A/N: Hi everyone! Here's a fun and spicy little one shot from early MSec/pre MSec days.
Hope you enjoy!
November 2014
"Ma'am," Daisy swoops into her office after Blake had announced that she would be coming in. Elizabeth picks her head up from the stack of papers she was mulling over previously, a stack left over from Secretary Marsh, and adjusts her glasses.
"Daisy," she says in a cool tone, flipping her newly shortened hair out of her face. "What's going on? Why the emergency meeting?" She's folding her glasses up as she asks because Daisy is taking a deep breath, and by the looks of it, this is going to be an uncomfortable meeting.
"Well," Daisy manages to get out, "I have a reporter who has some…" she looks down at her tablet, opening her mouth then closing it like she had to gasp for air to even find the right words. She grits her teeth together momentarily and Elizabeth folds her hands over each other on her desk.
"Some what?" She asks, growing slightly impatient.
Daisy looks up from her tablet again and clears her throat, "Well," she says again, and Elizabeth lifts her eyebrows in impatient anticipation, "A reporter came to me to let me know that they have some compromising information, as well as a photo, of you and Dr. McCord." She finally says, briefly making eye contact with Elizabeth before looking like she was going to panic again, "And I told them to give me until the end of the day."
Elizabeth furrows her brows, raking through her memories of herself and Henry. Compromising information? What kind of compromising information could people possibly have about them already—she's been in office three months now. Sure, they've been looking into George's death in their "free time," but surely no one has found out about that. "What do you mean by compromising, Daisy?" Elizabeth finally musters, "And is the photo somehow compromising, too?"
Daisy swallows thick and her eyes drop to the tablet, and she starts to say something but instead just grabs the tablet and flips it around, extending it out to Elizabeth to reach. She grabs it from Daisy and picks her glasses up, putting them back on, then focuses in on the photo.
It's definitely of Henry and herself, and they're on a plane. She squints her eyes a little to see they're holding hands—it's not the best quality photo, clearly taken from a cell phone—but she's not sure how this is compromising. "I don't understa—"
When she glances back up at Daisy, it hits her. She looks down at the screen again and swallows thick. "Oh." She mutters out, a sick feeling coming to her stomach as she droops her head down into her open palm, staring at the screen.
"Oh," Daisy repeats quietly, rocking back and forth from her toes to her heels. "The information is that they heard—"
"You don't have to go into detail," Elizabeth mumbles, shaking her head and lifting it slowly from her hand, "I'll talk to Henry first. I'll let you know immediately," she says, handing the tablet back. "Send that picture to me privately," she instructs Daisy as the other woman is leaving her office.
When the door shuts, she sighs, plopping her face down into both palms and rubbing her brows with the base of her hand. "Oh, Henry…" she mumbles, her voice muffled by her hands. Her fingers scratch through her hairline as she thinks back to that day—that month, even, because it had been long before the President asked her to do this job. Long before Secretary Marsh's death. Before George's death. Before everything had, frankly, gone to hell in a handbasket.
She's had some wins, but they've been hardly celebrated with all the other stuff happening around her.
And now this? This photo of her and Henry walking out of an airplane lavatory hand-in-hand? They were just a normal couple back then—a couple working secular jobs, coming back from their anniversary trip from Barbados, all tanned and without their three children. A twenty-fourth anniversary trip had not really been in their plans, but Barbados was on their bucket list forever, and now that things had finally been settled down with all their jobs and with the kids and the farm, Elizabeth had brought the idea up. Henry quickly agreed.
Yet, here they were in this picture on their way back to Virginia doing a mile-high walk of shame.
August 2013
"Our flight isn't going to be delayed," Henry replies, wheeling his carry-on luggage in front of him while she's hot on his heels.
She pierces the back of his head with her glare, though he probably doesn't know—but maybe he does, too. One can hope. She tightens her grip on the handle of her own luggage, "You don't know that," she argues, "What if we're not home in time to see the kids off to school, Henry? They'll be—"
"—so happy that their parents aren't there to embarrass them," Henry immediately fills in, interrupting her argument. "Come on, babe, we're kidless for a little while longer."
She snorts, "Says the one who was telling me how much he missed the kids on the way to the airport this morning?" She asks, now walking beside him with her carry-on in front of them, rolling it along through the terminal.
He makes a turn to the right and she simply follows, not even checking to be sure that it's the right gate. After all these years together, she knows he has it down—she's stopped looking not long after Ali was born. It was habit at this point to just trust he knew.
"Fine," Henry concedes, finding a seat for them in a mostly-empty area of the waiting lounge. He unloads his backpack from his back while she sets her purse down between her feet, moving them apart enough to fit it between.
She can feel him staring at her, and even after the week they've shared together (weeknight sex, lots of it—on the beach, even. In the bed. In the balcony's hot tub. In the bathroom's jacuzzi tub. In the shower. In fact, there was even weekday sex), she still feels warmth shoot through her entire body. Even her cheeks feel rosy. She clears her throat after she finishes rifling through her purse, "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Like what?" Henry asks, and she almost groans at the tone of his voice. She looks over at him and he's smirking.
Then she feels it—his hand laying on her thigh. At least, it had been laying on her thigh, and now his fingers are inching their way inward, upward, and she swats them away. "Henry James McCord." The full government name doesn't often come out, but this feels like an appropriate time.
He laughs a little bit, a little boyish she thinks, and she rolls her eyes at him.
"You're going to get us in trouble."
"You're going to get us in trouble," he whispers, "Because you're the one who's so hot that her husband can't get enough of her."
Oh, there's that heat again. Or is there a fire in this airport? She might be on fire. She looks down. No fire.
Not that she can see, at least. There's definitely a fire inside her.
She lets out an elongated breath, dipping her head backwards a little and staring at the ceiling for a moment. "Out of all our years together," she starts quietly, shifting her eyes over to look at him though her head is still mostly tilted back, "We've never joined the mile high club."
"Are you suggesting we do it today?" He asks eagerly.
She looks down at his hand that's now just resting on the top of her thigh comfortably, "I think you're the one who's suggesting it by letting your hands crawl around on my leg," she replies quietly, almost muttering it so that her lips couldn't be read by anyone around them. She bats her eyes up at him momentarily, and he watches her movements, looking into her eyes.
Finally, his fingers give a good squeeze of her thigh and he breaks his stare and turns it into an exasperated smile, leaning back in his seat dramatically and groaning a little. "God," he mumbles up to the ceiling, closing his eyes with a much bigger smile on his face, "Whatever I did…I don't think it was enough."
She snorts and smacks his thigh playfully, then squeezes it a little too to mock what he'd done with her leg. Looking over at him, she bites her lip and leans in to kiss him just under the jaw, "We need a plan," she whispers quickly, making sure her lips rubbed up against his skin when she spoke.
He drops his head back to a normal position and looks at her, and she smirks at the wild look in his eye. He looks, right now, like he could ravage her—and she's beginning to almost say go ahead. Right here. Right in this very airport. "I'll go in first," he says, "I'm less noticeable."
"Not true." She argues, raising a brow. "Women notice you."
He twists his lips, "Maybe," he says, "But I feel like men notice you more."
She thinks for a moment and doesn't have anything to say back, so finally she just shrugs, "Okay, you'll go first." She agrees, "And then I'll give it, what, five minutes?"
"Until what?"
"Until I come in?"
"Oh, right." Henry says, snorting and shaking his head.
"Brain not working?" She teases.
"Something is." He murmurs, blowing air from his lips in a more than dramatic way.
She laughs and shakes her head, "Five minutes sounds fair."
"Five is good." He says, "And knock four times and I'll unlock the door."
She opens her mouth to speak, but the voice came over the intercom stating that their flight is now boarding: "Flight number 2398 to Washington Dulles International Airport is now boarding."
She pats him on the leg, "Four times. Five minutes. Got it." She says, grabbing her carry on and rolling it into the line. She looks over her shoulder when she doesn't hear him, tucking her mouth into her shirt slightly to hide her smirk. She lifts her brows, then speaks, "Well I can't follow the plan if you don't get on the plane, McCord."
Again, he had been watching her with that ravenous, amazed look in his high. He looked as though he wondered if he were dreaming, and she figures he probably is wondering that. As she stands in line and feels his hand slide around her waist, resting on her hip bone, she feels her legs start to turn to hot lava. Her toes curl up in her tennis shoes as she stares ahead, trying to not look overly suspicious, but everything in her body was burning.
They take their steps forward and scan their boarding passes, walk through the loading bridge, and then find row eight. He lifts her rolling bag up overhead for her and then lifts his own bag, and they slide into the row. She looks over to her left and sees an older woman reading her book already, gives her a decent smile, and then looks at Henry on her right. "I need this plane to board quickly." She says to him, looking around at all the people yet to sit down.
Henry leans over and presses his lips against her ear, and she shudders and has to grab the armrest between their seats, gripping it hard until her fingers turned red. When he whispers, his voice is low, and his breath is hot against her skin, "The wait just makes it all the better." Another shiver runs through her body and she leans her head into his face, wanting to be closer to him. On top of him, ideally. Glued to him in every way possible—every gloriously sticky way, too.
He pulls away and smiles at her, and she raises her brow. "You're getting a kick out of this."
"So are you," he points out.
She takes a deep breath and decides he's right—she was getting a kick out of torturing him a little in the airport. But now, in such close quarters, her face is definitely red—she can feel it—and her body feels like it's throbbing. She leans into his ear this time, briefly nibbling on his earlobe before speaking, "I need you." She almost whines, but keeps her voice nearly silent as she speaks into his ear.
It's his turn to shiver this time, and she watches and feels the vibration of his body before smiling against his ear, then pulling away. He gives her a look, and she returns the same, and then they both sit with their heads against the back of the seat and let out a breath at almost exactly the same time.
Her hand, however, is still gripping the armrest, while his hand is gripping her knee.
When all the passengers finally board and the pilot comes on and gives the speech—the "do this if we start to die" speech—they finally get to the runway and take off. "We've reached cruising altitude," the pilot says minutes later. In between those minutes, neither of them had said a word—not since before the plane came to the runway. They'd stayed still—frozen, maybe. Afraid to move because maybe they would jump each other.
She hadn't felt like this in years.
She's loved him for years of course, and loved his body for that long too, but something about aging with this man she loves has taken their relationship to a new high. There's so much trust built between the two of them, so much intimacy that she'd never even imagined being able to have before. So much so that she's trusting him to take good care of her in the tiny airplane lavatory.
"You're free to roam about the cabin."
When they hear those words, they both look at each other, and Henry unbuckles his seatbelt. "Going to the bathroom?" She asks playfully, quietly so that no one else could hear, and wearing a big smile on her face.
"Yes, my love." He says sarcastically, wiggling his eyebrows at her momentarily before standing up.
She looks down at her watch and lets out a breath when he's out of sight, her hand still gripping onto the armrest. Her eyes jut over to the woman beside her, still reading her book, and then jut over to the row of seats across the aisle. Everyone had headphones in, and there was one person who was already asleep. She leans back against the seat again, closing her eyes and steadying her breathing.
With every breath she takes, she feels a pressure in her belly, not being helped by the seatbelt. So she reaches down and unbuckles it, then swallows thick and looks around to see if anyone saw her do it. It was natural, though. The seatbelt sign was off. Don't look so suspicious, Elizabeth, she tells herself as she lets the seatbelt fall gently to each side. She takes a look at her hand that's gripping the armrest, then clears her throat a little as she takes a look at her watch. One minute passed.
God, this would be harder than she'd thought to wait for five whole minutes. Surely he's made it to the bathroom by now—she could just go now. But that hadn't been their plan. What's the difference if you go now or in four minutes? She argues with herself in her head back and forth long enough that another minute passes, and when she looks down at her watch this time, she decides to scoot her feet under her and stand up.
Noticeably, she almost hits her head on the overhead baggage area, but ducks just in time and gets out in the aisle. Two people saw her, but she just laughs it off, "They really should make these taller," she teases, and both people just smile at her and go back to their own distractions. She widens her eyes a little after she passes them, then sets her eyes on the lavatory in the middle of the plane.
Oh God, she thinks to herself. We didn't discuss which one.
There's multiple on a plane this big—she should've thought of that. Surely, though, if she knocks on the door with someone in it, they'd answer and she'd be able to hear it wasn't Henry. Right? Oh, Elizabeth.
Her legs feel wobbly as she stands in front of the door and her hand feels like it weighs twenty pounds as she brings it up and makes a fist. She knocks four times, then swallows hard and waits, and the door unlocks. No voice must mean this is Henry. Right?
She glances over her shoulder but then realizes that makes her look suspicious, so she just opens the door up and hopes for the best. When she sees her husband peeking around the door, she smiles and shuts the door real fast, then pounces on him as her hand fumbles with the lock on the door.
Her other hand comes up and splays across his jaw, and his hands are already working at the button on her shorts. "I was afraid it wasn't you," he mumbles between kisses, pressing her against the wall and pinning her there.
She opens her eyes and smiles, "I was afraid it wasn't you, too." She admits, "We didn't discuss which one to go to."
"You found me." He smirks, kissing her sloppily and sliding his hands underneath her ass. "How have we never done this?"
"Shhh…" She whispers, mostly because she doesn't want him to stop kissing her and partially because she doesn't want anyone to hear them and become suspicious. "Stop talking." She whispers.
He kisses her again, and the way his tongue moves inside her mouth makes her whole body shudder. She picks her leg up and wraps it around his waist, grinding her body against the front of his.
"I need you," those three words, again, makes him look at her in a stupor before finally sliding his hands in the sides of her panties, almost ripping them off her legs before he finally gets them down. She's standing there in just her tee and her tennis shoes, and something about that fact alone makes her feel incredibly sexy—like she could take on the world in this tee and tennis shoes.
She leans in and kisses him hungrily, and he takes his hands and lifts her from the tops of her legs and hoists her onto his hips, and he pins her on the wall again. She opens her eyes momentarily and bats them at him, and she reaches between them and slides his boxers down—his pants had already been out of the way when she got inside.
She guides him in and has to suppress a moan, her head falling back and hitting the wall. It hurts, but only enough to make her notice that her head might be throbbing later, not enough to make them stop.
His mouth covers hers again and she takes the opportunity to moan into him, letting him muffle the sounds as he starts moving. She already feels the coiling in her belly, and she rolls her hips along with his thrusts. "Henry…" she whimpers inches from his lips, staying quiet enough.
He digs his fingers into her ass, and she moans again into his mouth. Their noses squish together and she leans into him, and now he's sliding his hand up the side of her body and underneath her shirt. Her mouth falls open as she pulls away from his mouth, and she locks eyes with him. He squeezes his fingers around her, and she squeezes around him, causing him to let out a strangled whimpering sound, too.
Her breath hitches as he slides his finger across her nipple, and all she can think of is how amazing his mouth would feel around it instead. In support of his endeavors, she rips her shirt off over her head and throws it into the sink—a choice she'll definitely regret later—and rips her bra off her breasts and beside them, giving him full access.
He wastes no time, immediately engulfing her right breast with his mouth, flicking her hardened nipple with his tongue. Her head hits the wall again and her fingers come up and run through his hair, her back sliding a little with each thrust against the wall. "Henry…" She whispers, trying to tell him she's almost there, but she can't get anything out other than his name.
One of his hands is still supporting her underneath her ass, the other is working on her other breast, kneading and massaging. She feels like she's going to explode—her entire body will combust soon.
He lets go of her breast with a pop, the cold hitting the wet and making her painfully aware of how she already misses his mouth. "I'm about—" it's all he can get out, too, before she pushes him into her other breast with her hand against the back of his head. He takes direction well, though, and sucks in hard on her nipple.
Her upper body crumbles a little, melting over onto him as she feels the friction below start to become too much to handle. The tightness in her belly builds more and more, and she takes one deep breath before her body seizes, squeezing her legs and everything else around him tightly. The motion makes him lose it, too, and she feels a new warmth inside her body as she drapes her head on his shoulder.
He has to put his other hand on the sink to steady himself, and she notices he's getting wobbly. She looks at him and kisses him one more time, nice and sloppy and wet, then looks into his eyes. "You're the only man in the world, Henry McCord. The only one."
He smiles a little, but mostly his brain looks like it's swirling in his head still. She gently slides off his body and they stand there for a moment, then he leans in and kisses her again, gently biting her bottom lip and pulling on it as he moves away. "You're an amazing woman," he whispers, kissing her neck, "Amazing. Stunning."
She feels another wave roll through her and has to hold on to the sink, then onto his arm, and looks at him with a smile. "Don't keep on," she warns playfully, "We'll have to do it again."
He laughs and kisses her on the lips, then on her forehead, and she closes her eyes and soaks in the moment. Her hands rest now on both of his forearms, and she steadies her breathing as she listens to the hum of the jet's engines. "I love you, Henry." She whispers, looking up at him. "I love you so much, and it only gets stronger."
He smiles at her, reaching into the sink and handing her shirt to her as she adjusts her bra again, "I love you," he whispers back.
Once she's redressed, he opens the door for her, and without thinking, they step out at the exact same time. He's holding her hand as he walks out, and she follows him, and they drop hands as they near their seats and sit down—the woman next to them still reading her book.
November 2014
"I mean," Henry says, looking at the photo, "It's not like we're naked."
"No," Elizabeth agrees, tucking her arms around her chest and into the edges of her robe as she looks at him across the bed, "But it's clear what we'd just done."
He sighs and sets the photo down on the bed, looking at her over it, "Let them print it." He says, shrugging. "We're not celibate."
"Henry." She says, tilting her head and staring at him. "We can't just…no."
He takes his glasses from his face and sets them on the photo, too, and then shakes his head. "We're not being controlled by the press, especially when they have a weak story like this. They can imply all they want, but maybe I was just waiting for you outside the bathroom and took your hand when you came out. You never know."
She sighs and rubs her palms on her face, "I don't even know why they took the picture," she murmurs, "I wasn't anyone then."
He's crawling into the bed now, and she just watches, "Because it's two people coming out of a lavatory. You know how social media is—everything's sensational." He says, tucking the blankets up under his arms as he looks over at her. "Everyone tries to sensationalize romance and love and marriage. We're two married people doing what married people do."
"In public," she argues, standing stock-still by the bed and amazed that he's even making that argument. "On an airplane in a tiny…closet." It might as well be a closet—the size isn't much bigger.
"They can't ever prove we had sex in that lavatory, babe," he reminds her, and the logical part of her agrees, but the more irrational side of her that has been coming out more because of the stress of her job tells her she should still be panicking for what people will be saying.
Instead, she just swallows thick and nods, "So you think Daisy should just leave it alone?"
"I think if she doesn't," Henry says, looking at her as she crawls into the bed, "It'll make us seem guilty."
She sighs and scoots into his body, and he wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her in tight. She snuggles into his chest and closes her eyes, thinking about how hard and stressful it is just to have the job alone, besides being under constant scrutiny—even for things that had been done in the past. Swallowing hard, she looks up at him, "I trust you," she whispers, "I trust that it's the right decision." She pauses, "Just—please don't break that trust."
The silence washes over them, and he scoots her in closer, "I would rather die than break that trust, Elizabeth." He whispers back, "I truly would."
She nods, settling into his side again and closing her eyes. "I'd do the mile-high club again all over with you, though, even if it meant public scrutiny."
She can hear his lips part into what she assumes is a smile, and he rubs her side gently, "I would too."