So why was he more fixated on Jack than ever? And why was his heart screaming at him to do something, to reach out to Jack, cup his face in both hands, and caress his lips in a tender first kiss?
He was failing massively at separating the personal from the professional.
But Ethan laid part of that blame at Jack’s feet, too. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought Jack was flirting with him. Perhaps even trying to court him, as old-fashioned as that sounded.
It started simply. Ethan headed back to the White House that Saturday afternoon to catch up on work he’d already caught up on. After an hour wasting time in Horsepower, Ethan headed out for a sweep of the grounds, checking in on all of his detail agents. That took him to the Residence, where he happened to run into Jack…and where he spent the rest of the afternoon and evening. A few beers and one long ballgame later, Ethan slipped out of the Residence through the secret stairwell in the East Sitting Hall, all the way to the bottom floor, and sneaked back to the West Wing via the underground tunnel. No one had seen him.
And it had been perfect. Absolutely amazing. Well, once he got past his nerves and the fear that he was about to be caught by one of his agents. But the detail didn’t go into the Residence unless they were requested, and Jack purposely sent the stewards away. Once Ethan had let go and relaxed in front of the game in Jack’s study, he’d finally allowed himself to fully appreciate the moment, the man, and the friendship he was being offered. Hours later, his cheeks hurt from laughing at Jack’s bad jokes and aggressive game calling, and he’d practically floated as he sneaked out of the Residence.
The next Tuesday, Jack invited Ethan back for another ball game after his evening National Security Council update. Ethan had to wait in the hidden stairwell in the East Sitting Hall, trading texts with Jack as Jack and Gottschalk took a late call from the Senate Majority Whip right before Ethan walked in.
On Friday, one of the White House staffers grabbed a burger for lunch and the smell of the fries wafted through the West Wing. Jack moaned about the White House food, claiming it was too perfect, and he just wanted a greasy, artery-clogging burger every once in a while. Ethan slipped out when the late afternoon wound down. Jack was catching up on emails and briefs in the Oval Office when Ethan came back with burgers and fries for two, complete with a chocolate milkshake for Jack.
Jack’s smile had bowled Ethan over, and he’d grinned through the weekend on just that memory, replaying that smile totally fixated on him.
Days later, Jack buzzed for Agent Reichenbach, asking to speak to him about the Prague summit coming up. Ethan, focusing on official business, walked into Jack’s private dining room, just off the Oval Office, to find a private lunch set for two. Prime rib and mashed potatoes, green beans, and sweet tea; the staples of an all-American meal. “A thanks for the burgers,” Jack had said, pulling out the chair for Ethan. “And because I wanted to.”
Every few days, Ethan slipped up to the Residence. At first, it was to watch sports together, but then Jack asked him if he played pool, and then they were up on the third floor in the game room, breaking sets together and trading off stripes and solids. Ethan was too distracted by Jack to clean the table while Jack mopped the floor with Ethan, over and over.
Through it all, the texting continued, even increased. As did the jokes.
Hey. Come stand watch during the next Cabinet meeting, k?
[Yes, sir. Is there a threat?]
No, but there is a game. Every time Jim says “let’s hang that out on a shingle”, Jeff and I are going to take a drink of water. Whoever’s bladder bursts first loses.
Jim was the Ambassador to the United Nations, and he loved his colloquialisms. Ethan smothered a grin. He was watching the previous shift’s brief when Jack’s text came in, and bursting out laughing while the former shift lead was discussing threat matrices wouldn’t be good.
[Do the American people know that you’re a total goof?]
Do they know that the Energizer Bunny protects me?
[This bunny has to go to work, First Name. Hopper 1, out.]
Hippity hop! ☺
Or, when Ethan was certain Jack was in a meeting with the congressional leadership in the Oval Office.
What’s the best thing about Switzerland?
[Good food, decent beer, and of course, the banking. Pretty sweet military too. Why do you ask?]
Well, that’s all good, but you know, their flag is a big plus. :D
[Oh my God. It hurts.]
Ba dum tissh! I’ll be here all week.
[How did you get elected?]
Ethan left his suit jacket in the Residence the first time they played pool. He hadn’t taken it off before, but to play pool, he’d shucked the coat and rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie. Jack had ditched his tie all together and then untucked his shirt by the third game.
Panicked, Ethan texted Jack at five AM, freaking out that the stewards would have found a mysterious suit jacket. Jack laughed, and he had Ethan’s suit jacket folded over the back of a chair waiting for him when Ethan showed up for their morning workout. “There are enough men in jackets, Ethan. One more flying around won’t raise any eyebrows.”
“But it’s the only one in your residence, sir.” Ethan couldn’t help but point that out. “Other than your own. That might raise a few eyebrows.”
Jack simply shrugged and kept jogging on the treadmill.
Ethan forgot his suit jacket nearly every time after. He was just too distracted by Jack and enjoying the tiny beer buzz he’d get each time. The beer mixed with his euphoria left him walking on air by the end of the night, and he always drove home replaying their conversations, remembering the curve of Jack’s smile and the sound of his laughter or the light in his eyes when he’d tease Ethan. By the time he pulled back the covers and slipped into his bed, Ethan’s thoughts would turn again, this time questioning what it all meant.
If he were a woman, this would obviously be flirtation. Jack would be flirting with him if he were a woman. If Jack was gay—or even bi—this would also be flirtation. He’d see the signs: lingering eye contact, and a challenge buried in the gaze. Looks darting down, undressing each other with their eyes.
But he wasn’t gay, and he didn’t know that Ethan was gay, so this was just male friendship. Straight dude bonding, something Ethan had never really done before. It was foreign to him, alien, and nothing in his past helped figure this out. Even his friendship with Collard and Daniels wasn’t helpful. They knew he was gay, and there had never been a question of flirtation or boundaries. There wasn’t anything murky there. And back in the Army, he’d mostly flipped between missions and going out, slipping off to bang guys at the bars a town over when he wanted to get away. Same with DC.
This though… It didn’t mean what he desperately wished it would mean. Jack was straight.
Right?
* * * * *
A week before going to Prague, both Ethan and Jack were inundated with preparations for the NATO summit. Jack was shuttled from meeting to meeting—Cabinet meetings, National Security Council meetings, briefs with the Joint Chiefs, and secure conference calls in the Situation Room with the allies. He was fielding calls from Europe, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt, and trying to get the French president on the phone every other hour.
Would it be too much if I issued an Executive Order mandating that we go back to “Freedom Fries” instead of French fries? Is that too far?
[If it makes you feel better, every president has nearly had an aneurysm over the French.]
Oh good. So it’s not personal. Gotta go. Brits are calling back and the generals are getting grumpy that I’m texting.
[Please focus on the world, First Name.]
I’ve always been good at multi-tasking.
Ethan deployed the advance team to Prague and spent an hour on the phone catching up with his old friend, Pavel Chovanec, an officer in the Czech
Bezpečnostní informační služba
, the Czech security and intelligence services, and the man in charge of the American’s security while they were in-country. Pavel greeted the advance team on the ground when they landed and took the detail to the Aria Hotel, which the United States was completely renting out for the summit. With only fifty-one rooms, the hotel wouldn’t hold everyone from the president’s travel party, but it would hold the president, his advisors, and the security detail. Pavel assured Ethan that the Aria was perfect for them in every way, and bet Ethan a round of drinks that the president would love it.
His phone buzzed after six PM.
I’m beat. I can’t do this President thing anymore today. I need to call it a day before I get punchy and pull a Reagan.
[Go home, First Name. You have the best commute of anyone.]
Or the worst. People have a habit of finding me when I want to hide.
[Playing hide and seek as the president is not advised. We tend to get a little bitchy when that happens.]
LOL I bet. Hey, come on up? I feel like banging some balls around and having a few drinks.
Ethan reminded himself to breathe, in and out, and willed his cock to stay silent. Jack wasn’t flirting with him. He wasn’t. Right?
[You know, I’m really glad you have a speechwriter, sir. ☺ Lemme finish up a few things here. Then I’ll slip up the east stairs.]
Ha! Jokes! I’ll make sure to not push a chair in front of your secret passageway. See you later!
Jack was already two beers in by the time Ethan headed up. He texted as he headed down the tunnel for his stairwell entrance, and Jack told him to come straight on up to the game room. When he arrived, Jack was taking a pull from his beer, shirt untucked and unbuttoned over his suit pants and revealing his white undershirt. The sleeves were rolled up, and Ethan had to drag his eyes away from the soft skin at his elbows and force himself not to give Jack a long, lingering once-over while Jack waved hello to him.
On the wall, the flat-screen TV was fixed on the news, talking heads arguing back and forth about the upcoming summit and Russia’s posturing.
“I just think that we’re setting ourselves up for a huge catastrophe by inviting the Russians,” one of the male commentators said, speaking loudly over his female spar. “There are no, I repeat, no, zero, zilch, requirements for the Russians to change their behaviors!”
“Ignoring the Russians and their aggression has done nothing!” his counterpart argued. “Ten years we’ve been ignoring the Russians’ invasions in Eastern Europe. And not just us! Europe, too! Shouldn’t we be doing more? Taking a lead in the world and stepping up, engaging the Russians?”
“America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists or brutal regimes—”
Ethan grabbed the remote and clicked the TV off. “C’mon. You’ve heard all that before. You need a break.”
Heaving a heavy sigh, Jack nodded and stood from the slouch he’d leaned into against the back of the sofa. “Yeah. I know. But I can’t get it out of my head.”
“How can I help?”
Jack crossed his arms. “I’m starting to feel like I’m on the edge of World War Three.”
“Is it that bad?” Ethan stepped closer, unconsciously trying to comfort Jack.
A deep sigh, again. “The Russians are land-grabbing in Europe, and no one is standing up to them. They’re operating on their own in Syria, maybe even helping the Syrian Provisional Government—a hack government that’s just robbing the country and doing nothing for what’s left of the citizenry. Add to that the Caliphate, a radical, stateless terror group that’s murdering hundreds of people a day, and destroying lives across the region. And they just happen to hate everyone, the West and Russia. Who nukes who first? The Caliphate, if they get their hands on a nuke? Iran and Russia, taking out the Caliphate and obliterating the Middle East? And Europe…” Jack shook his head.
“Every day, there’s another terror threat uncovered on the continent. The refugee resettlement zones are powder kegs with fuses. Radicals recruit disaffected youth, angry at the shaft they’ve gotten from life. They didn’t come to Europe as terrorists, but being left in the resettlement zones for years and stuck without any future prospects hasn’t made them any more eager to join the European community.”
Ethan crossed his arms, mirroring Jack, and stood wide. His shoulders loomed over Jack, and if he could have, he would have wrapped Jack up in an embrace.
“And now the Chinese are deploying to Iraq?” Jack rubbed one hand over his face, exhaling. “Am I Chamberlain, right before World War Two? Am I just appeasing the aggressor? Am I focused too much on ‘peace in our time’?” He swallowed. “I just don’t know what the right course is sometimes.”
Jesus
. Ethan chewed on his lip, watching Jack’s shoulders slump as he took another pull from his beer bottle. “What do you want to do?”
“Tell the Russians to fuck off, order troops into Syria to straighten that place out, and bomb the Caliphate into the Stone Age.” Jack shook his head. “I hate seeing all the devastation, all the death and the pain, all the time. There’s so much hurt over there. People are just trying to live their lives, but they’re caught in the middle of all this bullshit.” Jack drained the last of his beer in a long swallow. “But where does ‘wanting to save the world’ fit into ‘protecting American interests’?”
“I think that would be a pretty balls-out maneuver, sir. And I’d vote for you in a heartbeat if you did that. I think people are sick of the death and the horror, too. We’ve watched and waited for so long, and nothing has changed. Maybe we
should
help out. If we’re the world police, as we’re always accused of being, then why don’t we do some good? Authoritarian regimes and thug states hold power and territory because the world does
nothing
.”
“And why don’t the Australians, or the Swiss, or the Chinese go ahead and deploy troops on a humanitarian mission? We’re not the only ones who can save these people. But if we do nothing, no one else will. And if we do deploy, we’re going to lose soldiers over there to save lives that, at the end of the day, aren’t American.” Jack looked down as his fingers picked at the label on his beer bottle. “I know what it’s like to be told your soldier isn’t coming home,” he said softly.