The Fall Ball, as it was known informally, was the first weekend of September. Over the years, the White House had put on a number of Labor Day events, ranging from sitting presidents hosting the AFL-CIO for celebratory dinners to holding an open-house day where high-ranking staff members listened to seminars organized and led by union representatives from across the country.
This year, the Ball— which was technically the White House Autumn Gala- Celebrating the Dignity of America's Workers— was mostly boring, but still notable for a few reasons:
1. It was only slightly less hypocritical than previous fundraisers designed to help destitute laborers and people living paycheck-to-paycheck. The AFL-CIO and a number of local union leaders had been selected as speakers, and the entirety of Congress had been invited.
2. Everyone representing the White House in any capacity— from the President himself to the senior staff to the Secret Service agents at the doors— had been asked to adhere to a strict dress code: nothing new. According to the fashion dossier that Silena Beauregard had put together for the press, the President was forgoing his usual bespoke suits and was wearing one from his days as a governor. Apparently, it hadn't needed too many alterations. Reyna, Jason, and the rest of the military veterans on staff turned out to be a great disappointment for most of the papers— as usual, they'd simply wear their dress uniforms.
3. Bu the time the actual event rolled around, it had become clear that most of the senior staff would not be in attendance. Of course, no one said so publicly before the event began, but the select press outlets who had been invited all noted that Reyna Ramirez-Arellano, Jason Grace, Annabeth Chase, and Percy Jackson were all missing. No one asked, but Piper wasn't there, either.
"Does this event feel entirely hypocritical to you?" Clarisse LaRue muttered to Silena upon entering the ballroom that had been set aside for the evening.
"Hypocritical?" Silena rolled her eyes. "Darling, everything's hypocritical. We work in politics. Nothing's a lie, but everything's slanted."
"Right." The HUD secretary shifted in her gown, which showed off surprisingly muscular shoulders, even under the matching jacket she'd added. "I just don't really get how a sparkly, glitzy, glamorous event does a great job of celebrating working-class folks and the power of protests."
"It'll be a dull event, don't worry." Silena pointed across the room. "But I bet I know how you could liven it up, at least for your own personal entertainment."
Clarisse narrowed her eyes. "Is that Octavian Smith?"
"Senator Smith, yes." Silena deadpanned.
A smile— a genuine one, not the practiced one that she used for professional headshots or for ribbon-cutting events— spread across Clarisse's face. "Excellent. I can't stand that little shit. I'm going to go ask him questions about the menstrual cycles of all of his constituents. You know, since he thinks that the state government ought to get involved in women's healthcare."
Silena shook her head, bemused, as Clarisse set off to do just that.
"How are you doing, love?" Charles Beckendorf slid in next to her, staying just within his pre-set perimeter for the event. He wasn't officially Secret Service anymore, but as an approved contractor, this sort of event was well within his purview.
"I'm managing," Silena replied, blue eyes sparkling with a warmth that was reserved for him. She was friendly with everyone; had the kind of social ease that charmed even the harshest of her critics, but with Charlie, she shone even brighter.
"Managing well enough that we can sneak away when the event ends and I can just take you straight home, without any of the networking stuff that you have to do?" He arched an eyebrow at her. "I've got the pizza place you like on speed dial. And I'll make you coffee in the morning."
Silena's expression clouded for a moment. She blinked and turned to kiss her fiancé on the cheek. "Much as you know I'd love to, I told Clarisse we'd get a drink when we're not working tonight. We haven't really talked since she was sworn in for HUD."
"That's right, she's only in town for the weekend." He smiled that easy smile that had made her fall in love with him to begin with. "Enjoy the night. Come over after. I'll run out to the bakery and pick up scones for tomorrow morning."
If Annabeth or Piper had been there, someone would have made a crack about boycotting the party over dull clothing choices, or protesting over the ostentatious wealth that the White House had accumulated over the years. Maybe someone might have even joined Secretary LaRue in heckling the senator from South Dakota. As it was, Luke Castellan drew Smith into conversation and pulled him towards the bar, leaving Clarisse to make small talk with Katie Gardner. At the bar a red-haired bartender, after serving Smith with a carefully frozen mask of indifference, pulled a phone out of her pocket but didn't unlock it. No notifications— except for enough Instagram notifications that the number was unreadable— flashed up on the screen, and the bartender stuffed it back into her pocket. Drew Tanaka tweeted something about how boring it was that no one was wearing anything new, but that the White House's commitment to sustainability and to "everyman fashion" was something to commend.
On the other side of the White House, close enough that the strains of music sometimes drifted in through the vents or the open window, but not far away enough to hear any of the chatter, two closed-door meetings were taking place.
If anyone had gotten past the two armed guards standing at attention outside of the Chief of Staff's office, they'd have encountered enough Chinese food to feed an army— most of it uneaten, and gone cold on the paper plates— and a stack of paperwork almost tall enough to bury Piper McLean, whose face was flushing a deeper shade of red with each line of each form.
"I'm… I really don't know how to quantify… J? Have we ever… I mean, do you even know how many coffees you've bought me over the last…?" Piper shook her head. "See, I don't even know how long we've been doing… what we've been doing."
"One year, eight months, and twenty-two days," Jason replied miserably from behind his own stack of paperwork. "And if that makes me sound like a middle school girl, I don't care."
"What do you have against middle school girls?" Piper grumbled, right as Reyna interjected from her side of the desk, "middle school girls are better at playing politics than you'd ever know."
"Whatever." Jason shook his head. "I had to go through my calendar from over a year ago to find the event we started talking at."
"I don't know how relevant…" Piper sighed. "What about just the day you hired Annabeth, and me along with her? The day I joined the staff."
"That looks even worse from a PR perspective," Jason said.
He didn't have to explain why. If they'd gotten together right when she'd joined the staff, then either he'd been preying on a lower-level staffer from the very beginning, or she'd been out to sleep her way to the top from day one. Neither was good.
"Whatever." Piper groaned, shoving her hands into her hair. "I don't know how to quantify it. We never put a stupid label on it. It was never defined. But if I had to, I'd say probably the Gardner fundraiser where we threw our support behind the Senator's reelection campaign."
"Okay, next form." Reyna leveled her gaze at Piper. "For the record, I'm sorry we're putting you through this. Both of you. I remember some of this from when…" she shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "I know what this paperwork can be like."
Piper flushed an even deeper shade of red, and Jason paled, a twist of his mouth revealing either a stifled sarcastic comment or just utter nausea.
"That's right," Piper managed. "I'd forgotten that you two…"
"I'm gay, married, and in my fifties," Reyna said, pursing her lips. "It's safe to say that I'm over it."
"Maybeyoureoveritbutit'sstillthoroughlyawkwardinthisscenario," Jason mumbled.
"Anyway, next piece of paper," Piper said, redirecting all of their attention to the stack of forms in front of them. "Sexual preferences and gender orientation…" she turned to Reyna. "Is this really necessary?"
Reyna winced. "Actually, that one's my fault. If we'd been in a higher profile place than we were when Thalia and I started dating, after Jason and I broke it off, the press would have had a field day. That one's for your protection as much as ours— the White House's, that is. If there's a story, we can at least know what kind of ammunition they're likely to be working with."
"I'm…" Piper ducked her head. She and Jason hadn't discussed this, not really. "I'm bi, I think. Maybe pan. I still haven't really put a label on it, which I guess me and my therapist should probably talk about."
Jason tipped his head up to the ceiling.
"Got a type, I guess," Reyna said under her breath.
"I don't even know how to respond to that." Piper shook her head. "Is that even an appropriate… is there even an appropriate way to handle this? Given all of the connections, and the whole…." She gestured between Jason and Reyna. "History."
Reyna shrugged. "If you'd rather have your own PR people deal with this, then that's your choice. But in the meantime, this is what we're obligated to do, both from an HR standpoint and from the point where my wife is a lawyer and would kill me if the paperwork protecting the both of you wasn't filled out. Okay?"
"Okay," Piper agreed, somewhat chastened.
"Moving on." Jason cleared his throat. "Age differences…. Really, Rey? I'm thirty-nine. Piper's twenty-seven. It's not a big deal."
"We're both consenting adults," Piper added, past the lump in her throat.
"Great, tell that to the paperwork," Reyna told them.
Obediently, they filled out the appropriate checkboxes and added their signatures.
Nearly an hour later, the papers were signed. Jason packed up his belongings and went home, Reyna drifted off to the last dregs of the Fall Ball to salvage the few social responsibilities she'd had for the evening, and Piper sank into her chair by Annabeth's desk in the dark bullpen of the West Wing. She pulled out her phone and dialed, barely able to hear the ringing of the phone line over her heartbeat hammering in her ears.
Finally, the line clicked. "Piper? What's going on? I know there's a time difference, but it's late there. Is everything okay?"
The familiar voice broke something in her, cracked right through the carefully patched-up pieces she'd been holding together since collapsing on Annabeth's office floor. "Daddy."
A long exhale on the other end. "So that's a maybe at best. Boy troubles? Legal? How bad are we talking? Did you steal a car?"
The suggestion was so preposterous, it startled a laugh out of her. "Steal a car? Why is that always your go-to?"
"Still waiting for the real answer, honey." Tristan McLean was many things— absent, wealthy, and occasionally image-obsessed among them— but he had never been described as impatient. He'd wait as long as he needed to get an honest reply out of his daughter, and she knew it.
"Boy and legal might be kind of one and the same," she admitted. "I… there was paperwork, and the office is taking care of some of it, maybe all, but… Daddy, I think I need help. Do you still have that PR firm and publicist on retainer?
I know, I know. You'll get the Percabeth material in the next chapter- complete with a conversation, some hashing-out, and some revelations that I know (I hope?) you've been waiting for. In the meantime, than you for reading! ~GT