To Russia With Love
I haven't ventured in the depths of Madame Secretary fiction but I do love the show and have had this idea percolating for some time now. I hope you enjoy and if you are a follow/fan of my other stories... I am working on it. It just takes time to get the words on paper. I don't own anything and just pay my deepest respect to the creators of this incredible show.
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"Henry, what could you have possibly been thinking?" Elizabeth McCord asked her husband as she readied her side of the bed for the night. After setting aside what was the fourth decorate pillow she glared down at the offensive pillow that shimmered with golden undertones and covered a vine pattern. She found the color nauseating and the pattern would be something she found in her mother's assisted living facility, and her hatred for the inanimate object grew exponentially because she was fairly certain that her mother had the same floral print on her couch.
"When the hell did we become the people who used so many useless pillows?" She demanded rhetorically and mostly to her own silent debate that was raging in her mind. Elizabeth momentarily forgot her original line of questioning, and Henry was not going to interrupt her recent train of thought. If he was lucky, she would completely forget what she was asking. Her frustration with the pillow exploded and the poor thing was kicked across the room.
It landed with a resounded thump when it collided with the opposite wall and dropped limply to the floor. Elizabeth smiled triumphantly and turned her gaze back to her husband. "Ha.".m,b
"Did you just laugh at the pillow?" Henry asked with an eyebrow quirked on his ruggedly handsome face. He kept his voice tone light and benign as he was trying to remain cautious while he proactively worked to divert his wife's attention.
Divert...
Henry's soul flinched at the word because it sounded filthy and deceptive.
Divert...
No.
Henry McCord was not diverting his wife's attention as if he was fearful or worried about her opinion of his recently covert activities. Henry was more like distracting Elizabeth's attention from her initial line of questions. Of course it was his finest moment as a husband but it's not like he created a different topic. He was simply focusing his attention to a topic of conversation his wife started.
He was only purposefully and somewhat gently guiding Liz to remain in that direction.
Yes.
Distracting.
Henry had no qualms with distracting his wife. Hell, he had no issue with distracting any of the women in his household. Often he found himself in a disagreement or argument with Elizabeth, a heated debate or deep and differing discussion with Steven and there were literally verbal landmines that surrounded Allison. More often then not he would trigger an explosion and the best and most efficient way to extract himself from the situation would to act coy and offer a benign smile. It was his patent distraction tactic that would ultimately get the women in his family to grow frustrated, and storm away.
Sure they thought they won the war, but it was because he led them to believe it so. So yes, Henry McCord was comfortable and familiar with distracting his wife. It wasn't that difficult, especially during the past few weeks when the Cold War fell like a fog upon the Secretary of State's office. It all began when Elizabeth rejected President Dalton's request to join the upcoming presidential ticket. There was a multitude of reasons for Liz to decline his offer, but the few she offered Conrad was that she had no political aspirations and had no foundation in the world of politics besides her stint as the Secretary of State.
Her personal and real reason was she had been in the number two spot to Conrad in her work life. Her life was hell when he was the director of the C.I.A. And her direct supervisor. He was unrelenting, opinionated and callous. He had been the bane of her life and had ridiculed her when she started to put her family before the security of the United States after she turned down the station post in Tehran. Elizabeth vowed to never be his number two ever again.
So when she gave President Dalton her response, and things got awkward and tense. He pushed for the real reasons as if he could tell she was holding back. The polite conversation went from quiet probing to a raised and heated argument. Things were said by both, and it was only interrupted when Russell Jackson barged into the office. Elizabeth stormed from the office and President Dalton slamming the door. Even since a frosty hell descended on the relationship between the Secretary of State's office and the Oval Office. The once open lines of communication was now closed. Daily summarized memos stopped being sent, direct phone calls of the president's briefings were practically disconnected and the late night chats between the friendly co-workers had ended.
It was practically radio silence between the two office and the two staffs were starting to feel the strained from the effects of the Cold War. Nadine was sent to all of the meetings that required the Secretary of State's attendance that didn't require code word clearance. The secretary's deputy was happy to serve but her patience was wearing thin from the constant remarks and criticism of Elizabeth's absence. The president was openly dismissive of anything Nadine had to offer as advice or comments from the Secretary of State's opinion. Russell Jackson and Henry were also put in the middle of the two public service members. Henry's involvement was mostly a sounding board of Elizabeth's venting. Russell Jackson was forced to act as the go-between whenever the two were within the same vicinity. A new vein popped on his forward the second week of the Cold War from the stress and frustration he was under. There was a betting pool of when and where the White House Chief of Staff would finely implode.
The winner was an intern who doubled or nothing his winning bet. The site of implosion was in the situation room where the cabinet assembled to discuss a debunked misleading silo that was attacked by a rogue Islamic terrorist cell. Nothing was obtained but it did cause the United States to go into alert mode. The President and Elizabeth had been snapping and sending each other cutting remarks for nearly fifteen minutes. Each caused an interruption and delay of action. It pushed Russell over the edge.
He ordered the cabinet and joint chiefs to exit and before the door clicked shut, he rounded on the President and the Secretary of State. He yelled, bellowed and threatened their lives, the lives of their loved one and the sanity of the United States if the two couldn't pull their heads from their asses and sort out their issues.
He stormed from the room after finishing his firm and potentially illegal reprimand to the two most visual and possibly important figures in Western civilization.
"I mean, what did the pillow ever do to you?" Henry asked pushing her attention to the limp pillow laying on the floor.
"Well, it's called a throw pillow for a reason." Elizabeth rolled her eyes and ripped back the covers before taking a seat on her side of the bed. She pulled her socks of her feet and began her nightly ritual of moisturizing most of all her skin. She glanced to her husband as she took of her wedding ring and placed it in the dish next to her bed.
"I believe your decorator called them decorative accent pillows." Henry smirked and set his pillows in a pile at the bench located at the foot of the bed. He move lithely towards the en-suite bathroom to start his own nightly ritual. He was also using the room as a means to escape the questions of his curious wife. It wasn't necessarily the best idea he had concocted but surely wasn't the worst that was created. It was miles above the worst of Liz's crazy schemes she dreamt up over the twenty-five years of their marriage. He had just started to brush his teeth when the bathroom door opened and his wife appeared in the doorway.
"Are you evading the question, Professor McCord?" Elizabeth stood next to him and reached for her own toothbrush. The bathroom was large enough to accommodate a hockey team of sumo wrestlers, let alone the two occupants. It had nearly two of everything, closets, toilet rooms and sinks in the double vanity. And yet, Lizzie still continued to invade his personable space to brush her own teeth.
"You know the benefits of this bathroom is it's size." Henry commented after spitting out the remnants of tooth paste. Elizabeth looked in the direction of her own sink. It was surrounded with all of the products she used but yet remained untouched for most of the week.
Elizabeth continued to brush her teeth. She caught his reflection watching her in the mirror, and she smirked. "Wada da me way. Wada dwarn to you abalanal magestinin." Henry blanched at her comment.
"I didn't catch a thing you said." Henry chuckled and Elizabeth spit the toothpaste in the sink after running the water to cleanse the sink.
"I said, what can I say. I am drawn to your animal magnetism." She ran her toothbrush underneath the running faucet for a few moment to cleanse it. Henry smirked and stepped up behind his wife. He began to run his hands from her shoulders, down her arms and settled on her waist. Elizabeth smiled at her husband in the mirror. "I am not going to be distracted, Professor McCord. No wonder so many of your young co-eds flunk your class."
Henry scoffed with a sarcastic smirk. None of his students flunked his classes. He placed a kiss to his wife's shoulder. "What was the question?" It was time to face the music.
"I believe you know." Elizabeth said and turned in her husband's arms. She let her own hands brace on his chest before finding their own path over his shoulders and clasped behind his neck. She was met with an arched eyebrow. "You are an infuriating man."
"But I am your infuriating man." He moved closer and kissed her lightly on the lips. He tried one more distraction tactic by stroking his wife's libido. Elizabeth responded to his ministrations and allowed him to believe he was successful for seven blissful seconds before leaning back from his lip assault.
"Yes, because otherwise you would probably be some scandalous rake breaking the hearts of young women in whatever campus you were teaching." Elizabeth smirked when her husband started to blush. "Infuriating, indeed. Now, please explain to me how you thought sending your oldest daughter to spend time at the farm-"
"When did a little fresh clean air become such a terrible idea." Henry retorted and stepped away from his wife. He moved to leave the room, but Elizabeth grabbed his arm.
"Not so fast, Professor." Elizabeth snapped and propelled her husband back towards her, and moving his hands back to her hips. He squeezed lightly letting her know that he was listening. "Clean and fresh air is never a bad idea-"
"Then, why are we discussing this?" Henry pressed by interrupting his wife's train of thought and accusation that was waiting on the tip of her tongue. Elizabeth affixed her husband with a calculating eye. "Sorry, for the interruption."
"Thanks." Elizabeth smiled at her husband's ability to read her mind and needing an apology. "What I was saying is that fresh and clean air wasn't a terrible idea. But sending your daughter to the farm where a recuperating Russian refugee was spending his time recovering might not be the best idea. Especially when your daughter is suffering from a wounded and broken heart."
Henry shrugged, "I felt they both might needs friends because they are both in a same kind of stases ."
"Do you use big words on purpose to provoke me?" Elizabeth glared at her husband.
"You consider stases a big word?" Henry asked his wife. She pushed him away and moved back to the bedroom with Henry quick on her heals.
"Stases. Just admit it, you secretly want to recreate From Russia with Love." She accused halfway across the bedroom.
She slid into her side of the bed, and pulled the flat sheet over her body. Henry followed her motions. "From Russia with Love? You think I sent Stevie to the farm to fall in love with Dimitri?
"I don't know, Yenta, did you?" Elizabeth asked as she turned on her side to face Henry who was laying on his back and staring at the ceiling. She reached out to take his hand and smiled as their fingers threaded into the other. He looked down and gave her a quick boyish smile.
"I would make a bad-ass Yenta." Henry chuckled and brought her hand to his lips. "The answer is no."
"No?"
"No, to creating From Russia with Love." Henry explained. "I felt that each are suffering from loss of love, abandonment and each having trust issues."
"But Stevie was the one to break if off with Gareth."
"Jareth." Henry corrected his wife's name blunder.
"Right, Jareth." Elizabeth recovered, "She broke it off with him. I don't understand why she is moping about the house. She encouraged him to go back to England."
"Well according to Jason-"
"You pumped Jason for information regarding Stevie's breakup?" Elizabeth accused her husband.
"Of course, I know it is not my finest parenting moment-
"No, it is completely alright, I had to bribe Alison with concert tickets to get the down low about Stevie." Elizabeth confessed. The tickets were for Adele, and Alison had bartered for four tickets but ended only receiving three. Allie just didnt' know that it was really two because one ticket was going to be either herself, Henry or Blake to accompany to the show.
"We are truly winning parents of the year award." Henry laughed. "Anyway, Jason told me that Jareth had already moved on with an old flame. I guess she is a looker."
"A looker, our son described our daughter's ex-fiancé's new girlfriend as a looker?" Elizabeth stressed. "When did he go from being our conspiracy theorist to the epitome of a teenage boy. What did he mean by looker? Does that mean she is extremely attractive, or just average."
"I would assume the first option, but he continued to rate her as a 9.3 out of ten. I guess she has big-"
"Okay, I get it." Elizabeth muttered to silence her husband. She would be having a conversation with her youngest and his callous ways of treating women. It had to be that damn public school where he was picking up his disgusting new traits of treating women like pieces of meat. "But back to Stevie. Do you really think sending her to spend time with a Russian refugee the best idea? He is barely able to speak let alone who knows how he will react to a stranger."
"I think it is a great idea." Henry responded. "They both are dealing with something hard at the moment, and until we can get Dimitri's sister from Europe, a new friend that he can build a trust with could be exactly what Dimitri needs to fully recover from his suffering."
Elizabeth moved forward and planted a kiss to her husband cheek. "But if they happen to find love, you totally are going to gloat, aren't you."
Henry let a confident and cocky smirk cross his face. "Of course, then at their wedding I could quote James Bond."
Elizabeth let out a breathy chuckle and turned way from her husband to switch off the bedside lamp. He followed suit and turned of his own lamp. They laid in silence for a few minutes waiting for the inevitable pull of sleep to win the nightly battle with their mind.
"Henry."
"Hmm?"
"How awkward would it be if Jareth's new side piece turned out to be Dimitri's younger sister." Elizabeth felt the disbelief radiate from Henry's slumbering form. He groaned and a giggle escaped Elizabeth's mouth.
"Good night Elizabeth."
"Good night."
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Holy wow... These two are incredibly entertaining to write and it just flew out of my mind. I truly hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Ema