Disclaimer: I don't own Madam Secretary.
Hey, guys! I think I'm addicted to writing for this fandom now. It's so much fun. Anyway, this one is shaping up to be three or four (probably) chapters of mostly fluff with a side of plot. Or plot with a side of fluff. One or the other. Hope you enjoy and please do let me know what you think :)
Chapter One
The argument had been the first thing.
A stupid argument, really, one that they didn't need to have but did because she had been in a rush and hadn't had her mind completely on the conversation with Henry and so it had taken her longer than normal to realise that what she had said might not have come across all that well.
It was the President's fault. That was what she told herself as her husband had turned his back on her and disappeared off up the stairs, citing the need to get ready for work but, she knew, really trying to avoid saying something that might escalate the small argument into a full blown row.
Conrad had recently got himself on a governmental transparency drive, a hasty response to some debacle involving the investment portfolio of the Secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the consequence of which was a meeting with Russell Jackson in which he suggested that Elizabeth might want to consider releasing her back catalogue of personal tax returns in the interests of accountability. He had, at least, seemed more than a tiny bit embarrassed to be asking.
She had left the man without an answer, feeling that the long hard stare she gave him was response enough and unsure what she actually thought she should do about the matter, but confident that Conrad would, at some point in the intermediate future after both he and the media had calmed down, drop it.
The error had been telling Henry about the conversation. Her husband had reminded her over the breakfast table that there was an appointment with their accountant that afternoon, and she hadn't helped the groundwork by admitting that it was likely he was going to have to go by himself thanks to her need to be at a formal reception for the Prince of Somewhere-or-Other-with-a-Desert, which had helpfully been scheduled for the same time.
Then she had casually remarked, "The President wants us to release our tax returns."
It hadn't been the best phrasing, but it had only been a comment, not acquiescence, not an agreement with the request. Naturally, Henry had taken it slightly differently and the three seconds it had taken her to catch up with his thought process were three seconds he had spent curating his annoyance and then things had erupted slightly, and Henry still hadn't quite cooled down despite Elizabeth's insistence that she wasn't agreeing with the President and certainly wasn't suggesting they should go along with it, definitely not without Henry's agreement.
So the argument hadn't helped, but it was easily fixable, especially as by now Russell would no doubt have talked Conrad down from his summit of panic over the HUD scandal, and smoothing things over with Henry was top of Elizabeth's agenda as soon as she got home that evening.
If it had only been the argument.
She was already on edge when she arrived at the office, and from the looks on the faces of her staff during their daily elevator ambush, she guessed that something was going down.
It was.
A security incident outside the French embassy in D.C., apparently, and the ambassador was already in her office and somehow – somehow – one thing led to another and the morning ended with the ambassador storming angrily back out of her office and thirty minutes later there was a phone call from the President, demanding to know exactly what had happened, and apparently Russell hadn't yet got around to talking him down off any of the ledges he currently found himself on, because there had definitely been some yelling and it was clear that she wasn't in the good books.
She had fixed it, though. Her staff had rallied round and earned their wages, and she had called the ambassador back to her office and swallowed her pride (and a couple of aspirin) and fixed the mess.
By the time she was done it was already mid-afternoon and she hadn't looked at her emails once.
If it had only been the argument and the French ambassador.
She just wasn't able to deal with any more problems right then. She had just needed fifteen minutes to eat her salad and read her emails and sit quietly in her office on her own.
If it had only been the argument and the French ambassador, she might have been able to keep it together.
Look at it the other way – if it hadn't been for them, she might have been able to keep it together then too. Same difference.
Elizabeth was slumped down low in her chair, her half-eaten salad in front of her, scrolling through her pages of emails. There were more of them than normal, and it was only then that she remembered that Blake wasn't in the office. He'd had to go to a family funeral, and she had insisted that he take the full day despite his protests. He would normally have been through her email inbox before her, to rid it of the junk and clutter and the things that could be farmed out.
And the crazies.
She was aware that, from time to time (quite often, in fact, and despite her good approval ratings), she received hate mail. She had figured out early on in her career as Secretary of State that the best thing for her sanity was not to Google her name or read the replies to the State Department Twitter feed, and she had always been grateful that Blake and the Diplomatic Security guys intercepted most of the rest of it before it came her way.
Most of it wasn't credible, was just pissed off people blowing off some steam in an email or making idle threats in a letter, but still. It was just better not to know.
Just part of the job.
The email in her inbox had seemed at first like it might actually be something relevant or at least inoffensively banal. Entitled Foreign Policy Review, it had been sent by someone called Roger Norris. Unfamiliar name, but that didn't mean anything. So she had clicked on it, and then she had read it, and if it had only been the argument and the French ambassador she would have been fine, just a regular bad day, but the email on top of it all was just too much.
Dear Elizabeth, it started, like the guy knew her.
Then he had laid out, in exacting and tormenting well-written detail, exactly what he thought of her and exactly what he would like to do to her to end her life. Faithfully yours, Roger.
As if he knew her.
On a normal day, she would have brushed it off and paid it all of the attention it deserved – basically none. On a normal day, she wouldn't even have read it because Blake would have forwarded it to security to look into and then made it disappear before she could happen across it, and that would likely have been the last any of them ever heard about it again.
But the argument and the French ambassador and the fact it was three o'clock and she still hadn't eaten her lunch just made it too much. He wants to kill me.
Elizabeth felt her pulse tick up a gear, recognised the hum in her veins that indicated anxiety, and thought that suddenly her office wasn't big enough. She felt enclosed, like she wanted to get out.
Like she wanted a hug from Henry. She felt claustrophobic, but being close to him would be OK. That would help.
She hastily forwarded the email to the security guys before clicking out of her email inbox, like that would make her stop thinking about it, like it would make the message go away. Stop Roger Norris from wanting to kill her.
She stood, pushing the abandoned salad away and turning to look for her briefcase. She could make it. If she left now, she might just catch Henry before he went to see the accountant and then she could still get back to work in time for the reception for the Prince.
Russell Jackson appeared in the doorway.
Of course.
"We need to talk about the HUD thing," he said by way of introduction, shutting the door behind him and taking a seat in one of the visitor chairs without asking if it was a good time, or why she had been in the middle of pulling on her coat when he arrived.
OK, then. At least Russell would be a good distraction from the angry citizen who wanted her dead.
It turned out that Russell actually was a good distraction, because somehow by the time he eventually left her office, two hours had passed and it was time to go the reception for the Prince of Somewhere Hot, and Elizabeth was so caught up in making it there on time that she didn't even think about the death threat until she had made her speech and shaken everyone's hand and was working on inhaling her second plate of canapes without getting snapped mid-blini by a photographer.
She was alone for a moment, standing at the edge of the crowded room, watching the guests as they talked and ate and drank the cheap wine that the State Department bought out for mid-level official events such as this. She was fine.
But then, from nowhere, she thought: A man called Roger Norris wants to kill me.
The anxious thrum made itself known to her once more, sending her slightly light-headed. The man could be in the room. Her eyes darted across all of the guests as she wondered if he could be one of them.
No. Don't be stupid. He wasn't at the reception, because if he was, security would have seen her forwarded email and hustled in to remove him by now.
He probably lived in Nebraska. The thought made her chuckle to herself.
"Ma'am, is everything OK?"
Nadine.
Her chief of staff materialised at her side from seemingly nowhere and was looking at her with a vaguely concerned expression. Elizabeth realised she was laughing to herself and probably looking a bit twitchy.
She felt a bit twitchy. She pressed her hand to her chest, hoping it would calm her racing heart. "How long do we need to stay?" she said, aware that Nadine had caught her movement and had undoubtedly also caught the slightly breathless quality to her voice.
Nadine smiled calmly, reaching out to take the plate from Elizabeth's other hand and placing it down on the table behind them. "It's perfectly all right to leave now," she said, like she understood, walking them over to where the Prince was standing with his wife and some of the invited guests. "Fake smiles, now."
Elizabeth did the thirty seconds of formalities with the Prince, shaking his hand and telling him how glad she was to be working together. Then she let Nadine make their excuses before they left, glad that while her chief of staff might be more aware than Elizabeth was at times comfortable with, she could always be relied upon for her discretion.
"Thanks," she said to Nadine as they waited for the security detail to bring her car around.
"Anything I can help with?" Nadine asked tactfully.
The car pulled up and Elizabeth headed towards it, sparing a brief smile for the agent who held open the door for her. She glanced back at Nadine. "No. Thank you."
She just wanted to go home and see Henry. Then she might be able to breathe again.