A/N: Hello everyone! Here's a potential new story, or maybe just a little one-shot story. I haven't decided yet.
Hope you enjoy!

January 7, 2008

"International organizations like the United Nations?" She pauses, leaning her elbows against the podium in front of her and crossing her feet over each other, slowly scanning the room to be sure all her students were truly listening. Only about a quarter of them are being delinquents, and she figures for the first day of class, that's as good as she'll probably ever get. "They're pivotal in addressing global challenges, fostering cooperation, and maintaining peace. I encourage you all as we go through this semester to explore the UN's history, successes, and even the shortcomings—we can't all be perfect, not even the UN." She smiles as she hears about half of the class give a low rumble of a laugh, "You are the next generation of leaders, and you will play vital roles in shaping the future of international relations."

She steps out from behind the podium, smacking her palm lightly against the top to get the other quarter of the class's attention, popping their heads up from their notebooks where they, undoubtedly, are drawing goofy little sketches, "And you're about to graduate in just mere months. Isn't that exciting?"

A mixed reaction is what she was expecting, and when half groaned and half applauded and shouted their approvals, she knew she'd been right to expect that. "I'm getting good," she thinks to herself, realizing that she's already reading these students with ease after this only being her second semester here.

Maybe, though, it has something to do with her being a spy, of course.

"I'll see all of you on Wednesday, and don't forget to bring back your three sheets of paper. If anyone needs a last minute reminder of what to put on it even though I just explained it about," she pauses and looks at the clock while some are shuffling to get their backpacks ready to leave, "Twenty minutes ago." She says and gives a knowing grin, "Three countries, complete with their political system, and leader of that country, on individual pieces of paper. If you bring me one piece of paper with three countries listed on it, I will shame you." She says, making sure her voice sounds light enough for them to know she was teasing, but her eyes say she'll do it. Just taunt her, and she'll do it. "Alright, alright, get out of here. Enjoy an early lunch." She says as everyone starts filing out.

"Thanks Professor Adams," someone says on their way out, and she gives a curt nod.

When Henry suggested that she teach political science after all her years of knowledge in the CIA, she had only half thought about it. "I just came off the job, Henry," she'd said to him back in 2006 after so suddenly quitting the agency, "Our kids are growing up so fast, and I just…I want a year with them. At least." She'd explained.

He walked up to her and wrapped his arms around her waist, giving her a kiss on her forehead, "You don't have to work if you don't want, you know we'll make it work with just me."

"As valiant as that sounds," she'd teased, giving him a look with her eyebrows raised and her lips pressed together sarcastically, "You know the kids just get more expensive as they get older. And with Jason headed into school now…"

"I know," Henry said and sighed, "A year, then."

"A year." She'd agreed.

Last summer when a position opened at UVA, Elizabeth applied, thinking she probably wouldn't get it since her husband also worked for the university and she had no experience as a professor. To her surprise, she'd gotten an interview, and even more to her surprise, they hired her.

Even though Henry was in a separate department, she'd decided to keep it simple and teach with her maiden name. "You know when you're signing up for classes and there's two people with the same last name, it can get confusing." She had said while signing the paperwork for the university after her job offer, "Pretty soon, one of your religion students who signed up for World Religion that has an overwhelming theme of love and compassion will end up in one of my Poli Sci courses that talk about managing international crises and discussions of the ideologies that have led to bloodshed." She snorted at the time because he just stared at her, his mouth hanging open slightly as Jason and Ali were fighting loudly somewhere in the house.

"You—" He couldn't get his words out, and she laughed again and prompted him by raising her brows, "You're so violent."

She smirked a little right before she heard something hit the floor and break, then closed her eyes, "And I passed it right on to my kids." She whispered before yelling, "Jason? Ali? What just happened?"

"Professor Adams," she hears, pulling her back out of her thoughts of previous years and of the last semester when she wasn't even sure if she'd like teaching at all.

She looks up to see one of her students from last semester, "Cassie," she says softly, giving a warm smile to the young woman, "Glad to see you back in my class this semester."

Cassie smiles and nods, gripping one of the straps of her backpack, "I'm glad to be back. I really enjoyed Poli Sci 402 with you last semester, so I decided why not take Poli Sci 418 for my last semester with you?" She asks.

Elizabeth give a courteous smile as she's gathering her papers up, double-checking to make sure she took the role correctly, "Well," she says and laughs quietly, "I'm flattered to have my own following now." She teases. "I see that quite a few of your classmates chose to take my class again this semester, so I guess I wasn't a terrible professor."

The younger woman laughs and shifts, and Elizabeth immediately notices that she's looking slightly uncomfortable. She would even consider calling her body language awkward at this point. She wonders if she took it a step too far with the terrible professor remark, thinking maybe this was the only choice of class some of them had that fit with their schedules. But just as she was about to say something, Cassie speaks up, "I might regret asking this because, well…" she shrugs and grabs the other strap, too, "It's personal. And I totally get it if you don't want to answer."

Elizabeth lays her bag down after putting the papers in it, staring at the other woman, "Okay?" She says suspiciously, lowering one brow and staring at Cassie now.

Cassie looks down at her feet and clears her throat, "Well," she says, and Elizabeth takes a deep breath, preparing herself for whatever is about to come out of this young girl's mouth, "John and Molly and Kevin and I were all talking about you over the weekend when we found out we were all in your class again," she says, not picking her head up and looking at her dialogue partner, which makes Elizabeth feel a little more worried.

"What the hell were they talking about me for?" She panics when she thinks about the conversations she used to have with her friends and classmates about her own professors at UVA. Sometimes they were decent conversations, but for the most part, whenever a group of students talks about a professor of their class, it's not exactly good things.

Cassie is still looking down as she continues, "And we all collectively noticed that you haven't ever mentioned any family or anything, and that you don't wear a wedding ring."

Elizabeth raises her brow, trying to hide the smile that is slowly rising on her face. Cassie is still looking down, so she briefly shows her teeth before biting her lip and concealing it once more.

As for her family, she's made that a point to not talk about her family. Henry had been careful about it, too, but for different reasons. Back when he started teaching, Elizabeth was still CIA, and they could never be too careful about preserving anonymity for her. If her kids' information happened to fall into the wrong hands in some round about way, or someone contacted one of his students and threatened them for information, it would obviously be detrimental to not only Elizabeth's career, but incredibly dangerous for her entire family. Even a little dangerous for his students, really. So they'd agreed all those years ago when he first taught at UVA to keep his family out of the conversation. He stayed private, and he had a reputation around campus for that.

As for the wedding ring, she and Henry both had terrible luck with their wedding rings since they day they got married. On the actual wedding day, Henry's brother had lost the rings right before the small ceremony they'd had, eventually finding them underneath his bed after they'd slipped down between the mattress and bedside table where they were supposedly being safely kept. Henry was always catching his ring on things when he was still active duty, so they agreed that he shouldn't wear his. "But listen here, Captain Henry McCord," she had said, lowering her voice to a dangerous-sounding octave, "If you so much as think about acting like an unmarried man without a family…" she'd paused, grabbing his wrists and squeezing them tightly enough to make his eyes widen, and finally released her death grip and just pulled his hands to the sides of the swell in her belly, "A growing family," she corrected, "I will murder you." She whispered.

"Noted." Henry whispered back to her, his eyes still wide.

And then when he was no longer active duty, he just wasn't used to wearing one anymore. He'd put it on for special occasions, but mostly, he left it in his jewelry box.

Elizabeth wasn't much better about wearing hers, but she tried to remember to wear it. However, when she was about eight months pregnant with Jason, her fingers had swelled so badly that they actually had to cut her wedding rings off her finger. With all the heightened emotions, she had cried and cried and cried, and since then, she'd never brought herself to get another wedding ring.

"This is true," Elizabeth says to Cassie, folding her arms over one another in front of her stomach.

"Well," she says and clears her throat, "We also have class with Dr. McCord, a religion professor." Cassie explains, pulling her head up finally to look at Elizabeth. Whenever she does, Elizabeth immediately wipes the smile from her face and exchanges it for an intrigued expression, lowering her brows and sucking her lips in as though she's deep in thought. "Do you know him?"

"I do," Elizabeth answers softly, trying to keep a laugh down. Cassie seems unsuspicious, though, so she must be doing a pretty good job at keeping it all together. "What are you proposing?"

Cassie smiles a little and bites her lip, "Well—okay so it was actually Molly's idea but I was the one who was brave enough to say something—" she adds, "But we think you two should get together."

Elizabeth can't help but let out a short laugh, "Bah!" She exclaims, putting her hands on her hips and feeling her face get red. She looks over her shoulder and laughs a little, deciding to just go along with this, "Well, I'm flattered once again." She says.

"I mean, if you think that's too personal…"

"Oh," Elizabeth says, raising her brows and laughing again, "It's personal." She says, then bites her lip and cocks her jaw to the side, "How do you plan on getting us together?"

Cassie shrugs, "Well, the first and only step we'd planned was talking to you both."

"Both?"

"We're talking to you first, but now we basically have permission—"

"Permission, huh?" Elizabeth asks, folding her arms again and shifting to one leg, "Fine, okay, talk to Dr. McCord." She eggs on.

Cassie raises her brows and widens her eyes, "Seriously?" She asks, then blurts, "That easy?"

"Are you calling me easy?" Elizabeth quips.

"No! Oh, God…no. Not—"

Elizabeth laughs at Cassie's sudden rosiness in her cheeks, and Elizabeth just shakes her head, "Talk to Dr. McCord and tell me what he says when you come back Wednesday."

"Perfect," Cassie says, trying to recover from her embarrassment. "Thanks Professor Adams."

"Well," Elizabeth says, cutting up the lettuce that was for her family's salads while Henry prepares the hamburger patties in the pan. They'd worked this out a long time ago, she cuts and washes and mixes while he does the actual cooking. She can cook, technically, but there's a significantly lower chance of him burning the house down. "You'll never guess what some of our mutual students are cooking up."

This was the first time they'd been alone in the kitchen. Henry had just told Stevie to go finish her homework with Jason and Ali in the living room. "Oh, I bet I can." He says, "Because they've already talked to me."

"No way," Elizabeth says, setting the knife down abruptly on the cutting board with a thump.

Henry smiles as he keeps his gaze on the raw hamburger being formed into patties in his hands, "Yep. My class, apparently, is right after yours."

Elizabeth raises her brow and laughs, "What did they tell you?"

"That we should get together because, they think, we're both a little sad and seem a little lonely since neither one of us ever talk about our personal lives," Henry explains, laying the patty into the pan and grabbing more meat to form another.

Elizabeth shakes her head, "I mean, just because we don't talk about our personal lives doesn't mean we're either of those things."

"I'm quite happy," Henry assures.

"Me too." She says, going back to cutting her lettuce.

Henry sighs a little and shakes his head, the smile slowly coming back to him, "So anyway, they told me that I should make the first move. They're very traditional, you know."

"Really?" Elizabeth plays in.

"Really." Henry confirms. "And so I said, 'Okay, sure. Tell her I want to take her on a date this Friday.' And Cassie said she would the next time she sees you."

"I know what to look forward to on Wednesday, then," Elizabeth says sarcastically, putting all the lettuce into a large bowl, "So, Dr. McCord, where are we going on our date?" She asks.

He raises his brow and glances over his shoulder at her, "Guess you'll just have to wait to find out Wednesday."

She looks over at him and furrows his brow, "You're not actually planning on taking me out on a date, are you?"

Admittedly, their love life had been a little less than romantic over the last few years. Really, since 9/11, things had just…changed. With that event, Elizabeth's life became dramatically busier. They still loved each other, and she would still consider herself crazy about him and maybe even more in love with him than she was when she married him. But they have kids now, and with the kids ranging from six to fourteen, the romance had just dwindled. They were best friends, but not much more than that these days. No one's fault, but life had just gotten in the way. A snowball of things had happened over the last seven years.

"Why not?" Henry asks, putting the last patty in the pan. "We haven't been out in years just the two of us. On purpose."

"What do you mean by that?"

"We've gone to the grocery store together or whatever. But when was the last time we planned out a date night?"

Elizabeth had moved on to cutting the tomatoes, and she thinks for a few moments as she slices, "I don't know," she finally answers. "I guess it's been a while."

Henry nods and shrugs, "So, yeah, I do plan on actually taking you on a date."

Elizabeth tilts her head over as she continues slicing, "And who's taking care of the kids?"

"Don't worry, babe," Henry says, "I have it all planned. Just…go along with it."

January 14, 2008

Wednesday had come and gone, and Cassie must have chickened out on asking Elizabeth. She hadn't mentioned it at all, but Henry had still followed through on his plan with the date night. And for the first time in a long time, Elizabeth slept in on a Saturday morning after their night out, wrapped up in his arms, the smoothness of their skin touching at every inch possible making her feel as though she could be soothed and lulled into another sleep.

"Professor Adams!" Elizabeth hears from behind her somewhere in the cafeteria. She hated getting food here because she didn't particularly like being amongst the students in their social space, but she endured because she'd ran out of time to make a sandwich this morning before leaving. Henry, too, had not brought his brown bag lunch. Turns out that their date-night-Friday date night had turned into sex-night-Saturday and sexier-night-Sunday, and they'd ended up sleeping through their alarm this morning.

She turns around and sees Molly and Kevin, two of the group who had been scheming. Behind them, she sees Henry carrying a Styrofoam box and looking at her as if he were telling her "Shhh" without actually moving or saying it. "Hi Molly, Kevin," she says warmly, looking in the line ahead of her to be sure that no one had moved.

"We found Dr. McCord," Molly says slyly.

Elizabeth glances at Kevin who looks slightly uncomfortable, but is going along with it anyway. She just laughs, sounding as though she wanted to die a little, "I see that," she says coyly.

"Hello, Professor Adams," Henry says, extending his hand to her to shake.

Elizabeth looks at it briefly before smirking at him, taking his hand in hers and giving it a dramatic shake. "Hello, Dr. McCord." She says and tries to not laugh.

"The students are playing matchmaker again," Henry mumbles quietly enough that no one else could hear over the loudness of the cafeteria.

"I see that." She mumbles back.

Henry bites his lip, "Should we just tell them that we're married?" He asks.

She shakes her head slightly, "It's much more fun this way," she whispers, then looks over at Molly and Kevin who were trying their best to eavesdrop, "You'll be happy to know that Dr. McCord and I are going to eat lunch together in my office," she eggs them on.

"Oh, that's great!" Molly says a little too excitedly. "Well, I'll leave you two. I'll see you after lunch Dr. McCord." She says.

When the two leave, Henry leans over and kisses Elizabeth on the side of the head, "See you there." He says.

Her stomach does a little flip when his lips are against her head, and she digs in her bag and hands him her office keys, "See you," she answers, watching as he walks away.

When she turns the knob on her office door, she immediately notices that it's darker in there than she'd left it. She looks in to see the blinds closed, and bites her lip when she sees Henry with the first three buttons of his shirt undone, "Hey, Professor Adams," he says in a seductive, mostly sarcastic tone.

She snorts and shuts the door behind her, "You're going to cause us to get in trouble with HR, aren't you?"

"Miss Adams," Henry says in a dramatically fake and shocked tone, "Are you suggesting that I'm proposing inappropriate things?"

She locks the door and sets her Styrofoam box down on the chair opposite of him, scooting her keyboard, mouse, and other desk items over to the side before hopping on her desk and unbuttoning the rest of his shirt. Her palms rest on his chest as she feels his own hands slide up underneath her skirt, "God, I hope that's what you're proposing." She murmurs, leaning down to kiss his lips.