Chapter Text
Laurel would really rather stab herself in the eye with one of her stepmother’s Louboutins than venture into the fresh hell that is the inaugural ball.
But she doesn’t exactly have a choice; if the president’s own daughter doesn’t show her face it’ll whip up a firestorm of rumors, rumors the new administration can’t afford amid scandals involving her father’s business dealings outside the country, and so she dresses in the tasteful Oscar de la Renta gown her stepmother’s staffers had chosen for her, adorning it with a silver bib necklace and leaving her hair loose and curled around her shoulders. The dress is flag-stripe red, appropriately patriotic for the daughter of the newly-elected Republican president, and fits her immaculately, though she does feel like a bit like a walking traffic light slash prostitute wearing it.
She’d prefer blue. But there’s a time and a place for those kind of protestations, if she wants them to accomplish anything, so she can wait. She's good at waiting.
It’s a nauseating sort of opulence, this kind of event; all the stuffy Washington elite and high-profile donors, vying for a post, a cabinet appointment, some other less-than-legal favor like sharks smelling blood and circling in the water. She watches the first couple shuffle their way through a painful first dance to a Sinatra song, and try to look at least moderately in love with each other for the sake of the photographers. She pastes on a simpering smile as she stands on stage with her siblings behind her father, only half-listening to his twenty-minute-long, vainglorious ramblings, before escaping the spotlight and assimilating back into the crowd.
Laurel hones in on the first server in possession of champagne like a heat-seeking missile, and spends a while trading the requisite pleasantries with the children of senators and congressmen and campaign staffers, until she reaches her threshold of politesse for one evening and finds herself seconds away from breaking the champagne flute in her hand and slitting someone’s throat with the shards – or her own, preferably.
If Kan were here, he’d probably be able to talk her down from the edge, quell her rising homicidal thoughts, or at the very least distract her from them. She’s glad he isn’t, for once, though; it’s nice not to be soldered to his arm like a smiling plastic mannequin, to be able to roam around and hide herself away when it gets to be too much.
After a while she retreats to the outskirts of the party – after grabbing another glass of champagne, of course, always her crutch at these sorts of functions – and winds up over by a window, peering out into the city lights dancing on the Potomac and rubbing her lips together as the live string quartet carries on merrily nearby, doing nothing to offset her mood. Normally she’s at least passably good at pretending to be happy, the consummate politician’s daughter, that shining face in the family lineup, but tonight she can feel herself wavering, dancing far too close to the fire of madness, to screaming in this suffocating gilded cage.
She spends a while staring out the window and stewing, before turning around and peering back into the crowd – only to startle when she notices a Secret Service agent has taken his place behind her, back pressed against the wall, straight as an arrow. He might almost be mistaken for another ballgoer if it weren’t for his earpiece, and her mood sours at the sight of him; that’s something she’ll have to grow accustomed to as well, unwanted protection, unwanted eyes always on her wherever she goes.
She doesn’t need the Secret Service. At this point, she thinks she’s down to give any would-be assassins an open invitation to put her out of her misery.
“Are you following me?” she snaps, suddenly, tongue loosened by the liquor flowing hot in her blood.
There’s a flicker of something in his eyes, bright blue; mirth, like ripples on a pond after a stone has been cast, as if he’s amused by her. But his lips don’t twitch into a smile, and otherwise he remains perfectly stoic, silent, the hard angles of his profile softened by a beard framing his lips. He’s hot enough, she thinks, so maybe the Secret Service won’t be all bad if they look like him.
“Are you mute?” Laurel presses, making her way over to him, because the bartender here is some uppity sixty-year old man, not someone she can particularly confess her troubles to freely, and she thinks this guy just might do the trick. “I mean, is that a thing with you guys, here? The ones on the campaign trail would at least talk to us.”
A twitch at his lips; almost imperceptible, but Laurel perceives it, and narrows her eyes when he opens his mouth to speak, still staring straight ahead, refusing to meet her eyes. “Not mute, Miss Laurel.”
“You know my name.”
No answer, at first. The truth of the matter is that she’s impossible not to know, now, though for the most part she’s still only Jorge Castillo’s youngest, shiest, oft forgotten daughter, and the photogs chase her older sister Vanessa and her bunch of brats with far more zeal. She plays to them in a way Laurel doesn’t, dazzles in a way that’s never come naturally to her, and Laurel doesn’t begrudge her their attention.
The press labels her The Wallflower in the White House, and she can’t say it isn’t an accurate epithet.
“It’s my job to know your name,” is all he offers, and Laurel gives a soft hum of acknowledgement.
“If I said I was going to kill myself,” she begins, suddenly, a bit too loudly, “would you classify me as a danger to myself and like, try to tackle me or something?”
That finally gets him to look at her, and he furrows his brow. “I don’t-”
“Or if I said I was going to kill my dear father, the president,” she continues, stepping closer to him, raising her chin. Daring him to do something, and she doesn’t know what, or even why, “even if I’m his kid, would I be a threat to his life? How’s that work?”
He’s looking at her, now, and it’s clear he doesn’t know how to deal with this situation, if he should take her seriously or laugh at her, five feet and four inches, very much unarmed save for a few potential shards of glass in the form of her champagne flute, threatening the life of her father with hundreds of witnesses around, to an agent sworn to protect his life. It’s patently stupid. Liquor always makes her patently stupid.
“Threatening the life of the president is a felony under the United States Code Title 18, Section 871,” he divulges, finally, tone clipped, professional, though she can tell he still wants to laugh at her. “I’d be forced to neutralize the threat. Which, in this case, would be you.”
“Ah,” she says, raising her eyebrows. She steps closer, until she’s a bit too close for comfort and she knows it. She wants to see him fidget, flinch, locate some crack in his composure, like standing toe to toe with one of those expressionless, puffed-up guards at Buckingham Palace. “And… how would you do that?”
The grin bleeds into his eyes, but he directs them straight ahead, looking past her instead of at her. “I think it’s best I not go into specifics.”
“Darn,” she fake-laments, sighing. “And here I was having so much fun planning this hypothetical assassination with you.” She turns away from him, sipping at her champagne, even though it’s about her sixth or seventh glass and her stomach is starting to feel a bit like she’s swallowed Coke and Mentos. “I’d be doing the American people a favor, y’know. Because trust me-” She smirks over the rim of her flute. “They have no idea who they’ve just made the leader of the free world.”
Jorge Castillo’s campaign was, in many ways, a perfect political recipe; enough social conservatism and family values to appease the right, mixed in with a dash of mostly-feigned support for same-sex marriage with a few pride flag photo-ops to appear tolerant, topped off with a cleverly-crafted ad campaign about his plight as the son of Mexican immigrants to sway Latino voters.
Tough on immigration, though. Religious, but for appearances only. Strong on defense. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs – if Laurel has to hear that word one more time, she may follow through on this whole slitting her own throat thing after all. Cutting corporate taxes. The former Florida governor and his Colgate smiles and picture-perfect family had won the hearts of the nation.
“He won on the backs of Latinos. Mexicans,” she remarks, more to herself than to him, not even really caring if he’s still listening to her. “Pretended to give a shit about a path to citizenship and amnesty – when really, he’s just gonna deport them all the first chance he gets so he doesn’t look soft, screw them over. Oh, and women, too. He’s wanted me barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen since my quince, so. Bye-bye reproductive rights.”
She takes a greedy swig of champagne, wishes desperately they were serving something stronger. “And don’t even get me started on the NRA and all the millions they threw at his campaign. Because guns are great, right? All we need is more guns to… combat the guns, I guess?” She shakes her head, curling her upper lip in disgust. “He’s a money-hungry son of a bitch and a megalomaniac who could give a shit about anyone outside the top one percent and I didn’t vote for him.”
It’s a slurred, impassioned rant, one she should probably be keeping to herself at this particular function, but it feels liberating, at least, to say it out loud, even if this agent probably couldn’t give less of a shit. She sounds pathetic, the disgruntled liberal, sore loser, that tired cliché she knows her father would mock. She needs to keep her damn mouth shut; if there’s a reporter nearby and it leaks to the press that the president’s own daughter didn’t vote for him, the administration will be a laughingstock.
She kind of really wants to leak that to the press, now.
“They might as well serve Kool-Aid,” she sneers, taking another sip. “Everyone here’s already drinking it anyway.” She pauses, making her way back over to him, suddenly determined, teetering a bit in her heels. “You’re a good listener, ….?”
She pauses, prompting him for his name, which he gives, still without looking at her. “Frank.”
“Frank,” she echoes, moving closer to him again, emboldened in her intoxication. “Can I be frank with you, Frank?”
That earns her some eye contact, however brief, and she smiles, but it withers, quickly, curls up and dies on her lips, twists into something hideous and jagged. “He’s a monster. No one knows it, but-” She bites out a laugh, thick, almost teary. “I do. I know it.”
Still, she gets nothing, and she’s not quite sure what she expected anyway. Sympathy? Fucking sympathy – she’s the daughter of the most powerful man in the world who also happens to be richer than the God he pretends to believe in; she’s not someone who needs even the most minute scrap of sympathy. Maybe she’d expected him to say something, at least, give even the slightest reaction, a flicker of feeling, but ‘Frank’ just stands there, still as a statue and twice as impassive, and she laughs, again, at his stoicism, but mostly at her own stupidity.
“Well,” she says, bleary-eyed and teary-eyed, makeup smudged, blubbering like a drunk sorority girl and fully aware of how ridiculous she looks. She gives him a smile, another tiny, shriveled thing that lasts only a second. “My advice, Frank? Don't ever take a bullet for our dear Mr. President here.” She gives something like a snicker. “Because I can guarantee you he'd deserve it.”
Someone is calling a toast, on stage, calling the crowd’s attention – her brother, it looks like, though she’s drunk off her ass and not exactly seeing straight – and the interruption draws their conversation to its natural end, though it’s not as if ‘Frank’ had been planning on answering her anyway. So Laurel turns away, stumbling a little, and staples another wilting smile onto her lips, holding it in place, and making her way back into the lion’s den.
Showtime.
~
Her father summons her to the Yellow Oval Room at an ungodly hour the next morning.
Because that’s a thing that happens to her, now: she gets summoned. For what, she doesn’t know, couldn’t give less of a shit. She’s far too hungover to care, though it’s probably just breakfast, and rolls out of bed to tug on a pair of jeans and a passably nice blouse; her closet is already immaculately arranged, the staffers moving with expert efficiency to settle the new First Family; a unit she’s unlucky enough to be included in, as it stands.
The Yellow Oval Room is sufficiently yellow and sufficiently oval, all ancient furniture and too much damn light; an assault on her corneas more than anything. Tragically there’s no food awaiting her at all; instead, there’s only her father in a pressed charcoal grey suit, next to a row of four people, clad all in black as if attending a funeral, hands folded in front of them and expressions austere, as severe as their postures, almost military. It makes Laurel feel like she ought to straighten her own spine to fit in, and she’s in the middle of doing just that whilst taking inventory of the figures in the room when-
Her eyes fall on familiar ones. Bright blue, jarringly clear. A hint of mirth in them, buried deep; so deep it’s as if it’s meant only for her to see.
Frank.
“Mija!”
Her eyes snap over to her father, just in time for him to cross the room, reach out, and plant a kiss on her forehead; Judas kiss, she thinks briefly, before letting her own internal panic attack swallow up the thought. He takes her hand, leading her over to the others, and gesturing with a grand sweep of his hand, before his gaze settles on a woman standing in front of the others; dark-skinned and sharp-eyed and not appearing to be even the least bit friendly.
She doesn’t offer a smile, a greeting, but she doesn’t need to for Laurel to recognize her; Annalise Keating, in the flesh. She’s as formidable in person as she’d looked every time Laurel has seen her before, in articles and on television, the take-no-prisoners and take-no-shit type. She’s a good half a head taller than Laurel in heels, and holds out her hand, which she takes hesitantly, shaking it, eyes flicking over to look at Frank again before meeting Annalise’s.
“Mija, this is Annalise Keating, Director of the Secret Service, here to brief you on your protection detail.”
“Nice to meet you,” is all Annalise offers, without giving her any impression that statement is even remotely true.
Laurel nods, and swallows. “Likewise.”
“I’d like to introduce you to your Secret Service detail,” Annalise says, straight-faced, and gestures to the four people standing beside her, as if acknowledging a housefly buzzing around the room. “They’ll be with you at all times, whenever you leave the Residence, and-”
Laurel stops listening right about then, letting Annalise’s voice fade out of her consciousness for the most part, as her eyes drift down the line. She catches the name of the first, Nate Lahey, who gives her a nod and looks amicable enough, and also looks like he could probably snap her wrist like a twig, given the opportunity, though she supposes it’ll be other wrists he’ll end up snapping, if need be.
There’s another man next to him whose face she can’t place, at first – young, vaguely reminiscent of a frat boy in a suit attending his formal – but after a moment it hits her; Justice Millstone’s son, named something pretentious that starts with an ‘A,’ and until she learns his real name she decides she’ll settle on Asshole, for the time being. It’s an apt enough nickname, if she’s being honest, because the Millstone’s are notorious old money, the summer-house-in-Kennebunkport type, and there’s a distinct lack of gravitas in the way he carries himself that leads Laurel to believe he hasn’t risen above all that.
She wonders why the hell he’s here. Then decides, really, that she couldn’t care less.
Next is a short woman; petite, mousy, with close-cropped blonde hair. Her eyes look too big for her face, just like her suit seems too big for her body, hanging a little loosely off her frame, and Laurel can’t help but be perplexed – because she’s not physically imposing, not in the least. Quite the opposite; it looks like a stiff wind could blow her over, but Laurel knows as well as the next person that looks can deceive, and so she reserves judgement until further notice, finally settling her eyes on the last in the lineup: Frank.
And the first thing she notices about Frank is that he’s almost, almost smirking. Because Frank seems to think this is all some huge goddamn joke.
“-and this is Frank,” Annalise’s voice cuts into her reverie, as if he needs any introduction. Laurel meets his eyes, tries not to fidget. “He’ll be heading up your detail.”
Well.
As if she should really be surprised things have gone from bad to worse.
“And they’ll be with me at… all times?” Laurel asks, throat tightening, praying she doesn’t sound as breathless as she is, because Frank is still staring at her like he can see through her as easily as a piece of plexiglass, and she resents that. Resents him. “Everywhere?”
Annalise gives a curt nod. “Except when you’re here, and when you are they’ll be posted at entrances, stairways. Only a call away if you need them.”
“Great,” she blurts out, swallowing and fidgeting a little, her eyes darting back over to Frank. “I, uh… think I’ll take a walk. If Frank wants to come, he can brief me on everything else, I guess.”
Her father furrows his brow. “Annalise can brief you anywhere you like.”
“No, I think-” She cuts herself off. “I think I’ll just talk to Frank, if you don’t mind.” She takes a step toward the door, and the others make to follow her, automatically, only to freeze when Laurel holds up a hand. “No – just… just Frank, thanks.”
There’s something behind Annalise’s eyes, for a flicker of a second. Laurel doesn’t think suspicion quite describes it, but there’s something there, undeniable, an inkling of an idea which she, perhaps wisely, doesn’t verbalize and instead lets die before it can reach her tongue. Finally, she just nods again.
“Of course.”
She starts to take a step toward the door, eager to escape, but before she can her father calls out after her, voice sharp, “Oh – and don’t forget. Prayer service at the National Cathedral at eleven. Elena has a dress for you.”
Laurel contemplates praying for a heaven-sent bullet between the eyes for most of the journey down the stairs and outside, into the frigid January air. She tugs on a pale pink wool wrap coat and frowns, because as much as she’d hated the oppressive humidity of Florida, at least it was familiar, gave her some degree of freedom to dress in short shorts with plenty of bare skin, not bundle herself up every time she steps outside like a damn Eskimo. It’s unseasonably warm for January, she gathers, even unfamiliar with this climate as she is, and Frank trails behind her silently as she steps outside, not bothering with a coat, also not bothering to give her a word.
His silence is more unnerving than his words could ever be, anyway.
The garden is barren, the few trees dotted about black and withered, the shrubbery all spindly twigs, and there are none of the eponymous roses to be seen; it looks like a wasteland. There’s no polite way to start this conversation, by remarking on the beauty of the garden – because the garden looks like shit – or by making an observation about the good weather – because the weather is also shit – and so finally Laurel steels herself, glancing sideways at Frank where he walks, staggered ever so slightly back behind her, and gets to the point.
“Did you know?” she asks, tone clipped, not bothering to inject any venom into the question. She sighs, and watches her breath rise like steam. “Last night, that you were the head of my detail?”
He stares straight ahead, that same infuriating amusement dancing on his features. “I did.”
Laurel glowers; not at him, in particular, but rather at the world, the garden around them, at everything, even God, that smug bastard and his shitty ass sense of humor, giving an irritated huff under her breath. She opens her mouth to reply, but before she can Frank comes to a halt, hands behind his back, that same, very slappable smirk from before threatening to widen.
“With all due respect, can I be frank with you?”
Laurel stops, and her next glower is very much directed at him. “As long as you… never say that again.”
“I don’t care. About your voting record or your daddy issues,” he says, plainly, and Laurel seethes. “I’m here to do my job. Protect you. That’s it.”
She softens, a little. “So you won’t… tell anyone?”
“See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. That’s my motto,” he answers, still with a bit too much bravado to make her dislike him any less, far too familiar with her for someone she barely knows. He grows serious, all at once. “I won’t tell anyone. You have my word.”
“Okay,” she breathes, raising her chin and raising herself to her full height, which, if she’s being honest, doesn’t compare to his, but she’s grappling for an upper hand she can already sense is slipping, figures she has to do something. “Then we understand each other.”
Again, Frank looks like he wants to laugh, in that subtle, infuriatingly composed way of his, but he doesn’t. Instead, he just nods, and is about to say something when he brings his hand up to his ear, suddenly, a faint, garbled message coming over his earpiece. He listens, for a moment, then directs his attention back to her, nodding at the imposing white prison behind them.
“Prayer service in half an hour,” is all he says, shortly, unerringly professional when he needs to be, and for a moment Laurel almost believes she might be able to tolerate him. “Better get you back. Can’t keep the good Lord waiting.” She nods, and changes course, just as Frank raises his arm to his mouth, speaking into his sleeve. “Got it. Wallflower’s en route.”
Laurel perks up, and scowls over at him, incensed. “Wait, is… is that my codename? Who picked that?”
Frank doesn’t answer. He just follows her back into the house, his silence mocking her with every step.