Title: May I
Word Count: 2,658
Pairings: Michelle Benjamin / David Shepherd
Rating: PG-13 for the language.
Warnings/Spoilers: Takes place sometime after Insurrection. In my universe Judgment Day has not taken place yet.
Summary: May I hold you as you fall to sleep? When the world is closing in and you can't breathe.
Author's Note: I don't use this very often, but I just wanted to reiterate that Judgment Day hasn't taken place yet. I also wanted to point out that I don't think that David has a washer and dryer in his tiny apartment, but there's got to be a laundry room in the building someplace. I've also made a few structural changes to David's apartment for sake of the story. Hopefully no one minds too much.
Official Disclaimer: All Kings characters and plots belong to Michael Green and NBC. I do not hold stock either the man or the company. Michelle Benjamin, David Shepherd, and any other character featured are NOT mine. The song used for the title is May I by Trading Yesterday and is not mine either.
Let me raise you up
Let me be your love
~ May I, Trading Yesterday
"Someone wasn't in her room again this morning."
She entered the kitchen through the back hallway, moving directly to her seat. She noticed that their father wasn't in his usual spot behind the stove, but it didn't unnerve her. There were times that her father was unable to make breakfast. She could live without her father's cooking for one morning. Her brother was more then comfortable, his feet propped up in the seat in front of him, paper open. She poured herself a glass of juice from the center of the table before looking up at him, her features schooled into a cool smile.
"Excuse me?" She asked carefully, running a hand through her hair and reaching for the business section that was in front of the empty place setting. It had been ten days since she had begun spending her nights at David's, and she had actually begun to get a routine down. They woke together most mornings at seven thirty, and she was out the door before eight, David staying awake just long enough to see her off before catching another hour or two of sleep. His job didn't require him to come in before ten in the morning unless called. Michelle glanced at her watch; she was running rather early this morning.
Jack eyed his sister over the top of the sports pages. In the last few days she had begun to look better then she had before the hostage situation. He quirked his eyebrow as she didn't even flinch under his scrutiny. "Dad left for the countryside early this morning. Mom's making him take a day off." He reminded her. "He tried to tell you good-bye but you weren't in your room."
She wanted to panic. It was in the forefront of her mind to start freaking out over the fact that her brother had caught her. Instead she took a sip of juice and shrugged. "I woke up with a headache." She told him smoothly, forcing herself to not shake her head. Her brother had told her once it was her biggest tell when she was lying. "Since Dad's letting me leave the palace now I went for a ride hoping the fresh air would help."
Her top lip quivered and Jack nodded knowingly. He and his sister had had a conversation once about tells. He smiled to himself when he realized that he never told her all of hers. "Funny." He said smoothly, reaching for his coffee. "That's the same line I fed Dad when he asked me where you were." He dropped the paper and eyed his sister. It was the lie they had made up for him years ago when he would spend all night out on the town before he was given his own penthouse. It was odd that she was borrowing it. "Now where were you really?"
"I needed some air." She said defiantly, smiling at her brother over her glass. She twisted to the chef and held up a hand. "Can I get some scrambled eggs please?" She asked quickly, not taking her eyes off of her brother. Jack was too close for her liking, and she didn't mean physically. She should have known that he would remember the lie. But her face still held the smooth smile, and as long as she stuck to her story, Jack couldn't prove otherwise. "And some toast?"
The chef nodded and turned to grab the eggs.
"Michelle?" She turned again to her brother, who was now watching her critically with his index and middle finger rubbing absently at his lips. "Where were you?" He asked again, this time without the laughter in his eyes. It wasn't the first time that he had noticed his sister out, although this was the first time that he had ever had to cover for her. He had hoped that if there was something wrong that she would go to him. Jack could be accused of many things, but not loving his sister was not among them.
She shook her head at him, setting her glass down onto the table. Why was he making it so difficult for her this morning? The last thing she needed was the Inquisition. "I just needed some air." She told him again, hoping that he would stop pushing the issue.
Jack watched his sister for a moment, shook his head, and went back to the paper.
David moved about his apartment with careless ease, pouring his mother another cup of coffee and setting out the salads that they had bought for lunch while they were out that day. The meeting with the lawyer had gone well, his mother confident that the man they met with could possibly keep Ethan from the death penalty if not out of jail entirely. They had stopped after the meeting and his mother opted for take out instead of sitting in the crowd that was more then happy to welcome David. She had come to terms with the fact that her youngest had done all that he could for Ethan, but she drew the line at him parading around like a hero.
"You always were the neatest." Jessie Shepherd pulled a t-shirt out of the clean laundry basket and folded it carefully. He hadn't asked her to help with his laundry, but when she saw the basket she felt compelled to help. "How often do you do your laundry, every three days?"
"Once a week, Ma." He walked around the kitchen and grabbed two plastic forks out of the drawer. "And I never heard you complaining when I used to do my own laundry."
Jessie smiled. "I always wondered who taught you." She laughed and then frowned, pulling a pair of jeans out of the basket. She tilted her head as she held them up and then looked at her son. "David?" She questioned lightly, trying to decide if she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. "Is there something you want to tell me?"
There was no way that the jeans she was holding could possibly be his. David pulled his bottom lip between his teeth as he tried to remember when they had been left and how long they were in his laundry. Michelle had come over once or twice without her pajamas already on and with a spare set of clothes, so there was really no telling. "Not really." He said after a second, noting the way his mother was still holding them up for him to see.
"You've got a woman's jeans in your laundry and you're trying to shrug me off?" Jessie folded the pants and tossed them onto the seat of the piano. "David are you seeing someone?"
"No." He started emphatically, and at his mother's look he shrugged. "Maybe." He ran a hand through his hair and motioned her away from the laundry to the small island in the kitchen so they could eat. "She's just a friend."
"A friend that leaves her pants at your apartment?" Jessie asked skeptically. She loved her son, truly she did, she just didn't understand him anymore. Shiloh was turning him into someone that she didn't recognize. "David – "
"It's not what you think, Ma." He said emphatically stabbing his salad with his fork. "She…" How in the world did he explain his relationship with Michelle to his mother without explaining his relationship with Michelle to his mother? "She's just a friend that needed a place to stay." He took a bite and then set his fork down. "I slept on the couch." He lied slowly.
Jessie eyed her son. There was something that he wasn't telling her, she knew him well enough to know that, but he was trying too hard to get her to drop the subject and that was telling all on its own. "I don't want to see you get hurt." She told him simply, taking a sip of her coffee. "And I don't want to see you parading women around like you're Jack Benjamin."
David's eyes softened as he took another bite. "It's nothing like that." He told her carefully. "And you don't have to worry. You taught me better then that."
"Darn right I did." Jessie took a bite of her salad and smiled at her son.
It was later that afternoon when David kissed his mother goodbye and sent her on her way back to the farm. He straightened up his apartment, what little there was, and finished his laundry, setting the top that Michelle had left at his apartment with her jeans for her to take with her the next morning. He hadn't decided yet whether or not he was going to tell her that his mother had discovered the clothing. Somehow it seemed to make what they were doing more real now that someone knew, sort of.
He had settled in with a book when he had gotten the call, the joint chiefs were coming to Table and he was expected to attend on the off chance the press asked about it the next day. He was to be able to answer honestly anything that he was asked.
He was on his way to the press room, to give a short briefing before going to Table when he saw her, coming down the hallway with a tan jacket covering a pair of black pants and a blouse that tied on the side. He couldn't help the smile that came over his lips. "We've got to stop meeting like this." He laughed lightly as Michelle fell into step beside him on his way to the press room. "People may start to talk."
"They're already talking." She glanced over her shoulder at one of the reporters following a dozen steps behind them and laughed. "I just wanted to let you know that I may be late." She lowered her voice and stepped closer to him. "I have a dinner tonight with Lash about the health care proposal and talking politics tends to go on."
"I was ordered to Table to sit in on a meeting with the joint chiefs tonight anyway." He shook his head. The only reason he was glad to be ordered to dinner was so he could be near her. It was a shame that she was going to be occupied elsewhere. He laughed despite himself. "It promises to be a boring evening that I'll be able to talk about with the press tomorrow morning. Maybe I'll get lucky and there will be a game on tonight when I get home."
They turned the corner and she stopped, allowing the reporter to pass them. She ran a hand through her hair and smiled awkwardly. There was too much that she needed to say, and now was neither the time or the place to say it. "Look David, I have to be back to the palace earlier from now on."
He watched her eyes fall and nodded. "Is everything all right?" He asked quickly, looking around to make sure no one was watching them.
Michelle shook her head. "I think Jack's starting to suspect something." She didn't look up, not for a long moment, and when she did, he could tell that her brother finding out about them was probably the worse thing that she could think of to happen. "We can talk about this later, I don't want to make you late – "
"I'm sure the press would understand the princess needed me." He told her smoothly, adjusting the lapel of her jacket. "If Jack's starting to catch on are you sure you want to come over tonight at all?"
She didn't know what compelled her to tilt her head to the side, running her hands over the medals on his jacket as she allowed a brief smiled to cross her lips. "I can't sleep anywhere else." She whispered quickly. She took a step back, forcing herself to add some distance between them. "I'll see you tonight." She promised.
He nodded carefully. "Remind me to tell you about your jeans." He joked with a scrunch of his nose, laughing at her confusion as he turned his back on her and practically ran into the press room. Glancing around the hall again, Michelle turned around and headed to the car.
The door opened slowly, she didn't even bother to knock anymore, and David took a sip of his tea as she set her purse on the end of the dresser and her bag on the floor. He poured her a mug and smile as she took it, sipping gently before setting it onto the small island in front of her. "How was dinner?"
"I wanted to stab myself with the salad fork before the main course." She pulled her jacket off of her shoulders and laid it over top of the piano, running her fingers along the wood before turning back to David. "Whatever made me think that it would be a good idea to partner up with Lash now has me wondering why I can't have him killed."
"He can help you get the reform passed." David offered as helpfully as he could.
Michelle took another quick sip of her tea before moving into the bathroom, where she pulled her wrap shirt open and shouted through the partially open door. "He's insufferable." She pulled the t-shirt that she kept borrowing from David to sleep in over her head and pulled her hair up into a ponytail with the elastic that she had wrapped around her wrist. "He thinks that just because I agreed to a dinner that we're somehow dating, and tomorrow when pictures of us show up in the paper he's probably going to say 'no comment' with the ridiculous sly smile that's going to make everyone think there's something going on." She slid into her sweat pants and pulled the door open the rest of the way.
"Maybe Paul Lash is exactly what you need." David offered quickly, watching Michelle blanch.
"You're kidding?" She exclaimed harshly.
He held his hand up and watched as she took a deep breath to allow him to speak. "With everyone's attention on you and Paul, maybe your family will focus on something other than your morning schedule."
Michelle took another sip of her tea and checked her watch. It was late. If she was planning on getting up at six she should probably be getting to bed soon. "You mean Jack will focus on something else." She set her mug in the sink and made her way over to the bed.
David took that as his cue to follow her, forgetting his mug on the island. "It's not that bad of an idea." He tried, watching her crawl between his sheets.
"It's better then I could think of." She decided, rolling onto her side to face him. She watched him flip off the light and then snuggled into his side. "It might be an idea worth pursuing." She yawned and then tilted her head up to his chin. "I never did ask you how your dinner was…"
He tilted his face down to meet hers, hoping to be able to drop a chaste kiss to her forehead. "It was a state dinner with the joint chief's." He told her slowly, misjudging his position near her face and kissing the dimple in her chin, pulling her bottom lip between his own. He pulled back slightly, wishing that he could see her eyes in the absence of light.
The room got quiet, maybe too much so, and Michelle's tongue came out between her lips. She had to admit that she had been kissed before, if not so many times; although the accidental bump of lips was more then she thought it should be. "David." She whispered so close to him that her lips brushed his. "We shouldn't."
His lips claimed hers again, and he slid his hand against her ribcage as he rolled her over.
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