Fic: "Transitive" (Brothers & Sisters)
For mardia in the One-Night Stand ficathon. Her request was Robert/OMC, "something where Robert is with another male character, and is thinking of/fantasizing about Kevin."
Thanks to romanticalgirl for beta'ing.
The poor kid probably thought this was a job interview.
Robert never said anything of the kind, of course. But the way things were done here in DC--careful, coded, deliberately secretive--he couldn't blame the kid for his mistake. He was a mid-level staffer from a mid-importance district that easily got lost in the pack of California's House delegation. Getting attention from the big leagues--a Senator, a rising star in the party--was tremendous.
Of course he was excited. Robert understood that. And yeah, he'd used it to his advantage a little. Asking the kid personally--pulling him aside and suggesting a meeting over dinner--he knew what James Cleary was going to think.
Honestly, he would just offer the kid a job regardless. Even if he backed down on his original reasons for the meeting. Just make it innocent, a dinner on a whim, because he'd heard good things and his office needed more staffers from the young white male category. He hadn't (he'd heard exactly one thing about this guy, and it was completely irrelevant to his job performance, which was part of the actual reason he had asked Cleary to dinner), and it didn't (he was off the charts with young, white, and male; in fact, his office manager had informed him that he needed to show a decisive commitment to other demographics unless he wanted to wind up with bloggers saying nasty things about him).
But it wasn't like he couldn't lie.
James showed up five minutes early, with a leather portfolio under his arm and a smile so broad and aggressively confident that it was strained. Robert was tired just looking at him. Washington did unfair things to these staffers, the kids who greased the gears of the machine. They needed the right suits and the right shoes and the right haircuts, unless they didn't mind fading back into the pack of gray faceless provision-of-movement-of-paper that kept the guts of the Capitol moving. If they wanted to stand out, if they wanted to get ahead, it took that extra degree of spit-shine.
They lived packed like rats or college students in apartments that flirted dangerously with the fire code, because they were paid on a public servant's salary that reminded them every other week that they were doing this for the good of their fellow Americans, not wealth or glory. Or, well, they were doing it for some reason, but not wealth or glory. At all.
It was like the farm team system, a vast pack of the very good and very bright, but still just one in a hundred was going to be the best and brightest. And here they weren't even going to get a shoe named after them.
"Senator McCallister?" James was standing beside Robert's table, still smiling like it hurt. His suit wasn't quite good enough, though he'd obviously splurged on the tie. Senators' staff made just enough more than Reps' to be worth it. Maybe enough to make a dent in the student loans, maybe to bump the suit up a label.
"James," Robert said, and smiled. "Please, sit."
Robert had a talent, which was why he was in politics at all: he could turn his attention on people and make them believe with all their hearts that he was interested. Sometimes he even was. Tonight he was mostly faking it; he still hadn't decided what he was going to do, and it was distracting, something he was going to worry at the back of his mind until it came down to yes or no.
James was trying to make small talk. In DC, that meant politics and traffic. And the weather.
"Order yourself a drink," Robert interrupted, signaling the waitress. "Vodka martini for me. Double."
James ordered the same. Robert didn't care much. Vodka wasn't even his drink; he preferred scotch, but tonight it struck him as important that certain distinctions were maintained.
He didn't drink scotch with his staff. Not in DC. Not with this kid. Not here.
James was still trying to talk about traffic. The Metro had been running on a delay. Robert watched him across the table; James' tie was silk, patterned, expensive. His hands were deft and quick, and he used them when he talked. His eyes were blue.
"You follow sports?" Robert asked.
Stilted repetition of headlines, lifted off the feed in his Gmail while he was e-mailing his college and campaign friends about who went home with whom last night from the crowded, dismal crush of the politico bars.
James' suit wasn't quite nice, but it fit him well. His eyes were blue. His hair was dark, cut short and clean enough to stop the hint of curl. He was, according to the lines of gossip that ran through Capitol Hill like wires for electricity, gay and single and not precisely new at swapping sex for favors.
"Order whatever you want," Robert said.
Small talk about the big players of their mutual acquaintance. The appropriations bill and the confirmation hearings. Confusion grew in James' eyes as Robert steadfastly didn't steer the topic toward his office, the communications staff, a gap that wasn't there but could be.
He drew it out through the salads and steaks, through a second and then a third round of martinis. James finally stumbled over a fact, a name, and laughed, his hand coming up to cover his face. Robert smiled faintly.
"Why don't we take this somewhere more private?" he suggested.
James still didn't quite get it; most likely he didn't get it until they were halfway up in the elevator, watching the floors tick by toward the sixth, where Robert's sterile and efficient apartment was twice the size of the one James probably shared with two other staffers and a White House intern. Bipartisanship in action, in the interests of paying rent.
James looked at him, the way he was leaning against the wall of the elevator, hands in his trouser pockets, and his suit coat--and his was a very nice suit--flared open to fall precisely over his wrists.
"Is there a job?" James asked, his voice blurry with vodka, only a hint of anxiety there.
Robert nodded. There could be. "Yes."
"Here or in California?"
"Preferably here. We could negotiate."
"Here is good." The elevator stopped and chimed. James wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "What do you--"
"Not in the hallway," Robert said sharply, and James shut up, falling into step half a pace behind Robert, perfect staffer's position for the walk down the hall. Robert's apartment unlocked with a key card, like a hotel. It made the moment seedier than Robert cared for.
Inside, he stripped off his jacket and nodded at the slightly dusty minibar. "Drink?"
"No." James took of his own jacket and looked around for somewhere to put it. "Think I'm good."
Robert poured himself one anyway, scotch this time after all. James stood quietly, awkwardly, hands in his pockets, while Robert drank.
"I don't want to coerce you," Robert said abruptly, when he reached the bottom of the glass. He truly didn't. If coercion had been on the table, he wouldn't be here. He could have coerced in California, dealt with the problem at the root, taken what he suspected, refused to admit, knew he actually wanted, if he was that kind of guy.
"You can leave if you want," he added, licking the last of the whiskey from the rim of the glass. "No repercussions."
"I'll stay." James shrugged and reached up to loosen his tie. "Do you want--"
"Leave that on," Robert said, and nodded toward the bedroom.
He wound James' tie tight around his hand when he kissed him, the tension just enough to hold him there in the minute. James moaned and sighed into the kiss like a cheap porn star. Robert stopped and told him to knock it off. It was better, once he did. Not quite right, but better.
He didn't think about Kevin, exactly. He didn't use that name, certainly, and he didn't pretend. He couldn't, because it wasn't quite right. Kevin would not have been quiet as he undid Robert's trousers, would not have gone to his knees without a sarcastic remark. If Robert had gripped and guided Kevin's head a little roughly, he probably would have been bitten for his trouble, instead of receiving prompt and smooth obedience.
When told to stop, stand up and undress, Kevin wouldn't have been quite so thin. Not so bony and angular. The tattoo on James' left shoulder, that was wrong, and the thin line of a scar on his knee. The paleness of his skin, the dark tangle of hair at his groin, those were right, and all in all it was close, so close, but not so much that Robert would bother to waste his time pretending.
Robert couldn't imagine Kevin moaning softly when Robert pushed inside him, on his hands and knees on the bed, discarded condom wrapper and packet of lube out of place against the sheets. Robert was, thanks to Kitty's sarcastic stories about vacations past, very sure that Kevin would be loud. Vocal. Demanding. Eager for more and deeper and as much as Robert could give him, as rough as he cared to give it.
Kevin wouldn't look at the arc of fingertip bruises on his hips with puzzlement, after, or a faint hint of distaste. He would take them eagerly, and mouth off about if that was the best Robert could do. Robert was almost sure of that.
"I'll send a formal offer tomorrow," Robert said, pulling his boxers back on. "Ten percent raise."
"Any chance you can swing fifteen?" James couldn't find his undershirt. His eyes swept restlessly around the room, landing anywhere but on Robert.
"I'll see." Robert picked up the shirt, crumpled at the foot of the bed, and handed it to him. "You want to use the shower?"
"No. I'm good." James met his eyes for just an instant, a flicker of defiance there, and it was almost right. Close. Still not quite.
"I've got some calls to make," Robert said, and James showed himself out in silence.
Robert sat on the couch and turned on the TV; CNN at a low, soothing volume, recapping the things he had lived that day. The appropriations bill, the confirmation hearings. Nothing had changed.
It was three hours earlier in California.
He called Kitty first, because he loved her. Then Kevin, because he could.
Thanks to romanticalgirl for beta'ing.
The poor kid probably thought this was a job interview.
Robert never said anything of the kind, of course. But the way things were done here in DC--careful, coded, deliberately secretive--he couldn't blame the kid for his mistake. He was a mid-level staffer from a mid-importance district that easily got lost in the pack of California's House delegation. Getting attention from the big leagues--a Senator, a rising star in the party--was tremendous.
Of course he was excited. Robert understood that. And yeah, he'd used it to his advantage a little. Asking the kid personally--pulling him aside and suggesting a meeting over dinner--he knew what James Cleary was going to think.
Honestly, he would just offer the kid a job regardless. Even if he backed down on his original reasons for the meeting. Just make it innocent, a dinner on a whim, because he'd heard good things and his office needed more staffers from the young white male category. He hadn't (he'd heard exactly one thing about this guy, and it was completely irrelevant to his job performance, which was part of the actual reason he had asked Cleary to dinner), and it didn't (he was off the charts with young, white, and male; in fact, his office manager had informed him that he needed to show a decisive commitment to other demographics unless he wanted to wind up with bloggers saying nasty things about him).
But it wasn't like he couldn't lie.
James showed up five minutes early, with a leather portfolio under his arm and a smile so broad and aggressively confident that it was strained. Robert was tired just looking at him. Washington did unfair things to these staffers, the kids who greased the gears of the machine. They needed the right suits and the right shoes and the right haircuts, unless they didn't mind fading back into the pack of gray faceless provision-of-movement-of-paper that kept the guts of the Capitol moving. If they wanted to stand out, if they wanted to get ahead, it took that extra degree of spit-shine.
They lived packed like rats or college students in apartments that flirted dangerously with the fire code, because they were paid on a public servant's salary that reminded them every other week that they were doing this for the good of their fellow Americans, not wealth or glory. Or, well, they were doing it for some reason, but not wealth or glory. At all.
It was like the farm team system, a vast pack of the very good and very bright, but still just one in a hundred was going to be the best and brightest. And here they weren't even going to get a shoe named after them.
"Senator McCallister?" James was standing beside Robert's table, still smiling like it hurt. His suit wasn't quite good enough, though he'd obviously splurged on the tie. Senators' staff made just enough more than Reps' to be worth it. Maybe enough to make a dent in the student loans, maybe to bump the suit up a label.
"James," Robert said, and smiled. "Please, sit."
Robert had a talent, which was why he was in politics at all: he could turn his attention on people and make them believe with all their hearts that he was interested. Sometimes he even was. Tonight he was mostly faking it; he still hadn't decided what he was going to do, and it was distracting, something he was going to worry at the back of his mind until it came down to yes or no.
James was trying to make small talk. In DC, that meant politics and traffic. And the weather.
"Order yourself a drink," Robert interrupted, signaling the waitress. "Vodka martini for me. Double."
James ordered the same. Robert didn't care much. Vodka wasn't even his drink; he preferred scotch, but tonight it struck him as important that certain distinctions were maintained.
He didn't drink scotch with his staff. Not in DC. Not with this kid. Not here.
James was still trying to talk about traffic. The Metro had been running on a delay. Robert watched him across the table; James' tie was silk, patterned, expensive. His hands were deft and quick, and he used them when he talked. His eyes were blue.
"You follow sports?" Robert asked.
Stilted repetition of headlines, lifted off the feed in his Gmail while he was e-mailing his college and campaign friends about who went home with whom last night from the crowded, dismal crush of the politico bars.
James' suit wasn't quite nice, but it fit him well. His eyes were blue. His hair was dark, cut short and clean enough to stop the hint of curl. He was, according to the lines of gossip that ran through Capitol Hill like wires for electricity, gay and single and not precisely new at swapping sex for favors.
"Order whatever you want," Robert said.
Small talk about the big players of their mutual acquaintance. The appropriations bill and the confirmation hearings. Confusion grew in James' eyes as Robert steadfastly didn't steer the topic toward his office, the communications staff, a gap that wasn't there but could be.
He drew it out through the salads and steaks, through a second and then a third round of martinis. James finally stumbled over a fact, a name, and laughed, his hand coming up to cover his face. Robert smiled faintly.
"Why don't we take this somewhere more private?" he suggested.
James still didn't quite get it; most likely he didn't get it until they were halfway up in the elevator, watching the floors tick by toward the sixth, where Robert's sterile and efficient apartment was twice the size of the one James probably shared with two other staffers and a White House intern. Bipartisanship in action, in the interests of paying rent.
James looked at him, the way he was leaning against the wall of the elevator, hands in his trouser pockets, and his suit coat--and his was a very nice suit--flared open to fall precisely over his wrists.
"Is there a job?" James asked, his voice blurry with vodka, only a hint of anxiety there.
Robert nodded. There could be. "Yes."
"Here or in California?"
"Preferably here. We could negotiate."
"Here is good." The elevator stopped and chimed. James wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "What do you--"
"Not in the hallway," Robert said sharply, and James shut up, falling into step half a pace behind Robert, perfect staffer's position for the walk down the hall. Robert's apartment unlocked with a key card, like a hotel. It made the moment seedier than Robert cared for.
Inside, he stripped off his jacket and nodded at the slightly dusty minibar. "Drink?"
"No." James took of his own jacket and looked around for somewhere to put it. "Think I'm good."
Robert poured himself one anyway, scotch this time after all. James stood quietly, awkwardly, hands in his pockets, while Robert drank.
"I don't want to coerce you," Robert said abruptly, when he reached the bottom of the glass. He truly didn't. If coercion had been on the table, he wouldn't be here. He could have coerced in California, dealt with the problem at the root, taken what he suspected, refused to admit, knew he actually wanted, if he was that kind of guy.
"You can leave if you want," he added, licking the last of the whiskey from the rim of the glass. "No repercussions."
"I'll stay." James shrugged and reached up to loosen his tie. "Do you want--"
"Leave that on," Robert said, and nodded toward the bedroom.
He wound James' tie tight around his hand when he kissed him, the tension just enough to hold him there in the minute. James moaned and sighed into the kiss like a cheap porn star. Robert stopped and told him to knock it off. It was better, once he did. Not quite right, but better.
He didn't think about Kevin, exactly. He didn't use that name, certainly, and he didn't pretend. He couldn't, because it wasn't quite right. Kevin would not have been quiet as he undid Robert's trousers, would not have gone to his knees without a sarcastic remark. If Robert had gripped and guided Kevin's head a little roughly, he probably would have been bitten for his trouble, instead of receiving prompt and smooth obedience.
When told to stop, stand up and undress, Kevin wouldn't have been quite so thin. Not so bony and angular. The tattoo on James' left shoulder, that was wrong, and the thin line of a scar on his knee. The paleness of his skin, the dark tangle of hair at his groin, those were right, and all in all it was close, so close, but not so much that Robert would bother to waste his time pretending.
Robert couldn't imagine Kevin moaning softly when Robert pushed inside him, on his hands and knees on the bed, discarded condom wrapper and packet of lube out of place against the sheets. Robert was, thanks to Kitty's sarcastic stories about vacations past, very sure that Kevin would be loud. Vocal. Demanding. Eager for more and deeper and as much as Robert could give him, as rough as he cared to give it.
Kevin wouldn't look at the arc of fingertip bruises on his hips with puzzlement, after, or a faint hint of distaste. He would take them eagerly, and mouth off about if that was the best Robert could do. Robert was almost sure of that.
"I'll send a formal offer tomorrow," Robert said, pulling his boxers back on. "Ten percent raise."
"Any chance you can swing fifteen?" James couldn't find his undershirt. His eyes swept restlessly around the room, landing anywhere but on Robert.
"I'll see." Robert picked up the shirt, crumpled at the foot of the bed, and handed it to him. "You want to use the shower?"
"No. I'm good." James met his eyes for just an instant, a flicker of defiance there, and it was almost right. Close. Still not quite.
"I've got some calls to make," Robert said, and James showed himself out in silence.
Robert sat on the couch and turned on the TV; CNN at a low, soothing volume, recapping the things he had lived that day. The appropriations bill, the confirmation hearings. Nothing had changed.
It was three hours earlier in California.
He called Kitty first, because he loved her. Then Kevin, because he could.