A/N: Hello readers! So, after the success of my last fic (Saving Grace in the Avengers/Thor genre), I decided it was time to try something new. This time, you've got Eli Gold meeting up with Rafael Barba in an epic political drama with a few romantic twists and turns for both of them. Plus, you get Eli's daughter, a little bit of SVU, and maybe even some Alicia Florrick! What more could you want? Thanks for playing along - and thanks for leaving reviews (hint!). Enjoy!
Song: Feelin' Good by Michael Buble
"Have you COMPLETELY lost your goddamn mind, or were you always this stupid and I just never noticed?" Eli Gold was never one to mince words, especially when dealing with political campaign managers. Right now, the campaign manager on the receiving end of Eli's verbal assault was Johnny Elfman, the co-manager of Alicia Florrick's campaign for Illinois State's Attorney in 2014. He was now running former Governor Peter Florrick's U.S. Senate campaign, and Eli had just watched a taped practice run of Peter's first debate against his opponent. He was aghast and had called Johnny in a rage.
Running his hand through his increasingly gray hair, which fell immediately back over his forehead, he paced the hallway from the master bedroom to the living room and back. "Goddamnit, Johnny, didn't you learn anything from Alicia's campaign? If you try to play the nice guy, Sherman is gonna walk all over you. And Peter is at his best when he's a dick. Let him get angry!"
"Peter will look like a bully if he goes after Tommy Sherman. He's an Iraq war veteran and a single amputee, even if Sherman is getting a bit personal in his campaigning. How's that going to look, especially in a debate, where Sherman can play the victim even more convincingly?"
But Eli was insistent. It wasn't that Johnny wasn't smart - in fact, that was why Eli was getting so frustrated. Johnny knew better than this but was playing it safe.
"Look, do you remember when Peter ran against Maddie Hayward in the Democratic primary his first Gubernatorial bid? Well, when I was temporarily…" He paused and gritted his teeth. "…indisposed, the schmuck who replaced me told him to go soft on her to avoid looking like a meanie who pushed around girls. You know what almost happened? He almost LOST! The minute he took my advice and went after her hard - not even personally, just on her bullshit policies - the polls turned and we won."
In short, Eli thought, you're good, but I'm the fucking best.
"The fact is that when you go soft on candidates like this, the public only sees them as sympathetic. His proposed policies on taxes and gay rights are bullshit. You know it, I know it, Peter knows it, and the public knows it, but they need to be assured by people they think are smarter than they are. Peter can't back off the liberal vote, not after hitting so hard on those issues as Governor." He leaned his head back against the wall, resisting the urge to bang it.
"Okay, but should we push the personal?"
Eli spat daggers through the phone.
"Of course we should push the personal, you idiot! We pushed it with Frank Prady in Alicia's campaign. If this guy is bringing it back to Peter's indiscretions ten fucking years ago, we push back. It doesn't matter if the guy's a quadruple amputee with a lisp who adopts puppies in his spare time. There is shit somewhere, Johnny. GO FIND IT. And don't call me back until you do."
Eli hung up the phone in a huff. He missed the days of landlines; a slam of the receiver would have been so much more cathartic. Tossing his phone on the sofa, he wandered toward the large windows of his living room and stared out at the skyline. The midday sun bounced between the rooftops, and he could see it reflecting off of the East River in the distance. It was beautiful, but to him, cities always seemed like one another, their buildings rising and falling in the same patterns, some classic marble, some modern steel. Even the people - you could have plucked them from the streets of New York City and deposited them on the L in Chicago and they would look, act, and talk the same way. Then again, the only way Eli had regarded people in recent years was demographical.
He walked into the kitchen where his laptop sat open on the counter and refreshed his inbox. Endless emails were still marked unopened, and yet he had no urge to read any of them. They were all inquiries from various politicians and their staffers, all asking for his services as a campaign consultant. He didn't even have to look at the emails to know what each of the requests would be, but he opened one anyway.
Dear Mr. Gold,
I am writing to request your advice about the recent events surrounding my son's arrest for cocaine possession while in Las Vegas. You must be aware that my stance on drug possession and distribution has been quite clear and conservative during my career. As you can imagine, this turn of events presents a significant problem for the perception my constituents may have of me in the upcoming re-election campaign…
Eli rolled his eyes. Delete. He hesitated, but opened another.
Good Afternoon, Mr. Gold:
As you may have read in or heard on the news, I have recently been accused of possession of child pornography...
Are you fucking kidding me? Even he had standards.
At the end of the day, it didn't matter. Different specifics, same endgame: getting elected or re-elected.
His phone rang again, muffled by the cushions of the sofa between which it had fallen. He assumed it was Johnny again, so didn't rush to answer it. He'd left Chicago six months earlier, and even now felt like he couldn't escape. The only difference was now he didn't have an office, instead working out of his Upper East Side apartment. After spending four years as Peter's Chief of Staff, he now wanted to rebuild his client base in crisis management. He had only agreed to aid Johnny in Peter's senatorial campaign because Peter had requested he do so, but it was taking up the majority of his days.
The phone stopped ringing. He let out a relieved breath, thinking it had gone to voicemail, but almost immediately, it started again. Can a phone sound angry? he wondered. Sighing, he walked to the sofa and fished out the phone.
"Did I stutter when I said don't call me back until you had something?" There was a pause, then a familiar snort.
"No, but if you've recently picked up a stuttering habit, I would love to hear it firsthand."
His daughter, Marissa, was the reason he had moved to New York City to begin with. Marissa had been Alicia's handler (though Marissa preferred the word "assistant") during Alicia's campaign. At first, he had given her the job to get her away from him while he was working. He loved her, of course, but thought she was wasting her time, and his, hanging around the Governor' Office. But during the campaign, he realized two things: she was actually really good at her job, and how much time he'd missed with her as a result of his own. Then, when she moved to New York City to pursue what she called "a fresh start," he realized he missed having her around. So he followed suit. Besides, he figured, he'd been in Chicago all his life. Call it a midlife crisis; it was time for a change.
"Oh. It's you."
"Well, don't sound so thrilled," Marissa said. "I'm just calling to make sure you're still planning on coming down here for dinner. I realize you've got to tear yourself away from your… what is it you do again?"
Eli stiffened. His daughter had inherited her mother's dark features and small stature, but his big mouth and dry humor. Sometimes he appreciated it. Others, it only reminded him of why most people hated him.
"Yes, I will be there at…" He checked his watch. "It's 4:30 now. I'll be there in half an hour. Your boss going to care that you're leaving early on a Friday?" As he talked, he wandered through his living room, searching for his wallet and keys among the boxes stacked on the kitchen counter. A self-described neat freak, the disorganization of his apartment was the stuff of his nightmares, but he just hadn't had the time or inclination to unpack completely. Admittedly, the problem was more inclination than time. Once he got a few clients and really put down roots, he would make the place more like a home.
"Nah," Marissa replied. "He won't care. Court's in recess until tomorrow, so he's probably going to bury his head in closing argument preparation until the end of time."
"All right," he said, finally finding his keys and wallet tossed in an open box on top of the still unused stove. He momentarily considered how they got there, and then shook his head. "I'm walking out the door now. Be there soon." His front door slamming behind him, he barely caught the elevator as it was closing.
"Don't bring your gun, there are metal detectors here," she said breezily, hanging up before Eli could respond. No matter how many times he had warned her that the government monitored everyone's phones - and he had learned that several times personally - she never seemed to think about that probability. It was a wonder she'd passed the background check for her job. Secretly, and with no small amount of shame, he had wondered what qualified her for the position at all. Then again, of the two of them, she was the one with a job.
"Jesus Christ, you people live in soup," he said to no one in particular as he exited the air-conditioned lobby into the humid summer air. One would think being an island would result in a fresh breeze flowing into to the city, but one would be wrong. What little wind there was just caused the smell of sweat and garbage to blow through the streets just a little bit faster.
Standing outside of his apartment complex, waiting for his private car to arrive, Eli turned to stare up at his building. It looked the same as all the buildings in which he'd lived in Chicago - impossibly tall, gleaming glass and shining iron, sleek and new. In other words, nothing that should have been intimidating at all. But as the black sedan pulled up to the curb and he turned his gaze back to the street, the feeling of being extraordinarily small washed over him in a wave.
"Rafael Barba's office, how can I help you?" Marissa spun around in her chair as a very grouchy woman immediately began complaining about a plea deal that apparently hadn't been negotiated to her liking. Zoning out for a minute, Marissa stared out the window at the park next to their office. The grass was green, but not nearly so green as Israel's many gardens, where she had spent many days while living in the kibbutz.
Her father hadn't wanted her to go at first, despite having been the reason she was such a devoted Jew in the first place. She never quite understood why, other than his excuse that she needed to go to college. When she shot back that he went to college and hadn't used the degree he'd earned in twenty years, he relented. She stayed in Israel on the kibbutz for two years, living in the Judean Hills; she had learned how to farm, harvesting cherries, grapes, and apples from the fields. She helped care for the elderly residents in the nursing facility as one of her mitzvahs, and came to view many of them as surrogate grandparents. What she'd loved most was working on the animal farm, which was built in memory of an Israel Defense Force soldier killed in Gaza who had been dedicated to the environment and animal protection in particular. Like Marissa, he had been an American Jew who had felt the calling to his religious homeland.
When she came back, she had started hanging around the Governor's Office in Springfield while trying to figure out her next move. While she had never paid much attention to her father's career in crisis management, she found his role as Chief of Staff surprisingly interesting and almost easy to understand. She had been in the Education Division of the IDF, and found that her dad's job wasn't that different from hers. She was in charge of educating the new recruits on the IDF's goals, making sure they always knew the endgame: promoting and protecting Israel as a sovereign nation. Likewise, her father was in charge of making sure everyone in any campaign he was running kept their mind on the endgame: getting the candidate elected and making sure no one undermined that goal. And, as Chief of Staff, he had an even bigger job: making sure no one undermined the goals of the Governor's Office… including the Governor himself.
Apparently her father had some kind of confidence in her, because he assigned her to Alicia Florrick's campaign staff when she decided to run for State's Attorney. Marissa didn't think that had worked out entirely the way Eli had hoped; he wanted a fluffer, and she was outspoken and didn't toe the campaign line the way he might have liked. She tried to tell Alicia what she needed to hear, when she needed to hear it, the same way Eli did, which Alicia seemed to respect.
The experience she'd gained while working with him on Alicia's campaign had been invaluable, but after that election, she'd become burned out on politics and wanted a change of scenery. Through a connection Alicia had from Georgetown, had gotten the job in the D.A.'s office in New York City. So she moved to New York a year and a half ago, her father following suit six months ago, partially to her chagrin. It wasn't that she didn't love her father; it was more that she wanted a clean break from politics, and that was what he represented now.
She was learning a lot, and it was nice to have a normal nine-to-five job, but the people she left behind at the kibbutz would never believe her life now. She had gone from farmland to filing cabinets.
A fleeting thought of asking for a field trip crossed her mind.
She realized the voice on the other end of the line had gone silent. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but he's actually walking out the door to court right now, so I'll have to put you into his voicemail, I'm sure you're at the top of his list, bye now!" She said it all in one breath and clicked the voicemail transfer button before the attorney could get another word out. Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba was not walking out the door to Court at that moment, however. In fact, he likely wasn't planning to leave his office for the remainder of the evening. His door, just a few feet away from her desk, was open just barely a crack. The only sound emerging was the errant sound of keyboard taps - furious for a minute, and then nothing for two or three more. Usually she would have Spotify going on her computer, piano rock popping in the background to pass the time, but usually, her boss wasn't in the office on a Friday afternoon working on a well-publicized and challenging case.
So, the office was silent… until she heard an approaching voice, having a one-sided conversation on its way.
"No, no, no, no, NO! Do NOT cancel the speech at the Illinois EPA!" Her father marched into the small office, stopping halfway in the door to spin nearly in a complete circle in frustration. "The tree huggers are fucking nuts, you know that. Besides, the Republicans don't get to play the environmentalist card - that's our game. Do not cancel that speech!"
Marissa shot up from her chair, intending to shut Barba's door, momentarily debating just throwing her stapler at her father for his complete obliviousness. As she rose, however, Eli hung up his phone and plastered a smile on his face as if this were an episode of Leave it to Beaver. "Hi, honey."
She raised her eyebrows and looked around the room as if to say, "Uh, HELLO?" Eli looked around with her. "What? What am I missing?"
"Dad!" Marissa jerked her head toward the door to Eli's left, hissing between clenched teeth. "Shut up and let's-"
Suddenly, a cool, confident voice from behind the door cut Marissa's sentence in half.
"You're kidding. No, really, this must be the punchline to a joke you forgot to tell." A hint of sarcasm hung from the end of the sentence.
There was a pause, and then: "I have no intention of granting you a continuance this late in the game. This is an attempt to buy time to convince your client to take the plea that I am no longer offering, so you might as well put your well-known bluster into your closing arguments rather than wasting it on the phone with me. Your client will be better served."
Eli raised an eyebrow at Marissa. "Your boss?"
Marissa nodded, her mouth slightly agape as she stared in the direction of the third voice. "He's pissed."
"THAT'S pissed?" He had never heard someone sound so measured while pissed off.
"Not everyone chooses to throw books, kick chairs, and yell at their Noras when they're pissed off, Dad." Eli sucked in his cheeks.
"...No, Mr. Buchanan. We're prepared to proceed, and given that this case has gone on for a year and a half and we're at closing arguments, I see no reason to agree to this sham you've proposed. No plea. Enjoy your weekend." A click of the receiver and Eli could have sworn he heard a Spanish curse word shortly after that. Marissa also swore under her breath, but in very clear English.
"I guess I should go tell him I'm going. Should probably also ask if he wants anything ordered in before I go. The man can eat, especially under stress." Eli gave a curt nod and started reading emails on his phone while Marissa crossed the room and was about to knock on the door just as it opened. She jumped backward, startled, and Eli's head snapped up.
Standing in the doorway of his office was a short-statured yet obviously high-powered, vaguely Latino man. He was wearing a sky blue collared shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his arms, a pink silk tie with small black polka dots, and, though Eli couldn't believe he was seeing this in the 21st century, navy blue suspenders. His dark hair was neatly combed to the side, and his clean-shaven face made him look like he couldn't be older than thirty-five, though Eli knew from Marissa that he was nearly ten years older. Eli thought he looked like what you might get if you threw a Boy Scout and Frank Sinatra into a blender. His watery, red-rimmed green eyes darted from Marissa to Eli and back, and he cleared his throat.
"Are you leaving?" His voice was sharp, almost accusatory. Marissa hesitated before answering, a rare thing. Her boss's expression softened slightly. "It was rhetorical. I assume you're leaving for the day. I didn't mean to sound… like a prosecutor." He rubbed his forehead. Eli thought he looked like he had been working for three days straight without a nap. Not unlike what he looked like after a campaign.
Marissa visibly relaxed. Then, there was an awkward silence, as Eli and Suspender Man regarded each other like two businessmen sizing each other up. Suddenly, Marissa snapped to attention. "Oh, crap, sorry! Dad, this is my boss, ADA Rafael Barba. Mr. Barba, this is my Dad, Eli Gold."
"Actually," Eli said, stepping forward, "that's 'Eli Gold, Former Chief of Staff to Governor Peter Florrick.' I have a title too." He put on his most engaging smile, and Marissa rolled her eyes just enough so that Eli could see but Rafael couldn't.
"It's not the title, it's how you use it, right?" Rafael said. Eli laughed, extending his hand for Rafael's. As Rafael returned the gesture, Eli couldn't stop himself noticing that his grip was firm, strong, and reassuring.
It occurred to him, despite his better judgment, that Rafael Barba, Boy Scout Frank Sinatra, had the perfect politician's handshake.
