Work Text:
It was late. As usual. Karolina had been navigating the tabloid scandal all week. She’d logged about three hours of sleep over the past five days and, as of the night before, had broken her 10-year no cigarette streak.
She sighed, gazing at her latest Waystar Google alert on the screen before her.
“Hey.”
Karolina looked up, the exhaustion clear across her face, her shoulders, her hips—
“You know,” Gerri stood in the doorway to Karolina’s office, as she’d done so many times before—7 am on a Saturday in March with a cruises emergency, 6:45 pm on a Monday in May when Kendall had gone to rehab instead of the Met Gala, 1 am on an early Wednesday in November when ATN had called Arizona for the incorrect candidate—many times before.
“You know,” Gerri stepped in, speaking in a low, matter-of-fact voice to the woman she’d always regarded as a tacit friend, “there’s always my house—the one on Shelter Island?”
Karolina brightened a bit, trudging through some pleasantries, thinking Gerri was there to chat—and get something. “Oh yes—I recall you had quite a time with the reno—“
“Yes, Baird was…” Gerri chuckled at the memory, trailing off to another place for a moment, “well, what do you think?”
“About the tabloid—“
“About coming out for the weekend,” Gerri was putting herself out there, expending all of her energy to keep an even keel.
Karolina sighed in disbelief. She could’ve cried in that moment, there in her office, at the relief she’d felt.
“Oh no,” she immediately protested, achingly grateful at the invite, “I couldn’t—I know we always keep our personal—“
“I mean, yes,” Gerri admitted, “but I’ve—I’ve noticed you.”
“Noticed…?”
“Yes—I’ve noticed you,” she repeated, “and we could just—be away from all this for a while…Just one break.”
Karolina was silent as she regarded Gerri who stood before her now, illuminated by the blue light of the screens before her. To break the vow of compartmentalization—to mix work with pleasure—
“It’s messy,” Gerri supplied, as if reading Karolina’s mind, “but they all get to be messy.” She gestured out into the C Suite in broad fashion that implied an air of resentment. Karolina was careful to not expose any emotion as she considered the proposal.
Gerri shrugged, “I’m not try to say—“
Cold feet. No good. Cover your tracks.
The two should’ve known that anything burgeoning between two executives whose expertise lay in public relations and legal counsel would be an absolute peak level of shielded emotional calculus, but Karolina jumped in, eager.
“No, that’s a lovely idea,” she shot up, now face to face with Gerri, “Friday then?”
Gerri smiled, satisfied and maybe a bit smug. She’d been right all along.
“A work trip. Let Waystar foot the bill.”
“A wise choice,” Karolina whispered as she supplied a wry, tired smile.
Gerri stepped even closer now and laid the back of her fingers against Karolina’s cheek, sliding her knuckles against her soft skin, causing the other woman to lean into the touch and close her eyes—daring to finally imagine—
“Friday it is, then,” Gerri leaned in, brushing her lips against Karolina’s ear as she spoke.