This chair was not made for pacing. That’s the first thing I notice, which says a lot about where my head’s at. Oval Office’s meant to be sacred ground, history-thick and stately, mahogany gravitas and oil paintings that watch you like pissed-off ancestors. Not a single one of those bastards would’ve anticipated this.

“Briar,” someone says—probably my VP, or her Deputy PM, or Jesus himself, I don’t know, they’ve all started blending. Background noise with suit jackets.

I don’t answer. I’m too busy rereading the headline that just went DEFCON nuclear across every global media outlet in existence.

“EXCLUSIVE: President of the United States and British Prime Minister Caught in Secret Engagement – White House Sources Confirm Affair.”

The word affair feels deliberate. Like some Ivy-League intern at The Times threw it in with one of those smug little grins. Clickbaited it to hell and back. Because affair sounds illicit. Presidential. Biblical. You don’t say “engagement” and expect it to trend—engagement’s soft, it’s gentle, it’s what you put in a press release under bullet point three.

But affair?

Affair makes it a problem. And my father would know all about that, it may be why he broke the news to me first before even my media department did.

“Who leaked it?” I say, still not looking up.

“You’re asking that now?” snaps her Deputy PM, some guy in a waistcoat who’s always looking at me like I just pissed in the Thames. “The better question is how the hell we contain—”

“Watch the tone,” I mutter, then finally toss my phone down on the desk like it personally betrayed me. “I’m not losing the country over this, alright? I’ve tanked approval over the economy, healthcare, a literal alien sighting in Arizona—and we got through that. But this?”

It’s not that we got caught. It’s that we didn’t even get to announce it. Not on our own terms.

And I know—god, I know—I should be thinking about the optics and diplomacy and NATO implications or whatever’s in the brief they shoved in front of me this morning, but all I can actually think about is the way her hands were shaking when she put that ring on.

She’s across the room. Not crying. That would be too human for her. She’s doing that terrifying British thing where she’s completely silent and somehow louder than everyone in here. Arms crossed. Jaw locked. Like she’s both Prime Minister and Queen of Cold Rage, and I’d offer to kiss her just to soften it but that’s… not really on the PR agenda right now.

She finally speaks. “We either deny it or confirm it. Halfway will kill us.”

I flinch at us. Because she didn’t mean it like that.

Amandeep, my VP, makes some noise about polls and re-election chances and “potential impeachment if they can paint this as misconduct,” but it sounds like white noise.

I rub my face. My palm smells like her perfume still—because of course it fucking does—and I nearly lose it for a second. Not visibly. Not in front of the table.

“I need a minute,” I say, already moving.

“Mr. President—”

“I said I need a minute.”

The second I’m in the side room, the private one behind the Resolute desk where presidents cry or drink or punch walls, I lean back against the cool wood panelling and just breathe.

Inhale. Hold. Out. Slower.

There’s a knock. She doesn’t wait for me to answer.

She closes the door behind her, slow, soft, like it won’t echo through the whole damn world anyway.

“We’re so fucking screwed,” I whisper.

She stares at me, eyes like sharpened stone. And then she cracks. Just a little.

“Did you see the photo they used?” she says.

I blink.

“They used the one from the Boston gala. The one where your hand’s on my thigh. You remember?”

A beat.

I do.

She always did make this shit so much easier. Sometimes growing up the son of a president made me feel immortal against how regular men dealt with the pressure of being the leader of the free world.

Other times that god status was revoked and my mind span miles a minute. And she always knew how to make it stop.

I was two extremes before {{user}}.

{{user}} bought the calm.