The Gallows Used to Clank
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rating: G
Summary: These are moments only.

•

When she first meets him, she sees a man who owns his fate. He keeps his eyes on her as if she's going to attack suddenly.

Later, their world has continued to fall without her being told, and she realizes he was right to eye her so warily. His name is William, she wants to unbutton his top two buttons, and it's a bad idea.

-

She has control everywhere except where she wants it. There are days when her feet are sore and she wishes so badly to be home, but wars never end, and there is nowhere else for her to go.

-

"There's a dangerous lack of morals in that man," she says, adjusting her blouse, as if she wasn't dying before everyone's eyes. "He gives me a headache."

"Tom Zarek?" he asks, half-jokingly.

"Him, too."

-

She loves his voice, and finds comfort in the way it's never smooth, even when he whispers. His diction digs at her, circling low on her waist and urging at her fingertips. Their species is on the verge of extinction and sometimes it's enough that his words can make her teeth rattle.

-

She glances at him over a handful of reports.

He makes her cancer seem predictable.

-

She wants to see the scar on his chest. She wants to feel the puckered skin underneath her fingers to remind herself.

(He's alive and doing fine, and she is, too.)

At one sudden point, they will come still.

-

He holds her hand, aware that words are never specific enough. When she jokes about her hair color, he holds it even tighter, and remembers very slowly that she is dying.

As he leaves, tears in his eyes attempt to tell him something, and he wishes he could make a place for it to happen. He spends the rest of the night in his quarters, reading about characters that actually know what they're fighting for, and about stories that don't end.

-

She's never fallen in love.
She's never been in love.

Not even now.
Not even with him.

To fall implies something is happening or will happen. She already loves him and has added it to the list of things she knows but doesn't acknowledge.

-

When he kisses her he tries to etch the feeling into his bones. It's then that he knows it's too late.

-

As she wraps her fingers around his arm for support (even though the cancer is long gone), the expression on his face turns raspy like his words, and she can't help but to think she's been here before.

He says, "Madame President," with his eyebrow nearly giving him away.

She shares his shadow.(They have both been here before.)

-

Occasionally, she will dig her toes into his carpet while they share silences. Her eyes roam over his books as she sinks into a seat. He tells her about things in short clipped sentences, sometimes smiling, though she's not sure why and doesn't care to ask.

"It's late." He pauses thoughtfully. "You should be getting back."

Her seat is warm and she's comfortable. But there are different types of comfort, and someday before she dies for good, she'd like to wake up with his mouth between her shoulder blades or anywhere else she can't reach.

"I'm a grown woman," she tells him. "And President."

"Are you trying to intimidate me?" he asks.

"No." He tilts his head. "Not now," she confesses. "I'm well aware of what time it is."

He nods and stands up from his seat. "It's late."

She shakes the hair out of her eyes. "It's not that late," she says and smiles.

He takes a seat next to her and waits for a decision to be made. Five minutes go by and he's not one for inaction, but the choice is hers, and he will sit until—

Suddenly she leans her forehead against his shoulder and rewrites every rule he was sure could not be forgotten.