Chapter Text
Vice President’s Office – 1:04 a.m.
“…So when it hits 2:00 a.m., my eyes’ll say Holocaust, my mouth will say carnival.”
Across from the fraying knot of staffers, ____ didn’t even look up from her phone. She let out a quiet snort, thumb still scrolling through polling data. Selina Meyer’s late-night metaphors had stopped surprising her somewhere around month three of the Clean Jobs push.
It had been a long night. It had been a long year.
One minute she’d been a wide-eyed intern fetching coffee in the West Wing, the next she was seated at the table as one of Selina’s core advisors, riding the wave of the Clean Jobs bill and praying it didn’t crash on all of them.
Sleep had become theoretical. Meals were whatever she could unwrap one-handed between briefings. Her lights were on so rarely the neighbors had probably assumed she’d moved out. Every win felt microscopic, every loss headline-sized. And through it all, Selina’s orbit pulled tight and relentless, demanding loyalty, speed, and the ability to smile while bracing for impact.
The Clean Jobs numbers had been fluctuating all week, and the midterms were making it all the more tense. Kent would’ve called it volatility with a confidence interval; Dan called it “a nightmare in a pantsuit.” ____ just called it exhausting. Still, she kept color-coded tabs open on her phone like a security blanket, refreshing county maps as if willpower alone could win them the results they wanted.
Around the room, tempers frayed in low, constant static. Dan looked half embalmed. Amy’s pen tapped with the rhythm of impending violence. Mike was sweating through optimism. And Selina was vibrating at a frequency just shy of visible.
Which meant everyone else had to vibrate with her.
As always, the minute ____ zoned out for a brief moment of peace, Selina was on her feet, striding out of the office. ____ rose automatically, trailing behind her with phone in hand.
“I need something positive, okay?” Selina griped, heels clicking against the floor. “Something to boost morale.”
“We’re ahead on voter turnout in Lake County, Indiana,” Amy offered, looking no less neurotic than usual.
"What? That's it?" Selina snapped back, incredulous.
"That, and the big quake hasn't hit San Francisco"
____ suppressed a snort, too worn out to contribute much more than trailing behind the group as Selina walked through winding hallways, eventually landing at a conference room.
Plastering on her signature fake smile, Selina moved towards Ben Cafferty, who flashed ____ a brief smile of recognition before Selina called the room to attention.
"Well, I have some good news. It seems-"
"Hey, we are ahead on voter turnout in Lake County, Indiana," Jonah appeared out of nowhere, interrupting the Vice President with a smile far too cocky than he was deserving of.
Without a second thought, ____ lifted her hand and flipped him off behind Selina’s back.
Jonah gasped. “I saw that!”
“Yeah and I bet that gets you off, doesn't it,” she shot back, not bothering to turn around.
The room barely reacted. Dysfunction was white noise at this point.
As Selina trailed down the hallway after a dreary looking Ben Cafferty, ____’s attention drifted back to her phone. A county map flickered red to pale purple, and she walked along without thinking. It was muscle memory at this point. Her steps slowed in the hallway outside as new numbers rolled in. She almost followed Selina into what appeared to be nothing more than a closet, but slowed just long enough to overhear Selina’s voice drop into a sharper register. Did ____ really want to be part of this? She decided against it at the last moment, pausing a few steps from the semi-ajar door.
“I’m gonna take more of a leadership role as Vice President starting tonight,” Selina was saying, somewhat hushed through the wood of the door. “And I need your advice as to how to set that in motion.”
“Ask Kent,” Ben replied.
“Kent Davison?”
“Yes. He’s back. Senior strategist.”
A beat of silence.
“No.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know what his strategy was two years ago? Do you remember that? He had me hang with my ex-husband like we were this normal, loving family. He made us go river rafting together. Catherine got giardia. And I had to listen to Andrew bang that skank on the riverbank all night. I said to Kent, ‘Can you make me feel good about this somehow?’ And you know what he does? He points to a graph.”
____ didn’t stay to hear more.
Kent was back.
The exhaustion that had settled into her bones all week shifted, lightened. During her first year in the White House, before he’d left, Kent had been the only one who treated her like a colleague instead of a coffee courier with delusions of competence. Data-heavy, emotionally baffling, yes, but steady. The others may have found him difficult, but she had always genuinely enjoyed the man's company.
She veered off, wandering the hallways with more purpose now. The White House at 1:30 a.m. felt like a different organism—fluorescent-lit and humming, staffers moving like ghosts between offices.
When she spotted him through the open doorway of what she thinks used to be a supply closet, her face lit up.
“Kent!” she called, stepping inside. “What are you doing here? I didn’t know you were back.”
His head snapped up at the sound of her voice. For a flicker of a second, he looked genuinely startled, a face that was quickly replaced by what ____ recognized as affection on his normally expressionless face.
“____,” he said as warmly as a man like him could, slow as if testing the syllables. “Yes, I’ve returned. Are you still working as an intern?”
Before she could reply—
“Oh, Kent.”
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. Selina stood in the doorway, hands on her hips.
“Madam Vice President,” Kent replied smoothly.
Selina glanced around the cramped space. “Look at you, you’re all back. I see they took out the sink and the toilet. Made it a little roomier for you.”
“I could punch through the wall and tap POTUS on the shoulder,” Kent said evenly.
“And what would you be tapping him on the shoulder about specifically, do you figure?”
____ looked down, hiding a grin. She could feel the tension crackling between them like dry static.
Kent adjusted his stance slightly, hands loosely folded in front of him. “Repositioning.”
Selina brightened instantly, like someone had flipped a switch behind her eyes. “So glad to hear you say that. We are on the same page, my friend. Both in terms of the party and, of course, in terms of myself.”
____ kept her gaze carefully lowered, though her eyes flicked between them. Of course.
Kent tilted his head a fraction. “Am I supposed to ask a question now?”
“Oh, sure,” Selina replied generously, waving a hand. “If you want. Fire away.”
A small beat.
“And what would that question be?” Kent asked, his signature inquisitive squint crossing his face.
____ bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. He wasn't being obtuse, he rarely was, but sometimes ignorance was the best way to respond to Selina's obviously targeted statements.
Selina didn’t miss a step. “Well, that question might be: what do you think is the best reposition to take?”
Kent nodded slowly. “And what would the answer to that question be?”
Selina stepped closer, lowering her voice like she was revealing classified intelligence. “And the answer to that question would be standing right in front of you. The answer would be a certain someone, shall we say, whose skills were not adequately tapped.”
____ resisted the urge to to interrupt. Oh my God. She’s pitching herself to him like a campaign product.
Kent stared back at the Vice President. “That’s some question.”
“So,” Selina concluded briskly, clapping her hands once as if a deal had been notarized, “we’re good.”
“We’re good,” Kent echoed evenly.
“Great. I’m so glad that we had this chance to connect.”
“I really am,” he replied.
There was a pause, heavy with discomfort.
Selina gave one last decisive nod and swept out of the room.
Silence settled in her wake.
“So. That was…” ____ began with a grin, but Selina pivoted sharply, brushing past her.
“I don’t think I was actually very clear before.”
Kent didn’t hesitate. “No.”
“My uncle used to have this saying,” Selina continued, looming. “He used to say to me, ‘Honey, if you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu.’ And, Kent, I will not be eaten.”
Kent’s brow furrowed. He squinted up at her, genuinely perplexed.
“Why would anyone want to eat you?”
____ choked, ducking her head as a laugh escaped despite her best efforts. A warm, traitorous tug pulled at her chest. God. No time for this. Not now. It was midterms. The country was on fire. She fought off the potential crush last time, she could resist one more time.
The conversation carried on around her, words ricocheting off the cinderblock walls, until Selina snapped, “Well, salt and pepper ’em!” and stormed out.
Silence settled in her wake.
For a moment, ____ and Kent simply looked at each other, astonished amusement mirrored in their expressions.
“Sorry, I guess I’ve gotta—” she began as Selina’s shrill voice echoed down the hallway, shouting her name.
“Of course, duty calls,” Kent said at the exact same time.
They both paused, faint smiles tugging at their mouths. ____’s lingered a second too long before she turned and hurried after her boss.
“That was all your fault back there, you know that?” Selina said abruptly as they strode down the hallway.
____ blinked. Of course it was.
She gritted her teeth, fully aware she had caused absolutely nothing. She hadn’t spoken. She hadn’t intervened. She had, if anything, existed quietly and helpfully. But in the spirit of continued employment, and continued oxygen intake, she kept her gaze steady and said, “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“Mm-hm.” Selina kept walking, satisfied with the confession she’d extracted.
They moved in silence for several seconds, heels clicking in sharp, echoing rhythm against the marble floors. ____ kept her expression neutral, schooling her features into professional attentiveness.
Selina exhaled sharply. “And another thing. Kent Davison is unfuckable.”
“Yes, ma’am. I know, ma’am,” ____ replied automatically.
She pushed aside the immediate, unhelpful thought that argued otherwise.
They rounded the final corner into the main office space, where the rest of the team stood clustered in various states of agitation. Gary was on the phone, his voice low and frantic.
“It's just I can't find her lipstick and I thought maybe it fell out of the Leviathan at home-”
He nearly dropped the phone when Selina entered. “I was not on the phone,” he blurted, shoving it into his pocket. Selina didn’t break stride.
“Okay, folks. Kent Davison is back. So, number one: what are we gonna do about it? Number two: why am I telling you this news? And number three: would you please hang up the phone because I’m the fucking Vice President of the United States and I have something to say.”
A few people visibly winced. Amy set her phone down.
____ had been here long enough to let the tone roll off her. Selina’s volume wasn’t personal; it was atmospheric. You either adapted or you drowned.
“So now we got to figure out a way to get Kent on board with this whole co-POTUS thing,” Selina continued, the edge in her voice dulling slightly as strategy replaced fury. “Because I am not about to let him graph me into irrelevance again.”
Around them, staffers shifted, papers rustled, and the familiar churn of crisis resumed.
“You can’t reason with him,” Mike replied, voice pitched high with stress. “It’d be like explaining Supertramp to a Komodo dragon.”
“I don’t know what those words mean, Mike,” Selina replied flatly. “Are you in the middle of some sort of aneurysm?”
“It’s a band, ma’am,” ____ offered in Mike's defense, “you know that one song—‘Take the Long W—’”
“____, STOP!” Selina barked, cutting off her inevitable correction.
____ raised both hands innocently. “I wasn’t even-”
“Stop thinking about singing,” Selina snapped. “I can feel it.”
"Lets just wind back a sec, okay?" Mike interjected, stepping forward. "You think Kent Davidson is a bad thing?"
____ snorted, rolling her eyes with bitter amusement. She loved Mike, truly. He was one of the only people on Selina’s team who was consistently nice to her without agenda or condescension. But God, was he bad at his job.
“Okay, alright.” Selina breathed out, pinching the bridge of her nose before locking eyes with ____ in a moment of shared, bone-deep exhaustion. “I have a very strong feeling that Kent is gonna get in between me and POTUS like some sort of thick rubber condom, and I have got to have…”
“Unprotected?”
“Yes. Unprotected access to the Oval Office.”
____ looked down to hide the flicker of a smile.
Selina turned sharply. “Well, Amy, you were on the campaign trail with him. How do we pop him?”
Amy looked worse than usual- which was saying something. Her posture was tight, jaw clenched, eyes glassy but furious. She was clearly forcing herself to stay present, even as her mind was somewhere else entirely. Her father had just had a stroke. He was in the hospital. And she was here.
____’s gaze softened.
“Ma’am,” she began carefully, stepping forward. “Maybe Amy should-”
Selina cut her off.
“Hey. Yeah.” Selina pointed at Amy. “You have to go and see your dad.”
The room stilled.
Amy blinked. “It’s the midterms.”
“Amy,” Selina snapped, though the edge wasn’t quite as serrated as usual. “It’s the fucking midterms. Go.”
Amy stood frozen for a beat, visibly shocked, then turned for the door, thanking the Vice President profusely.
On her way out, ____ reached out and gently caught her wrist.
“I’ll take care of your shit for the night,” she said quietly. “Text if you need anything."
Amy pressed her lips together, nodding once in place of a thank you, then hurried out the door.
Gary and ____ exchanged a look. A shared recognition that something almost human had just happened.
“It’s the fucking midterms,” Selina snapped again, louder this time.
____ closed her eyes and clenched her jaw.
And there went the humanity.
Jonah rushed past the doorway moments later, shouting, “We just lost the House!” The room detonated.
Dan and Selina immediately began rapid-fire strategizing. Ben rose from his chair with the weariness of a man who had survived too many administrations.
“Hey, Mike,” Ben said, opening his arms. “Give me a hug. Uncle Ben’s on his way out. What is that, Ralph Lauren?”
“For men,” Mike replied earnestly.
“Well, that’s a good scent.”
____ stared at them for half a second, too tired to process whatever the hell that exchange had been. She didn’t have the time or the mental bandwidth to unpack it.
Instead, she looked over to Dan, who had just finished a call with Congressman Furlong and was leaning back toward Selina, already recalibrating. Their plan, apparently, was to corner Kent and force alignment.
Deciding she could spare a few minutes before the next explosion, ____ perched on the edge of a nearby desk and scrolled through news alerts on her phone. Headlines shifted in real time. Losses. Projections. Panic disguised as analysis.
Her phone buzzed.
A text from Dan:
Jonad's stats guys caught us in some fucking office. Told her she’s got good news. She’s on her way to the Oval to tell POTUS.
____ groaned audibly.
The thought of standing up again felt offensive, but she slid off the desk anyway and started down the hall. When she reached the Oval Office corridor, she slowed.
Through the heavy door, she could hear the muffled cadence of Selina’s voice, sharp and insistent, layered over the lower rumble of the President.
Wait. No. Not the President. Was that Kent?
She exhaled slowly, smile tugging at her lips.
Footsteps approached from down the hall.
____ straightened as Dan rounded the corner with one of Jonah’s statistics guys in tow. Dan was waving a stapled packet in the air like a victory flag- she assumed it was the data Selina had demanded ten minutes ago and would pretend she’d conceptualized herself.
“This is the one,” the stats guy muttered nervously.
“It better be,” Dan shot back.
“It is.”
Dan groaned, but nodded. “Jesus Christ, it's the fucking Oval Office, it's not hard to find.”
____ pushed off the wall she was leaning against and followed them through the doors just as Selina was saying, venom dripping from every syllable, “Thank you so much for bringing us the memo on aggregates. Now why don’t you just go and fuck yourself in your own asshole?”
She turned sharply at the interruption. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Ma’am, we have that data you requested,” Dan replied smoothly.
“Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come.” Selina beckoned them forward, then looked back at Kent with a sharp little smile. “You might want to sit down for this.”
“It’s okay. I’m alright,” Kent replied dryly.
“Okay. Hit it,” Selina said, folding her arms with smug anticipation.
____ bit the inside of her cheek This wasn’t going to go well. It never went well.
“When it comes to successful campaign visits, ma’am,” the stats guy began carefully, “you have a lead over POTUS of 0.9%.”
A beat passed.
There it is, ____ thought. Shit.
Selina blinked. “But. That’s not even a percentage.”
“If we round it up,” the stats guy offered weakly, “we can make it one.”
Selina snapped at him, ____ stepped in between, and suddenly everyone was talking at once.
“Sir, she has strong utility in key demographics. Working mothers, Hispanic voters. She gives us traction in swing votes.”
Kent, maddeningly calm, replied to Dan, saying that Selina was a useful tool.
____ flinched. She may not love her boss, but she still had enough of a soul left that working here hadn't eradicated yet to know that friend or not, Kent was out of line. "Kent, fucking- don't."
For god's sake. Is the pay really worth all this?
“Oh, no, no, no,” Selina fired back, advancing on him. “I’m not gonna be used as a prop again, my friend. I will never forget on election night how you put my ex-husband up on that stage and it was my night, Kent. It was a healing image for America. The way that you used Catherine to make it look as if we were all coming together.”
“Calm down,” Kent cut in.
That was the wrong thing to say.
“Don’t you tell me to calm down!” Selina was bordering on hysterical now. “I saw that photo you had in your office with the word ‘glue’ written across her forehead.”
“Better if I said cement?” Kent replied, bitterness edging into his voice.
“Kent, that is NOT helping,” ____ snarled, frustration finally cracking through as she reached for the stack of papers in Dan’s hands. “Ma’am, let’s just think for a minute. We can use this, maybe-”
“Here’s some good lipstick!” Gary’s voice cut in.
When had he gotten here?
It didn’t matter.
“FUCK that lipstick!” Selina roared, throwing her arm out and knocking it from Gary’s hand.
Time slowed.
The tube flew.
Kent shrieked, high-pitched and startled in a way that would’ve been hilarious under any other circumstances.
The lipstick struck him square in the eye.
“Fuck, Jesus Christ!” ____ exclaimed, rushing to his side as he doubled over, hands cupping his face.
“Kent? Are you okay? I’m so sorry,” Selina called, voice suddenly pitched high, not with concern for him, but for the optics of having maimed a senior strategist.
“What, are you high?” Kent shouted back, flinching away from ____’s reaching hand, pride bristling as much as his injury.
“Don’t,” ____ said pointedly, steady but firm, as Gary babbled over her.
“No, no, she’s not. No, that was my fault.”
“Um. What’s going on?”
Amidst the chaos, Ben had entered and now stood just inside the doorway, scanning the room like he’d walked into a crime scene. “Just been with the president. He’s asked me to stay on.”
A beat of stunned silence.
Then Kent straightened, blinking furiously.
“My eye hurts,” he announced, voice small and aggrieved, before abruptly fleeing the room.
More silence.
Ben looked down. “What’s that shit all over the floor?”
And there was the chaos again.
Gasps rippled outward as everyone’s attention dropped to the bright red smear streaking across the Oval Office carpet.
The lipstick.
“Oh, fuck me,” ____ groaned, backing away carefully to avoid stepping in it.
Selina had not been so cautious.
“Look right here. It’s over here too!”
“Ma’am, no! You’re tracking it!”
“It’s stuck on the bottom of your shoe!”
Gary fumbled for wipes. Dan grabbed Selina’s arm to steady her as she nearly slipped. The red stain spread in frantic arcs across presidential carpeting.
In the swirl of shouting and paper towels and existential dread, ____ saw her opportunity. "Fuck this noise," she thought as she took advantage of the chaos, slipping out of the room.
Heels clicked quietly against the floor as she ducked into the nearest kitchenette, dumped ice into a plastic bag, wrapped it in a dish towel, and made the short walk back to Kent’s office.
Knock, knock.
“Hey. You okay?” she asked softly, leaning against the doorframe.
Kent looked up from behind his desk, one hand still hovering near his eye. He sighed.
“It is such a delight to be back.”
She huffed a quiet laugh and stepped inside, nudging the door mostly closed behind her. “Healthiest workplace in the country, I know.” She crossed the room and held out the makeshift ice pack. “Here. Ice.”
He accepted it carefully, their fingers brushing for half a second too long.
“Thank you,” he said, sincerity threading through the usual dryness.
She leaned casually against the edge of his desk, arms folding loosely as she watched him press the ice to his eye.
“It’s good to have you back, Kent,” she said, the teasing edge gone from her voice.
He regarded her for a moment, unreadable as ever. Then:
“It is… statistically advantageous to have competent people in proximity.”
She rolled her eyes. “Wow. Be still, my beating heart.”
A pause.
Then, softer: “It’s good to see you too, ____.”
Her smile is soft, but genuine. "How's your eye feeling?"
Kent sighs, raising an eyebrow at her. “You’re too nice to be working here, you know.” He doesn't answer the question.
“I know,” she chuckles. “I’m basically just here for damage control, anyways. If I'm not nice every once in a while, you're gonna lose me to the dark side forever."
"Is that what she has you doing now?" Kent chuckled, nearly wincing at the thought.
"Yup! I'm moving up in the world, clearly. From shit-eating intern to shit-eating advisor. "
His smile came easily this time.
For a moment, the chaos of the building felt far away.
“Seriously though, how bad is it?” ____ asked, tilting her head to inspect the damage.
“I haven't been to a mirror yet,” he replied evenly. “But given the velocity and angle of impact, I would estimate mild swelling and very little discoloration.”
“So… kinda purple?”
“It seems likely.”
She laughed under her breath and pushed off the desk to perch in the chair opposite him, angling herself slightly closer than necessary.
“I really am glad you're back,” she said, softer now. “You left and everything just… tilted.”
He studied her carefully, like she’d presented a data point he hadn’t anticipated. “Tilted?”
“Don't analyze it. Less math. More vibes”
“That would explain the current condition of the midterms.”
She laughed, full and loud. “Too soon.”
A brief silence settled between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Just full.
“How have you been?” she asked. “Outside of being weaponized with cosmetics.”
“I was consulting,” he said. “Privately. There is significant demand for empirical clarity in an environment that increasingly rejects it.”
She smiled. “That’s the most Kent way possible you could’ve phrased unemployment.”
He ignored that. “And you?”
“Still here,” she said with a small shrug. “Clawing my way up the ladder one public humiliation at a time.”
“You have advanced,” he said, nodding slightly. “Your proximity to decision-making has increased by approximately forty percent.”
“Wow,” she deadpanned. “What an achievement. A whole forty percent.”
“I meant it as a compliment.”
“I know.”
She smiled.
He shifted slightly in his chair, testing his vision. “You were always competent.”
Her teasing expression grew. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in this building.”
“That's a low bar.”
“Still counts.”
Another bout of silence. Outside, distant shouting echoed faintly down the hallway. Someone swore. A phone rang and rang and rang.
“You didn’t have to bring the ice,” Kent said, not looking directly at her now.
“I know.”
“It wasn't your responsibility.”
“I know.”
He finally met her eyes. There was something steadier there than she wasn't ready to acknowledge.
“You have a tendency,” he said evenly, “to assume responsibility for damage you did not cause.”
She huffed. “Occupational hazard, it's literally what I'm here for.”
“No,” he replied. “Personality trait.”
That landed somewhere deeper than she expected.
"Damn, Kent, that's not what a girl wants to hear when her entire career is based around fixing someone else's shit"
He absorbed that without commentary, which somehow made it worse.
“You always did that,” he added after a moment. “Even your first year. It makes sense, that Selina kept you on to fix things for her”
“The entire Meyer administration is a disaster. They needed someone to keep her on track sometimes, and to clean up the messes we can't prevent. God knows Mike isn't doing it."
He was silent again.
"Is that really what you want to spend your career doing? You have… potential," he finally says, the compliment feeling unnatural as he spoke.
____ smiled again, lightness creeping back in. “I'm happy here, honestly. I complain for the sake of complaining, I'm not weak, just… tired. I can be ruthless when I need to be."
Another pause. There was often silence between them, but it was never uncomfortable. Finally, she spoke, the question that had been quietly eating at her for the last year finally coming forward.
"I reached out, a few times. How come you never called?"
Kent didn’t answer right away.
He shifted slightly where he sat, fingers adjusting the cuff of his sleeve, a stall tactic she recognized. When he finally looked at her, his expression was guarded. She held her breath.
“I saw them,” he said.
The admission was quiet.
Her stomach dipped. “Okay.”
“I intended to respond.”
A small, almost self-aware breath left him. “Then I did not.”
She crossed her arms loosely. Not defensive, just bracing. “That’s not really an explanation.”
“No,” he agreed. “It is not.”
Another beat. He glanced at the office door, as if checking for witnesses, before continuing.
“When I left, the transition was… abrupt. New office. New data sets. Different priorities. I told myself I would reach out once things stabilized.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And did they?”
“No.”
That almost made her smile.
“I became occupied,” he continued. “Professionally. Logistically. Life tends to expand to fill the available space.”
“And I just… what? Fell out of it?”
His jaw tightened slightly at that.
“No,” he said, more firmly than before. “You did not.”
The words landed between them.
“I assumed,” he went on, tone smoothing back out, “that you were advancing here. That you were busy. That contacting you might… complicate things.”
“Complicate how?”
Another hesitation. Smaller this time.
“You were no longer an intern,” he said. “You were building a career in the Vice President’s office. I did not know what my reappearance in your inbox would signal.”
She blinked at him. “It would’ve signaled that my friend was saying hello.”
“Yes.” His voice dipped slightly. “I understand that now.”
Something in her chest loosened, just a fraction.
“I never forgot our friendship,” he added, quieter still. “I referenced you, occasionally.”
She huffed a soft laugh. “In what context?”
“As an example of competent staffing,” he replied. “Which is rare enough to warrant commendation.”
“Wow. High praise.”
He ignored that, eyes steady on hers now.
“I regretted not responding,” he said. “Several times. I drafted messages.”
She smiled, slightly. “You did?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I did not send them.”
“Why?”
That seemed to be the only question he didn’t have data for. “I am… not entirely certain,” he admitted. “It's possible that I believed too much time had elapsed. That the appropriate response window had closed.”
She stared at him. “Kent. It’s texting. There isn’t a statute of limitations.”
“I'm aware.”
“And?”
His shoulders lifted in the smallest shrug.
“It is also possible,” he said carefully, “that I was concerned the conversation would remind me that I had left something I did not actually wish to leave.”
The air shifted.
She swallowed. “You mean the office?”
He held her gaze.
“No.”
The word was soft, but precise. For a second, neither of them spoke. The quiet felt different now.
“I thought maybe you just…” she started, then stopped. “I don’t know. Moved on.”
“I assumed the same of you,” he replied. “It seemed statistically likely.”
She almost laughed at that. “You ran the numbers on me?”
“Informally.”
“And?”
He looked at her for a long moment. Not analytical now. Not detached.
“Inconclusive.”
That did make her smile.
“I’m sorry,” he said then, and this time there was no polish to it. “For not responding. It was not intentional neglect.”
She studied him, weighing the apology, the year between them, the messages that had gone unanswered.
“I know,” she said, her voice kind.
And she did.
The silence that followed wasn’t heavy anymore. It felt like something settling back into place. Not the same as before, but not broken either.
She laughed, the sound cutting through the tension.
“You know,” she said eventually, “Selina called you unfuckable earlier.”
Kent blinked, then huffed out a laugh. “I don't quite know how I'm supposed to respond to that”
“I’m just saying.”
They both laughed that time.
He cleared his throat first.
“I suspect,” he said carefully, “that the morning shows will be calling, expecting an audience with the Vice President within the next ten to fifteen minutes.”
“Probably.”
“You should return before your absence is noted.”
“You mean before I’m blamed for something else?”
“Yes.”
She stood slowly, smoothing her jacket. For a second, neither of them moved toward the door.
"She realllly doesn't want to go on the morning shows. Like. Would rather fuck Roger Furlong raw, sort of not wanting to. Remember, she did hit you with lipstick."
A faint smile tugged at his mouth again, understanding what she was getting at. "Noted. I'll book them all."
He watched her for a long moment, something unreadable passing behind his eyes.
“Goodnight, ____,” he said with a soft smile.
“Goodnight, Kent.”
She gave him one last lingering look before stepping into the hallway.
For once, the halls were quiet as ____ walked back towards the Meyer administration's office space. Before morning, phones would start ringing again. Producers would start demanding soundbites. Selina would spiral about lighting and camera angles and whether America deserved her. But right now, it was still.
____ walked slowly, heels echoing softly against polished floors, her mind replaying the evening in fragments - lipstick flying, shouting in the Oval Office, Kent’s startled shriek, the conversation they had just had.
She’d spent the last two years climbing. Intern to advisor, outsider to insider, learning how to twist herself in just the right way to make somewhat of a name for herself in DC. She'd spent the last year convincing herself she’d outgrown the affection she’d once had for the strategist who rubbed most people the wrong way.
Apparently, she hadn’t.
Some new beginnings didn’t announce themselves with fireworks or press conferences. Sometimes they arrived quietly; bruised, blinking, holding a bag of melting ice.
She straightened her blazer, squared her shoulders, and pushed the door open.