Chapter Text
It had been a quiet evening after what had turned out to be an unexpectedly busy day at the State Department. They’d been in the same corner of the building but had barely seen each other throughout the day.
Kate had been drafted in, last-minute, to an afternoon meeting and had text Hal that she would have a late finish. He had offered to wait for her but she said no, telling him to sort out something for dinner instead.
So, he had done exactly that. He’d walked the short route home, stopping into an artisan grocer that they sometimes bought from when they were looking for something extra special for a housewarming or some other gathering.
Not that they went to many of those. The one good thing about being locked in a compound in Baghdad or Kabul was that you didn’t have to buy a lot of house-warming gifts.
Hal actually didn’t mind cooking; it was something he could do to a serviceable level. But their lifestyle, such as it was, didn’t create an awful lot of time for invention in the kitchen. When Kate had tasked him with sourcing dinner for that evening, he’d pursed his lips and opened a new window on his laptop for research purposes.
By the time he got to the grocers that evening, he knew exactly what he needed and he whipped around the shop quickly and easily, only momentarily sidetracked by other options screaming out to him from the shelf – lobster ravioli would definitely put him in Kate’s good books. He wondered if he should offer to cook more often, then told himself to wait until he’d got over this first hurdle.
By the time Kate got home, tired and hungry, Hal had succeeded in creating what he believed was very passable pappardelle with bolognaise ragu. He’d even bought the expensive parmigiano to grate over it and mixed in actual basil leaves as opposed to the sprinkles you bought in herb jars.
All in all, he was pretty proud of himself.
“That smells great,” Kate said as she dropped her bag just inside the doorway of their bedroom, “Did you order Giovanni’s?”
Hal shook his head, “Nope.”
Kate frowned, “The new place on the corner?” Hal stifled a laugh and shook his head again.
“I cooked it.”
Kate’s frown held and was punctuated by a blink, “What?” She looked over at the large pot sitting on top of the hob and regarded it with suspicion. Hal laughed and walked to her, reaching for her hand and pulling her to the breakfast counter to sit. Then he dished out two bowls and pushed hers to her before joining her on the second chair.
She picked up a fork and looked at it sceptically while Hal took his and wolfed down a mouthful while she was still contemplating it.
“Jesus, Katie. It’s pasta and meat sauce; it didn’t come out of Chernobyl!” he laughed as she finally dug in and took a mouthful. Her eyes widened as she chewed, looked at the bowl, then at Hal and back at the bowl again.
“This is really good,” she said, reaching for the glass of water he’d placed in front of her. He hopped up suddenly, remembering that he’d bought a nice bottle of wine in the same store, and poured two glasses for them.
“If I’d realised this sooner, we’d have eaten a lot less take-out over the years,” she quipped and he leaned in to kiss the corner of her mouth where some of the ragu had smeared.
“I’ve unionised,” he whispered, “You’d have to make sure the work conditions and, more importantly, the pay was up to scratch.”
She smirked at him, leaning forward and placing her free hand on his thigh, letting slide slowly higher as she spoke, “That could be… hard. My finances are a little…tight… at the moment.”
He chuckled, nipping at her lips with his, “Lucky for you, I’m not motivated by money…”
She kissed him then, her lips moving confidently over his, her tongue teasing. He pulled her from her stool to stand between his legs, his hands on her hips holding her tight to him. When they broke, breathless, she laughed and reached back for her chair. Hal smirked as she retrieved her fork.
“I think I prefer that form of collective bargaining,” he muttered and she laughed, swatting him with her free hand before tucking back into the rapidly cooling pasta.
After dinner, Kate’s phone rang – it was Carole, checking in as she had done on a few occasions since Hal’s trip to Europe. Thankfully, he’d been confined to D.C. in the weeks since, ordinarily something he wouldn’t have appreciated but given how well he and Kate seemed to be working through things, at least so far, the last thing he wanted was to be shipped off for a week or more.
He was enjoying their newfound ease with each other. It sounded strange, given that they’d been married for ten years, but it almost felt like a new relationship again, with all of the excitement and playfulness and discovery.
He supposed it was partly to be expected – their relationship had started in less than orthodox circumstances and had been kept secret for 14 months during which time they had, yes, grown as a couple but primarily through their physical relationship.
A very, very good physical relationship.
But Hal and Kate had never really “dated” in the traditional sense of the word. They’d never had much chance, outside of work functions, to get dressed up like they did a few weeks ago when they had gone to a fancy, exclusive restaurant. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever cooked for her before, or her for him. While what he was referring to as “shore leave” was making him a bit stir crazy in one sense, he had to admit that he was enjoying the domesticity of their current situation.
At least for a little while.
He had received a call earlier in the day from an old college buddy asking for some advice on some investments in the Middle East. Hal didn’t like these calls, Kate liked them even less, and he usually found a way to conveniently “forget” to respond.
It was what he’d do in this instance as well, but he was at a loose end after tidying away their plates and leftovers, so when Kate curled herself up on the couch to talk to Carole, he slipped through into the study with his glass of wine, closing the door quietly behind him.
He sat at his desk, wine glass in hand, and did some shallow digging into an alternative energy company, a food science researcher, and a fintech company that, try as he might, Hal couldn’t figure out what exactly it did. He took a breath, tapped his fingers against the base of his glass, wondering if this was the kind of thing he’d get drawn into if he were to leave the foreign service.
They would probably pay him extremely well to admit that he didn’t know what any of these companies were doing. He’d get rich, his bosses would get rich, but he wasn’t sure he’d sleep particularly well at night. And some nights, that was already difficult enough.
Hal was not built for boredom. In any event, Kate still had a career, somewhat stalled by his actions, but they would see the idiocy in benching someone of her calibre before long. If… no, when that happened, he didn’t want any ties he had to any interests to cause trouble for her.
He was bored now, but at least it felt like he was trying to be on the right side of things.
He looked up at the sound of a soft knock on the door and Kate stepping through, barefoot now, shirt untucked probably from fidgeting around to get comfortable on the couch, her hands behind her back and an enigmatic look on her face. Hal twisted his chair in her direction.
“How’s Carole?” he asked with an easy smile.
“She’s good. Immensely glad to hear we haven’t murdered each other.”
Hal nodded, “She’s not the only one.”
Kate laughed, bowing her head as she shifted from foot to foot where she had stopped about metre short of him. Hal was watching her arms, coming to an obvious conclusion.
“What have you got behind your back?” he asked in a curious tone.
She raised an eyebrow and shook her head, “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Hal stifled a laugh and reached for her. He loved this coy, playful version of Kate. He loved how he could say things to her and watch for the flush across her cheeks, then wait for the sultry, hooded look she would give him, the one that went straight to his groin, via his heart.
He was about to question her further when she stepped forward, using one hand to push up the arms of his office chair. He took a deep breath as she stepped forward to straddle him, using her free hand to pull herself tight to him. He exhaled, his hands coming up to rest on her thighs, his mouth level with her sternum where her shirt was unbuttoned. He leaned forward and grazed her skin with his lips, dragging them across to drop soft, nipping kisses along her clavicle.
Slowly, he crept one hand up her thigh, onto her ass and around in an attempt to grab the hand she still held behind her back. But she was too quick and snapped her hand back, prompting a guffawing laugh from him.
She leaned in and kissed him, picking up where their earlier kiss in the kitchen had left off. Hal’s hand found the small of her back, pulling her firmly against the bulge in his pants and drawing a moan from both of them.
“Kate,” he gasped, eyeing the desk to his right and wondering how bouncy his laptop might be if he knocked it to the other side of the room. He was coming down on the side of “Fuck it, who cares” when she caught one of his hands with hers and pushed a small velvet bag into it. He looked down, face contorted in confusion.
“You should know, Hal. They were your gift to me.”
Hal frowned, thinking for a minute and suddenly remembering exactly what she was talking about. A wide, goofy grin found its way across his features as he looked up at her expectant face. He handed the bag back to her.
“Your gift, your roll,” he smirked, feeling a jolt of warm anticipation run from his chest down. As she opened the bag and picked out one of the dice, he ran his hands along her thighs, kneading the muscles there, drawing his touch further onto her inner thighs with each pass. The breathy sigh that she tried to hide made him bite back a smug smirk.
Suddenly she stood up and Hal groaned at the loss of her weight on him. She bent forward to the desk, surely teasing him he thought to himself, and with an extravagant twist of her wrist, rolled the dice. He wheeled his chair closer, sliding one of his legs between hers and pulling her back against him. They tilted forward to look at the icons on the dice.
Hal frowned and scratched his head, which seemed apt in the circumstances.
“How the fuck does that work?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. Kate looked equally confused, tilting her head this way and that.
“Turn it clockwise,” she said in an authoritative tone.
He did and looked again.
“Oh… No, actually that hasn’t helped at all…” he laughed and asked if she wanted to roll again.
“I think that might be best, yeah.”
The next roll wasn’t much better. Again, they peered in to study the image before Kate huffed and went to retrieve her glasses, saying the fact that she needed to do that did not bode well for this exercise.
When she came back, she looked again and was no less baffled.
“Is that an arm or a leg?” she asked with a look of concern on her face.
Hal had figured the position out while she was getting her glasses, “Uh, neither…” Kate looked again, raised her eyebrows and shook her head, rolling the dice again and then again after landing on the same position again.
“These are getting weirder,” she said, squinting to see what the newest one was.
“Could try a different dice,” Hal suggested.
“Well, no,” she said brightly, “This one doesn’t look so bad…”
Hal caught his bottom lip between his teeth and replied with a very unenthusiastic, “Um, yeah…”
Kate looked again, then blinked, “Hang on, is that supposed to be you?”
There it was.
Hal nodded, “I think so.”
“Oh god!” Kate exclaimed, “No chance!”
Hal sighed, “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
She turned and looked at him, an incredulous look on her face, “Oh come on, Hal, you don’t honestly think…”
“No, I’m serious – thank you for being confident that I can’t fucking do that! I was afraid you were going to make me try it!”
She stared at him, his face aghast as he sat almost reclining in his office chair, and suddenly burst out laughing. She leaned back against his desk and brought her hands to her face, pulling off her glasses to leave next to his laptop and then raucously laughing. Her humour was infectious and after a moment Hal was laughing too at the absurdity of it all.
“This is ridiculous,” she laughed and he stood up from his chair, edging closer to her, his eyes roaming over her, his want for her coming out of the holding pattern they had put it in while rolling dice. Reaching for her, he pulled her against him, his lips going straight to her neck before he backed her against the desk.
“I don’t need to roll a dice to know the best position here,” he whispered in her ear, grinning when she shuddered against him, her mouth desperately seeking his. He ran his lips along her jaw, kissing the corner of her mouth but pulling back when she tried to drag his lips to hers.
“Hal…” she whined and he chuckled.
“What?” he whispered against her lips.
“Fucking tease…” she murmured, grabbing his bottom lip between her teeth, gently pulling him with her. He moaned and, when she released his lip from her teeth, gave her what she had wanted, kissing her with such a fervour that they broke breathless.
Hal’s hands came to her thighs, intending to push her onto the desk before he realised that the desk was already over-occupied. He groaned in frustration.
She glanced at the desk behind her, “You know if you sweep this desk, you’re going to break that laptop.”
He grinned devilishly at her, “Fuck it, who cares?”
The laptop, an empty wine glass, and a pair of glasses hit the far wall with a fatal crash.
*