Chapter Text
1
The razor glided across his skin, his movements careful as he twisted his head one way and then the other, rubbing his hand over the skin to check that it was smooth. Satisfied, he reached for his aftershave, running low, and rubbed some between his hands before applying it to his face.
The music drifted in from the small, tinny speaker in the bedroom. Neither of them really listened to music, but Kate liked some background noise when she was working or getting ready. Hal liked whatever made her smile.
Moving from the ensuite out to their bedroom, he smiled at the sight of her sitting at the dressing table, Italian silk robe wrapped around her, as she applied as little make-up as she could get away with.
“So, how fancy are we talking tonight? Do I need to wear a suit or…” he wasn’t sure what the alternative was.
“Fancy enough that I’m wearing that,” Kate inclined her head toward the bottle-green coloured dress that was hanging off the front of her wardrobe door. Hal eyed the dress on the hanger and asked if it was new. She nodded, saying she’d picked it up on sale earlier in the week.
He smiled and moved to his own wardrobe, pulling out a slate grey suit that he generally kept for social outings. He dug around for a bit, lips pursed, and found the shirt that he was searching for, a deep green almost identical in colour to her new dress.
Then, methodically, he opened drawers, retrieving socks and boxers and unceremoniously dropped his towel to step into the latter. He glanced sideways and caught her eye in the mirror, winking at her.
“Caught you,” he grinned and she raised her eyebrows at him before turning her attention back to her own reflection. He chuckled and continued dressing, pulling on his socks and then the suit pants, followed by a dark leather belt. The green shirt followed and, as he was tucking it into his pants, Kate stood up at the far side of the room, and slipped out of her robe.
Hal didn’t even try to hide his gaze, his eyes travelling the full length of her body, clad in skin colour bra and thong, as he continued going through the motions of tucking in a shirt that was already well tucked. She turned her head and raised an eyebrow at him.
“Caught you,” she smirked and he laughed.
“I wasn’t exactly being subtle,” he said, stalking towards her, knowing that he would be called on for assistance before too long. She was stepping into the dress as he reached her, slipping her toned arms through the narrow straps and reaching behind her for the zip.
“I got you,” he murmured, stepping behind her, closer than necessary and grasping the zip and its endpoint. He glanced in the mirror and admired how close the dress was to his shirt colour.
“So, tell me again why we’re going to the place that you went to with that asshole from Waldren’s office?” he asked as he slowly pulled up the zip, the knuckle of his finger grazing her spine as he did. He could feel the tension in her body under his touch and smirked to himself, not minding if she saw it in the mirror or not.
“Because,” she said, turning to face him, “It was a nice place, with great food, and I’d like to actually enjoy it this time.”
She stepped away from him, searching absently for something on the dressing table. He tilted his head curiously.
“And what’s in it for me?” he asked in a teasing tone.
Without looking at him, she replied, “A really good steak.”
Finding her work bag, she bent over to rummage through it, giving Hal such an enticing view of her ass that he had to assume it was intentional. His mouth formed into an ‘o’ shape as he watched her digging in the bag and finally withdrawing a bottle of perfume.
“You want to tempt me with prime rump, you can just keep rummaging for things in that bag,” he quipped. She turned, an amused look on her face.
“Stop ogling me, Hal,” she rolled her eyes and he stepped closer to her, one hand wrapping around her waist.
“Yes, how dare I be sexually attracted to my wife,” he jibed, leaning in to place a chaste kiss on her lips. She smiled and swatted him away, telling him they needed to hurry or they would be late. Hal crossed the room and grabbed the jacket for his suit, slipping it on and checking the mirror. He flicked open the top button of the shirt, and then the second one.
Nodding to himself in the mirror, he found his usual dress shoes and slipped his feet into them, crouching down to tie them.
“Are we cabbing or walking?” he asked as he stood up.
“I’m not walking in these things,” Kate said, kicking out a leg with a moderately high-heeled shoe on the end of it. Hal smiled and nodded, reaching for his phone to organise a car.
“How do I look?” she asked after a minute, grasping a clutch handbag under her arm. He smiled lovingly at her.
“Like the restaurant isn’t necessary,” he remarked.
“Huh?”
“You look good enough to eat,” he replied lasciviously.
“Oh,” she smirked, stepping closer to him, one hand on his chest as she leaned towards his ear, “Maybe later.”
Hal took a deep breath as she stepped away, heading for the hallway of their apartment. Maybe later, indeed.
In stark contrast to Kate's last visit to Clarté some weeks earlier, the restaurant had a queue out the door and a harried looking young woman traversing the lines inquiring about reservations.
When they told her their name and that they were booked, the woman smiled and asked them to follow her.
“Place to be…” Hal muttered as the woman escorted them inside and deposited them into the care of the maître-d, a different man to the one Kate had met previously.
“My deepest apologies, Mr. and Mrs. Wyler. Your table is not ready yet. Can I get you set up at the bar with a drink while you wait?”
Hal nodded and said that they’d be quite happy at the bar, drawing a smirk from Kate as the maître-d guided them across the front salon to a packed bar. He said a few quick words to the barman and left. Kate ordered a French Martini and, keeping with the cocktail theme, Hal ordered a Boulevardier, essentially a whiskey negroni.
It was standing room only in that front salon so they stood close together at the end of the bar. When the drinks came, they clinked glasses and sipped, each savouring their respective choice. Kate’s eyes were darting around the room, watching the various movers and shakers of the D.C. world.
“Do you know anyone?” she asked him quietly but he shook his head.
“We’re too low on the payroll,” he quipped and she frowned at him.
“Hal, you were an ambassador.”
“My point still stands,” he smiled back at her. She cast her eyes toward the dining room and was dismayed to find a familiar face sitting along the back wall that flanked off the kitchen. She looked away quickly and Hal frowned, asking what was wrong.
“I don’t believe it; Greg Jenson is here…”
Hal turned cautiously and looked through to the dining room, fixing in the general direction that Kate had been looking. He recognised Greg, talking animatedly to a dark-haired woman with her back to them, and turned back to Kate, a small smirk on his face.
“Guy’s got a system, can’t fault him for sticking with it.”
Kate took a sip of her drink and eyed him curiously. Hal stepped in closer to her, letting a couple pass behind him to the bar, and rested a hand on her hip.
“He’s a player, Kate. Notorious. This is obviously his thing – bring them to the fanciest restaurant in town, flaunt his wealth, his connections, his looks, his… whatever. It’s clearly worked before, and enough times for it to be worth the investment.”
She scowled at him, “The investment? Hal, that makes it sound…”
Hal cut her off, “That’s the mentality of the guy you’re dealing with. And at the end of it all, he can either say that he brought a model to Clarté, fucked her and everyone went home happy; or he can say he brought some ungrateful bitch to Clarté and she wouldn’t even give him a blowjob…”
Kate opened her mouth to respond, disgusted, but he cut across her again.
“Again, that’s his mentality, not mine. He’s not telling this story to his colleagues in the office; he’s telling the entitled pricks in his country club who think exactly the same way.”
Kate scowled again, but this time directed her gaze toward the dining room, mumbling something under her breath which, close as he was standing, even Hal couldn’t catch. He asked her to repeat it.
“He invited me here,” she said, spitting the words out as if even saying them was unsavoury. She felt like she needed to shower again. Hal smiled at her, letting the hand on her hip lower slightly and shift around to the top of her buttock.
“Well, why wouldn’t he?” he said, his eyes trailing down her body appreciatively.
“He wasn’t trying to sleep with me,” she said with a shake of her head and Hal stifled a laugh, bringing his glass up to take another sip of his drink.
“Of course he was trying to sleep with you, Kate, come on!” he spoke quietly so that the crowd around him wouldn’t hear. She shook her head and dove into her glass again.
“He pretty much insulted me right from the first minute,” she scoffed, letting her free hand twist around her back to entwine with his. Hal pursed his lips, tilted his head in consideration. Kate had filled him in on her disastrous "working" dinner with Greg Jenson in the days following his return from Europe, and they had laughed together at some of the antics of the evening.
“He was testing the water,” Hal shrugged, “Checking to see if you were bitter or angry or sad about everything.”
Kate blinked, “I was all three of those things.”
He smiled sadly, giving her hand a squeeze where it was linked with his behind her back.
“I know,” he said quietly. She smiled back at him and returned the hand squeeze, a silent recognition of the truce between them – tentative as it might be.
In the weeks since Hal’s odyssey of self-awareness through Europe, things had been better between them. They had both been trying hard to tackle the little things as they arose, rather than letting them fester in the pit of their guts, snowballing with other little things to create black holes of darkness and blame.
There had been arguments, sure. They were only human. But they had both been able to stop, take a breath and reframe their point before letting things turn nasty.
A thought occurred to Kate suddenly.
“Did you have a system?”
“Hmm?” He had heard the question but his feigned mishearing was buying him time to come up with an answer.
To his delight, the maître-d returned to tell them that their table was ready.
*