Request for Nadine and Mike for the prompt: "If you don't want to talk about it then say so. Don't lie and pretend to be fine when you clearly aren't."

Post-4.02, but not canon compliant.

Mike sat up in bed, his bedside lamp turned on as he reviewed a stack of Treasury dossiers. Nadine was fast asleep next to him, turned away from the low light with the duvet pulled up only to her waist. He'd tucked it around her shoulders earlier, she pushed it down in her sleep just a few minutes later so he left it. He'd cover her again if she looked like she was getting cold.

Most nights found themselves either like this or the reverse—Nadine working in bed while he slept—or with both of them working side by side in the glow of twin lamp lights.

The first time he'd found himself needing to work late in her company, he'd slipped out to his office down the hall so that she could sleep in peace—he knew better than perhaps anyone how much sleep she needed and never seemed to get—but then she'd wandered into his office an hour later, yawning into her hand as she asked him to come back to bed.

"I'll be there in a bit," he'd promised. "I just have to get through these last few reports."

"Work in bed," she'd insisted.

"I don't want the light to keep you up. You need to sleep."

"I'd rather fall asleep with you next to me. The light won't bother me."

And so he worked in bed now, because he wasn't in the habit of denying her the things she asked of him. It was spades nicer than working alone in his office.

Now, Mike set aside a small stack of files on the nightstand. As he reached for a new one, the sound of a sharp inhale diverted his attention.

Nadine was faced away from him but he could tell that she'd startled herself awake. This had been happening a lot recently—he only noticed it when he was still awake while she slept, but he suspected it happened just as often when he was asleep, too. But he was a heavy sleeper and rarely woke when she did.

He wondered what she dreamed about.

"Hey," he said quietly, reaching for her. "You okay?"

She rolled over and blinked against the light. "What time is it?"

"Just after midnight."

"You still working?"

"I'm almost done."

She nodded. Her eyes drifted closed, but he could tell that her body wasn't drifting back to sleep.

Mike grabbed the next folder—the last one—and flipped it open as he reached over and absently carded his fingers through Nadine's hair. It was something that relaxed her, and he hoped it might help put her back to sleep.

But by the time he finished his review—copious notes scrawled along the page that required his follow up tomorrow—putting the work aside and turning off the light, he could tell that she was still awake. She remained still as he laid down beside her and readjusted the covers around them both. He knew by her breathing that she wasn't asleep.

He settled in, face to face with her in the dark, and brushed a lock of hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. She nuzzled into his touch as her eyes fluttered open. "What's bothering you?" he asked quietly.

It was 50-50 whether she'd tell him or just brush him off. He wasn't very good yet at predicting which times would be which.

"...Nothing." So, a brush-off.

But it clearly wasn't nothing. Because whatever it was, it'd been waking her up multiple times this week and she had to know that he knew that.

He frowned slightly. "If you don't want to talk about it then say so. Don't lie and pretend to be fine when you clearly aren't," he told her.

He discovered early on that Nadine had a bad habit of keeping a lot of things to herself. She liked to decide unilaterally which parts of herself he'd care about, liked to choose on her own the things that she thought did and didn't deserve his attention. What she didn't seem to understand was that he cared about all of it, wanted to have all of it, wanted to know every part of her that she was willing to share. Sometimes he pushed and sometimes he didn't (he was still working out the best times for that too), but he wanted her trust and he didn't want to have to force it from her hand.

But this time, he would push. If he had to.

Nadine curled into him more and tucked her head against his shoulder. She didn't say anything. Mike began to trace nonsensical patterns against her skin with his fingertips, his touch light as he waited her out. The silence stretched out around them until finally, she sighed into his neck. "I can't stop thinking about that little girl," she said quietly. "I've... I've been dreaming about her."

His fingers stopped moving. Libya. Of course. "You didn't tell me that," he said.

"I— I thought the dreams would go away after a few days, but..." She drifted off.

"But now it's been over a week and it's still haunting you," he finished. "Is that why you've been waking up so often?"

"Yeah." She shifted, and he tightened his arm around her.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart."

"You should've seen her laying in that hospital bed," she said softly. "She was so tiny. Her head all wrapped up, and her parents—" Her voice broke.

"Hey, it's okay. She's okay now. She's alive; she got to go home."

"It could've ended so differently," she sniffled. "That... that's what I dream about."

"You and Elizabeth moved heaven and earth for that little girl. She's still alive because of you."

"She's alive because of the surgeon."

He kissed the crown of her head. "You and Elizabeth got her there. She's alive because of you, too."

She fell silent again. To Mike, it seemed like she was gearing herself up to say something else. He had the sense that if he were to interrupt her now, she'd never say it at all.

He felt her lips part against his collarbone, felt her breath against his skin. "I'm exhausted," she whispered finally. Her voice sounded close to tears, perhaps from the shame of such an admission. "I— I think I'm ready to..." She bit back the rest of that sentence, but he knew what the end of it was.

I think I'm ready to quit.

"Hey, hey." He rolled her gently onto her back and cupped her face with one hand. He felt the moisture on his thumb and he swiped it away. He knew what she was going to say, what she kept herself from saying, and it alarmed him. He'd seen her frustrated and angry and heartbroken by the job before, but never defeated. Never ready to call it quits. "It's been a really hard month, I know that. You've been dealing with so much pushback, you've been defending Elizabeth so hard, this all would've been challenging for anyone."

"I'm tired of fighting," she confessed.

He knew, deep down, that it wasn't just that she was having a tough month. Not really. And his heart was sinking, because it sounded like her mind was nearly all the way made up.

"Okay," he murmured. He shifted and wrapped his arms around her again. "Okay. I support you. Whatever you want to do, I support you."

His mind raced as he wondered over the possibilities. Who could possibly step into her shoes? Who else could possibly carry Elizabeth through the rest of her tenure, and into the Presidential bid they all wanted to see? Elizabeth hadn't yet reached the decision herself, but Mike knew it was a foregone conclusion. He knew that once Elizabeth realized it, she wouldn't want anyone else to see her through it but Nadine.

He wondered if Elizabeth would let her go easy, or if she'd fight tooth and nail to keep Nadine at her side. If she'd leave claw marks behind.

"I... I don't know what I want to do yet," Nadine admitted.

He kissed her cheek. "That's okay, too."