Chapter Text
Her father’s first campaign was before she was born. Vital parts missing of the American nuclear family designed to win—no two point four kids, no white picket fence, a long-haired mutt of a cat instead of the required Golden Retriever—but her father was charming, handsome, a service record with a purple heart and a beautiful wife from a growing demographic and somehow the voters looks past the missing parts. Gives him his seat—or maybe it is her mother’s father that gives it to him, a check book that never runs out of pages—and her parents never look back.
No white picket fence, no Golden Retriever, but Alina appears as a slow swell in her mother’s belly at the exact right time. Half-asleep in her arms at the victory party, one year and some months and none of them had ever looked back. Words not yet spoken, raised eyebrows and smiles filled with potential.
Alina’s first memory is of a stage, flashing lights and noise that makes tiny hands press over tiny ears, hiding against her mother’s legs.
A childhood of happiness and abundance, but privacy is not a part of it. Ambition superseding everything and Alina sits in her fifth grade civics class and looks at the ages of presidents pasth and wonders why her parents cannot simply wait a little.
Another stage, another set of flashing lights, brighter than ever before, waving signs and chants and she is too tall now to hide against her mother. Clutches her hand as a compromise, brings out the smile her grandmother has trained into her before every yearbook photo. A bright politeness, a few drops of mustered enthusiasm, the promise of a weekend spent hidden away at the California ranch for every event they bring her along for.
She doesn’t remember much of her father’s inauguration speech, biting January chills despite the bright sun and her boots are pretty, but the leather far too thin. Toes freezing before he has even placed his hand on the Bible and she wishes there was a way to sneak the hand warmers in her mittens down her socks instead.
Smiles long after her cheeks begin to hurt.
Prepares for the pain to be a familiar companion for the next eight years.
Weekends in California turns too much of a hassle, a shelter dog licking at her heels somehow making up for it. A new companion now that even her mother is too busy with her calendar and projects and Alina is neither neglected nor lonely. Sunday dinners at seven pm happen more than they don’t, five minute breaks in her father’s schedule where she can sneak in for a brief hello over a cup of coffee that will be forgotten once she’s gone.
Neither neglected nor lonely but she is no longer the first priority.
And perhaps that should grate at her but Alina isn’t sure that she ever was and so the hurt never finds anything to linger on. Lives her life and sometimes it briefly convenes with her parents’ and she never lacks for anything.
She is sixteen when she gets assigned a new Secret Service agent.
When they tell her she doesn’t think much of it. Expected it to happen after Kaisa had snapped at Matthias one too many times—he used to be a cop, he probably still smells like one—doesn’t think much of it until she officially meets Aleksander. Shorter than the man he’s replacing, less bulging muscles, but she can feel calluses of a very specific nature when he shakes her hand and there is not a doubt in her mind that he could very easily murder her if he wished to.
Has seen him in the hallways a couple times, black eyes and dark hair and broad shoulders filling out a suit that should not fit as well as it does. A pinch behind her belly button each time, quick and startling and mostly forgotten by the time they have rounded their respective corners. Matthias had teased her about a crush once and then Max had given him such a look that he had never done it again.
Wisely kept his mouth shut and Alina doesn’t think she has had anything close to a crush since she was maybe eight.
Has yet to even kiss a girl.
Still—
The idea forming as Aleksander lets go of her hand, says something to her father, three seconds where she can study him in peace, lets her thoughts run further ahead than appropriate for the situation. Has never done anything that could in any way be twisted into gossip or a scandale, perfect attendance and straight As, on track for Varsity volleyball and the fact that the media find her for the most part pretty boring has never suited Alina as well as now.
Puts on her most polite smile, innocuous and harmless to everybody except the corners of her mouth. Returns to her room and Sunday dinner is in three hours and she has two chapters of the Great Gatsby to read for English the next day and she doesn’t know anything about seducing grown men.
The little pinch never goes away though. Lingers, turns into a little pea size ball of heat that slowly grows as September rolls into October into November into December. Toes once again frozen as she waits for her father to light the Christmas tree outside, a weakness for style over comfort that haunts her and that Aleksander has picked up on. Briefly joins her in staring at her lackluster boots and she envies him his beard, her own cheeks long since frozen by the gusts of wind drifting up from the Potomac.
“There is an easy solution to this, you know?”
“This solution better not involve my mother.”
“Well,” head raised again, scanning the crowd and she should tell him to look for Genya. “She did give me some boots earlier to put in the car. Just in case.”
“I’d rather cut off my toes.”
Mouth briefly curling in a small smile, disappears as he spots something, a faceless agent escorting Genya through the crowds and finally there is a warm body she is actually allowed to press herself against.
It is Genya that shows her the photo the next morning, sitting on the floor as Alina braids her hair. Her father focused in the center, the two of them caught in the corner. An appropriate gap separating them, Aleksanders hands loose by his side, her own curled into her pockets. None of the sickly heat curling through her stomach can be found on her face tilted up towards him, the photographer catching the two seconds he had smiled and all of it is entirely innocent.
“You look cute together.”
Wants to zoom in and screenshot it and send it to herself. Her mother’s press secretary’s strict warning echoing through the room and she relinquishes the phone.
He has New Years off, a magic trick she isn’t sure how he pulled off and tipsy in her room at one am, a deal of mutually assured destruction and a champagne bottle spirited away by Max, she is filled with the need to call him.
Calls Genya instead who has been spirited away to relatives in Ireland, the night long gone and morning already arrived, a grouchy mess of knotted hair and smeared eyeliner.
“I was sleeping.”
“You can go back to sleep, I just didn’t want to be alone.”
A nasty glare she smiles at, two minutes before Genya mutters something incomprehensible, a single little snore and it barely takes Alina ten minutes to follow along.
Wakes confused and parched some hours later, never bothered to draw her curtains but outside it is still dark.
On her phone Genya still sleeps.
Sometimes, in moments so brief Alina isn’t sure if she is imagining them or not, she can feel Aleksander looking at her. Never catches him in, never a second where he looks awkward or flustered, caught in a trap designed to catch a thing that doesn’t exist. Turns the tables and catches her looking, one eyebrow raised in preparedness for a question or mouth quirked in a smile so teasing that Alina sticks her tongue out at him. A childish response on the verge of embarrassing, but better than letting the blush hiding spill forth like it is threatening to.
In April she stumbles getting out of the car, a proper stumble, the kind that would lead to a broken nose and national headlines about the President’s daughter in the hospital.
Aleksander catches her instead.
One hand easily sneaking around her waist, slipping under her sweater, devastatingly warm as he pulls her into his chest and it is still a little undignified but far better than the other option.
“Going somewhere?”
“Shut up.”
Feet under control again, makes to move away from him, one second lasting for ten and this she doesn’t imagine, hard chest pressed against her back, fingers spreading across her belly, holding her in place. One second where she cannot breathe, every cell working to make her body function too busy focusing on the sensation of his thumb twitching against her skin.
One second and then she’s let go. Aleksander moving from behind to her side, face as relaxed as it always is, not even a raised eyebrow and even if Alina wanted to ask him there is no way she can do it here.
What little privacy she ever had gone as two-seventy flashed blue on a screen.
She celebrates her seventeenth birthday on the campaign trail with her parents. The Wisconsin state fair, more people than she is comfortable with, cheeks hurting and all she really wants to do is to sneak over to the barn to look at the horses for sale. Obediently stays in place, studies her parents and looks for any cracks in their facade.
Impossible to find any no matter how hard she looks.
Two hours in when Aleksander herds her against a picnic table, Nina and Max in front of them, blocking off the crowds, a rest she didn’t think to ask for. Hands her a water bottle, fingers cool as they brush against her own. Lifts his shades, watches as she drinks and Alina might prefer him like this, out of his suit, t-shirt and jeans, could still be in college.
“How are you feeling?”
Exhausted.
“I’m fine.”
“Liar.” Smiles, and it really is pathetic, the way her stomach rolls around itself, toes curling in her sneakers in an effort to sit still. “I can take you back to the hotel if you want to?”
His face no different than it always is, but his hand finds its way to the bare skin of her knee. the touch so brief she doesn’t know if he is aware of it himself.
Except there is no way he isn’t.
Everything about him always measured, three steps ahead of her and thinks it wouldn't have mattered if she had been the type of teenager wanting to rebel. Wouldn’t have gotten a toe out the window without him waiting on the other side.
“I really am fine,” adjusts her baseball cap and ponytail, a moment of bravery, pushes his shades back down on his nose. “Just get me some ice cream.”
“Fried or with sprinkles?”
His face closer than it should be when she stands up, head bent downwards and Alina would just have to get up on her tiptoes—
“Hand me anything fried and I will get you fired.”
Eats dinner with her parents in their hotel room, room service and a cake box warped in a bow.
“Thank you for being here sweetheart,” a moment of tranquility, tv off, phones left in a different room. “I know it’s not your favorite way to celebrate.”
Licks salt from her fingers as her father speaks, burger and fries a once a year break from her self imposed vegetarianism.
“It’s okay.” And it is, her birthday simply another day, cannot remember ever waiting to do anything except spend a few hours just the three of them exactly like this. “I do have a favor to ask in return though.”
“Oh?”
“After the election, I’d like some days alone.” Wants to go home, sleep in the bed that has only ever been hers and watch the sun scatter across the grape vines. “I was thinking I could go to Camp David a little early before Thanksgiving?”
Looks at her parents, these strangers that she loves, wonders what their plan is in five years.
“We can make that happen,” her mother’s smile soft, Stanford sweatshirt decorated with a mayonnaise stain that Alina knows her father is waiting for the perfect opportunity to point out. “We’ll tell them that you are coming down with a cold. Not even the Quakers are going to argue with that.”
“They probably will.”
“I’ll patch them through to your dad.”
“Martha will love that, she doesn’t think he has enough volunteering hours.”
Alina makes Varsity in the fall, earns her spot, bruised and sweaty and it is Aleksander who is there afterwards to congratulate her. Laughing as she high fives him, childish glee that brings her no shame. They take the long way home, even Ivan smiling as he pulls into the drive through, black coffees and a strawberry milkshake, ten minutes of normalcy hiding behind tinted windows and eight inch walls.
Aleksander doesn’t miss a single game throughout the season, including the one he isn’t supposed to be at in late October. A rare Friday off, and still she finds him in the bleachers during warmup. Jeans and hoodie, leaning forward with his arms on his knees and Alina almost takes a ball to her face when she spots him. A fumbling recovery, cheeks burning and she manages to ignore him until the scoreboard shows a decisive victory.
Gone when she looks up at the bleachers again.
Lingers in the wardrobe afterwards, the high of a well played match slowly fading.
“You okay?" Genya asks, hair still a little wet, hand on the handle, the rest of the team already gone, on their way to a dinner Alina doesn’t have the energy for. “I don’t have to go.”
“I’m okay, promise, just tired. You go, have fun. I’m probably gonna fall asleep in the car.”
Sits for a little while longer before she puts her shoes on, expects Max on the other side of the door.
Finds Aleksander instead.
Leaning against the wall, head tilted, a small smile spreading as he sees her.
“Hello.”
The rest of the corridor empty, not even the echo of a slamming door or squawking footsteps and she doesn’t know what drives her to do it. Bag falling to the floor, three steps before Alina finds herself with his arms wrapped around her, hands immediately finding their way underneath her cardigan, stroking bare skin and pulling her closer. Rests her cheek against his chest, all and none of it innocent.
“You came.”
“Of course.”
Looks up at him, hair hidden underneath the hood of his sweatshirt and she is acutely aware of the security cameras decorating the ceiling.
“I didn’t ask?”
“You didn’t need to.” One arm letting go of her waist, hand cupping her cheek instead, holds her still as he presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “I wanted to be here. It's important to me.”
Would be so easy, would simply need to turn her head a little to the left, take what she’s been hungry for since the day he shook her hand. Gathers courage, Aleksander’s lips linger against her cheek, the invitation undeniable and yet Alina can’t make herself do it. Opens and closes her mouth, a puff of laughter, Aleksander smiling as he looks at her.
“Do you need me to do it?”
Clutches at his chest to stop her hands from shaking, somersaults and butterflies, and in the back of her mouth the need to bite.
Nods.
“Don’t worry,” the smile disappears, impossible to discern the edge of his pupils, closes her eyes as his nose bumps against hers. “I’ll take care of you.”
Breaths.
Waits.
Gets no kiss.
Footsteps around a corner, too late to pull away and Aleksander makes no attempt to move away. Holds her as comfortably as ever as Max appears and Alina tries to get her mind to work again, to make her mouth form words and excuses and threats.
None of it necessary.
A silent conversation above her head.
“I need to bring her home now.”
And Aleksander releases her without another word, winks, leaves Alina to stare after him in silence.