Chapter Text
Epilogue
"Wake up, Fick, it's your graduation day," Brad says, running his fingers over Nate's back. Nate arches into the touch, but doesn't make any move to get up.
"Do I have to wear an ugly robe?" he asks with his face tucked into his arm.
"I'm not sure. But if you do, I'll happily disrobe you afterwards."
"It's nice of you," Nate mutters without lifting his head.
"I aim to please," Brad agrees and then gives Nate's hair a little tug. "Nate, come on."
"I'm awake," he says, turning to lie on his back. He had probably been up for hours already. "But I've decided I'm not getting up."
"I'm not sure the party can start without you, you know."
"We still have time, right?"
"I don't know, you're the popular one. Don't you have any meetings beforehand?"
"I'm meeting General Pears and General Matthew in about an hour, then breakfast and then we have a meeting with the president and her husband in the White House before the ceremony."
"It's as if you were someone important."
"As if," Nate smiles and turns to kiss him. "Five more minutes," he says with his lips against Brad's.
.
"How many?" he almost chokes on his coffee.
"Six, sir," Tony says and Brad sighs inwardly. He gave up on explaining that he didn't want to be called 'sir' all the damn time. Or at all. Apparently, when your husband is elected president, suddenly nobody but him and the rest of your family can call you by your name. Brad's managed to convince Martha at least, after she tried it one time. "It's how it's supposed to be," she said, but he told her he didn't care. Then there was her "What if I slip in public one day and the press will notice?" and his "What if I ignore you in public when you call me 'sir' and the press will notice?", and just like that he won.
"We have to go to six inaugural balls," Nate's voice brings him back to the conversation.
"Why?" he almost whines.
"Because there are six balls organized?" Tony replies and this is why Brad picked him to work with. Nate smiles.
"You have to show up for just about twenty, thirty minutes," Andrew, Nate's assistant, explains. "Shake some hands, make a toast..."
"We will be drunk before we go to our last one," Nate says.
"Maybe you will," Brad smirks and Nate kicks him. Martha rolls her eyes.
"You don't have to drink the whole champagne. The president makes the toast, you both take a sip and that's it."
She meant Nate, Brad thinks. He thought of President Wilkinson, but she meant Nate.
"Mark is writing those toasts for you, sir. You will get them in the car on the way."
"I can make a toast by myself, I've done it before," Nate tries.
"I'm sure you did, sir, but it's different."
"Let Mark do this," Brad says. "It will be a nice change after writing two hundred pages of inaugural speech. Which, by the way, I hope is great, because it's going to be cold out there."
"It will make you cry," Nate deadpans. "So, a toast that I won't write and champagne I won't drink. Something else?"
Andrew looks nervous.
"Well, usually there's a dance of the First Couple, but it was suggested by the committee that we may skip that part. So it will be..."
"Who suggested it?" asks Nate and Brad knows trouble when he sees it. Nate would want to dance only to show everybody that they can. They have never danced together, not even at their wedding. They aren't starting now.
"Whoever it is, he, or she, will be glad to hear that we're not going to dance," he says calmly, trying to downplay how serious he is about this. Only one person is supposed to hear it and he does.
"We're not," Nate agrees, looking at Andrew before turning to Brad. "I guess we will have a lot of hands to shake."
Brad smiles at him.
"Aren't you used to it by now?"
.
"At what point does this stop being surreal?" Brad wants to ask, but feels it's stupid, so he doesn't. At what point does it stop being surreal that your spouse is the president? At what point do you stop caring that you're living in the fucking White House? And when both of those happen, how do you stop yourself from going mad?
"It never really goes away," Wilkinson says, still standing in the patio door, smiling at him and pretending he isn't giving Brad time to get over himself. Nate and the president are already outside of the Oval Office, but Brad lingered a couple steps behind to have one more look at the room.
"Does it get better?" he asks, when they step outside.
"Yes," Wilkinson says. "You can get used to it after some time. At the beginning every time I came into the Oval Office, I was... intimidated. But one day I just went in, because Donna was horribly late, and I didn't even notice the room. After that, it was better. Of course, you can't just do it anytime you want, especially if your husband is in a meeting, but aside from that, you have more or less a free pass."
They join their spouses and the president leads them to the East Wing.
"It's a little difficult to make it look like home," she says, "but I'm sure you'll manage."
After the quick tour, Brad thinks that the only way to do that, would be to throw away almost everything and start again. But that's most likely not gonna happen.
.
After some time, Brad won't remember the morning conversation, because they've had and will have thousands of them over the years. He won't care about the inaugural balls. He will get used to the White House, the magnificent bed they will love and the scary living room they will almost never be in, the cooking staff and the cleaning staff, he will get used to everything and everyone.
He will get used to this life, similar and completely different than what they had before. He won't remember in details the novelty of it all.
But nothing will ever, ever feel like this:
It's so cold when they're standing up, the wind stronger than just moments before, when Brad was simply a part of the crowd (There were over one hundred and fifty thousand people there, Martha will tell him later). Brad has a copy of the Constitution in his hands (It's insulting, Nate said, when the committee proposed the Bible, when you swear on a symbol of something you don't believe in) and moves his icy-cold toes a little (I hope nobody's filming my shoes right now, he thinks).
Nate next to him is dressed in a black coat and the lines on his face are almost invisible now, his eyes shining, but calm, when he says:
"I do solemnly affirm that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States..."