"Seriously, could it be any hotter right now?" Elizabeth McCord pushed up the sleeves of her old UVA t-shirt for the seventh time in as many minutes. The humidity was stifling, the muggy air blanketing the District, a million air conditioning units pumping fruitlessly, unable to keep up against the thick summer heat.
Her husband flopped down on the bed beside her. "You may have mentioned that a few times. Want to play a game?"
"No," she groaned, "I want to lay here and whine at you. Or go do something—something bigger than a board game. I feel…," she paused for a minute before the descriptor came to her, "stagnant, and this humidity is not helping."
"Why Elizabeth, I do believe this is the first time since you started as Secretary that you've actually had time to be bored! Forgot how that feels, have we?" It was true. It was an unusually slow week: China and Russia were behaving, terrorist cells were quiet, and the only horrible thing Nature seemed to be up to was producing a doldrums effect over DC.
"Ugh, yes," Elizabeth elbowed Henry next to her. They stared at the ceiling for a second, before the brainstorming started. "We should go do something. Something out of this house. Something different. Come on, Henry, think." She rolled over on her side, poking his ribs.
Henry preferred to take his heat waves in stillness, maybe enjoying some extra sleep or some time to read, but he knew that when Elizabeth got in one of her moods, she was unappeased by the suggestion of more naps. "How about we go for ice cream?"
Always a surefire suggestion. "Okay, good. But then we have to deal with security, and traffic, and that black SUV—why does it always have to be black? Why can't the secret service buy yellow ones, just to mix it up a bit?"
Henry chuckled at his wife's rant. "I think the idea is to be inconspicuous, babe."
"Yeah, well, it's boring as hell." She was still for a moment before whipping her head around at him. "Henry, I've got it. We should go get ice cream….without security." Her eyes gleamed.
This was one of Henry's favorite versions of Elizabeth, when she had an idea sprouting faster than she could even articulate, eyes flashing and a mischievous grin taking over her countenance. All suggestion of staying in for the evening was gone—he was totally entranced, completely hers. He flashed back to one of his favorite memories of college, when she was in the dorms still and he was living off campus, and she had had another insatiable urge for adventure. Her dorm had a weeknight curfew of 10 o'clock, and Elizabeth's particularly astringent resident advisor always seemed to do room check on the nights that he and Elizabeth planned dates that ran long. One night, Elizabeth had stayed in her room through room check, and then climbed out her window to meet Henry outside. He could still hear her shrieks of laughter as they pelted across the dorm lawn, him shushing her as they ducked under trees and the RA's window to get to his car across the parking lot. They had gone out for ice cream then, too, preferring the shop near the park to the one closer to the university. He grinned at the memory of them laying under the window of her dorm room till dawn when they got back and realized that she had been locked out, her roommate already passed out for the night. Their clothes had been damp from laying in the grass, but as they laid there into the dawn, Elizabeth dozing with his arm as a pillow, Henry remembered thinking, Yeah, this could definitely work.
"There's just one problem, babe. They're not going to let us go without them."
"That's why we're sneaking out." By this point she had crawled over him, hands planted on either side of his head on the bed. She leaned closer, kissing his cheek and behind his ear. "Heennnnrrrryyy…you know you want to. Come on, let's do it. It'll be like college." Apparently Henry hadn't been the only one to call up the old memory.
Call him a sucker for nostalgia, but she had him. "Okay, but babe, we have to be sneaky. We're not dealing with your RA this time. These people could potentially shoot us."
She had already rolled off of him and was madly digging through the closet for her sneakers. "That's part of the fun, hello. Here, take your shoes." She chunked his shoes at him, already wrestling her second one on her foot while she barely managed to balance on the other.
Shod and a little antsy, the pair made it downstairs, checking in on the kids' rooms on the way out. Crouched by the window to the back yard, they hatched their game plan. They would wait till shift change in thirteen minutes. Each night there was a brief conference at the SUV out front so evening shift could brief the graveyard guards, and so the backyard would be momentarily clear. They had already disabled the house alarm and just had to wait, which, keyed up as they were, was not an easy task. It had been quite a while since they got out of the house just the two of them, and they were both excited for the little bit of normalcy, for a short glimpse of their old lives, some momentary freedom.
Finally eleven o'clock arrived, and Elizabeth opened the window as soon as the two backyard agents crossed the yard to the front. She already had one foot out the window by the time she heard Henry's whispered "Go," and he followed after her, hands pushing her out by her hips. What they neglected to remember, however, was how high the window was off the back grass, and so they landed loudly below them, an ungraceful heap of limbs and grass stains.
"Did you hear that?" asked Sarah, the lead graveyard shift agent. Elizabeth began to giggle uncontrollably, and even Henry's hand over her mouth barely hushed the sound.
"How old are you?" He asked, trying not to laugh himself. Sarah walked back toward the backyard, and Elizabeth launched herself at Henry so they were hidden behind the bushes. With one last look at the backyard, Sarah headed back to the SUVs, giving the pair time to bolt across the yard to the side gate and sneak out, Henry almost tripping over Elizabeth as they laugh-lurch-ran away from the house.
Halfway down the street, Elizabeth and Henry slowed down, panting and laughing still, bumping into each other affectionately. It had been a long time since they really got to have some fun on their own, and they planned to enjoy every second of it. The breeze had picked up with their mood, like the universe had conspired along with them, and soon enough they could see the bright pink of the ice cream shop sign.
As they sat eating their ice cream, Elizabeth could feel herself relax, like her soul was releasing a breath she didn't realize she was holding. Time with Henry always had that effect on her—grounded her, made her human—but she didn't realize it had been in such short supply until he commented with a grin of his own, "You look good, babe. Ice cream parlor fluorescent suits you."
Elizabeth blushed but nodded back at him. "I miss this. I miss us, just us, not the 'us' surrounded by a million people all the time. I miss being just Henry and Liz, nobodies." She paused, piecing together her thoughts. "You've always been home for me, Henry," she said earnestly, leaning across the table, her wide smile replaced by a softer one, "but lately I've realized that you're really all I need to be home. All of this Secretary of State stuff, the attention and the galas and the constant movement—I don't need it. And I'm not going to miss it when I'm through. It's this that I miss. Having ice cream with you, without security. Going to the beach with the kids, and not having to worry about the press, or what will be printed about my choice of beach attire or sunblock brand or whatever ridiculous thing they notice. I've learned a lot, working with Conrad again, and some of it has been an absolute blast, but this is who I am. Yours."
Henry met her across the table to kiss her. "Let's go home, babe." He said softly. He opened the door for her and grabbed her hand, and they strolled slowly back towards the house, enjoying the peace that the darkness of the night afforded them. As they neared the gate to the back yard, Elizabeth held a hand on his arm to stop him.
"Wait, one more minute, please." She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, savoring one last bit of quiet, and then stepped back away. "Okay, I'm ready now. We can head in." With a kiss to her forehead Henry motioned her on, pulling the side gate shut behind them.
"Good evening, Sarah," Henry smiled at the agent as they walked toward the front door, Elizabeth half-snorting into the house at Sarah's startled reaction to the Secretary and her husband, who, by Sarah's account, had been inside the house the whole evening.
The agent swallowed her abject confusion in time to answer. "Good night sir, Madam Secretary."
The next morning Elizabeth opened her inbox to find one new email from the head of her security detail.
Dear Madam Secretary,
The next time you find yourself craving ice cream, please allow your security detail to drive you to the restaurant.
Sincerely,
Frank Reynolds
Elizabeth grinned to herself, sending a screenshot to Henry. Best date ever.