A/N: hi guys! I know I disappeared from the face of the earth, but the season finale really hit me so here I am. Not to jinx myself, but there's a possibility I'm on the verge of another madam secretary phase…

At any rate, this contains spoilers for the season five finale, so if you'd like to avoid that then you should stop here. Please enjoy and feel free to leave a review :)

This isn't based on a prompt, but a thought I had, which was: what if Stevie had been freaking out as much as Blake right after their kiss?

Stevie didn't do freaking out. At least, not anymore. She was a grown woman now, damn it. She was not the teenager she had once been; that girl, she had been very prone to freaking out, and she had the college dropout on her life's timeline to prove it. Now, though, she was a grown up who worked in the White House. She had pulled her life together, finally, and she didn't do the freaking out thing anymore.

Except that right now, every cell of her body begged to differ. After leaving Blake on the sidewalk with an impressively casual instruction to him about not freaking out, she herself had proceeded to go home and do just that. Barricaded in her bedroom, she paced the floor and replayed the entire scene over and over in her head. It was as if it was on a permanent loop in her brain from start to finish, beginning somewhere around "flamingos" and ending with her last glance at Blake's face before she'd turned around and walked away. She could practically hear his voice in her head, words coming together in a dizzying and somehow comforting jumble of Blake.

Blake. She'd kissed Blake. Blake, like her mom's assistant. Blake, like the guy who had saved her from her own immaturity with a blouse from her mother's wardrobe and told her, in a bizarre yet sweet kind of way, that she had winner eggs. Blake, as in right-in-front-of-her-all-this-time, too good to be true, too put-together to fit her pattern, Blake. And then, she'd left him there on that little corner in Georgetown and she'd gone home because they couldn't and they shouldn't and there was too much at stake.

But maybe, she was thinking now as she paced barefoot across the floor of her bedroom, maybe that was the point. Maybe because there was too much at stake, maybe that was why she couldn't stop touching her lips with the tips of her fingers and remembering how warm and right it had felt when they were pressed up against Blake's.

"Hello?"

Stevie was pulled sharply from her reverie, dropping her hand from her face quickly as she spun to face the doorway, fully aware that she looked like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at the dramatic reaction, a knowing look in her eyes as she surveyed her daughter.

"Mom," Stevie said, trying very hard to sound like her normal self. "Hi."

"Hi," Elizabeth replied. She leaned against the doorframe, looked Stevie up and down, and smiled.

"What?" Stevie asked nervously.

"You tell me," Elizabeth shrugged. Stevie sighed; her posture physically deflated and she sank onto her bed. She knew there was no use now; she'd long since learned that when Elizabeth knew, she knew, and this was undoubtedly one of those times.

"Who is he?" Elizabeth asked, pushing herself off of the doorframe and moving instead to sit next to Stevie, who couldn't help but laugh at that question. There was an undeniable irony to this whole situation, Elizabeth being able to tell that there was a guy involved but having no idea that the one in question was in Stevie's life only because of Elizabeth herself.

"What?" Elizabeth asked, amused.

"Oh god, Mom," Stevie groaned. "You won't believe this."

Elizabeth laughed lightly.

"I think at this point, honey, I'd believe anything," she stated. Stevie laughed at that, too. She sighed, leaning back and drawing her knees underneath her. She shook her head slightly, thinking again about Blake and how much he'd felt like home.

"You ever meet someone who feels like home?" Stevie asked softly. "You know, like...I don't know, like the person you'd want to see again if you knew that the world was ending?"

Elizabeth smiled slightly at her eldest child, nodding her head

"I think you already know that I have," she said quietly. Stevie met her gaze and nodded slightly, surprised by how little that scared her.

"Dad," she said.

"Yeah," Elizabeth confirmed. They sat in silence for a moment, side by side in Stevie's room. Elizabeth took a sideways glance at Stevie, knowing that she'd continue when she was ready to. Another minute passed in comfortable quiet.

"It was Blake."

Saying it out loud made Stevie's heart race. Elizabeth looked over at her in surprise.

"So maybe some things can still surprise me," Elizabeth said. Stevie couldn't help but laugh.

"Yeah. Me too," she agreed.

"Blake?" Elizabeth asked, not against the concept but surprised by it enough that she wasn't sure how to feel. Stevie sort of felt the same way.

"Yeah. He, um...we went for drinks because he felt bad about the vetting thing, which was-"

"I heard, was that-?"

Stevie waved her off.

"It was fine," she said. "But he felt bad so I said he could buy me a drink and call it even and I thought nothing of it, really, but then we were talking about- about that stupid flamingo statistic, you know, the one-"

"The one from the 2030 report?" Elizabeth asked, and Stevie nodded.

"Yeah. And, I don't know, things started to shift and then we left and we were talking end-of-the-world scenarios and I thought to myself, if the world was ending I'd want to see Blake again and-"

"Wow."

"Yeah."

Elizabeth thought about that for a moment. If the world was ending, she'd want to see Blake again. Elizabeth couldn't deny the power of that statement.

"Then what?" she asked; she couldn't resist. Stevie sighed.

"Then I was thinking about how much he understand me. How he seems to get what I'm saying before I say it, and then we kissed."

"You-"

"Mmhmm. I kissed him. And it was quick, and then he looked at me and then he kissed me and it wasn't so quick, and then all I could think was, he's not gay?"

Elizabeth, after half a beat of silence, burst into laughter. A smile tugged at Stevie's features as she watched her mom.

"Shut up," she groaned. "Mom, come on."

"I'm sorry," Elizabeth said through her laughter.

"Come on!" Stevie laughed. "He's not gay! Did you know?"

Elizabeth, laughing too hard to answer, nodded her head.

"He's-"

"Bi, yes, he said."

Elizabeth turned to Stevie then.

"Oh my god, you asked him," she stated.

"Well-" Stevie began.

"You kissed him and then asked him if he was gay?" Elizabeth clarified.

"Yes," Stevie admitted. "Or I tried- I tried to ask him and got all tongue tied and it was horrible, I-"

"Oh, this is too good," Elizabeth laughed.

"You're really not helping," Stevie pointed out, though she, too was laughing. As the laughter died down, Elizabeth surveyed Stevie again for a moment, and then rested her hand on her daughter's knee, drawing Stevie's blue eyes to her own.

"You'll always wonder if you don't find out," she said quietly. "End of the world kind of people are the kind of people you want to make sure with."

Stevie thought about that for a moment, still torn about all the problems it could cause if something came of her connection to a member of her mom's staff, but also thinking about Blake's warm gaze and that feeling of home. Elizabeth, sensing the shift, stood up. She leaned over and kissed the top of Stevie's head, then smiled at her.

"Think about it," she said lightly, and then she left before Stevie had a chance to thank her. Once again alone in her room, Stevie brought her fingertips to her lips again and smiled slightly.

She was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to think about anything else.