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John’s in a stairwell wondering if it’s midnight yet when his earpiece buzzes.
“John,” says Carol’s calm, raspy voice. “I know your shift is almost over, but the president asked for you.”
“Really?” John asks before he can consider how much like a twelfth grader he sounds. It’s not like he thought saving the free world together would make them best friends, and he knows the guy is understandably pretty busy right now, but he hasn’t even seen him since the plane brought them back from the hospital ten hours ago. Carol was the one who gave him the earpiece and the walkie and the spare suit; he was starting to wonder if the president even remembered he’d hired John.
“He’s in the sitting room, in the residence,” Carol says now. “Do you need directions?”
“Nah,” John says. He’s pretty sure the layout of the White House is going to be burned onto his brain for the rest of his life.
President Sawyer is at his desk, writing in a dim circle of light from the desk lamp. The darkened sitting room is unbelievably pristine. It’s like nobody ever got shot in here.
“Jeez,” John says, looking around. “That fast enough for you?”
“Wait til you see the kitchen,” Sawyer says without looking up. “Alison’s finally getting the renovation she’s always wanted.” He puts down his pen and swivels his chair to face John. “Thank you for coming,” he says after a moment.
“Uh, yeah,” John says, a little self-conscious. “Kinda my job.” He gestures vaguely towards Sawyer’s stomach. “How’s the, uh -”
“Oh, my war wound?” Sawyer asks drily. “Healing fast, that’s what they tell me.” His face falls into seriousness. “John, I don’t know if I’ve properly thanked you.”
“Mr. President, you don’t have to -” John tries to interrupt.
“Shut up now,” Sawyer says, kindly but firmly. John gulps down the rest of his sentence. “I don’t like to make a big scene, and I can tell you like it even less, so I’ll get it out and then we’re not gonna talk about it anymore. You saved my life. You went above and beyond. You and your daughter both did. I can never repay you.” He goes silent, and John hopes that isn’t the end of the speech, because he’s not sure how to follow that.
Sawyer takes a deep breath, rubs his eyes, and says, “I know you’re tired, John, but can I ask you to take the night shift?”
John is tired. The president knows how tired; he was there for most of it. But there’s no choice, nothing else he can possibly say besides, “Yeah. Of course.”
--
They swear in the new vice president the next day. The way his hand shakes as he raises it for the oath doesn’t come across on camera, but John can see it great from his position in the wings. Sawyer went on air yesterday, explaining the attack, and the media has since exploded with questions and accusations and general insanity. Vice President Hammond’s funeral is later this afternoon. John wouldn’t want to be this guy for anything.
Sawyer catches his eye as they head for the cars and inclines his head at the presidential Cadillac. John nods his understanding and quietly radios Carol to let her know about the switch.
--
One of the new guys is finally tapping him out at eight p.m. when the door to the Oval Office opens on Carol saying, “Sir, he needs to sleep.”
Sawyer turns away from her and looks at John over his glasses. “Cale,” he says.
“Yes, sir,” John says, straightening up. He glances at Carol, whose face is at once disapproving and soft with empathy.
“How would you feel about taking the night shift again?” Sawyer asks.
“Sir,” John says, caught. “You know I’d stay, but...” He glances from Carol back to Sawyer, then winces apologetically. “She’s right, I gotta sleep. You really don’t want me guarding you on no sleep, sir.”
Sawyer nods briefly. “Of course, I understand,” he says, and John feels like a real asshole. Sawyer squares his shoulders and says, “Then I need you here tomorrow at six sharp.”
“Absolutely,” John says quickly. “Sharp. Six sharp.”
Sawyer disappears back into the Oval Office, while Carol takes a step towards John and leans in.
“He doesn’t feel safe without you yet,” she says quietly. “You’ve both been through so much.”
Her words transform John. His heart starts beating faster and his nerves spark like he just did a triple espresso shot. The president doesn’t feel safe without him. Part of him wants to shoulder past Carol into the Oval Office and take it back, take the shift, stay up another twelve hours, anything Sawyer wants.
Instead he just nods solemnly at Carol and says, hoping she doesn’t hear the tremor in his voice, “See you in the morning.”
--
The next day and a blissful six hours of sleep later, John is trying not to listen to the worryingly loud voices coming through the conference room door. The guy on the other side of the doors is staring straight ahead, unaffected, so John tries to take a page out of his book and relax. The president and the cabinet are on some kind of international call, judging from the snatches of multiple languages John can make out.
When the doors burst open, John startles, but his buddy on the other side doesn’t even move. God, that guy’s good.
“Come on,” Sawyer says to John. He points at John’s counterpart. “Not you.”
John doesn’t bother to conceal his smugness as he follows Sawyer away from the dispersing cabinet.
“How’d you sleep, Cale?”
“Like a baby, sir,” John says. He omits the part where he had to chase reporters from CNN and MSNBC off his lawn before he could get through his own front door.
“Not me,” Sawyer says. “Took some of that Tylenol PM around one, but all it did was fuck me up.”
“Aw, I could’ve told you that,” John says, trying not to smile. “You can’t take that shit halfway through the night, you gotta hit it right after dinner.”
“Wish I’d had you at one a.m.,” Sawyer says darkly, and John hears the faint accusation in it. He shuts up.
When he realizes they’re heading for the gym, John checks his watch.
“Sir, I thought your trainer came at like, sunrise,” he says.
“You thought right,” Sawyer replies. He keys in the code and, once inside, heads straight for the locker room, leaving John a little flummoxed as to whether he should follow him or not. He has yet to discuss presidential nudity as an etiquette and/or safety topic with Carol.
Sawyer makes the decision for him by coming back out in sweats and a t-shirt and no glasses. John watches him for some kind of instructions, but when it becomes clear that Sawyer’s going to ignore him, he takes up a position by the door and folds his hands behind his back. Sawyer heads straight for the treadmill and cranks it up high.
The only sounds for a few minutes are his increasingly labored breaths, until he hits the button and hops off. Then it’s the clanking of the leg machine. Then it’s the thunk of dumbbells.
John eyes Sawyer. Okay, so he’s working something off, probably all that business with the cabinet. But John doesn’t like all this bouncing around.
“Can you even work out with a stab wound?” John asks finally.
Sawyer’s head whips around, and he gives John a look. John raises his hands and backs off.
But when Sawyer gets underneath the bar and starts to benchpress all wrong, John can’t handle it anymore.
“Okay, no, stop,” he says. “Stop! Stop.” He unbuttons his suit jacket.
Sawyer stares at him from where he’s lying on the bench. “Excuse you?”
John strips off his jacket and rolls up his shirtsleeves. “You heard what I said,” he says. “I appreciate that you’re working out some shit, but man, come on. I can’t just stand by and watch this.”
“Watch what?” Sawyer says sharply, narrowing his eyes at John.
“All of this,” John says, waving a hand at basically Sawyer’s whole body. “Didn’t you play sports in college?”
“Lacrosse,” Sawyer says, still suspicious.
“Wow, of course you did,” John mutters. “Okay,” he says, coming over to the bench and clapping his hands. “One, you’ve got to keep your shoulders down,” he says, touching his own shoulders to demonstrate. “Otherwise you’re gonna destroy your back, which I’m pretty sure you need for doing president stuff. Two, I can’t see any daylight under here.”
He leans down and tries to get his hand under the small of Sawyer’s back, but there’s no room. Sawyer twitches hard, but he doesn’t move away. “See? I should be able to put my hand completely under here. You’ve got to arch more.”
Sawyer looks at John’s face for a long moment. Then he looks at the ceiling, appears to think about it, and his body shifts against John’s fingers. John slides his hand into the space between Sawyer’s back and the bench. “There you go,” John says, satisfied. He wiggles his fingers. “See how much more room there is?”
“Yep,” Sawyer says in a slightly strangled voice.
It occurs to John, now that it’s way too late, that he might have just breached a personal space boundary. He’s close enough to smell the sour-sweet cologne-and-sweat mixture of the president’s skin. He yanks his hand out from underneath Sawyer and straightens up. “So, uh, just do it like that.”
Sawyer shifts in his new position, feeling it out. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” He takes the bar off the rack, and tenses up his whole body. John can see the trembling in his knees. Then he benches ten times, and it doesn’t look too bad.
“Awesome,” John says, his face crinkling in a grin.
After catching his breath, Sawyer returns it.
John isn’t dazzled and the exchange has nothing to do with why he agrees to take another night shift.
--
At four thirty-four in the morning - John has been subtly checking his phone out of sight of the cameras - a new guy comes up the stairs.
“Uh, what’s up, dude?” John says, patting his pocket to make sure his phone is still hidden inside. “I’m not relieved already, am I?”
The guy stands on the other side of the door and rubs at dark-circled eyes. “Nope. Got a call from Finnerty half an hour ago. President requested double detail.”
“He -” John is confused, and maybe a little hurt. “Did she say why?”
The guy looks at him like he’s stupid. “No, she didn’t.”
John makes a face at him, but only when he looks away.
Turns out they don’t have to wait long to find out, anyway. Two minutes later the door to the president’s bedroom opens and the man himself emerges, still in the shirtsleeves John saw him in six hours ago.
“I’m getting a snack,” Sawyer says to John, while the other guy tries not to gape. “You coming?”
“Yes, sir,” John says, and that little knot of doubt he was starting to feel dissolves. He follows the president across the hall into the dining room, looking behind him for a quick glance at what he can see now is his replacement. He gives John a little disgruntled shrug like, Whatever.
The dining room and kitchen have also recovered from their brief trauma. John’s eyes look for plaster, remembering the spray of bullets into the walls and ceiling, but he finds nothing. Not a thing is out of place.
“You weren’t kidding about this kitchen,” he murmurs. Sawyer is rummaging around in a gleaming new stainless steel fridge. “Hey, I don’t remember the fridge getting shot up,” John says with a frown.
Sawyer twists to look at John over his shoulder. “Like I told you,” he says, and then goes back to stacking containers in his hand. “Alison’s been dreaming about this renovation.” He straightens up and brings his finds over to the kitchen island. “Want some?”
John wanders over. Sawyer’s got foie gras, a container of blueberries, string cheese, and what looks like a stack of cold pancakes. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and goes for a stick of string cheese. Sawyer gets out a fork for the pancakes.
“You don’t stay up this late, do you?” John asks. The army and the security work has conditioned John to the hollow, sandpaper feeling of being awake far past when your body demands you sleep. The president, on the other hand, is looking a little wired. The hand with the fork is shaking a little.
Sawyer shakes his head and swallows his bite of pancake. “I can’t,” he says. “Your ability to make accurate decisions decreases with every hour of sleep lost. It makes you optimistic,” he says bleakly.
“Optimistic, like what, you think everything’s gonna be okay in the Middle East?” John jokes.
The fact that Sawyer doesn’t rise to it tells John a whole lot about how tired he actually is. He simply shakes his head. “If you’re driving, you think you can make the light. That kind of thing.”
John feels a little queasy at that. “Okay, well, you’re driving the whole country, so maybe we should get you back to bed, sir.”
“I just can’t get tired enough,” Sawyer says like John didn’t say anything. “It’s post-traumatic, I realize that. I’ve got an appointment with a psychiatrist tomorrow.”
“My ex has Emily seeing one of those, too,” John says, relieved to hear it.
“Smart woman.” Sawyer looks at him then. “How about you, John? Are you okay? I know you haven’t been home much in the last few days.”
John hopes his shrug looks casual. “You need me here,” he says.
“I do,” Sawyer says quietly. “I do need you here.” The way he says it is kind of weird, like it’s partly a question.
John swallows. “Anyway, there’s reporters at my place, like, twenty-four seven right now. It’s easier just to stay at work.”
Sawyer looks at him sharply. “I didn’t know that. We’ll have someone take care of that today. First thing.”
“Oh, uh - okay,” John says. He’s not sure how Sawyer’s going to “take care” of it - what with freedom of the press and everything - but on the other hand, it would be really nice not to wade through media crews every time he wants to hit the hay, so whatever.
Sawyer gets some orange juice out of the fridge and takes a swig right out of the carton. He tips it towards John, raising his eyebrows. John shrugs and takes it from him. Through his half-lidded eyes he can see Sawyer watching him while he chugs, and John suddenly gets that feeling - that sparkling adrenaline awareness you get sometimes in the field when you know something is about to happen. He tenses up. He’s ready. He wants it, whatever it is.
He doesn’t expect Sawyer to rush him, but he does, and John barely gets the carton back on the counter, sloshing and rocking dangerously, before his arms are suddenly full of president. Sawyer’s hips shove him back against the counter, his hands scrabbling for John’s zipper, and John tries to do the same, but it’s so early in the fucking morning that it takes him forever to get his fine motor skills going, long frantic seconds until he can finally unzip Sawyer’s pants and take out his cock. Sawyer is already stroking him, rough, sweet strokes, and John is hit by some serious cognitive dissonance about who this is, what they’re doing. He tries not to let his eyes roll up into his head.
“Oh, my god,” John grits as Sawyer wraps his hands around both of their cocks and starts to thrust. He grabs Sawyer’s upper arms and thrusts, unbalanced until they settle into a rhythm, rocking urgently against each other. John’s cock is slippery with precome, he’s not sure whose, and the slide of Sawyer’s cock against his is so good he can taste it in the back of his throat like gunmetal. That smell is in the air again, cologne and sweat, and with a groan he wraps a hand around Sawyer’s neck and pulls him into the sloppiest kiss of all time.
Sawyer strokes faster, grip tightening, and then with a final thrust he moans into John’s mouth, and John can feel the hot wetness spatter his cock. John is a goner after that. He loses the rhythm completely and he’s coming, so hard it’s almost like pain, all over both their hands.
John blinks. A few stalled-out seconds pass before he’s aware of his own body again. He’s panting, and messy, and clutching Sawyer so hard he’s probably bruising him. Sawyer’s still got his hands around both their cocks.
“Uh,” John says, but he can’t get much farther than that.
Sawyer is staring at him, but he doesn’t look shocked, or angry, thank god. He reaches past John - the movement against his sensitive cock makes John close his eyes briefly - and leans back with napkins. They clean up themselves up.
Sawyer throws the napkins away and then comes back to stare at John some more.
“Sir,” John says finally, “could you please say something? Cause I am freaking just a little bit.” He is. He’s exhausted, and he just had sex with the President of the United States, and did he just get Monica Lewinskyed?
“Don’t,” Sawyer says. He puts a hand on John’s neck. “You’re not fired, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It is,” John says, feeling only mildly hysterical. “That, and - you know, other stuff.” He tries and totally fails not to look at Sawyer’s mouth.
“You stay,” Sawyer says, again as though he’s trying the words on for size. “Not sure why. Maybe my psychiatrist can tell me tomorrow.” He gives a dry half-smile.
“Yeah, ask them if they can recommend one for me,” John says, as Sawyer’s thumb starts stroking his throat. “I definitely, definitely need one.”
He opens his mouth when Sawyer leans in to kiss him, even so.
--
The next afternoon, after a good ten hours of beautiful, uninterrupted sleep, Carol calls to inform him that the president has requested he be permanently put on the night shift. John mashes his hand against his mouth so that he doesn’t grin like a child in the middle of his apartment.
“Yeah, okay, I can do that,” he tells Carol seriously. “Anything he wants.”