[log] we never looked so pretty, never seemed so real
From the restaurant, Caius heads directly back to the residence; when he finds Mina, he has his shirt sleeves rolled up, his tie in his pocket and his jacket over his arm. He's been thinking on the drive - about what Alex might have been after, if he was after anything, if the presently tenuous acquaintanceship could come in useful ( Read more... )
Mina, by the way, is seated in a chair, in her underwear, legs propped up against a table, a book spread across her lap. (She reads every single one he finds for her, and if she doesn't know the language, she starts learning it.)
She tips her head back and smiles at him.
"And the same to you. What happened?"
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Standing behind the chair, hands on its back, he leans foward and kisses her hello. "Mr Georgiou got bored of the fundraiser and we went elsewhere to chat. How's your schedule for a trip to California sometime?"
Don't provoke her, Caius.
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She smiles bright and sharp and says, very sweetly: "I'm sure I can arrange something. Does he know about me?"
Then, because Caius foolishly is near enough, she bites his lip.
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"That depends entirely on your definition of know-" Caius tips her back further, by means of his hand at her collarbone, and bites back before he straightens and goes to put his tie away and kick off his shoes. "I'm not sure what the point was...interesting, though."
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She makes a little sound when he does that, half-pleased and half-challenging. Mina sets her book down and leaves her chair, wandering around the room.
"But you got along?"
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"We got along," he allows, standing on his socks to yank them off his feet and sifting through his mail. "It wasn't a very in depth conversation-" as far as he could tell, and something about it's still niggling at him, "-but I've got an open invitation to stop by."
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"He's quite the businessman," she muses, leaning against the wall near Caius, "and much more principled than the norm. I'll have to look into him--when are we going?"
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"I just walked in the door, Mina," he says, not looking up from the paper in his hands. Still, he adds, "This month, ideally. What were you calling me about before?"
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"You always know what you want," she tells him, amused, "you just don't always see fit to tell anyone else. I know you, Caius."
She smiles, slightly.
"And on that note...well, how do you feel about Prime Minister?"
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He doesn't need another prompt to realize what she's saying to him, and he answers that instead of acknowledging the fact that she's right about him. "Running for Prime Minister," he says, not a question. He folds his letters in his hand and drops them on top of his laptop. "PR would be a nightmare."
It's not as though he's never thought about it on his own, though.
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"But manageable." Mina moves forward to sidle up to him, sliding her arms around Caius' neck. Her eyes are bright, and her smile is present but barely.
"For those secrets to get out, they have to be published somewhere. All the magazines, the newspapers, they belong to businessmen, five or six, at the most." She's earnestly explaining the danger of the media, the reason that no mainstream reporting can ever be considered unbiased these days. It's all got money behind it. And they can use that.
"If those businessmen don't want your secrets to get out because you have something on them, or some deal is going, no one will ever know. The PR can be managed, and those connections are more than profitable."
She taps her fingers on his chest, smiling wider now.
"If we own their souls, we control what they do."
We, she says.
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While Mina is smiling, Caius frowns. "Cordelia isn't a secret and she is something I'd have to explain." Especially the more Mina says 'we'. A diplomat with speeding tickets and a twenty-one year old mistress is one thing; the Prime Minister shacking up with a woman half his age while he battles privately with his wife is another.
Outright hustling the media isn't out of the question - not a perfect solution and hardly the most ethical, in his view, sometimes needs must - but Cordelia's going to be a problem.
He wants this; he got into politics to make the things that made him angry better and the things they could achieve from there...
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Her smile doesn't slip, but her eyes are hard, briefly, and then it's gone. Mina touches his face, affectionate--she loves Caius. She'll do anything to get them where they're supposed to be, and Cordelia is...
Mina thinks of the many people who have died for no fucking reason at all in her country, because of an inept government. She thinks of how disaster is facing them unless there are some real changes made, especially in the north. Cordelia is a sacrifice they are going to have to make, and at least her death will be for a purpose. So that Caius and Mina can fix things, save things.
It's unfortunate that Cordelia has chosen to be a problem, but she's going to have to die, since she won't change. That's just the way it is, in politics. It has been for a very long time.
"Let's give it until spring," she allows, "to think about it, what we'll do. You're young--we have plenty of time to formulate a game plan."
And it honestly won't take Mina long at all to arrange a mugging-gone-wrong.
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Caius is going to be angry; he'll be pragmatic, too, but he'll be angry first. Maybe it's been a long time since he loved Cordelia, and maybe he wants nothing from her but out of his life...still, he doesn't want her dead. Gone, yes. Out of his hair and out of his bank account, yes. Not dead.
"Spring," he agrees, slowly, settling his hands on her back. Maybe Cordelia will have signed the fucking papers by spring. (No, and he knows better than to really think that.)
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Mina doesn't think of Cordelia as a person. She thinks of her as an obstacle, and she believes, arrogantly, that even if Caius had still loved the woman, what is between him and Mina overrides it and would have anyway. Theirs is a world-conquering relationship, and it would be nice to have the title of his wife, but they don't need it. They're more than that. Everything, if they choose, and Mina...she might be right about Cordelia, and she might be wrong, but either way it's what she thinks.
"In the meantime, we've got a trip to a warmer climate," she says, pleased, "and I'll finally get to ride in that jet I got you."
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"Yes, he seemed very interested in meeting the woman who bought me a jet," Caius says, letting the subject of Cordelia drop away - it's hard to move on from a grief that's the centre of your own private war, after all, and it's easier to just imagine that the distance between England and the US makes Cordelia Roy out of sight, out of mind.
(He remembers loving her like it was in black and white, compared to Mina.)
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