Hey all! Next installment up. It's a little bifurcated, but I think it gets at the themes of working together, being partners, and the inherent stress involved in it. Let me know what you think!
April
Sidling up to the bar, Sloan says, "Gin and tonic, hold the tonic." She flicks her hair over her shoulder and looks around. The patio of the French Ambassador's residence is loud, hot, over-decorated, and probably the last place on earth she would like to be. There is purple mood lighting. She starts mentally listing the places she would rather be: jail, the Arctic, an oil tanker off the coast of Africa are the first three places.
The bartender slides the drink over with a sympathetic simper. "Long day, sweetheart? Fight with the boyfriend?"
She glares at him pointedly. "No, but my husband kept me up all night giving me three screaming orgasms."
"You know, Sloan, that's the kind of remark that gets you into the tabloids," Will says from behind her as the shocked bartender stares on. "Scotch, on the rocks, please."
"I only care about when they print untrue things," she retorts as the creep walks away. She looks around. "How long do you think we have to stay until Charlie lets us go?"
"It's the Correspondents' Dinner afterparty, not a gulag," Will says, sweeping a hand across the expanse of the Vanity Fair-hosted fete, where New York and Washington's most awkward journalists are mingling hopefully with Hollywood's elite. Mostly, the latter group is being forced to politely take selfies with the former. "Come on, enjoy yourself."
"The only reason all of us had to come down to D.C. was to mitigate any Genoa fallout. I don't cover straight politics, ergo, I think I should be excused."
It has officially been the longest two weeks of Sloan's life, the week of Genoa/Benghazi/her wedding excepted (how was that only six months ago?). Two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon twelve days ago, where her two youngest sisters had been running. Both had finished already and were fine, but the near near-death experience wracked her with guilt: Prior to the bombing, she hadn't spoken to them since her birthday in January. Don had (again) been appointed director of the war room (he needed an official promotion, stat) for the event, and during the manhunt, he'd been working actual twenty-hour days. He had not gone home from Wednesday through Sunday — she had brought him clothing and food whenever she got a chance, but he'd worn the same flannel shirt for fifty-two straight hours at one point. Elliot had headed to Boston the day of the bombings, so she'd taken over ten for him in addition to her two afternoon shows, News Night appearances, and prep for her new show, set to launch in June after their honeymoon. She was working six-to-eleven most days as well, only going home to sleep because part of her job description included 'look pretty.' An explosion at a chemical plant outside Waco had only compounded the insanity.
She is exhausted, and only has to get through one more week before she could peace out to Thailand for her honeymoon. Charlie had insisted they all attend this damned dog-and-pony show to make nice with all the congressmen they've collectively pissed off in the last three years. At least she made it through the rope line and dinner without setting Jack Lew on fire. She supposes that's a good thing. But she is irritated, and tired, and she and Don are spending tomorrow with her three sisters, her brother-in-law, and her nieces, so tomorrow is a long day too. All she would really like to do now is sleep, please. She had five work days left before they go to Thailand, and she's not entirely positive she'll make it.
"Your new show launches in six weeks and you'll need them all then," Charlie says, appearing from behind her. She knows this, but really is too tipsily tired to care. "Come on, Keefer," he cajoles. "It's a party. Live a little."
"Sabbith," she corrects as he orders a bourbon. She takes a sip of her gin-and-tonic-hold-the-tonic. "Not changing that professionally."
He smiles. "Don't you want to go meet Julianna Margulies or the cast of Homeland or Kerry Washington? The gay dads from American Family are here." He sighs as he leans against the bar with them.
"Modern Family," she corrects. It's bad if she knows a reference. "And no. I want to be at home. In New York. In my bed," she says indignantly, shifting on her heels. She'd had to walk the red carpet for the first time ever this year — stand and pose and smile and shift poses and smile again, not just get a quick snap from the ACN guy — and it had given her a headache.
Charlie smiles, amused and … proud? "You look nice, Sloan. That dress … It's shiny."
"It's silk," she informs him, quelling the urge to do a twirl. She's wearing a gunmetal Giambattista Valli with a navy flower print crushed in velvet on the bodice, with a thin, neon-yellow belt around the middle. It's far livelier than anything she's used to, and far different from the solid red strapless number she'd worn last time, but Don had liked it best out of the six dresses she'd tried. Liz Banks (they had become friends when she shadowed Sloan to play Avery Jessup) thought it was sure to land her on a best-dressed list. "And yes, I look hot, thank you for noticing."
"So, what, are you just going to sit here in this corner and hide now?" Will says.
"Probably," Sloan says, lifting a shoulder and staring at everyone awkwardly half-mingling, half-dancing in place. "Drink some more. You go socialize, though. Have fun," she gestures with a smirk. The only person less social than her at a party is always Will. "Make merry."
Will shrugs. "I mean, someone needs to keep you upright."
"Gotta make sure you don't cause bodily harm to anyone who warrants Secret Service protection," Charlie adds.
"That was once!" she protests. "And it was not as ridiculous as it seemed. Don can vouch for me. I was saving Alfre Woodard." She was.
"Likely story," Charlie says. "And Don's the reason that story is still in the air vents."
"Traitor," she mutters.
Across the room, they watch Maggie — at her first Correspondent's Dinner, but looking like she is enjoying the hell out of it — bump into Jim. They jump apart, and Jim awkwardly, tenderly pats Maggie's shoulders, and appears to ask her to dance. They stand there, elbows akimbo and with enough room for the Holy Ghost, and move generally in time to Just Give Me a Reason, which Sloan supposes is an apt choice. Charlie stares at them. "Is Jim still dating —"
"Hallie? No. They broke up two months ago," Sloan says.
"So are he and Maggie …"
"No, but they've both dropped more piles of paper, tripped over feet, spilled coffee, or knocked into each other so many times in the past six weeks I'm considering getting them checked for concussions," Will says.
"Jim almost had to go to the ER last week after she slammed another door on his face. It's pretty sad," Sloan agrees, lips pursed and unimpressed. It has been like this since the breakup, the two of them doing this dance and bumbling and stuttering. She shakes her head and takes another sip of her gin-and-tonic-hold-the-tonic. The glass is now empty. She waves it around and hands it to a different bartender to refill. "Hold the tonic," she instructs seriously.
"Like either of you can talk," Charlie scoffs. He points at each of them in turn, "Pined after guy for a year and a half while he was dating another woman; subjected us all to years — actual, literal years — of insanity as you and MacKenzie figured it out."
Will waves Charlie away by muttering irrelevant, while Sloan glares at him. "There was no pining, and you, sir, do not fight fair."
"I fight with truth," Charlie proclaims.
"Not once did I or Don have to go to the hospital."
"No, but Timothy Geithner did."
"Totally unrelated!"
"Is Sloan trying to defend torching a Cabinet Secretary again?" her lovely, understanding, empathetic husband says, approaching. "You know how antisocial you all look, right?"
"We're gossiping," she informs him.
"You're drunk," he smiles. "Gin-and-tonic-hold-the-tonic again?"
"I really don't understand why it's not a more popular drink," she says, her palms upturned in a shrug.
He chuckles and slides an arm around her shoulders. "You're cute. Too drunk to take advantage of tonight, but adorable."
"Not too drunk to take advantage of you, though, pal," She nuzzles his nose.
"See, you two are just as bad," Charlie says.
"I'm not sure rape-jokes-as-foreplay is cute," Will interjects. "Feminism tells me that."
"Bad as what?" Don asks.
"It's clearly between two consenting and highly sexually active adults," Sloan says to Will. She supposes she's at the point where she should keep her voice down and drink water. "Highly," she repeats, because it's a point worth making again.
"Jim and Maggie," Charlie says, ignoring her.
"With their bumping into each other and dropping papers and their meeting and remeeting cute," she adds.
"Oh-ho-ho, no. It's physically impossible to be as bad as them," Don informs Charlie. "They are painful. Half the time in the newsroom it's like watching two live-action Kewpie dolls discover hormones for the first time, and the other half of the time it's like the junior high's unintentionally hilarious production of His Girl Friday."
"Cosigned. And he gets to say this since he used to date Maggie," Sloan says. She pauses. Is that inappropriate, or just hilarious? She settles for hilarious.
"I told her when I broke up with her to call him and work it out, and she didn't, so … yeah. I get to mock."
Will stares at him. "That was actually ridiculously spot-on. How did you nail that description so accurately?"
"Talent," he shrugs, then looks at Sloan. "You. Wife. Want to dance?"
"I want water first," she admits bluntly.
"I'll get it. I am here to serve you."
"Ugh, don't be gross," she chides as he walks off.
"What's gross about that?" Will asks.
"He's not here to serve me, or please me, or anything like that. He's here to be my husband and that includes taking care of me after five gin-and-tonics-hold-the-tonics." She's usually much better at liquor than this — Charlie and Will have taught her well — but she supposes that it's the sleep deprivation. "And I do the same for him," she decrees triumphantly.
"You know your limit is four gin-and-tonic-hold-the-tonics," Don says as he reappears with her drink and a palmful of Tylenol. God, he's a saint.
"Your inability to hold your liquor is almost embarrassing," Charlie says.
"This isn't intoxication, this is sleep deprivation," Don says. "She gets loopy; I get stupid. Not the best combination."
"We're a regular Abbott and Costello, though," Sloan adds.
"More like Lloyd and Harry," Will comments drily.
Don cocks his head. "Have you ever been told —"
"Yes."
The music switches from the Taylor Swift song about the boy from the new Backstreet Boys to a song Sloan finally recognizes, and she tugs Don's arm. "Oooooh, I know this one. Let's go."
"Is this by —" he asks as he slides an arm around her waist.
"The same guy who sang our wedding song? Yes. Good ear," she says as To Love Somebody, covered by Ray LaMontagne and … someone else, comes on.
"I pay attention to the important things," he smirks. "How are you doing? You look exhausted. Beautiful, don't get me wrong, but exhausted."
"I went home at some point over the last ten days," she points out. "Trust me, you look worse."
"Yeah, but this … it's just fucking insane. What stops it? We have a shot-up elementary school, two kids putting a bomb in a trash can at a marathon — the hell?"
"We should do a special," she says suddenly. She's loopy, but it's perfectly clear to her. They absolutely should do a special. "An ACN Reports thing. You EP, I anchor."
He stops. "Are you serious? You're launching a new show in five weeks."
"Yes," she says. "This is ridiculous. More people die of handgun violence in the United States than in any other country. We're in a position to make a difference about that, and we should."
"We could use Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon bombing as a hook —"
"Do you think Boston is too tenuous?"
"Right now, yes, but we can fix that. It's home-grown violence; we can build a tie."
"I'd want to get into the economic ramifications — you know, the false claim that gun control hurts the economy." They're completely still in the middle of the dance floor, other couples moving around them, as ideas stream out of them.
"I think we need to really hit home the fact that, while Sandy Hook and Trayvon Martin receive all this attention, but it's something that is ridiculously common. And the prison sentences are devastating to affected families."
"We also do need to hammer home the inaction by politicians — maybe follow the money a bit there?"
"And let's weave a human-interest story throughout. Follow someone who's lost a couple people to gun violence — someone has died, but also someone who's incarcerated, maybe. Start and end with them. Loop back throughout the broadcast. You listened to that episode of This American Life, right? About the gun violence at the high school in Chicago? Get someone like those kids involved."
"I like it," she smiles, then does a double-take. "We're doing this, aren't we?" She likes the idea of working with him. She likes working with him even when it's miserable.
He kisses her lightly. "Hell yes we are. But let's make it through this damned honeymoon first."
"I like the way you think, Keefer," she smiles as they start dancing.
"You're not so bad yourself, Sabbith," he says.
"We'll call it a draw and agree we're an OK team."
They dance a couple of more dances, mingle a little more, and decide they absolutely cannot handle any more time on their feet; since it's now past midnight, Charlie decrees their duties toward ACN discharged. Don goes to wait in the coat line while she runs to the bathroom.
As she's washing her hands and reapplying her makeup — there are cameras, and she absolutely looks drunk, even though she feels pretty clear-headed — Maggie emerges from the stall, the blue Tadashi Shoji she'd borrowed from Mac twisting at her ankles. "Hey," Sloan smiles. "You have fun tonight?"
"Yeah, actually," Maggie says, with a pleasantly-surprised smile. "You know, it's been so insane this month I wasn't really looking forward to it, but it was really fun."
"You and Jim were dancing up a storm," she says with a smirk.
"Not every day you get to scuff up the carpet at the French Ambassador's, am I right?"
"You're right," Sloan pockets the lipstick. "Hey — I never said anything, but you did great in Boston. And thanks for finding my sisters, day-of." Maggie had been the one to finally get a hold of her sisters — Sloan been broadcasting since the news broke during her show, and Don was producing, so Maggie had tracked them down, then scribbled messages in large print on a legal pad to let Sloan, still on air, know they were safe.
"No problem. Don looked pretty busy and I could help, so I did. I'm glad they're OK. And … thanks," Maggie smiles, and starts to leave. Sloan feels compelled to speak. She's feeling magnanimous.
"You know, way before you arrived at ACN, I … floated, let's say floated … going on a date to Don."
"OK?" Maggie says, confused. This conversation is now in a dramatically different place.
"I'm not — we didn't, nothing happened, while you were dating," Sloan clarified. "Hell, we barely spoke, then. But the day we met, right after I started working at ACN, we grabbed a drink, and talked about the fact that I'd just quit my job after a terrible breakup with a coworker. He'd cheated on me, so I had walked out of everything — our apartment, my job, my life. And I wasn't in a great place, but I suggested to Don that we get drinks again, and I think I made it pretty clear that I meant in a date-like setting." She and Don had discussed this non-date several times, and he maintained it had not happened like she remembered it, but who was the one with the near-eidetic memory? She was. She's right.
"Sloan, I know that Don is one of the good guys, and you two are pretty awesome together, and it's fine —"
"That's not what I'm trying to say. Though I'm saying what I was trying to say pretty poorly," she takes a deep breath. "My point is, there was a brief moment, when we could have started dating in 2008. We did not, because a completely blackout-drunk Don thought it would be a bad idea. It's the one good idea a drunk Don has ever had. Because if we had, if we'd gone on that date and I used him for a rebound and he treated me as a fling — I'm pretty sure we would have broken up. Either fairly early, or fairly epically. I wasn't ready to be in another relationship and I wouldn't've been able to trust him and would have been really closed off and volatile. And he wouldn't've been able to commit, and when Don gets scared he does and says really stupid stuff, and blows off problems and purposefully fucks stuff up, which we both know. And since we wouldn't've known each other very well, I would not have known that, and he would have done stupid shit, and … you get the picture. We needed, like, three years to grow up and be friends and go through things and get ready for each other. And only then were we remotely equipped to try."
Realization skates across Maggie's face, and she blushes. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"
"I'm saying that I think you and Jim finally, after three years and three major relationships, are at a point where you can actually figure out what you mean to each other. Without all the noise. And it's not too late, and maybe the timing is actually better than if you had been single when you two met. And I think you owe it to yourselves to try," she cocks her head to the side. "Is that what you thought I was saying?"
Maggie smiles. "Basically, yes."
"Anyways," Sloan smiles back. "Have a good rest of your night."
"Sloan," Maggie calls.
She turns. "Yeah?"
"I just wanted to say … you're really good for Don. I'm happy you two ended up together and are, like, good … together."
She smiles back. It's a little insane because she knows, objectively, that she-and-Don are much more evenly matched (and better suited) than Don-and-Maggie ever were. The challenges that the other presents are almost a turn-on — she likes that he is so aggressive and sarcastic, finds it funny and fun instead of aggravating; he thinks her wonkiness is sexy and her confusion charming, doesn't have a problem explaining things or listening to her discuss economics. There are boring days and stressful days and uncertain days and days when they pick fights with each other and days when they just fundamentally disagree, but they're doing it. She's still only beginning to grasp how long "as long as we both shall live" is, how many things will change between now and then, but she's happy Don's the person she is changing with. Different as they are, they overlap in the most important ways. But the benediction makes her feel almost … affirmed.
So she just nods. "Thanks," she finally says. "He's pretty good to me too."
"How … how do go about … starting things?" Maggie bites her lip in that little-girl way that Sloan has always found exasperating, but Jim (and Don and Mac and Will) have always found appealingly vulnerable.
She smiles. "Well, Don and I got into a pretty huge argument at Hang Chew's in which we said some awful things to each other and he made me cry. I don't recommend that."
"He made you cry?" Maggie looks horrified.
"Not cry-cry just ... upset. But hey, it worked for us," she shrugs. "You kind of have to figure it out yourself. Maybe start with coffee?"
"Coffee," Maggie repeats. "Alright then. Thanks."
She finds Don at the coat check, her silver capelet in hand. "Ready to go get some sleep?"
"Yeah," she says. As they're leaving, she says, "So remember how I told you not to interfere in Jim's life about the breakup?"
"Yeah?"
"May have told Maggie to ask him out." He starts laughing, head kicked back — a full-bellied roar.
The idea of a special marinates over their honeymoon, which is mostly sex and food and swimsuits and staying at a private pool. They come back and decide to pitch it to Charlie, dragging him out for street hot dogs and a conversation on a park bench. After Charlie explains to them that the city's gone to hell due to Uber and food trucks, he says, somewhat abruptly, "So why'd you two bring me out here? Fess up. I'm old, Keefers."
"Still Sabbith," Sloan says, making a face at a bite of hot dog. "But. We had an idea, after Boston." She grimaces again, and tosses the offensive street fare.
"We're pissed about the stalled gun-control debate," Don takes over. "It's a violent epidemic that's destroying communities economically and socially. It's misrepresented and co-opted at basically every turn. Then we realized we could do something about that."
Charlie smiles that gruff smirk that's equal parts proud and 'get off my lawn.' "What are you thinking?"
"One-hour special. June. Taking a look at the cost on a human and community level. We'll start with one death, one gun, and trace it through the economic and social ramifications, what this means on a big scale, and what politicians, community leaders, and citizens can do about it," Sloan says.
"Big, brief hook to the violence from the national perspective— Sandy Hook, the president crying, the Boston manhunt — then bring it back to the very normal. One person, one family, one community, destroyed by a gun death. We'll use that to anchor each block, but we'll look at their life story in A, the community in B, the economics in C, the social-injustice lens in D, the politics in E, and wrap up with what's next in F," Don sums up.
"You think you two can get that done, and launch your show, and do your job in four weeks?" he emphasizes each of their tasks with a firm head-tilt.
Sloan shrugs. It's tough, but they have a reason. "The Senate is voting on gun control by the Fourth of July. We want it in then, on a Sunday night."
"It's also a great brand-builder, not for nothing," Don adds. "It'll help with her launch. That's not why we're doing it though."
Charlie smiles. "Get a team together. I want a narrative outline by next week, and then I'll make the call."
Jim is unimpressed with their idea. "You know we're launching a show in two weeks, right?" He asks. "That's plenty to do there. You need to focus there. Only an idiot would take this on right now."
"That's false. Mac would totally do this."
"Not helping your case. Do you want a Peabody? We have time for the Peabody. After we launch."
"I'm doing this because somebody needs to," she says. "There is an epidemic. We have a platform. We need to use it. And not for nothing, but this helps us build out the show."
"I'm not going to convince you it's a bad idea, am I?"
"You really can't. But," she says, "you can do something else. We need segment producers."
"No —"
"Come on, it's going to be very compelling, it'll garner high ratings, we're going to take a hard look at a critical issue in this country. This is exactly the type of shit you love."
"Sloan —"
"You can't say no. You actually know that you can't say no. The only downside is that it'll be extra work, and you can't turn something down because it's extra work."
"I'm about to EP my first show, my first major show, and you want me to put together a segment for a special?"
"This is important," she says. "To the show, and to the conversation."
"God Will trained you good," he says. "Fine. But I call whatever you guys are putting together on social justice."
She grins. "Good man."
Within three days, she can admit that Jim's points have some merit (some, not a lot), just based on how exponentially her workload increases. Charlie greenlights the outline, and they take over a solid third of Don's office with notecards, potential interviews, and angles to pursue. She conscripts the good people that remain on Mac's team, half of her own team (which now includes Kendra and Tess, whom she'd poached along with Jim), and most of Don's team. Neal agrees to manage the online-only features, including longer interviews, videos, and a solid shit-ton of interactive infographics. They find the sort of TV-ready family that will illustrate the story perfectly: A former-cop single mother in Camden whose disability doesn't keep the family out of poverty; an honors-student son gunned down three years ago; a prodigal son currently in Otisville for possession; a sixteen-year-old daughter who just wants to escape. They wake up extra-early to take the train down to talk with them for a few hours before the show frequently; on those days, after her four o'clock every day, Don is there with a quadruple-shot skinny vanilla latte, no foam. She's constantly exhausted.
And it's a little strange, doing this together (It's such a joint effort they begin referring to the report as their firstborn). While they've worked together in the past and performed such feats of teamwork as planning a wedding in three days, Charlie is right; it was different. He's never, ever had an opinion on her clothes before, but as they're prepping for her to interview an English teacher from the who's had three students die of gun violence, he dismisses four successive tops as, "too structured," "too unfriendly," "too slutty," and "too boring."
"You know, would it kill you to put this much thought into my wardrobe when we go out?" she complains as she tosses on another dress.
"Yes, and this one is too high-powered. You look like Hillary Clinton's lawyer," he says.
"Given that my mother is one of Hillary's lawyers, that is kind of offensive. She's in her sixties. I am hotter than that."
"You are hotter than that, and that's why you can't wear that dress. Here," he says, digging through the closet. "Wear this. Gold jewelry, soft makeup, don't overdo it."
She puts on the dress — a navy silk sheath by DVF, tight and with a deep neckline but conservatively patterned — and has to admit he's right.
It's only one of their constant, low-boil arguments, brought on by stress and proximity and their shared investment in the project. They hash and rehash the order of interviews and arc and argumentation and tone and beat and music and pronouns. The debates happen everywhere: late at night in his office, at home when they should be sleeping, on jogs with Clem in the morning on weekends (he hates running, but it's one of the few times they can talk, so she's wearing him down). Don constantly rewrites her questions list because he thinks she's not being tough enough, and she plays intermediary between the staff when Don gets too intense and makes them redo the editing job seven times. Besides Camden they travel to Aurora and Columbine, to Sandy Hook and Blacksburg, to state capitols and the nation's capitol, sleep in shitty hotels, and split Chick-Fil-A in rental cars.
They're so busy, in fact — arguing about what to ask a group of teachers who started an anti-violence advocacy association — that she forgets to be nervous about her show's debut until the night before, when she's suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea.
"Are you alright?" Don asks after watching her fling the contents of her inner into the toilet.
"Yeah," she says, grabbing a washcloth. "I guess I'm just nervous about the show," she admits. They've promo-ed the hell out of the show, they have interview segments pre-taped for the B, C, and F blocks, and she and Jim have gone fifty rounds over email about what stories they're going to cover and what their spin on it is going to be, but it's still tomorrow and she now feels hopelessly unprepared.
"It's been a little crazy," he agrees. "Look. We can push the special. We've both been working too hard lately, and we don't need to do it this quickly."
"No, I want to do it," she insists, pushing her hair back. What she means is, I want to do it with you. "I just …"
"Yeah?"
"I don't know," she admits.
"We'll push it back. There's a lot to do, and you're under a lot of stress about the launch, and it's more important the launch goes well. If that's messed up, it puts this project's success in jeapardy.
"Thanks," she says, sarcastically. "I absolutely didn't just puke from pressure."
"I'm serious. There's just so much to do, and so much to argue about."
"We're not arguing."
"We're arguing all the time. We're arguing about whether or not we're arguing right now."
"I would consider this witty banter, which, let's be honest, is one of our strongest suits," she sighs. She rests her head on her hand. She's exhausted, and they need to figure out how many minutes to devote to a panel reflecting on mandatory minimums, and now she's freaked out, too. "We're disagreeing, which is fine. We do it about the apartment, and the dog, and the wedding, and whose family to see over Christmas, and whether to get Indian or Thai for dinner. This special means we have to talk all the time, and trust each other, and rely on the other's strengths. We do that all the time. Just never in a professional setting. We're not fighting; we're being … professionally married."
He smirks as he sits next to her. "Professionally married. I like that. Do we need vows?"
"I think the wedding vows cover any and all professional marriages."
He chuckles, then smiles at her. "You know, have I ever told you about the first time I watched your show?"
She scrunches her brows at the change of topic. "No?"
"It was a couple days after we met, the day after you got me drunk."
"You got yourself drunk. It was tequila, Don. Not roofies, not ecstasy. Tequila."
"Anyways, I was working through a hangover and one of Will's particularly awesome moods. I saw the show was on, so I turned up the volume to watch. You said you thought you came across as nervous so I was watching to see if I could offer you feedback."
"I believe you told me to cut my hair and to practice smiling in a mirror so I would look 'less like Bambi about to get killed.' You had plenty of feedback."
"Right. Those things were totally true. But I was going to watch for about three minutes, and ended up sticking around for 30. You … you were good, Sloan."
"You gave me notes!"
"You had stuff to improve on, sure, but you were good and it showed. And that was almost five years ago. You're going to be great, because you are prepared and ready, but also because you work damn hard and you won't settle for anything less. And you'll be great on the special, too."
"Thanks," she smiles, standing because they have work to do. "Let's try and get them for six minutes."
"The mandatory-minimums panel?"
"Yeah."
"I'm going to need you to ask the gun guy harder questions."
"I think we need to pull back," she disagrees. "We're going too hard, that's going to sound one-note — guns are bad and we need to stop them."
"There's not a whole lot of other notes involved," Don says drily.
"We can hit hard on this, but we need to make it credible," she points out. "we want nuance. If people feel attacked they're not going to listen. I'll work on the list; you finish editing the latest session with Kiara?" They'd spent Tuesday morning shadowing her at her high school and had four hours of footage to condense into B-roll.
"Sounds good," he says. "I'll order Thai."
She scrunches her nose. "Indian?" He sighs, then holds out his fist. Rock beats Scissors. "Fine. Thai," she smiles.
The launch of Starting Line goes well the next day — though he didn't say he would do it, she can feel Don in the control room next to Jim, which makes her smile. The ratings are solid, if not spectacular (higher than the last show, and a bunch stick around for Will), the reviews are good, and she adds 30,000 Twitter followers overnight. And two weeks later, as she takes the desk on an unfamiliar Sunday and he asks, "You good to go out there?" she smiles again.
"Yup," she says, rearranging her papers.
"Because we could postpone. Run a repeat of the election night coverage. People liked that the first time around."
"Or we could just do this," she points out, smiling into the camera.
"Or we could," he agrees. "You look stunning. You'll be great."
"We'll be great," she corrects softly, hoping he took her offline.
"We will," he says. "Counting down. Ten to go —"
When the camera flips to go, she's suddenly speaking to two million people, sharing what she and Don have built together with the world. She smiles, freezing for a split second. Then Don whispers, "We've got this, Sloan," and she's ready to go.