Thankfully, there was lengthy construction work slowing down traffic on the interstate going south. Every dragged out moment was much appreciated. St. Elizabeth’s sat on Alabama Avenue’s southeastern end. Located in close proximity to the Anacostia and the Potomac, it was a surrounded by a lot of commerce and travel, an unknown yet busy sector of D.C. Less than a quarter of an hour from where Nathanial laid his head down at night, that’s where Marcy had been this entire time. How many times had she crossed his mind during her stay? Countless. Had he been so close and hadn’t acknowledged her proximity?

How tall was he? 6’1 as of the last time his fraternity had a competition. 72 inches… Multiplying his height in inches by .413, which was a constant for determining walking stride for different heights. Nathan divided that slowly in his head by 12, the number inches in a foot, his brain momentarily jumbling as his driver hit the brakes at the signal of a roadside worker missing his two front teeth. He was rusty. The numbers came back into focus as he inched past the narrowing road being encroached upon by barrel cones. Dividing the number of feet in a mile by the last number in his head gave him some lengthy decimal.

He feared he might lose the digits so he pulled out his phone, swiping up and accessing the calculator. Times 7 miles, which was what it was, right? About 14,915 steps. 15,000 steps. Nathan felt less guilty now about not seeing her. He couldn’t walk that far in his physical shape. Perhaps she had only just decided she wanted to regain contact. Surely she had not sat on his name and their knowledge of each other for months, or however long she had been handcuffed to a bed.

Sure, she had been handcuffed to a bed before, on many occasions, but the walls weren’t bland and bleach wasn’t in the air, permeating even non porous surfaces like beige speckled white tile and metal door knobs. He had been there, on top of her, with her, inside her. They were kids, though. He was nearing the realm of his late thirties and with a term already under his belt and a re-election, according to the polls, in the bag, he was a different person now. She probably was too.

He usually did adequately at forgetting her, and when past memories surfaced he was able to remember around her in a way. Her brother had called him out of the blue days prior to tell him about the situation with his sister. And she didn’t want Alan. She wanted Nathaniel Bennett, the president of the United States, whom she had seen naked and snorted snowflakes with to sign her “I’m pretending to not be crazy and drug addicted anymore so you’ll let me out and I can go do it all over again because I’m all sorts of fucked up” papers. Even as the president, he wasn't sure if his signature was strong enough to uphold such a lie. It might be the biggest lie he had signed his name to.

The conversation with her brother hadn’t been the most flavorful, promising to reminisce over beers encounter. It was late, and luckily Alina was out of the house. His private phone line rang and he picked up hesitantly.

“Hello?” he spoke, clearing his throat as he laid the X rated men’s magazine face down on the bed to keep his place. He was savoring the centerfold's nude body in the forefront of his mind.

“Nate? Um, Mr. President, hey, uh, it’s Alan Burke.”

“Oh, wow, man, hey. How are you? Are you still in New York?” It had been years.

“I’m alright, I’m still living on Staten. Listen, I have a favor to ask.” Was he really calling the president of the United States to ask for drug money?

“It’s Marcy,” he paused, as if Nathan needed time to recall why the name sounded familiar. There was no way to let an electric soul such as Marcy Burke’s slip from your memory. Unless you did more drugs than she did, then forgetting might be possible. But no one used more than Marcy. “She has been down in D.C. and I can’t make it down to come get her. But, uh, she won’t see me. She wants you.”

“Me?" Nathan practically snorted. The day he left New York for D.C. replayed in his head over and over again. She hated him. He didn’t deny to himself that her closeness excited him and his loins. “Why is she down here?” Had she come to tell him she was going to do everything in her power to prevent his reelection? Did she even remember him? Of course she did, she had to.

“She’s been locked up in St. Elizabeth’s." Locked up sounded so harsh. "Mom and dad are footing the bill. But they’d rather pay through the nose than go get her.” Of course. Alan and Marcy’s parents were a lot like Nathan’s. Their money and their feelings had an inverse relationship. When the dollars rose, the love and affection took a nose dive. He blamed a lot of their childhood problems on the older Burke generation.

“Well, man, I don’t really think I’m the one for the job.” Sorry, this president isn't able to face past sexual partners. No can do.

“She asked for you.” Why the hell would she do that? He hadn’t seen her in… years. She wasn’t going to be a positive influence over his campaign. He would have lost the election with her by his side. It would have been a joke..

“So, you want me to take her home?” He wasn’t really entertaining the idea….?

“My parents don’t want her living at home until she… changes. And Jill…” his prudish wife who was so offended by their frat joke 'No means yes and yes means anal' chant at initiations. “Isn’t really comfortable with the idea of her staying here…”

“Alan, she isn’t a puppy who needs potty-trained. She is your blood.” He stood now, erection from his magazine fully gone. Nathan ran a hand through his hair and straightened his sweats as he considered the effectiveness of pacing.

“She has more of your bodily fluid in her than mine,” It was a joke but it was probably true. Truer than he would ever reveal to her brother. “Can you put her up? I don’t want her with her friends that she has there. Nothing good about that…” Nathan understood Alan's illusion to his sister's ability to make not so favorable friends.

Is the married president allowed to pick up ex-girlfriends that do copious amounts of drugs from mental wards?

“When is she being discharged?”

“The seventeenth. Three is the pickup time.”

Their conversation ended soon after that and here he was, with absolute minimal security without his wife’s knowledge of where he was, during the turning point of a U.S. presidential campaign.

“Thanks, Barry,” President Bennett fumbled around, deciding he really only needed a wallet instead of an entire briefcase. Marcy always said he had a way of ensuring he was the center of attention. Perhaps winning presidency proved her right? “The car is all ready to go, too?”

“Yes, sir, all squared away.” He offered a reassuring smile in the rearview.

“I really wish I would have hired a slower driver,” he muttered bitterly as he stepped out of the black sedan, hearing the older man chuckle as he shut the door too hard. Was he here already?

He had taken a back entrance, with a hood over his head and his head hung so as to not attract attention. She was on the 15th floor, room 1503. He felt unsure. Would he look old to her? He knew he had aged significantly, especially during the past four years. Had she seen recent pictures? There were thousands online. The bags under his eyes were surely irreversible and he diligently had Alina dye his hair to hide the gray.

Nathan hadn’t lost his thick, tall build, but surely he didn’t look like he did the last time Marcy had seen him. He pictured her the way he always would, barely seventeen, usually with a joint in her tiny left hand.

Thankfully, no nurses were in the room when he knocked and slowly entered. He needed control over the situation, and couldn’t have her answer the door. It wasn't the way he'd imagined the encounter. She stood with her back to him, thin, even with her over-sized clothing. Her hair was still long, how he liked it. “Marcy?” was all that came out, despite the poetic slurs he’d fantasized about the past few nights as he drifted to sleep…

Four months and twelve days.

Four months, and twelve days.

Second longest amount of time Marlene Burke had been clean.

The first had been a successful, solid half year; but at least that time had been her choice. In retrospect, it was a stupid attempt. She had been set on chasing a fantasy that everyone knew would never come true. Everyone except for her. Marcy really thought she could change. For him. For herself. Dark lips for a prim pink pout. Short skirts for an A-line. Crystal that she would actually wear on her ears and not around her nostrils.

She was young and in love and most dangerously of all, she wanted to prove a point. Why was it so hard to understand that she could quit any time she wanted? This - the drugs, the partying - this wasn't going to be her entire life. It was just a phase, and she would outgrow it.

And she did, for a time. She proved her point. For herself. For him.

And then he fucking left.

Fast forward thirteen years: he was now the President of the United States, and there she was, leaning against the windowpane of her discharge room on the fifteenth floor of St. Elizabeth's hospital.

Since the dawning of the realization that Nate wasn't going to come back for her, that he really was serious about the campaign bullshit, Marcy had thrown herself back onto the familiar cushion of that lifestyle. It welcomed her like a warm blanket, filling her up the way only he used to be able to, once upon a time. With her parents' money she dove headfirst into a blur of needles and men and blissful ignorance.

It didn't help that his face was everywhere. His face, and the face of his wife. Somewhere deep down, she knew it wasn't meant so, but it felt like a harsh Fuck you, Marcy! every time the TV plastered the two across its screen. The anger (or whatever the hell it was that she felt towards him) would flare up, and she would sink right back under the influence. But then the high would waver to an end, and the cycle would begin all over again.

It wasn't until four months and twelve days ago, when the campaigns were starting up again, that Marlene decided she'd had enough. Anger, real anger this time, told her it would be a great idea to make the five hour train ride down to her ex's big fancy house, knock on his door, and give him a thousand pieces of her mind. It would be years and definitely a lifetime too late, but at least she'd win.

However, aggressively screaming and clawing at the police officer who'd asked her to open her purse for inspection upon arrival landed her a room in the hospital's mental ward, postponing her winning blow until the bastard agreed to come down to see her himself.

Withdrawal this time around seemed much, much worse. Her temper and tear ducts had gone haywire without warning, resulting in countless nights handcuffed to her bed with a dirty mouth and sore throat. Of course, the irony wasn't lost on her; handcuffs, a dirty mouth, and a sore throat, attributes that once had been a nightly routine between she and him, twisted into a weird recovery story, all for the sake of seeing him face to face.

Finally, the day of judgement had arrived. She could only wait and see whether or not Alan had delivered on her demands.

They had given her back her belongings, minus the drugs from her satchel purse. She was wearing the clothes she had arrived in: an oversized, plain grey knit sweater, tight jeans that had old paint stains all over, and some worn out black Keds. Her arms were folded across her chest as her piercing blue eyes absentmindedly drifted around the landscape of the side of the hospital. Strawberry blonde hair fell to the middle of her back, tucked behind her ears to keep it out of her face, which, aside from looking tired and thinner than normal, looked pretty much the same as it did when she was clean.

There was the knock...

"Marcy?"

The woman bit down on her lower lip. Media wouldn't let her forget his voice, which had changed over the years, but somehow, in those two syllables, it sounded exactly the same as it did in his dorm room.

She didn't turn around. Not yet, anyway. Truth be told, she half expected his strong hands to slide around her midsection and pull her body into his. She was 5'7", almost a whole head shorter than him, but it was hard to forget how they had fit together like puzzle pieces.

There were a few more beats of silence, during which Marcy was telling her inner monologues to shut the hell up and let her concentrate on keeping her cool. She'd had months to prepare this encounter, but she wasn't expecting how weak the mere sound of her name in his voice was going to make her. Even after all this time, and her grudges...

She turned around to face him. Her gaze immediately found his face, the one she'd seen so much in the past four years. Marcy knew it would probably be strange to see hers after all this time, and she waited for a flicker in his expression to say so. Eventually a small ghost of a smirk would creep across her mouth.

"Hey, Nate." Then she caught herself, shaking her head slightly before she spoke again, although there was a definite hint of sarcasm in her tone. "Or, uh, is it Mr. President now, I guess?"

"Congratulations, by the way."

Goddammit.

She wasn’t haggard and worn like he might have hoped once or twice. She barely looked any different. She was still his best friend’s little sister who hung around them even when they less than kindly hinted at their distaste for her presence. When high school ended and the two boys, hardly worth the namesake of men, moved the half hour away to New Haven, into dorms of one of the most prestigious universities in the country. Nathan almost saw her more frequently then than he did when he practically lived in her house.

It wasn’t until he saw her repeatedly, over and over again at every Friday night frat party, that he really gave any thought to the conversations he overheard her parents having. When she wasn’t around, he would hear them discuss the trouble they foresaw on the horizon. Her “promiscuous mannerisms” as Mrs. Burke referred to her behavior, “was going to cause real trouble”. Marcy had a lot of older friends. They would bring her up for parties, and they were the drug guys the seniors always seemed to be on good terms with. Though, they were more attracted to the molly and Adderall than Marcy and Nathan’s choices.

It was a Halloween party, which is always the first detail Nathan recalled within this story. It was very early in his freshman year, just over a month past the start of school. He was barely legal, and she wasn’t at all. He recognized her that night, right away, her and her friends were a little late arriving to the party. All the guys there knew damn well she was way too young. He kept his knowledge of her to himself, though. What did it matter to him what his best friend’s baby sister did?

Soon, she was much more than someone’s sister, even now, she was so much more than that.

‘Oh that face, makes me wanna party,’ he thought as their eyes met. He promised himself he wouldn’t look away from her, for days he’d promised over and over again that he wouldn’t take his eyes off of her. His heartbeat was in his ears now.

It was like he was fifteen again, and he shoved his palms in the pocket of his grey sweats. ‘Don’t say something douchy like you would have in college,’ his conscious muttered, whom Alina had deemed his only useful vice president.

He returned her smile, nervously. Still, he didn’t know why she wanted him here. To see him again, but this time as the leader of her country? Nathan didn’t feel so big in this moment. He couldn’t seem to recall a moment when she did him wrong, but rather the opposite. Every raised voice and every outburst, every assignment and quiz and midterm that he’d blamed on her. The smile on his lips widened as he remembered how it was exactly she’d moaned when he made it up to her…

“I’d really rather Nate,” he confessed, taking a few steps closer. He could smell her, and he never realized it until now, that he’d blocked out the fragrance.

“How have you been holding up?”

Marcy watched his smile widen slightly, watched the familiar look on his face that always came when he was remembering something. She couldn't count on a thousand hands how many times she'd seen this expression, or seen those slivers of dimples carved into his cheeks. She remembered how her fingertips felt when the traced over them, every morning, laying in the mess they'd made the night before. Without knowing it, her fingers had begun fiddling with the loose string hiding in the crook of her left arm, trying to distract herself from getting pulled into memory-land herself; otherwise she knew she'd be standing there with the same strange, reminiscent smile on her face.

But that wasn't why they were here. No, she was here to get even. Or, at the very least, get some place to stay.

Nathaniel had taken a few steps closer to her, and Marcy for some reason straightened up a little bit, her chin gravitating upwards slightly in an attempt seem taller than she was. He probably would recognize the stance, the habit that she couldn't shake, always employed when she felt she needed to try and regain control or power over the situation. The room wasn't very big - at least, it didn't seem very big at the moment. Maybe she was imagining it, but it seemed to be shrinking around the two. Forcing them to get closer. His proximity was already freaking her out, making her toes buzz with electricity and the area between her legs come alive like they hadn't in so long.

No, stop it. That's not why you made him come get you.

Wasn't it?

She could smell him, too. She'd smelled him as soon as he'd walked through the door. It was hard to miss: A strong cologne, a sophisticated scent. Leagues away from the musk he naturally wore on his skin, the aroma that had enveloped her for so many years. The difference snapped Marcy out of her reverie, and she reached up with a slender hand to flick the back of her pointer finger against the tip of her nose. A change in subject.

"Ah, well, I've been just... Fantastic." The undertone of sarcasm in her jazzy-alto voice came trickling back out. "You know, after the withdrawal, they were pretty nice to me here. Free meals, passable bed. Therapist only tried to get in my pants a handful of times. Not so bad..."

"What about you? TV tells me you're doing pretty well."

Understatement of the decade. Marcy's head had fallen to the side, observing his highness, trying to see if she could still get a rise out of him. After all this time, she could still nail the role of his best friend's impish little sister.

"Although, I would have guessed that the President would have nicer threads than those?" She gestured her chin towards his attire, grinning at the idea that she might be the only person to have seen him out and about in sweats.

Her change in posture spoke volumes to him. Maybe she had only requested his presence to see how much older he’d gotten or so he could see how well she was doing without him (which by the looks of it wasn’t very well). But somewhere deep down she remembered him, and he made her feel something. Whether it was good or bad she had not yet reached the tone of indifference.

“Who wouldn’t try to get in your pants?” Maybe she needed a boost of confidence. He could blow her horn, and other things. Had she been with other men? A large part of Nathan had always hoped the drugs kept her too busy to fuck anyone else after he left.
He finally let his gaze drift from her. The hospital room was dreary and white, and the white tile was, as anticipated, speckled with beige, as if beige was a color. The layout wasn’t what he had imagined. Is protocol to send someone experiencing withdraw to a psychiatric hospital? Here

Nathaniel had thought prison was the first step. But then he remembered the means Marcy came from. The Burke’s bathed in it and made sure everyone knew it.
His eyes returned to hers as she mentioned his well-being represented on FOX. Oh, had she seen Alina? “Being the most searched man on Google has its perks,”

Not really. That was a lie. The travel and experience was great, but as a hot, yet very cold, blooded Aquarius, he wanted nothing to do with the leash he felt put on him by responsibilities and security. Nathan was barely left alone long enough to get head, let alone enjoy a vacation. Of course, over the course of four plus years he had come to accept the things he had given up. He told himself many times a day ‘You made this decision, you made your bed, now lay in it’.

But what was the alternative? Would he have ever stopped messing around? Would he have even graduated? It was a miracle, truly, that he was able to make it through, by society’s standards, unscathed. By his own standards, very lost.

He had 2,000 dollar suits but that was never the kind of thing that impressed Marcy.

“I thought you might not remember me, so I went for the nostalgic sleep-deprived college-senior.”

“Who wouldn’t try to get in your pants?”

That was the last thing she expected to come out of the President's mouth. But then again, he wasn't just the President to her. Sure, Marlene was more surprised than anything; her cocked eyebrows betrayed her cool-demeanor and her grin was amplified by his cheekiness. Maybe it was a slip of the tongue, or perhaps he was simply trying to warm her up. Either way, Marcy couldn't deny the flickers within her stomach that always rose up when being flattered, especially by him.

Marcy pushed that aside. For a while, she thought he could be the only man with an all access pass to the aforementioned pants. Even now, while they stood together in the depressing clinical white of the room, the Scorpio in her was itching to try and get his ass in the bed. But no, she had to be good, for now. He'd finally obliged by coming to get her. She wasn't a complete asshole.

An involuntary grunt and a roll of her blue orbs punctuated his last statement. "Oh, fuck you."

Could she say that to the leader of the country? Eh. Freedom of speech and all that, right? He really could have been joking with her, but he of all people should know that she couldn't not remember him. If she was being honest with herself, he would always be the same Nate that could take several hits from the pipe and still have enough stamina to make the floor hear her moaning through the walls. The whole Presidency thing didn't phase her much. At least, that's what she was telling herself as she continued.

"You really think I could forget you? Come on, Nate. I'm a strictly high functioning addict. Who owns a goddamn phone. It's not like you've been off the grid all this time."

"Besides," she said, taking a few more brave steps forward so that they were only a few flimsy feet apart now, "I don't think even sleep-deprived college seniors have such bad stress lines on their foreheads." Marlene chuckled to indicate that it was a joke as she instinctively reached out with her hand, but paused the movement before it could get further than a few inches ahead of her. She glanced at it, laughed again under her breath, then let it drop back to her side. It's destination was meant to be his face, but she supposed that sort of contact was still packed away in the corner of a warehouse they called history.

Marcy shook her head and turned instead to her bag, which was waiting for her on the bed, and pretended to busy herself with organizing the few, random things inside.

"So I guess Alan already talked to you about my situation? I uh, need a place to stay. Bet you got lots of empty space in that big house of yours now, huh?" She kept her tone nonchalant in order to smooth over the almost-accident, but kept her eyes off of him as she spoke.

The words fuck and Marcy always sounded like a good idea when combined.

But that was a long time ago. It was a senator and a presidential term ago. A lot of stuff happened since then, things Marcy would never understand, nor was he able to help her understand. The world wasn’t black and white anymore. Nathan couldn’t “Just see what happens”, like his soul wanted him to. He couldn’t just be in it for the experience like he once was. This was bigger than him. Even though Marcy made him forget it, he was a leader. It was an annoyance that was always present.

She could see his life wearing on him, represented in the worry lines across his skin. Nathan frowned and then relaxed his face, wondering if they had gone away now, if his forehead was smooth again. Probably not. Those lines were reinforced every second of every day. But, Nathan often forgot how lucky he was. His secret service was very lenient and allowed him to leave their sight quite often per his request. He had them to thank for these moments alone with her.

“As much as I try to be off the grid, it’s hard for people to get enough of me,” he couldn’t help himself. As if they followed him around because they liked him or cared about him.
Nathan moved over to the window. She was pretty high up. Curiously, he checked the engineering of the windows, but you couldn’t open them. Figures.

“Your brother seems worried,” he fibbed. He didn’t seem unconcerned, per se, but Alan never felt overly affectionate or brotherly towards his sister. Perhaps that’s why he was able to remain friends with Nathan when he knew without a shadow of a doubt he was sleeping with his sister in the next room over. Though, to most it might seem wrong, Nathan was more brotherly to Marlene than Alan. A really weird and dysfunctional sibling relationship with a lot of kissing.

No matter their past, she could not stay in his house. With Alina. It would be on the cover of every magazine within days. And he might be castrated by every feminism group he’s done so much work with. “Yeah, it’s pretty big but a lot of it is open for the public. We only occupy about a fourth of it.” He would tell her later that she wasn’t staying with him. Is that really what she wanted? Sure, he could afford every meal and mortgage for her for the rest of her life, probably even her drugs, too, but she wouldn’t want to be so reliant on someone. Especially someone in as bad of a political spot for a personal relationship such as himself.

Nathaniel turned back to her now, grabbing a black duffel off the bed and slinging it over his shoulder. She didn’t seem to have too many belongings with her. Just two bags, one being a very small purse. Alina had purses that looked like that, with a lot higher price tag. “You ready?”

Marcy snorted at the mention of her brother being worried about her. It was nice of him to cover like that, but it was unnecessary. They both knew that she was a big girl who didn't need anyone's sympathy, which was why it was always such a big deal to her that she always felt compelled to seek out Nathan's. Now, playing grown-up with his stuck-up wife, Alan has come to share the outlook of their parents', which was that Marlene was the blemish on the face of their family. Didn't bother her much, though. As long as they were there as a safety net, Marcy was perfectly fine being the bad seed. It suited her.

As he grabbed her duffel from the bed and swung it over his shoulder, she couldn't help herself: "Wow, special treatment from the celebrity himself." Laughing softly, she lifted the strap of the satchel over her head and let it rest across her body, finally allowing for some definition between where the sweater ended and where she began. Marcy hooked one thumb into the strap and came to attention at his side, chest puffing out while her hand flung itself up to her hairline in a lazy, mock solemn salute.

"Lead the way, Mr. Pres."

Sure, she might have been a bit too obvious with her jabs at his new lifestyle, but he had to have known this was coming. Maybe she was a sarcastic, vengeful bitch, but let it never be said that she ever wasted an opportunity. After they left the room, she'd probably have to hold back most of the smart remarks for the sake of his carefully constructed publicity. And for the sake of not getting arrested on account of accidentally calling Nathaniel a jackass, or something. That would just be a waste.

She strode past him to the door and pulled it open, holding it behind her with her hip while she gathered the strands of her long hair and tied it up in a messy bun. "How the hell did you get in here, anyway? Without any fuss, I mean? Don't you have a posse following you around like, 24/7 nowadays?" The back of her slender neck now exposed, he could see the little tattoo of the black and white outline of a lotus flower peeking out through wisps of loose strands when she turned her head to look out in the hallway. It was her first tattoo, the one she'd dragged him to get with her on her eighteenth birthday for a hand to squeeze.

Nathaniel glared at her in mock annoyance. Had she grown up at all? Maybe he wasn’t any better than her for doing something with himself, because if it weren’t for others’ expectations of him, he probably wouldn’t have become anything more.
“You’re very fortunate, Ms. Burke, I haven’t carried my own things in years,” Which was mostly true.

He didn’t particularly enjoy her calling him any name that reminded him of his career choices. Nathaniel didn’t want to mix her with the idea of being the president… the two never mingled well before and they weren’t going to now. Nathan used his one free hand to pull the fallen hood back over his head in disguise. “I have gotten them to leave me alone. I’ve promised legal pardons if anything happens to me.” It sounded very foolish, but the benefits were endless. “Usually I have them with me. But it’s much easier than trying to sneak away, which is kind of impossible.” How had he not been assassinated? But, truthfully, other presidents have been assassinated and they were with service guards. Besides, the risk of dying was far from the worst thing involved in being the leader of a country.

He caught a whiff as she tied her hair, again, the fragrance reminded him of how he’d let the memory slip. She always smelled good, even the day she got that tattoo. Against the advice of everyone, including Nathan, she gotten drunk right before her appointment. He drove her to the smoky tattoo parlor and waited for three hours while she got inked right on the spine. Marcy wanted him to get one, too, but for some reason unbeknownst to Nathan, he’d refused. Refusal to try something new truthfully wasn’t in Nate’s repertoire. Usually. That tattoo was the only precipice in which his body wouldn’t let him jump off of. Since then, he’d gotten one or two.

Nathan was in sneakers, and easily kept a little ahead of Marcy as they walked. He skipped the check-in desk where the discharge papers would have been waiting on him, should he have taken the normal route and not asked for them ahead of time. He led her down the hall, quite a ways before guiding the way down the stairwell and all the way down to the parking garage.

Fishing deep in his left pocket, he found the keys to the Beamer i8. Row something, number something. It beeped after he hit the lock button enough times.

She still had that languid, strolling walk of hers, allowing Nate to pull a little ahead of her as they exited the room and maneuvered their way through the hospital. A few nurses that had treated her during the stay blinked in confusion at the hasty, hooded male leading her out of the building, and when they waved goodbye to her with question marks on their faces, Marcy flashed them an award winning smile, simply waved back, and shrugged her shoulders as if to say, "Men. What can ya do?"

When they arrived in the reception area, Marlene made to walk towards the check-in counter where the usual business happened. But Nathan didn't stop, and the question mark that had been on the nurses' faces made a guest appearance on hers. "Wait, what about the papers?" she murmured at his shoulder, jogging to catch up with him. When he didn't respond, she just rolled her eyes and sighed, deciding to trust him with whatever he had planned. He probably had his ways of taking care of things. It was just as well; she had never really liked the bitch at the desk, anyway.

Marcy followed after him all the way down to the parking garage, enjoying the sound of their footsteps echoing in the stairwell as they went. She glanced around at all of the dormant cars in their invisible cubbies, playing a game with herself to see whether or not she could guess which was his.

Though he didn't really seem to know which one it was, either. An eyebrow inched itself up on her forehead as she watched him clicking the button on a set of keys. But again, deciding to just let him do his thing, Marcy kept her witty attitude contained to a smirk. Finally a beeping sound came from somewhere further down the lot, and she followed him to a shiny new BMW, like a gem in a sea of rocks. And it's been a while since she'd been in a gem as nice as this one.

Her jaw dropped. "Oh, my god." The thing was gorgeous. Marlene was never really into the mechanics, but you could never deny that the machines were beautiful. She'd been around nice cars her entire life because of where she'd grown up, but the damn car wasn't exactly going along with the inconspicuous vibe he was trying to keep up. Then again, it was D.C. Marcy realized this probably was being inconspicuous.

She let out a long whistle. Never really one to ask whether she could touch, Marcy lay her hand on the vehicle and almost caressing it, let it run along its length until she reached the passenger side. "Nice perks." Then, a funny thought occurred to her. It wasn't exactly like she was super concerned, or anything. But the President doesn't usually man his own transportation, did he? "You still remember how to drive?"

With a double click of the top button, he unlocked the two doors. Swiftly he tossed the duffel into the back, having to fit it between the driver’s headrest and the frame. Nathan slid in, reaching up and pulling the door down and into shut position. It was a shame he didn’t possess the means to drive something as sweet as this during his racing days. “We’re going to find out,” he replied jokingly to her question. He drove every couple months or so. Driving after a long break was very similar to simply switching vehicles. It didn’t take long to adjust. “I drive a lot overseas, not so much here,” he smirked to himself. “Will knows how to have a good time.” As in, Prince William.

Nathan frowned a moment as he adjusted the air conditioning for mid-august in the south. “Wait… is it the left…or right side of the road?” he watched as a Toyota rolled by in the dimly lit parking garage. Nate gave her a sideways glance as he easily slid the machine into drive and
pulled out with a flat, flexed palm steering the way.

What had Marcy been doing for the past decade or so? A combination of drugs and wearing thirty shades of the same purple lipstick? “How long were you in the straight-jacket joint?” He made a few turns at green lights and merged onto the 295 north. Nathan had never imagined he’d see her again, that she would allow him within 100 feet of her. But their dynamic seemed almost… unchanged, just more grown up. How long the social politeness, with minimal mention of their flawed history, would last, he wasn’t sure. Would she see him again, after today? Her moods shifted with the direction of the wind. According to the i8 rearview display, the wind was 15mph south. He kept his eyes on it, waiting for it to waiver, but it didn’t even as his speed fluctuated.

In the time he had been away, learning at the hands of politicians who planned to groom him for presidency, where was she? Nathan had forgotten their last encounter, allowing it to fade away as easily as he pushed the rest of her imprint away. He had a system, a method to force his mind away from her memory, thus his subconscious threw away some of the details he tried to recall when he wanted to torture himself. Some trigger would finds its way under his skin, and he would encourage the anguish by reliving the pain others had caused him.

Others being Marlene. You can move mountains with that feeling of despair. He reminded himself of how important it was to bathe in sensation, good or bad. It was important to feel, to experience and to understand all aspects of human capabilities. It didn’t matter that his heart was broken, it was easily buried by the mountains he carved and the rubble left when he detonated. His feelings would change, time would heal, and he would have yet another notch in his belt to draw from.

After all she was the real failure.

Right?

The doors slid up above the car frame and Marcy softly chuckled her approval. This thing was out of a freaking Bond movie. Nathaniel seemed completely unfazed by the thing, but she was smiling as she proceeded to lift her purse over her head and tuck it into the foot space before settling herself down into her seat. Getting Nate to agree to pick her up was one thing; the shiny car was just another plus.

She was reaching up to shut the door as he replied to her quip, namedropping whom she assumed was the Prince of England. Marlene rolled her eyes at the windshield, tucking strands that had gotten free of her bun back behind her ears. "You boys and your toys," she sighed, meant to be disapproval, although she herself wouldn't have minded having toys like this. Living in the city most of her life, she never really had cause to own one of these bad boys. Just another one of the luxuries she had to live without.

“Wait… is it the left…or right side of the road?”

Marcy's eyes widened and flew over to look at him just in time to catch that sideways glance that told her he was playing with her. And almost immediately a few bubbles of genuine laughter erupted from her as he pulled the car out of the space with ease. Her gaze also caught his flexed, open palm at the wheel; there was no reason for it, but she had always found his way of steering the car into turns like that very hot. Yeah, it was fucking weird to find it appealing, but the idea that he could control the machine with one strong hand was enough to make her want to beg him to pull over so she could jump his bones.

Now, she simply pursed her lips together and swallowed down the arousal, resulting in a moody, grumbled, "You're an asshole..." But the smile returned to her face soon after, and her stupid pride kept her head turned away from him to hide the damned thing.

It was strange how easily they were interacting. Like nothing had changed. Well, there was the number of repressed urges and the constant under current of awkwardly familiar sensations, but aside from that, everything seemed normal. Marcy had stormed down here with an intent to shred him to pieces with guilt and anger, but that plan didn't seem to be working out just yet. Not that she was going to complain - despite her denial, it was nice to be back in his presence. She would never admit it to his face now, but it soothed her somehow. The years that he'd been gone had been a total blur of fast-paced city living. He'd always been like a refreshing, drink of water.

At his question, though, Marlene felt a sudden, unexplainable surge of anger charge through her. The smile was instantly wiped off and she practically snorted at the ease with which he asked it. How long had she been in there? How long had she been waiting for him to come visit her? It probably wasn't his fault that the nurses didn't pass on her not-so-kindly worded messages to his office, or that Alan didn't call him sooner, but all of the frustration seemed to funnel in right then and there, at the man driving this pissy fucking car. The man that had pulled her down to the capital in the first place. "Oh, let me see..." She crinkled up her nose, pretending to think long and hard about it.

"Four months and twelve days. That's about one hundred and thirty-three days that I've been clean, by the way." That last bit was spat out like acid, and then she tacked on for extra measure, "Thanks for asking. Oh wait, you didn't."

It was probably obvious that she'd been clean, but she thought she'd rub it in a bit more, a subtle allusion to the previous time she'd gone sober. And like a child throwing a temper fit, she crossed her arms across her chest above the seat belt and sunk into the seat, face set in a hard expression.

Her laugh was only cut short, the sweet sound tarnished, at the mention of her imperfection and demerit. Was that not a perfect characterization of her life thus far? Her happiness and carefree attitude were blemished by her lack of self-control.

‘Great job, Marlene. Try being sober your whole life like everybody else fucking is,’ he wanted to say.

But Nathaniel had a soft spot in his heart for her. He always promised himself there was some other reason she used that he wasn’t aware of – no matter if he understood every scanty inch of her tarred soul. He sought to grasp WHY; to avoid judgement he convinced himself she participated in such a detestable way of life for some inducement he was not conscious of.

Originally, Nathan had lived within the approximation that drug users lived on the street and begged for money. They didn’t eat or work, just used and leeched off of others. But Marcy had greatly revised his way of thinking. She kept it so well hidden, which is something he thought about often during the years they spent together. He continued to return, after carrying his cross around the circle of reason, to the possibility it was all for attention. If so, she wasn’t doing an adequate job at it. Other than a select few friends, her dealer, and Nate, everyone was oblivious. As if her wild child phase would end, because they didn’t know how deep her lawless affectation ran, they patronized her as a girl who was taking a little longer than everyone else to grow up. But she still hadn’t grown up, throwing a tantrum this very moment. She always had a way of bringing old shit up, unpacking it and bringing it out of the warehouse of history, into the light.
He remembered the junction in which her ‘fun’ stopped being a behavior he could attribute to wanting to try new things and having new experiences, to being young.

They had slept together plenty of times, maybe just enough to count on his fingers and toes. The fraternity house was poorly monitored and girls spent the night on a regular basis. Though, perhaps the single difference between Nathan and his housemates was the non-plural nature of the girls that stayed with him. It was just Marcy. He had a college-issued twin sized bed in his room in which they slept. She laid on top of him, chest to chest simply because there was no other arrangement that would afford comfort.

As Nathan drove, remembering his route from years of living in D.C., he remembered how soft she was. She felt so little in his arms, providing him nothing variant from warmth and solace. Her breath was even with sleep, and his hand stroked her bare back underneath the thick fleece he’d brought from home. Many nights he stayed awake, one of the intended effects rather than a side effect, of his own drug. Sometimes it worked too well and still held him days after ingestion. He wondered if Marcy envied that quality of his more subtle white bottle and solo cup of water, rather than spoons and needles, which had been shoved under his bed in a fruitless attempt for discretion. It always seemed as if her high became shorter and shorter, less and less euphoric.

He presently flinched as the image came back into his mind. Perhaps that night his medicine had begun to release him and allow him to drift. The pretty creature on top of him jolted awake, bringing her head off his chest and leaning over the side of the bed. His eyes opened, head turning to face her. A nightmare? He felt her abdomen flex and relax, flex and relax as sounds of dry heaving inaugurated.

Man stink, and weed.

That was how the majority of the frat house smelled. Well, that's how it smelled to Marlene. It didn't bother her much, though. In fact, she preferred it to her mother's countless Yankee candles strewn around the family house. At least these scents were properly earned. Her mother paid more than a bus boy's two-month salary for a single goddamn wick.

It was basically a huge man cave, filled with the stereotypical fraternity douchebags and their make-up caked, 3 AM booty calls, but that house had come to be her home. Marcy spent more time there in that tiny room, on that tiny bed with Nathaniel than she did in her own. She kept her clothes there, her toothbrush, her needles - the newest addition to her pantry of drugs. Her roommate had recently introduced her to the stuff, and Marcy and the heroin quickly became buddies.

By now, it was routine; Nate with his pills like a nightly cup of coffee and her with her lighter and spoon, a more fucked up NyQuil. After a couple of orgasms, maybe a Poptart to replenish lost calories, she would reach under the bed and prep her medicine. The stuff was getting more and more expensive. Or was it because she was just buying more of it? Marcy didn't know. Marcy didn't care. She just wanted to feel nice. Heroin was her better version of weed.

It wasn't that she had trouble sleeping or anything; it was the happy, mellow glow she returned for. And the fact that it didn't fuck her over in the morning for class (when she went) was an added bonus. All she had to do was push down on the injector, and bam! The world was at peace. She was floating on a fucking cloud in that beautiful fucking room room with that fucking beautiful man. Life was good, life was great, and sleep sounded like a good idea...

Suddenly, Marcy's eyes flew open. Or as open as they could have gotten under the influence of the heavy narcotic. Something was trying to claw its way out from her stomach by way of her esophagus tube, and it was waiting for no one. She peeled her cheek off of Nathan's warm chest. Somehow in her sleep, she had gained three tons of pounds, and dragging herself to the side of the bed was the feat of the century. Her blue eyes were practically rolling around in her head. Her diaphragm was in cahoots with the shit inside of her, doing its best to push it out of her mouth.

The effort of trying to keep herself up on her elbows was too much and Marlene collapsed back onto the mattress, laying like a rag doll with her face pressed against the edge. She wasn't aware but there were tears trickling from her eyes as the dry heaving worsened. The world was not at peace, it was actually crashing down around her. It was angry, and the proof was trying to get out of her body.

Somehow it registered with her that it would be rude to vomit the Poptart all over his floor, and with whatever strength she could muster she slowly reached back with her hand, exposing the tracks inside her arm, and tried to grasp for his shirt or something. But her hand was nowhere near him, and all she caught were sleepy fistfulls of air. She couldn't do that to him. He was so nice to her. She couldn't make a mess on his floor like that. "N-Nate..." she gurgled, whimpering like an injured animal as her diaphragm bucked again, "I'm go-gonna.. Throw up... Nate..."

He would fix this. He would make it all better. He always did.

Nathan quickly came back into his alertness. He’d lost his chance to sleep. It would be another week until his mind gifted him the opportunity again. If he was lucky. He gripped her waist, sliding out from under and pushing her body upright, onto her knees on the mattress. All he wore were his former fitting boxers – a gift from his mother. Of course she meant to provide her son with hygienic products required to be a normal human, being but the Armani label caused it to be somewhat of an eyebrow raise to any he told. Which he didn’t tell. They were black, but you couldn’t make out much more detail than that in dimly lit morning.

His mind was foggy, crying for him to lay back down and curl up and to rest. He usually had a trash can but it’d been snatched and taken to the den for ‘Yale’s finest innovation since DP,” beer game.

“Fuck,” he muttered, grabbing a cardboard box that had been shoved under his desk. Textbooks had arrived in it days earlier. Stumbling over clothes and shoes, cautiously squinting to ensure he wouldn’t step on needles, he brought it to her. “C’mere,” Nathan handed her the oversized and less than ideal catch-all for her bile. Her hair band was pulled up over her bare bicep, and he slid it down her arm and off of her wrist. Using his own wrist as a place holder, he tied her hair back in a lopsided high pony, missing some of the baby hairs at the bottom. Her pretty water color tattoo was exposed now.

Nathan rubbed his eyes, running his hands through his hair several times as if it would stay out of his face. He begun tidying their strewn clothes, organizing by owner.

She vaguely felt him vacating the space underneath her, felt him position her on the bed so that so that she was sort of kneeling. All she had on was one of his shirts, which she was swimming in, and her black lace panties. Marlene was basically reduced to a slumped over, dry-heaving pile. When she tried to ask him not to leave her alone on the bed, all that came out were short whimpers and gargled groans. Her eyes had disappeared behind her eyelids again, and all she wanted to do was fall over and go back to sleep. Or maybe shoot up just a tiny bit more. Maybe that would convince the Poptart to go down and stay down.

It felt like he had taken a freaking eternity, but Nathan finally returned to her side, passing over some sort of box. Marcy took it gratefully and held it close to her torso like it belonged to a deceased grandmother. "Thanks..." Her face promptly disappeared into it - partly because she knew this was meant to be the vomit-receptacle, and partly because she just didn't have the energy to keep it up anymore. Through her hazy state, she could feel him tugging something from her arm. What he was doing that for, she had no fucking clue. It only clicked when the dark inside of the box became slightly less dark, and the tugging on the top of her head indicated that he had just pulled her hair into a helpful pony.

Then again he left her on the bed, left her alone with the angry bile that only moments afterwards finally forced itself through her mouth. The sound of her retching, combined with the sound made when the previous tenants of her stomach hit the bottom of the cardboard rectangle were probably pretty disgusting. Marcy couldn't tell. Her ears were full of buzzing as she haunched over her own throw up again and again, until eventually it returned to dry heaving, and then the dry heaving fizzled out to silence.

After a minute or so of sniffling, Marlene finally lifted her head, mouth covered in specks of regurgitation. Eyes half closed, she slowly set the box down on the bed beside her, used whatever energy she had left to lift her arm and swipe the shit off her face with the back of her hand. Then she melted back into the mattress in a deformed fetal position, careful to keep the dirty hand off her pillow.

Another few minutes of silence passed, filled only with the sound of her deep breaths, before she opened her mouth again. And then slivers of guilt trickled out. "I'm sorry, baby..." Her voice was barely at a whisper, but the room was so small he had to have heard it. "I'm sorry... It's gonna be smelly in here now... Sorry..."

When her sounds of vomiting ceased, he waited a few more moments. Nathan decided she had nothing left to throw up and walked the few feet back over to the bed. He’d since pulled on gray sweats to keep warm – the seniors often kept the ac running even in the winter. Nate grabbed the box by the outside corners, careful not to touch the contents.

He left the room, carrying it down the stairs and out into the trash on the curb. It was an early Wednesday morning, and there was a blue-grey tint over the earth as the sun considered rising. He was thankful not to be stepping over drunk bodies like on a Saturday or Sunday morning. He returned swiftly after grabbing a chilled can of sprite from the cooler in the kitchen. Leaving the bedroom door slightly cracked to allow some light to trickle in, he handed her the can after opening it. She had nails she never wanted to chip on the metal contraption. “It’ll settle your stomach,” he told her, running a hand up her thigh and kissing her bare temple.

“Go brush your teeth, little girl,” he teased her, sitting on the bed and leaning back against the wall with a hand rested on her lower back.

The dust had finally settled, and the world had stopped crumbling. Marcy lay with her eyes closed, still murmuring soft apologies while he took the box and left the room. The high was most definitely gone now, leaving no evidence that it had even happened aside from a gross sensation in her mouth. And on the back of her hand.

Only when he returned did she open her eyes, a sheepish expression molding her face as she sat up and took the Sprite in both hands. Sighing out her thanks, she let her thumb trace around the lip of the can before holding it up to her mouth. She hated having Nathaniel clean up her mess, but he always did it, without complaint. In her eyes, he was nothing short of a miracle.

The can felt nice and cool in her hands and when she took a few sips, the fizz rushed down her throat and comforted her with its familiarity. “Go brush your teeth, little girl." Marcy looked back at him, wanting to playfully push him for the joke, but energy was still in low reserves, so instead she just laughed before taking another sip of soda. "Yeah, alright, grandpa," she teased back, before gathering herself up and off the bed. She placed the can on his desk and grabbed her toothbrush before heading to the bathroom not too far down the hall.

Finally feeling clean, and actually very much awake, she returned to the room, closing the door behind her. Replacing her toothbrush in its holder on the desk, she climbed back onto the bed over him, and sat down so that she was straddling him against the wall. "There," she announced, her hands moving to his face to push back his untamable hair lovingly, "Now can I give you a thank you kiss?"

Nathaniel reached up and slapped her bottom as she left to go to the bathroom. “Watch it,” he warned in a groggy voice.

He was in this state – he’d yet to name it – when she returned. It was the closest semblance to sleep he had for days. It was in the family of the half sleep, half awake sensation that we all understand, but not quite the same. Did anyone else complain about the effectiveness of their drugs as much as the future president did?

The way Marlene’s body fit on top of his felt good. He was centered, grounded, yet she provided him the freedom he’d always been hesitant to give himself. “Only if you beg,” he teased, bringing his neck up an inch or two to meet her lips.

Nathan was young, something his reminiscing would never endorse his forgetting of. His hands were uncontrollable and he slipped them under the shirt on the sides of her hips. His calloused thumbs traced the variation of texture between her skin and the lace. She smelled like crest blended in with his cologne, a combination he wished to further transfuse with touches and kisses. “Mmm,” he sighed, flicking her front teeth with his tongue as he leaned her back on the mattress.

She wasn't sure how long she had been pouting at the window, but Marlene finally tore her childish glare away from it to look over at Nathaniel. He hadn't said anything since her little outburst, had continued driving like he wasn't just being an inconsiderate asshole. She wanted to find some remorse or whatever in his expression, an apologetic frown maybe; and for whatever reason, she found it.

Cocking an eyebrow at his weird silence, she turned her attention back to the front of the car, blowing out air through her lips as she did so. Her arms unfolded from her chest, albeit somewhat reluctantly, and instead she bent an elbow against her door's armrest, leaning the side of her head in her hand.

"Anyway," she sighed, her way of offering an olive branch. "I hope your kitchen is ready because I could definitely use some food." It was a lame subject change, but at least it was honest. The last time she'd eaten was at noon, and a small square of lasagna that was probably as old as some of the patients there and a carton of fruit and orange juice wasn't exactly her ideal first meal of freedom. Besides, she had been too anxious to see whether or not Nate would actually come get her to eat, and she mostly had just pushed the lumps of meat around her tray.