your hand was the one i

They haven’t actually spoken, since she left, but he knows that their paths will certainly cross again; knows that running into her at some point is a matter of when, not a matter of if, especially now that they’re both on the campaign trail, and he thinks—hopes, really—that he’ll be able to handle it, he’ll be able to stay professional.

He just wants to be ready, because the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, and all of that, and at least if he’s prepared to see her, he might know what to say, might find a way to avoid betraying that he misses her so much his chest feels heavy with the weight of it, like in the months after the shooting when he’d had to coax his lungs into learning how to expand properly again.

Only maybe he doesn’t think of everything, maybe there’s a devil out there that he hasn’t met after all, because when she walks into his meeting with Will, he just freezes.

A revision of 6x11, "Opposition Research". Written for Trope Fest, prompt: "poorly timed confession".