Set during the middle of Dmitri drama in Season 2. Dirty, filthy(this is no joke, hide the children), and angsty, also full of weird tense issues and too many parentheticals, apologies in advance, this was written in a haze at 1 in the morning. I'm not really entirely happy with it but here it is nonetheless. I'm far more of a reader than I am a writer; I'm a hide in the shadows kind of fan.

Cross posted to Ao3 (same username) because we all know we can't trust ffnet with this kind of stuff.

…..

Henry woke up exhausted, missing Elizabeth while also grateful she wasn't there to prick his never ending guilt. Being near her lately was a balm and an ache all at once.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes he glances at her nightstand, and notices that she'd never come home, the delicate stack of papers on top of the detritus stood undisturbed. It was the fifth day in a row they hadn't seen each other, a record for them when they were technically inhabiting the same space. Elizabeth slept at the house the first two nights while he pulled all nighters and the last three nights it had been only him while she was called away for emergency after emergency.

He picks up his phone and sees no new messages. The last text from Elizabeth was at 7:06 the previous night asking him about paying the electric bill with a tag that she'd be at the office all night, the text before that a reminder to her about Jason's field trip sent at 2:47.

Henry sighs. It is past nine so the house is empty and he has no plans on working today. He is tempted to stay in his pajamas and play games on the couch all day. Resisting the urge he stands up and walks toward the bathroom. He turns on the water and moves to grab a towel. The only one left on the shelf is an old beach towel covered in sailboats. The last time it had been down to that one he and Elizabeth had playfully argued about who got to use it after getting out of a joint shower (which they had solely used to continue a heated argument about the finer details of a recent trade treaty). When she snagged the towel and sprinted out of the bathroom he had followed and tackled her to the bed. The wrestling match they then engaged in and the resultant sex (which might or might not have involved some mostly playful spanking and some most definitely not playful biting) ranks among his most memorable recent sexual experiences.

His mind wanders to the deep groan she made when he...Henry shook his head and turns to hang up the towel and step into the now steaming shower. He shouldn't let his mind go there, he knows that, it just makes him hurt, but thinking about the sounds Elizabeth made that night, he is half hard already. No matter their issues he is always desperately attracted to her.

His brain is running though and there is no stopping it, thinking of the sounds leads to him thinking of how he had caused them: a series of particularly deep thrusts, each punctuated by a sharp slap to her ass. Something, he didn't remember what, had made her feel particularly powerless that day and ironically days like that always left her craving submission. (The time she was chewed out by her professor for misfiling some paperwork was the first time he tied her up (an occurrence that had only been repeated 6 or 7 times in their entire relationship, but had always come after major conflict in her life).) The sound she had let out each time his palm connected with her skin echoed in his brain. His hand drifts down to his now fully hard erection and begins stroking it, the memory in his head still playing. When he had bent over her back and put his teeth on her shoulder pressing down with no small amount of pressure the scream she let out liquefied his brain tissues. If it hadn't the waves of pressure on his cock surely would have along with the bucking of her body. After the scream and her pants of "Fuck... God...Just... Right there... Ahhhhhhh," she pushed back hard on her hands, sending him to his knees with her back pressed to his chest, her knees splayed open on top of him. The position wasn't that comfortable, especially for any length of time, but damn did it feel good. It allowed him to go especially deep and the closeness of their bodies ignited him. He had slammed up into her as she pressed down once, twice, three times while reaching around her to put pressure on her clit that was just this side of pain. She had come for the third time that night as he spurted inside her.

In current time, he is now panting as his hand on his cock moves faster, moaning "Elizabeth, please."

As if he summoned her by the force of memory the shower door opens and when he turns from the spray to see what let in the rush of cool air she is standing there, naked except for a pair of underwear. Her pupils are blown wide and the tips of her nipples are pulled in tight. She stares at him, breathing rapidly, for 5 whole strokes of his hand.

"Thinking of me?" she finally manages to croak out. He can't take it anymore, the exquisite torture of her presence and he reaches out and pulls her in (underwear and all). She stumbles slightly over the step but he pushes her into the back wall and slams his lips onto hers, forcing his tongue inside her mouth while he pulls her pelvis towards his now throbbing cock, grinding himself into the soaked cotton. She moans into his mouth and he almost loses it all right there. He yanks at this last barrier between them and maneuvers the navy fabric down her legs and off, throwing them to a corner while he shifts his mouth to her neck, alternately licking and sucking at her most sensitive spots.

He is ready to slam himself into her, a rebuke to all the guilt that was eating him alive when she pushes back, panting. "No. Tell me. What were you thinking of?"

He continues the slow roll of his hips, his cock rubbing along her wetness, reminding her what she is missing, as he replies "About you. About how you moan when I suck your clit and use the barest hint of teeth. About how when I fuck you from behind you go speechless." He is deliberately crude, he so rarely is. He wants to shock her, goad her into some kind of action, maybe into running away.

Instead she tips her head back, eyes closed and huffs out a breath. She looks back at him briefly an unreadable expression flashing across her face before she drops to her knees. Her tongue goes immediately to his tip, swirling around before drifting lower, spinning up and down the length.

"Fuck." is the only word that escapes his mouth.

Her mouth is sin. He'd known that from the first time she had used it on him. On the sofa in his tiny apartment he'd come in two minutes flat. She'd had given him a sly grin as he lay gasping and he'd known right then that he was lost. The decades since then had most definitely secured his damnation.

As her tongue moves over each inch and her lips periodically pucker to gently suck patches of skin her nails scrape over his hips. It isn't enough to finish him off and she knows it. "Elizabeth." a warning and a plea all in one.

Elizabeth looks up at him, smug, and brings her entire mouth down around his erection, sinking slowly until her lips almost meet her fingers circled around the last bit. She maintains eye contact the entire time, only breaking it when she begins moving back and then forward, fucking him slowly with her mouth.

There was no way he was going to last and if they were on better speaking terms right now he knows he would get ribs about his stamina.

" You are absolutely perfect. God I love you" he stutters out. Her rhythm pauses for a moment before she resumes, faster than before, taking him a tad deeper. His hands move from his sides and tangle in her hair, doing his very best not to exert any control (they did that sometimes too but now didn't seem the time).

Looking down at her Henry is overcome with the sight of her blonde hair moving back and forth. His wife, among the most powerful people in the country, at his feet focused only on giving him pleasure, is a heady sight. It isn't often a thought he dwells on, but this morning it is doing something for him. Maybe it feels like an apology for all the things he knew she wasn't actually sorry for because she wasn't actually at fault for them. The why's didn't really matter and he spills into her mouth seconds after warning her with a muttered "I can't..."

She holds him inside her as his spasms subside, swallowing around him, coaxing another pulse out. They stay like that, attached for what seems like an eternity before she stands up.

He wants to pull her towards him, kiss her and see if any remnant of his orgasm remains in her mouth but instead he watches mutely as she reaches for body wash.

It's as if the minute she finished she turned into a completely different person and touching her feels wrong. She is holding herself stiffly and he steps back as she completes a greatly abbreviated hygiene routine.

She opens the door to the shower and steps out, drying herself with the sailboat towel and walking towards the bedroom. He stands there for countless seconds before he turns off the shower and gets out, picking up an old towel from the pile in the corner, quickly rubbing himself dry before wrapping it around his waist to follow her.

When he steps into the closet area she is already partially dressed, underwear and bra on and pulling on a pair of slacks.

" Elizabeth."

When she looks toward him her eyes are full of sadness and knowing, but all she says is "Henry."

"I want..." he trails off unsure what it is he wants aside from Elizabeth, always Elizabeth.

"I know," she says sadly, turning to button her pants and pulls a gauzy pink blouse off the hanger before slipping it on. (And really her habit of wearing dark bras under light shirts, even with a blazer on top, must be designed to torture him, though he's never called her on it). She takes the matching jacket and walks away.

"Wait." he pants out, following her and grabbing her hand. She turns and gives him a half smile.

"I have to get back to work."

He tugs her and she comes with only a little resistance. He kisses her, imagining he can still taste a hint of extra saltiness in mouth.

He pulls back to say in a low voice. "Let me...I want to..."

She shakes her head and puts a hand on his cheek, still close enough for him to feel her breath on his skin. "we're not tit for tat, we never have been." Her next sentence is said with a fervor that belies her relaxed stance "Just figure it out okay. Tell me what you need. I'll do it." With that she walks away for real, disappearing into the bedroom.

He stands there frozen, desperately in love with every inch of her but aching in ways he doesn't understand.

...…...….

That walk might be one of the hardest she's done. Her heart and her sex are throbbing, in pain, in unfulfilled need. She walks downstairs, gathering the belongings she had left scattered. Perhaps she'll slip into her bathroom at the office and just rub her clit fast and hard until she comes. It will be mostly unsatisfying she knows but it will lessen the ache just a tad, hopefully enough so that she can focus on world altering disasters instead of on how much she needs her husband.

What she wants is to run back upstairs and fall into Henry, to take Henry inside of her (though given that he's 50 she knows she'd more than likely have to settle for his tongue and fingers after the explosive orgasm she'd given him.)

When they first started dating he scared her. The need, the want he made her feel was terrifying to the 20 year old who had spent the last five years keeping the world at a distance. Today she didn't know how to exist without all of that want.

The sight of him silhouetted in the shower with his hand on himself while he moaned her name just about made her come standing in the doorway. The distance between them had been aching, she just wanted to close it, even if only for a few minutes. When she opened the shower door she froze though, suddenly unsure if she would be welcome.

She melted at his touch deluded for a moment that maybe this could fix things. She wanted to hear him, to know how he wanted her, ached for her even when she was there but it was all too much and just enough at the same time. Her skin was on fire and she could still see the tenseness in his face, the visible manifestation of his inner conflict. So she had changed the narrative.

She loves having her mouth on his cock. When they first started dating he was surprised at how often she wanted to go down on him. She made fun of him when he told her, telling him most guys would be over the moon. He insisted that he wanted their sex life to be egalitarian. She scoffed, not because he didn't enjoy eating her out, indeed his mouth was on her almost as often as hers was on his, but because it was ridiculous. "Sex isn't about keeping score. It turns me on to watch you come apart, don't take that away from me." In fact, his skin on hers is as close to heaven as she thinks she believes in.

Today it was what she needed, or at least what they could both accept. It helped her feel connected to Henry without crossing this invisible wall they had somehow constructed, maybe it could be an olive branch she had thought. She had been being a little bit absurd she knew, a blow job wasn't going to fix anything, was likely only going to complicate matters.

Shaking her head at herself she climbs into her SUV and directs Matt to drive her back to the office. Displaying his usual tact, he doesn't mention that she had taken far less than the two hours she said she would be. Nor did he me mention her wet hair, so atypical to her normally well maintained coif. She digs in her bag to find a rarely used elastic and pulls the wet strands into a messy bun. She hates wearing her hair like that, but desperate times and all that.

Upon entering the seventh floor she verbally swats away her circling staff. Telling Blake she's taking 45 of personal and to only interrupt her for actual nuclear war or if the president was dead (he looks a little taken aback at that, it isn't something they joke about in this line of work, but he simply nods.)

She pauses in the entryway, debating between going straight to sleep on the couch or going to the bathroom to do other things. She had learned quickly that doing anything more scandalous than a quick kiss in an office with multiple doors that people often entered without knocking was a poor choice. Hopefully Russell Jackson would never know that he had almost seen his newly minted Secretary of State with her husband's erection down her throat. (Russell had been distracted by some commotion in the outer office just as he opened the door, giving Elizabeth time to get herself and Henry in a less compromising position. Though he'd still given her an odd look when she told him she was looking for an earring back when he saw her on the floor.)

Elizabeth goes into the bathroom. Anger simmers in her blood, it is always there lately, but doesn't have any real direction. Anger and sadness and helplessness coil into a twisty ball inside her that leaves her aching.

Leaning against the sink she undoes the button and zipper on her pants. She slips her right hand inside, running a finger along soaked lips. It won't take long she knows, she lets her feelings bubble up and morph into arousal.

She thinks about what she needs from Henry, how he had been so good in the past at giving her exactly what she needed. There was that time a year or so ago, after some useless Ambassador got caught with underage Thai girls and she could do nothing about it for stupid useless iron clad reasons. That night Henry had poked and prodded until she jumped him. She had ridden him hard but couldn't turn her mind off. The only words out of her mouth had been "Please" and "Henry." He had sat up enough to grab her hair and pull it, moving her head to the side so he could reach her neck. He placed open mouthed kisses on her while continuing to tug her hair. The sting had sent her spiraling and when his mouth moved to her nipple and brought it between his teeth for a quick bite she was done. He kept up the assault on both beasts, definitely leaving at least one mark when he bit the skin right where it turned from dark to light. She had become nothing but a creature of need until she came all over him panting and speechless.

Thinking about that encounter has her clenching. She circles her clit with one finger while holding herself open with two others. She keeps playing the memory of Henry's mouth on her breasts, of his fingers inside her, of the feeling when his sex first enters her and she stretches so deliciously on replay. It doesn't take too many repeats before she is spasming in a small orgasm.

She takes her hand out of her pants and wants to sob. She needs her husband right now, desperately, but all she is doing is hurting him and she doesn't even entirely understand why. The universe is a cruel mistress.

She hears Nadine call from the office and she washes her hands yelling to Nadine that she will be out in a moment. Elizabeth can't fix things with Henry right now (and maybe not ever a dark part of her mind thinks), but she can do this, the work that keeps tearing her marriage apart.