day. Hillary was hardly sentimental in any way, but sometimes…sometimes, she was.
With
a petite hand, she touched the last hot beam of light to stream through the glass and watched it disappear. Soon her hand was left shaded a depressing gray and her skin took on the same cast as the evening made
itself comfortable over Washington D.C.
At
last she turned away from whatever faith guided her to sunlight and retook her seat.
He thought she must’ve been oblivious to everything at that point; he knew his eyes must’ve been like pin
pricks at the top of her head. She thumbed through the pages of one resolution,
joint or otherwise, took out a pen that was decidedly red in nature and went to town.
He
found himself smiling at her snarky comments about the legislation; the minute eyerolls, the snide clucks about how disappointed
someone’s kindergarten teacher would be, and how many words used in the resolution weren’t
actually words—“That could be problem,” she quipped and deleted the offending colloquialisms with a slash
of her mighty pen.
Evan
didn’t know how long he stood there, just outside the open door of the future President’s Senate office. He watched until she stopped talking to herself; he watched until her pen began to
track repeatedly across the same lines; he watched until uncharacteristic distress was writ large across her face; he watched
until she sat back in silence. She pulled her rectangle lenses from her face
and closed her eyes.
She
looked at peace for a moment, all stress had vanished from her countenance—she was at peace. Evan took a step closer; she was putting on a show.
Hillary
was good at that sort of thing, putting forth an air of absolute competence and infallibility.
Then, there were moments like this: when no one was supposed to be around to see and she could just let go. Maybe she couldn’t do it at home because there were too many mementos of when Bill hadn’t had
to let go. And she couldn’t do it on the campaign trail, because to let go there was to let go in front of the world. But the office, her office, was her place alone.
And when everyone had stepped away to go to their all-important meetings, and had shut up inside to do what had to
be done, she could open up and let her suffering seep through the steel.
She
wouldn’t cry again, he knew. She’d shut down production on that after
New Hampshire. No, she never cried anymore, but she did cringe and laugh dryly. She did shrug uncomfortably and smile unsteadily, her lips too downturned to be the
joyful expression she’d intended. She contradicted her emotions and kept
balance to all the others’. She did what a president does in hard times:
she was the unflappable leader and they damned her for it.
There
it was, that awful thump in his chest as he thought about what this country would be without her in a year. He didn’t like, couldn’t stomach the possibility of it.
He’d work this very same heart out to see her sworn in on January 20th next year.
Not just because it was best, but because he couldn’t stand what it might do to her. Something told him there’d never be another chance to hold her has close as he had the day they’d
said goodbye. Something told him November might be his last chance.
…If
it was, he wanted it. Since for every person that had had some unsavory, deplorable
thing to say about her face, her body, her teeth, her hair, he’d met her and fallen hard for beauty they denied. He’d fallen for a pair of intelligent eyes that challenged him at every turn;
for skin so pale it was translucent in direct sun; for eyebrows that shifted northward in proximity to absurdity; for a voice
that did strange things to men when consumed with passion; and for hands that rested so lightly and easily on his shoulders
that he hardly noted they were there but mourned them like the dickens when they were gone.
Mostly he mourned the husky whispers in his ear tinged with the smell of Blue Moon and orange, tempered by a low laugh
that erupted from her core and seduced him to his toes. He ached after the scent
of jasmine in her hair, that wafted from her skin—and the heat she gave off, oh the heat!
He
wanted that woman back at his side, convincing him more and more everyday that she should be president; convincing him and
many others that she was everything they’d heard she was with a dozen better things included. He wanted her next to him at committee hearings. He wanted
her at his condo after adjournment. He wanted her at lunch with him right now.
Oh,
God, how he wanted her still.
She
opened her Carolina blue eyes and they were set dead on him.
But he had no excuse.
~~
