Hey all, it's been a while since I updated, but luckily not a wait like last time! You'll also be happy to know that I completed two more chapters in this time, and wrote my favorite line, ever, in one of them ("You need to get off the fucking sword that you fell on from atop your high horse." I won't say to whom from who, though.) Alas, they're the last two chapters that will be posted, so it will be a while! But they're awesome and I can't wait.
I started this one after I wrote the second or third one-shot (whichever one is Sloan's perspective about the wedding.) But I couldn't find an angle or tension that I liked enough to finish it until recently. I'm pretty happy with the way the ending turns out, and I like where the characters took me here with their attitudes toward finances, responsibility, and marriage. There's another one that will deal with similar issues coming down the pike.
September
Married life, Don decides Monday morning, after 40 hours of experience, is pretty fucking awesome. He decides this after waking up to Sloan kissing his shoulder. "Morning," she murmurs, swinging a leg around him as he glides to consciousness.
They'd gotten a suite at the Peninsula after the wedding, and they'd stayed there the whole weekend. It's fucking swank. "Morning Mrs. Keefer," he says, and they both wrinkle their nose. "We don't have to get used to that."
"I'm Sloan Sabbith at work," she cautions. "And probably 95 percent of the time anywhere else."
"Fine by me," he says, because he honestly doesn't care. They haven't even talked about her changing her name; he assumed she wouldn't. Not that he fucking cares. They are married. It's … sacred all on its own, no title change necessary. He leans up to kiss her, then flips them over so she's under him, causing her to laugh.
Twenty minutes later, she checks her phone. Realizing it is dead, she plugs it in, then grabs her watch. "It's almost 8," she says. "I have to be in by 9 to prep."
"Do we have to?"
"Well no," she says. "But if I don't go in, there's dead air for an hour this afternoon. And if I go in alone, there's a pretty big chance that as soon I walk in, Kenzie's going to say something and make people clap, so it would be awkward. Plus this room is beginning to reek of sex, so you probably want to leave."
He sniffs. "You're right."
"Yeah. So we need to go."
They get ready and leisurely walk the mile to the office. His wedding band is cool against his hand and that makes him smile more. He sees a guy walking a dog, and decides that they should get one. He wonders when to run that by Sloan. He's pretty sure she'll say yes. She loves dogs. Married life is so fucking great. They're totally getting a dog.
She's jittery as they approach the building, so he slows them to a stop. "What's up?"
"So this is it," she says. "We walk in and we're married."
"Wait — that didn't happen when the clerk said, 'I now pronounce you husband and wife'?" he jokes.
"I mean it," she says. "We walk in, everyone knows, they clap, Will says something on his show, Elliot says something on his show, something gets picked up on Fishbowl-NYC, and we're married. We'll get tweeted congratulations; it might get into some magazine. We'll be married."
He kisses her. "I married you on Saturday. Right now, we're just going to work."
"You know, we still need to figure out where we're living," she says as they get onto the elevator.
He shrugs. "Your place is bigger; mine is closer to work."
"We need to just buy new, honestly," she says. "Mine will sell faster, so I think we should start out there, and put yours on the market. Once we find a place we both like, we'll put mine on the market as well."
He shrugs. "Sounds great." He's not particularly attached to his place or his furniture, and she's got the big financial brain. They're gonna buy a new place and turn it into their home.
The security guard congratulates them as they sign in. In the elevator, Mindy from the dayside says, "Congratulations! I saw it in the Times."
"Thanks," Don smiles, and turns to Sloan. "It was in the Times," he says, eyebrows up, faux-informing her. He probably should grab one of yesterday's copies.
"Maybe Charlie made the call," Sloan says, chewing the corner of her mouth. This is unexpected.
"When did you guys even get engaged?" Mindy smiles.
"Tuesday," Sloan supplies with a smile.
"And you got married on Saturday?"
"Yep!" Sloan says.
When they get off the elevator, he's a little taken aback by how much is happening. Mac had sent an email out Sunday afternoon announcing it(they couldn't stop her), so he was anticipating some congratulations, but Mac has also filled the entire newsroom with red, silver, and white balloons, put up an enormous sign that reads CONGRATULATIONS, and ordered about 1,000 cupcakes, which tower precariously on a pod of desks that's been cleared of deritrius. The newsroom is also packed — his entire team is in, and they don't normally come in until two, all of daytime news is there, Mac's team is there, people from the news desks are down from the twenty-seventh floor. There are a solid four hundred people there. Everyone stands, claps, and whoops, and they laugh and wave. He gives her an 'ohmigod' bugged-eyes look, because none of them expected this, and she shrugs, squeezes his arm and kisses his cheek.
He slips an arm around her and yells, "Thanks guys!"
"Speech!" Someone — Neal — yells from the back.
"What the hell about, Sampat?" he says back.
"Like when the hell did you propose?" Mike, his senior producer, yells back.
"Tuesdays, during the four o'clock," Sloan says, as everyone laughs. "No, really. And we just wanted to keep it very, very small, so we're sorry we didn't let anyone know. We didn't even tell Charlie till Friday, and he had to sign off on it for HR."
"Yeah, you're lucky I didn't fire one of you," Charlie says. Please. He'd had tears in his eyes.
"But — thanks so much for this," Sloan says, smiling, and he watches people munch cupcakes.
"Honeymoon?" Someone (Tess maybe?) yells.
"Not till the spring," Sloan says. "Things around here need to calm down first. But we will be taking at least two weeks."
"And we'll be in Thailand on a beach, so seriously: Don't email us. I mean it. Don't email us. Please. Don't. Email. Us." Seriously, though. They're unsyncing their iPhones.
"Ladies and gentlemen, do you recognize this man?" Charlie laughs.
They circulate for a few minutes, then Charlie, Elliot, Mac, and Julia — Sloan's new EP, who is much better than Zane — pull them into Will's office. Mac has not had a good look at either ring, so she has Sloan's left hand in a vice grip as they talk.
"We need to talk about how you two want to release this," Charlie says without preamble. "We're having the PR people put together a statement that will be released after Sloan's 2 o'clock."
"Send me the language," he says. "I want to look it over."
"Don't say we got married at City Hall," Sloan says. "That will make it sound like I'm pregnant and I really don't want photos of my stomach in TMI for the next six months."
"You know, it does kind of sound like you're pregnant," Mac says. "Dating for ten months, engaged for four days …."
"The Times announcement says you were married at City Hall," Charlie supplies. "And it's been picked up in a few blogs. Grantland wrote you up in Wedded Blitz!. You won this week. Thirty-nine points. Practically unheard-of, according to Sophie."
"Seriously? Also: about the Times. Who sent that in? And I'm not. Pregnant, that is," Sloan says. "Charlie, can you tell TMI that?"
"I can't tell them anything," he laughs.
"You'll have good-looking kids," Elliot says. "As long as they don't get Don's ears."
"Yes. In a few years. Not seven months," Sloan says. "And I like his ears," she tugs one affectionately. "Wait. Does this mean I have to say something about it? Or can, you know, we just send out the announcement? Let's just send out an announcement. Twitter. Let's use Twitter. I'll tweet a photo of the ring and a quote from The Princess Bride. Ooh! That's fun, right?" He's proud of her increasing movie knowledge.
"I'm congratulating you two at ten," Elliot throws in.
"And I'm going to engage you in some witty banter about it during your segment," Will says.
"Fine. I'll put together a statement and I'll say something at the end of the show."
"You're like, the worst newlywed," Don jokes, because he knows she does not like speaking about herself. She gets flustered.
"I get flustered!" she says. "Just write me flattering things about you, and I'll say them."
The two of them are an incredibly efficient team — at 11, despite her show prep, Sloan shows up to explain finances before she calls a realtor. "I'd like to put the offer down as soon as possible, since it'll be 30 days until closing," she explains, after outlining how much they'll make from the sale of their apartments, how much she has set aside specifically for buying a bigger place (she seems to have pockets of money stashed all over the place), what they both have saved, the wedding gifts her parents and his mom are giving them, and what a reasonable mortgage is, based on their salaries (he practically gags at the number). "So we should probably talk what kind of place we want, before I call her."
"Pet friendly," he says, automatically, and she wrinkles her nose.
"You want to get a cat?" she asks. She doesn't like cats. Mostly, she's paranoid that they do not like her.
"A dog," he corrects.
Her face rises a bit at first, but then falls. "There's no way we have time for a dog, pal."
"Sure we do," he says.
"With our 16-hour work days?"
"One of us needs to be at work those hours. I can work from home until … noon, probably, and you can go home in between finishing the four o'clock and Will's show if you have to. Hell, people bring their dogs into work all the time; we both have offices. Besides," he points out, "if we're paying … that ... for a mortgage, we can shell out a few extra hundred for a dog walker if we really have to."
"Have you ever owned a dog before?"
"No, but I haven't been married before, and giving that a whirl has been going pretty well."
"We test-ran a marriage. We can't test run a dog."
"But isn't this one cute?" Don says, spinning around his laptop to show her a collie-golden retriever mix.
She sticks her lower lip out, wavering. "Pet-friendly. Doesn't mean we get a dog, we just have the option open."
"His name is Horace," Don says. "Good name for a dog, no?"
"If we get a dog we're naming it Milton."
He laughs, then kisses her, because there is no way that name is going to happen. "Let's find the apartment first, then the puppy, then decide on his name. What else is on your short list for a place?"
"Upper West Side, for work and Columbia. Three bedrooms, so we can have a guest room and an office to start with."
"Why three?" he asks, remembering their discussions about one or two kids.
"The housing market's going to dip in the next three years, and we're both up for new salaries within twelve months. A three-bedroom is always going to trend up. We should save now and buy bigger later," she says. "Ok. Close to the park, parking nearby, a functional kitchen we don't need to renovate. Oh! I found out who put it in the Times, by the way," she says chirpily. "It won't surprise you at all. Guess."
He thinks for a minute, then gets it. "Your mother." It makes perfect sense.
She smirks. "Of course it's my mother," she rolls her eyes. She holds up her phone. "But it's good for announcement purposes. Chelsea and Hillary texted me congratulations," she pulls a face. "Maybe we should've invited Chelsea at least?"
"Can I say your family friendship with the Clintons is beyond surreally weird?"
She shrugs. "Chelsea and I had sleepovers back when we had braces, went to college a few towns apart, and now live in the same city. That's not weird," her phone beeps. "Ooh. Timothy Geithner says congrats, too." She texts something back to the Treasury Secretary. "I'm surprised he forgave me."
"You sent him those great cufflinks with flames on them. I don't see how he could not."
"Those were pretty freaking awesome," she agrees. "Alright. I'm calling the realtor and then I'm going to go on my show and banter stupidly about getting married," she huffs a bit.
He raises his eyebrow. "Look, I get you want private, and I get that you hate talking about yourself. If you don't want to do anything, I don't care. We're married. That's all I could ever want. I don't need people to know to make it more real. I mean, I could should it from the rooftops but I have absolutely no need to," He's not offended that she doesn't like the publicity-seeking aspect of her job. He hopes that's clear.
"No, I do. I want to," she sighs. "I want to. It just feels weird, that's all."
"Alright then. You want me to watch?" he asks. Before they started dating, when she was first at ACN, he was usually be the one to push her to connect more with her viewers — tweet stuff from behind the scenes, smile a certain way, reveal her personality on-air strategically, do interviews with other journalists to raise her profile, attend the right parties and get photographed there. By the time they got together, she'd been prodded enough and become comfortable enough that she knew how to manage her own brand pretty effectively (Sloan never liked to be bad at anything, and this was no exception). But it was still strategic. The most personal thing she ever revealed were what books she was reading, and this was big for her.
She wrinkles her nose in confusion. "You don't watch?"
"I mean, it's on. But, like, from behind the camera, watch?"
She bites her lip. "Honestly …"
"You'll get flustered."
"I'll get flustered," she confirms, cocking her head and raising her eyebrow. "I should go call the realtor. We'll probably have to meet with her this weekend to list your place."
"Put it in my calendar," he says, shuffling his papers. She kisses him lightly, then heads out.
He doesn't see her before her show, and since ACN is always on in the background, he doesn't notice it's her show until 2:25 and she's bantering with Jamie, the Wall Street correspondent, who Julia has thoughtfully brought into the studio (his producer-brain applauds it, because it's a nice touch, to have her gab about it with a girlfriend).
"So, Sloan, I read in the New York Times that you had a pretty eventful weekend," Jamie says as her segment wraps up.
"Wait, the completely awesome manicure I had ended up in there?" she jokes. At Jamie's raised eyebrows, TV-Sloan goes, "In all seriousness, yes. It was a pretty great weekend. I got married on Saturday."
Jamie gasps on cue. "Congratulations! That is so exciting. And you kept that pretty well under wraps."
"Yes — Don, my, well, I guess, husband," she gives her little TV, ain't-that-ironic chuckle, and a quirk of her lips, "and I wanted something very small. So it was us, our families, and maybe twelve friends at New York City Hall. But it landed in the New York Times and the ACN staff bought about 1,000 cupcakes — which I hope you got a chance to try, they were fantastic — so cat's out of the bag," she smiles. "But in all honesty, it was lovely and exactly what we wanted and I … I couldn't be happier," she half-shrugs, a crooked, real-Sloan smile on her face.
The rest of the day passes in a whirlwind. Will gives a very nice blessing on his show, and Elliot makes a brief, humbling mention as they're closing out his. Sloan spends the entirety of his show sitting in the control room showing him photos of apartments to check out, and it's so fucking perfect that he wouldn't mind getting married once a week or so. But the best part is when they're done, Sloan hops up and says, "Ready to go home?"
She's said it before, and she'll say it again, but he doesn't think it will ever feel quite this good.
Since they're not having a honeymoon, they apparently don't get a honeymoon phase. They "stage" his apartment for sale, which basically means they move most of his stuff to her place. Then they realize her one-bedroom modernist loft is way too full, so they rent a storage unit and schlep everything extra out to New Jersey. They look at every available mid-sized apartment, duplex, or townhouse on the Upper West, but they're pretty interchangeable: Good but not great; okay view; one room too small and/or windowless. It's so desperate they look at a townhouse in Brooklyn. There's also sex (lots and lots of sex) and the ongoing fallout from Genoa — lawyers and meetings and more lawyers. The two balance each other out, but barely. And Sloan is probably more stressed than he is, which is saying something.
He's leaving a particularly stressful meeting with Reese and Charlie and the in-house counsel about the fact that they're bringing in a new lawyer — some First Amendment hotshot that Mrs. Lansing used to babysit — when Sloan practically accosts him. "Want to hear something good?" She seems overwhelmingly relieved.
"Yes. Please."
"I think I found our apartment."
The next Saturday is one of those ridiculously perfect late-October New York days that only happen twice a year, and they get up at nine and head way uptown to look at this place. "Ta-da!" she says, as they walk up. "I love the building. What do you think?" The lobby of the gray-stone building is all Art Deco, wrought-iron embellishments on stained-glass windows and hexagonal tiles in the floor. The 14th-floor corner unit has three bedrooms, 2,200 square feet, stunning views of the bridge on one side, and a tucked-in terrace on the other (if you twist and peak, you can see the park four blocks away). Sloan's right; it's pretty perfect.
But ... it hasn't been renovated since the late 80s. The living room and dining room are fine, even if the floors are a little scuffed, but the kitchen is orange, the bathrooms are pink, and the bedrooms have a ridiculous shag carpet and no space for Sloan's shoes. And everything is going to need paint. And Elliot likened a bathroom renovation to Vietnam, once. He's not entirely convinced.
"It's a little, um —" he starts.
"It is a little dated, yes," Lila, their realtor, concedes.
"Dated? It looks like something from The Brady Bunch."
"It's really only the kitchen — and that carpet — which isn't hard to do," Sloan says. "And some paint. And that bathroom. And you said when you proposed that you wanted to redo a kitchen with me. This is it."
"Yeah, but you had not needing a renovation on the top of your list for an apartment. And if we're going to move in a couple years is it worth the money?"
She hums and looks upwards. "This is a great neighborhood, so anything we put in is going to massively help any sale. And this place … it has personality. And good bones. And we're not going to get this space, at this price, without any renovation."
All of those things are true, and if Sloan says they can afford it, they can afford it. They've taken a lot of hits lately and he just wants a win. He turns to Lila, "Alright. What do we need to sign?"
There's some brief discussion about staying in Sloan's apartment until the renovations are done, but Sandy effectively ends that discussion for them. Their move-in plan is almost derailed by Dantana's attempt to sue him for the dumbass job recommendation, but Sloan gets that thrown out two hours after it's filed. And so, less than two months after they get married, they move into their home, with essentially no furniture except what's at his place that she deems "keepable" (spoiler alert: it's not much). Sloan decides that, since so much of the apartment will get overhauled, they don't need to unpack more than the bare necessities. This means that moving day, in and of itself, is an absolute breeze. They drink wine on the floor of the crappy kitchen and end up having sex on the godawful orange counters.
"Do you like the brown-and-white mosaic tile, or the black and white pattern? It's more traditional, but how traditional do we want to go?" Sloan asks a week later as she's waiting for him to finish up Elliot's show. "Or should we just stick with wood?" Sloan's decided not to hire a decorator, which is great since it saves money, but it means that Don is subjected to books upon books of tile patterns and paint swatches and wood samples. And his opinion is then asked.
"Uh," he says. "The rest of the apartment is pretty traditional, right? And we're keeping the built-in bookshelves and you want to do that … subway tile on the … backsplash, so maybe the more traditional one?" In his ear, Elliot laughs so hard he starts coughing.
"You don't think it would clash with the dark wood cabinets, if we went that route?"
"I didn't think that was a route … All of the books you showed me have white cabinets."
"Do you like the white cabinets?"
"Anything is better than the orange."
"That's obviously true. But do you like white? This is important."
"I — Sloan, the show?"
"Riiiiight," she nods, flipping through the book. "Of course, sorry."
"No, no worries," he says. "Elliot, 30 seconds to commercial."
She's still flipping through the books when they're back and Elliot starts talking about a typhoon in the Philippines when Sloan says, "Glass or stainless steel cabinet fixtures?"
He stares at the monitors and decides he has fifteen seconds. "Uh, lemme see?" She holds up two pictures and he replies, "Stainless steel."
"Good," she says, like there's a right answer, circling one of them. "What do you think we should do about those maids' quarters? We could make it a mudroom, or knock down the walls and make it a breakfast nook? Or maybe both, do you think there's room?"
"Elliot, next up is the guy from State, make sure to ask him about China," he flips the mic down. "Sloan, honey … can we talk about this when I'm not producing a show?"
She sighs, then gathers up her things. "I'll be in your office pricing washers and dryers, oh unreasonable husband of mine."
"Thank you," he says, giving her a quick kiss as she leaves.
He finds her Pinning things in his office after the show. Pinterest is absolutely the worst website in the world, he has discovered. "Someone did a spread on Kate Spade's apartment and we're totally stealing the bathroom. I'm thinking classic white clawfoot, but with a glass cage so it's also a shower. And bone-colored tiles on the walls. And the sage-green towels that you really like."
This sounds insane, and he didn't know he liked the sage-green towels. "Sure," he says. "Can we make it bigger? That's really the only thing I care about."
"Of course," she says, looping her arm into his. "Tomorrow, we need to go to the Restoration Hardware to look at the knobs."
"We have the staff meeting at 11." They're discussing the deposition schedule with Jerry Fucking Dantana's lawyers.
"Yeah, we'll go beforehand. The Broadway location opens at nine. We need to go exactly at nine because I want to go to Manhattan Center for Kitchen and Bath on our way in too."
"I thought we said the stainless steel knobs?"
She sighs. "Oh, young grasshopper. But which ones? Also, I think we need to replace the floors throughout the apartment. And I think you were absolutely right about wood in the kitchen."
"How are we affording this? And how long is this gonna take?" Sloan just laughs maniacally and starts talking about the different types of wood they could select for the floor.
He doesn't know how, but they come up with a plan (he thinks he gives tons of input on the cabinets, but he's honestly not sure). It'll be herringbone floors, dark wood glass-front cabinets with stainless-steel knobs, bone-white subway tile, marble countertops, a breakfast nook and mudroom with a standing washer and dryer, which they'll somehow accomplish by converting the maid's-quarters bathroom as well. They'll be adding an island with a hidden microwave and somehow opening up the kitchen so that it flows into the living room and there's something about the cabinets and countertops is especially impressive (maybe they reserve heat or something? Or are from some famous Italian quarry? He's absolutely lost. All he knows is that walls are going to move.). It looks nice and all, but he has no idea why Sloan and Mac are so over-the-moon obsessed about the whole remodel. Any time he turns in the newsroom, they're looking at swatches or wedding stuff for Mac. There's something … tense … about her in general that he can't quite pinpoint, even though on Election Night, she'd insisted she was getting better.
The next week the contractors come to start the project, first with the bathroom and then the kitchen. He's not sure if it's normal, but the contractors start at 7 in the morning and go until five. Which would be great — well not great, but much more bearable — if he went to bed before one on a normal day. And it would be infinitely better if he had remembered it before the clanging woke him up.
"Hey, uh, you guys getting started?" he asks as he stumbles out of his bedroom.
"Yeah. Your wife gave us the keys yesterday?" One of the three guys — who is holding a fucking sledgehammer — says.
"Yeah, yeah, she mentioned that. So, uh, I don't have a shower right now?" he signals to the shambling pile of porcelain where the pink bathtub once stood.
The guy shakes his head. "Nope. We'll probably have the new shower installed by next Wednesday. We got to reroute some of the plumbing."
"It's Monday."
"Yeah. We got to reroute the a bunch of the plumbing. We're also getting started on your kitchen tomorrow — you guys need to pack up the dishes."
Since he can't shower at the house and Sloan is already at ACN, he packs stuff to wear and heads downtown. He finds Sloan jogging on a treadmill. "Hi honey," he calls across the gym.
"Don," she slows the machine — she knows he only uses 'honey' when stressed or pissed. "You know where the gym is?"
"I had to find it, since I realized this morning that having our bathroom redone means that we can no longer shower."
"Oh," she says. "Yes, that makes sense."
"We have five degrees from some pretty decent schools between us —"
"NYU? Really?" she jibes.
"OK, Berkeley is a state school, Sabbith, don't get cocky. How did we not know that we wouldn't have a shower for two weeks?"
"A week and two days. I guess we forgot? It's been stressful."
"And they're going to start tearing up the kitchen. They want us to pack the dishes tonight, by the way. The dishes we just unpacked like, last week. How are we going to eat for the next six weeks?"
"We didn't unpack all of them and we've cooked at home twice in our three weeks living there."
"I'm really not opposed to getting a hotel room for the next month. Or going back to Charlie's studio."
"That's ridiculous. We have showers here that we can use, and we barely ever cook. It's a waste of money; we can make it through."
"The hotel is a waste of money, but getting all the perfectly-fine floors replaced isn't?"
"One's an investment and one's a sunk cost. Why are you so angry with me? You signed all the papers too."
"Yeah, before I realized I didn't have a shower."
She points to the lockers as she dabs at her neck and chest with a towel. "Thattaway, buddy." She steps off the treadmill and stands chest-to-chest with him. "Think of this as our first married adventure. And besides, think how awesome it'll be to re-christen the kitchen when it's done."
That is certainly appealing.
"Dinner tonight?" he asks.
"I can't," she makes a face. "I need to go meet with the contractor after my four o'clock — you're welcome to come."
"I can't make it uptown that quickly," he says. "After Will's? We can do sushi in my office."
"I told Kenzie I'd help her knock people off the engagement-party invitation list that her mom sent after the show."
"Alright then," he says. "I'll see you … sometime after my show then, probably."
"Don," she says, and he turns. "It'll be OK. This'll be over soon. I promise."
The ACN showers are absolutely disgusting — how does Sloan look decent all the time if she's using the showers regularly (oh. Hair and makeup and natural beautifulness. Right)? They're tiny and cold, even compared to the awful pink tub they just had sledgehammered. There's also something incredibly greasy about the ACN communal showers; no matter how much soap and shampoo he uses, he's not actually clean. When Elliot sees him, moist and unhappy and wrinkled, he bursts out laughing.
"I can hear you," Don sing-songs, annoyed, as he types some emails.
"You, um … This renovation suits you," Elliot says.
"You know, when I pictured the first three months of marriage, I absolutely saw meetings with lawyers every other day, showering in public restrooms, not being able to make a bowl of cereal in my kitchen, and barely seeing my wife," he grouses.
"It's a transition," Elliot says. "Dating is not the same as being married, even if you were living together. Which, oh, you weren't."
"We … basically lived together, ok? And did your transition include not being able to shower? Did it?"
"You and Sloan dated for ten months and planned a wedding in four days. Of course you two are doing an entire years' worth of stuff in a month."
"That's kind of sweet, thank you," Don says.
"Don't get used to it."
"On that note — Sloan's seemed OK to you, hasn't she?"
"Uh, sure? You married her. That's kind of your area of expertise."
"It's just … She's really into this apartment thing. She's gone off the deep end — redoing way more than we planned to, spending more money, she joined Pinterest and made me join ..."
"She's Sloan, but she's still a girl. And she got married and now she gets to play house and decorate everything. She'll go nuts; it's what women do."
"Yeah, no, it's still strange. It's Sloan."
"You could talk to your wife and ask her if anything's wrong?"
He just groans.
After that night's show, he finds Sloan and Mac drinking wine in Mac's office, huddled over a laptop. "Can I kidnap my bride?" he asks.
"Absolutely," Mac grins. "Thanks so much for the help with the vellum decision, Sloan."
"What the hell is vellum?" he asks as he helps Sloan shrug on her coat.
"For invitations? For the engagement party?"
"That sounds like an animal byproduct," he says, and the two women roll their eyes and sigh.
Later as they're both in bed (her: looking at a huge, square fabric book; him, reading This is how you Lose Her), he asks, "You liked our wedding, right?"
"Are you kidding? I loved our wedding."
"You didn't want something, I don't know, bigger and crazier? With vellum invitations?" She seems to be directing an immense amount of energy into crazy endeavors, and that's the only explanation he can come up with.
"God, no. Kenzie sounds miserable just with the engagement party. I loved our wedding, Don. It was perfect and us." She sounds convincing so he lets it drop. "Which fabric do you like? Ikat or chevron?" she asks, holding up two similar white-and-blue prints.
"What do you mean?"
"This one, or this one?"
"That one," he points to the one with a diamond pattern. The squiggles look too much like a boat's flag. "What is this for?"
"The chairs in the dining room."
"We're getting new chairs in our dining room?"
"Yes. My loft didn't have a dining room, and you got your dining room table from Craigslist."
"I didn't know we were getting those."
"Yeah. We also need a new couch, and a TV console for the living room. And stuff for the office. I'm thinking in the office, what if we do custom floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, then get a library ladder? We're going to need flat screens in there too, obviously. Will says at least four but I think that's excessive, given that we have two in the kitchen and another in the living room."
"OK," he puts the book down. "Do you think we're going a … little overboard? Especially because we still haven't sold your apartment?"
"My super said the building will be ready to go by mid-December, so we can list it and probably have it sold by January 1. And I'm predicting a seven percent boost due to the post-hurricane interest."
"Great," he says, and means it. "But custom bookshelves and chairs sound expensive, and we seem to be buying a lot of stuff."
"Yeah, because we bought a home. Our stuff doesn't work together, your couch was from Sears, and we have way more space now. And this place needed to be renovated — you hated that kitchen."
"Yeah, but you've kind of …"
"What?"
"Gone all Delta Burke —"
"Delta Burke?"
"You know, from the —"
"I know from the show. I too grew up in the 80s and had a mother. You're referencing the wrong Sugarbaker sister, and I didn't know whether I should tell you that or point out that, Don, we bought a house. An honest-to-god house."
"Yeah, we kind of spent a lot of money on it."
"Right, so we should also make it look nice. Since we did spend a lot of money on it."
"I just … I feel like we're going overboard. New kitchen, I get, but new dining room?"
"We don't have a current dining room!"
"I'm just saying, I think we can get nice things, decorate the apartment, with a couple trips to IKEA and Crate and Barrel. Hell, even Pottery Barn. You kind of have just —" he pantomimes took off — "you know."
She stares at him. "No, I don't know, because right now we're living among boxes, sleeping in a bed you bought in 2007 from IKEA and I am trying to turn this cardboard jungle in a home for us. And by the way, we are not buying anything from IKEA except for some basics; we are in our mid-thirties. This is our home, Don. We'll have friends over, our parents will come here, hell, one day we might have a kid and that kid will live here and we will take photos of that kid in every room. We need to make it nice."
"I'm not saying we don't need to, I'm saying — what's our budget?"
She makes a face. "That's a really simplistic way of looking at it. Money isn't the only thing to value here."
"Well, how much money do we plan on spending, Sloan?"
"It's better to think of it as an investment and as long as you're incurring good debt — low-interest mortgages from a bank, which we are —"
"That's for the renovations, I get that."
She squints in confusion. "We haven't even cracked a credit card on the rest of it yet."
"Right, I'm saying how much do you think we'll spend? To decorate?"
"Back of the envelope — not counting the bookshelves — probably 25 to 35 thousand. Maybe closer to fifty, since there are some long-term projects we'll need to complete too."
"On furniture? That's what the average American pulls yearly!"
"Don, we're not the average Americans — we make three-quarters of a million annually right now. Or are we not combining our salaries here?" she's suddenly serious. "We never actually discussed that. That's a lapse."
"Of course we are," he says, confused. He didn't know that was up for debate. He currently makes more than two-thirds of their combined income, but he didn't think that was a big deal. Or maybe it was to Sloan, because feminism? He's never sure when he's inadvertently trampling on her, or Mac's, or even Maggie's or Kendra's or Tess's or his female staff's rights as women.
"OK. Well. It's not insignificant, but it's within budget. We can use the money we make from selling my apartment. And our parents gave us wedding money that we can use here too, if you're worried. I was going to invest it though."
"I wanted to use that for a vacation."
"You don't want to spend fifty grand on furniture that would last years, but you would spend an entire, fairly significant, cash gift on a vacation, which is ephemeral? Seriously?"
"I'm saying we should at least talk about it!" he stares at her. "Listen. I obviously know that you will be handling our finances, for the rest of our lives, and I obviously think that you are, you know, more than qualified for it. But I think I should get a vote in how much we're spending, because that's ridiculous."
She cocks her head. "How much do you think a sofa costs? A good one?"
"I don't know. A thousand dollars?"
Sloan pales visibly. "You are joking, right?"
"Why would you spend more than a thousand dollars on a sofa!?"
"Because you're going to have it for years and years? How much do you think the sofa in my apartment — which you love — costs?"
He guesses. "Two thousand dollars?" Even that sounds insane.
"Seven. I paid seven thousand dollars."
His jaw drops. "We're keeping that sofa then."
"Fine!" she says. "We can put it in the office. With some non-custom bookshelves."
"Fine!" he says.
She tosses the book by her side of the bed with a light thump. "You know what? It's late, and we're both tired. I'm going to sleep."
He puts his book on the nightstand and flicks off the light. "That sounds like a great idea." He flips on his side to face her, but she flips away, and doesn't scoot close enough for him to wrap an arm around her. Alright then.
It takes them both a very long time to fall asleep.
The next morning, he's awoken by a bunch of banging in the kitchen area. Sloan's gone, unsurprisingly, so he sighs and pads out after her. He finds her sitting against the exposed wall where the cabinetry used to be before it was torn out. She's leaning against the sink console, which is still there though it doesn't get water, holding an empty glass. Her face is streaked with tears.
"We don't have any fucking water," she explains, shaking the glass. "I tried turning on the sink, then I remembered we don't have any fucking water."
"One sec," he says, taking her glass and going to the guest bath in the front hall. It's not particularly cold and they don't have a fridge, but it's something. "Here you go."
She blinks. "I should've thought of that. I'm sorry. I'm tired."
"It's OK," he says, sitting down next to her. She flops her head on his shoulder, and he instinctively moves his chin on top of her forehead to be a little closer to her. "It's been a really long fucking couple months."
"I'm sorry if I've gone overboard a little bit, about everything. It's just been … a fucking age of men with Genoa, and with everything at work so unstable I think I just wanted a … well something to focus on, but also something permanent."
"Hey," he says, moving an arm around her. "If you ever need to think of something permanent, this, us, is, alright? That's why I married you. The apartment — sure, fine, it's going to be ours for a long time. But we're permanent too."
She kisses his collarbone (he fucking loves when she does that). "You have a way with words," she says.
"That's why they pay me the big bucks," he says drolly. "And hey, I'm sorry that I haven't been as helpful as I should be with the furniture and everything. You're right, this is our home, and it should look nice. I still think we should be a little bit careful with money — not because we have to, just because we should — but if there's a couch as great as your for more than a thousand dollars and you like it, we should buy it." He'd known from the first second he saw Sloan, when she'd been killing it in an Armani dress, that she had a pretty fucking high bar for how she looked and how her things looked. Part of it was she was a little high maintenance, part of it was that she was used to nice things, but a substantial portion was simply that she had high expectations, and was too competitive and ambitious to do anything poorly. Including decorating the apartment. "And I was thinking about the dining-room chairs. Both those patterns were a little too trendy. Maybe let's get the really good fabric, but in a plain color, and then get the fun patterns on the curtains?"
She smiles into his chin. "I like that," she says. "Sometime — probably this weekend — let's sit down and figure out everything we need to buy, and then figure out where we want to save and splurge. And we should probably just talk money in general, and work through combining our accounts. That's something people are supposed to do before they get married, and I think we just assumed that …"
"Since you're a financial genius and we make pretty good salaries that it wouldn't be an issue? Yeah, we did."
"Yeah," she swallows. "So we should do that."
"Sounds like a plan," he says, kissing the crown of her head softly. "You want to head into the office for showers?"
"What time is it?"
"My phone said 5:15, I think."
"Mmmm. I don't have to be in until 7, and I have a shot at 10 so I'll just have hair and makeup fix me. You want to get a little more sleep?"
That sounds heavenly. "Yes," he breathes out. She stands, abruptly, then helps him up. She doesn't let go of his hand as she walks back to the bedroom, and they flop on the bed. This time, she turns to face him, burying her nose in his chest, sliding her leg between his, and wrapping an arm around him. He wraps both arms around her waist and sinks into her smell as he closes his eyes.
Plenty continues to go wrong during the damn renovation — unsurprisingly, it takes four months, instead of six weeks, though he does finally get a fucking shower by the first week of December. Mac and Will's engagement-party planning and wedding and general and dramatic existence continue to occupy way more head space than Don ever wanted them to, and Genoa drags on until the spring. Other awful things — Sandy Hook, for one — happen, and there are long days and bad days and good days and hard days. But he and Sloan manage to sell her old place and eck out a pretty damn nice apartment in the process, one that (he thinks) reflects both their tastes and interests, and doesn't cost too-too much. On a warm night in late March, they finally unpack the last box and assemble the library ladder (he caved, and it's actually pretty fucking cool). Charlie had given them a case of ridiculously expensive Riesling from Mosel for the wedding, and they crack open a bottle and drink that and eat a smoked-fig and prosciutto pizza on the floor of the kick-ass new kitchen. Sloan is bizarrely adamant that housing milestones be celebrated with wine on the floor, though it's decidedly tougher with the puppy running around them.
"We did it," she says, clinking their wine glasses and shoving Clem's nose away from the pizza. "We officially have our first home."
"Third home," he corrects impulsively.
She squints. "You're counting ACN and what else in your dubious attempt at math?"
"Four then," he corrects himself, as she raises an eyebrow. "What? I consider any place that you and I are together. So your old place, my old place, ACN — they all count for me."
She beams. "Fourth home, then," she smiles and kisses him deeply. He responds, putting a hand at her lower back and dipping his tongue into her mouth and forgetting about the froufy, expensive pizza and wine. They make out for a second and just before it's about to really heat up, she puts a hand on his cheek and pulls back slightly. "Before we —" she kisses him — "get too far —" he kisses her — "I just want you to know —" she kisses him, but then pulls back more. "That —" kiss — "the last few months have been way —" kiss — "way more stressful than I thought they would be. And being married is a lot harder than I thought it would be — I figured, we basically lived together, we were clear about what we wanted, it would be the same as before. But it's not, and now I know it's not." He kisses her. "And I know it'll probably get harder. But I feel very, very lucky that you're the person I'm learning how to be married with."
She gives him too much being credit for being good with words, because she floored him there. He brushes her hair with his fingertips, before finally settling on — "Me too, Sloan. God, me too."
And it's that, more than any house or lawsuit or wedding band or whatever, it's that attitude, and that feeling, that is his something permanent.