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Louis’ life works best if he doesn’t think too closely about certain things in the dead of night.
He has two grandchildren in Reno that he’ll probably never meet. The divorce was tough on Louise and the girls took her side. That’s fine. Good, even. Louis wouldn’t want it any other way, really, because Louise needs her girls. (Louis needs them too, part of him insists, but he’s never been there for them the way she has, so he doesn’t have any right to expect them to be there for him.) He hasn’t seen any of them for almost three years, though he’s caught a glimpse of Lola around the Capitol once or twice. She works for Congressman Abido - or did. He’s heard she’s pregnant and that she and James are moving back home. Another grandchild in Reno, out of his reach. The only thing they’ll be told about their maternal grandfather is that he’s hellbound, probably.
He writes Louise from time to time. He emails his daughters regularly, but he’s not convinced they ever read them. They certainly never reply. If he spent too much time thinking about that, he’d go crazy, so he doesn’t.
Instead, he rolls over and rests a hand on Eugene’s chest, feeling it rise and fall slowly.
He doesn’t do electoral math in his head, because he knows he’d come up short. His old voter base has frayed catastrophically. First the Mormons left when the divorce became public, then the rest of the social conservatives when he came out, Eugene by his side. The young centrists that might theoretically find an out and proud Republican with a war hero for a boyfriend interesting still think he’s a bigot, just a little less of one. They prefer a Democrat, any Democrat, according to the poll numbers Julie pretends she doesn’t have stashed in her desk.
“Nevada’s trending more centrist every year, that’ll benefit us in 2020,” she says from time to time, and Louis isn’t sure if it’s him or herself she’s trying to convince.
There’s still about a year until he has to decide for real if he’s running again, which is good because he’s not sure how to even begin facing it.
The feeling of Eugene’s skin against his, the soft curls of hair on Eugene’s chest against Louis’ fingertips, is usually accompanied by acute, piercing regret for all the time he wasted being afraid of his own feelings. If he thinks too much about that, about how he could have spent years -- Well, anyway.
He’s done everything he can to reverse his old ways. Out magazine that once branded him D.C.’s Homophobe of the Year now tout him as the most LGBT+-friendly Republican in the Senate. They, too, seem dubious that his repentance is genuine, though. There’s not much honor or credibility in turning tail on tightly held moral beliefs when it’s suddenly about yourself, Louis supposes. When he came out, he said he didn’t expect the LGBT community to forgive him his past transgressions, but the truth is… He kind of did.
“They’ll come around,” Eugene says whenever Louis laments his impossible position.
“But what if they don’t,” Louis invariably replies, hating the frantic tone in his voice.
There’s too much to think about and not enough hours in a night. When dawn filters through the curtains, Louis is bleary-eyed and no closer to any answers to anything, but the rhythm of Eugene’s heartbeat is still steady against his palm.