Very Few Things Forever are Hidden

by Arokel

Summary:

Bernstein heaved a dramatic sigh. “Fine. We share what we know. Got any big, blackmailable secrets you’re holding onto?”

 

“Not a one,” Bob managed. “You?”

Notes:

Each chapter of this counts as one day's thing because I make my own rules and I said so.

Chapter 1: Accord (AKA "The Dahlberg Check")

In hindsight, telling the Post’s night editor to add Bernstein’s name beside his in the article byline was not the solely magnanimous decision Bob Woodward had believed it to be at the time. In hindsight, it had been nearly entirely self-serving.

“You put my name on it?”

Carl Bernstein’s voice over the telephone, less familiar across state lines than it sounded across the aisle between their cubicles in the Post newsroom, was baffled and - if Bob was not mistaking his tone - a little pleased.

“Well, yeah,” Bob said, eyeing the empty desk across the way where Bernstein usually sat, drawing Bob’s eyes at all times even when the man himself wasn’t there. Was in fact in Florida, soaking up the sun and bothering district attorneys while Bob worked his fingers to the bone back in Washington. “You did half the work.”

Bernstein snorted. “I did more than half the work. We should be writing an expose on obstruction of justice by secretaries for jumped up prosecutors.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it was a real hardship for you to harass a pretty lady for a few hours,” Bob said, though there was no real annoyance behind it. Bernstein was more palatable out of the office, far enough away that he couldn’t peek over Bob’s shoulder and criticize his writing or his reporting or the way he held his wrists when he typed. Over the phone, he was almost fun to talk to.

Bernstein laughed. That sounded nicer over the phone, too - or maybe it was just that this time, he was laughing with Bob. “As much of a hardship as it was for you to finish a story without my help.”

Bob felt a frown tugging at his lips at yet another reminder of how much better than everyone else Bernstein thought he was, but something in Bernstein’s laughter as it tapered off, the nearly-audible wince and the expectant silence on the other end of the line, made Bob change course and discard his planned retort.

“Sorry, you cut out for a second, did you say something?” he said, with exaggerated earnestness. A signal that he had heard both the needle and the wince, and that he would let both of them slide.

He took Bernstein’s answering half-chuckle as a personal victory. Bernstein’s voice came through muffled, as if he were holding his palm over the receiver. “Sorry? I’ve got a dozen Miami prostitutes in here with me; it’s hard to hear you.”

The thought of Bernstein with any number of Miami prostitutes sat uneasily in Bob’s stomach, but he forced a laugh in return. “Let me know if they say anything interesting. See you back in Washington.”

“See you in Washington,” Bernstein echoed, before hanging up and leaving Bob alone with the uncomfortable image of Bernstein, untrue as it may have been, surrounded by beautiful, loose-lipped Floridians.

It was no big deal. Bob had extended the first overture of friendship and Bernstein had accepted it, and their working relationship could only go uphill from there. That was the most important thing. Who Carl Bernstein did or did not sleep with didn’t matter at all.

---

“So,” Bernstein said, back in Washington and safely ensconced in Bob’s car, bags stowed in the backseat and banal how-was-your-flight pleasantries out of the way. “Partners.” He didn’t offer context, and he didn’t need to. They both knew what a double byline meant in this business.

“Partners,” Bob agreed. If nothing else, the fact that he had picked Bernstein up from the airport in the middle of the workday, with no reason to go except that if anything had happened on the flight, Bob wanted to be the first person to know, was proof enough.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bernstein’s nose scrunch in distaste, and a moment later Bernstein had turned it into a woefully, exaggeratedly petulant pout, which he leveled with impressive accuracy at Bob in the split second Bob turned to check his right-hand mirror. “Does this mean I gotta share my scoops with you?”

“It’s only fair, if I have to share mine with you,” Bob said, hiding a brief, irrepressible smile in the pretense of looking over his shoulder to merge left. Bernstein’s pout wasn’t fooling anyone, but the playful, teasing tilt to his jutted lower lip was more effective than it had any right to be.

Bernstein heaved a dramatic sigh. “Fine. We share what we know.” Then, suddenly, there was a shocking touch to Bob’s leg as Bernstein poked him, hard, in the thigh. It left his head reeling and heart pounding with surprise and the brief, dizzying uncertainty of what the touch could have been, and Bob nearly missed the next words. “Got any big, blackmailable secrets you’re holding onto?”

“Not a one,” Bob managed. “You?”

There was a long pause as Bernstein stared contemplatively out the window, watching the drab shrubbery and wrought iron fences of the George Washington Parkway speed by. Finally, he shrugged, and, turning back to Bob with a self-satisfied grin, said, “I don’t think girls look sexy in those flared jeans.”

Bob’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. The sheer unexpectedness of the secret, such as it was, had nearly jolted them straight into traffic. And the oddly confessional nature of it, paired with Bernstein’s hand on Bob’s thigh only moments ago, had Bob’s palms unpleasantly clammy on the hard leather. No, Bob didn’t have any blackmailable secrets. But that was only because if it ever came down to blackmail, Bob had made sure he held all the cards.

“But you wear flared jeans,” he said, uselessly and unnecessarily, unprepared for Bernstein’s startled laugh at what had been more a conversational hail-mary than a proper joke.

“Yeah, but I know I’m sexy,” Bernstein explained, as if that settled it.

And in a way, it did, because there was no answer Bob could make without accidentally accusing either one of them of finding other men sexy, and so he opted to let the conversation come to an end.

“Well, if I think of anything equally inflammatory, you’ll be the first to know.”

“I’d damn well better be,” Bernstein said cheerfully, and they drove the rest of the way to the Post’s parking garage in silence.

Perhaps it was only the fact that they’d been talking about Bernstein’s fashion choices, the memory of Bernstein’s so-called confession lingering in Bob’s mind, which drew his attention as Bernstein rounded the trunk of the car to meet him, hefting his luggage over his shoulder. The move pulled aside his brown suit jacket, and in that moment Bob noticed what he hadn’t before: for once, the suit actually fit.

“Don’t you clean up well,” he said, startled into speaking his thoughts aloud. Bernstein looked equally startled.

He recovered quickly, flashing Bob a sheepish grin. “Yeah, well, I thought I’d dress my best for Ruby, see if I could soften her up.”

“Did it work?” It was professional curiosity, nothing more than that. Nothing to do with the way Bob’s heart had pounded with petrified tension in the moment after Bernstein had pulled his hand away from Bob’s leg, leaving a perfect, fingerprint-shaped brand of warmth behind.

Bernstein’s grin grew wider. “Absolutely not.”

“Guess she doesn’t like you in flared pants either,” Bob said, and resolutely did not let his eyes drop below Bernstein’s exaggeratedly wounded face.

---

Sometimes, Bob thought, Bernstein reminded him so much of an owl that it took everything within him not to crack jokes about it each time they bid each other goodnight, often late enough that an early-bird joke would probably have been more appropriate anyway. It was something about the way he sat with his shoulders hunched up to his ears, the shoulderpads of his ill-fitting jackets rising even higher like protruding wings, and the way he tended to stare with those huge dark eyes of his, unblinking and imploringly soft, when he was confused.

Bob had seen that look a lot in recent weeks. This time, however, it was not directed at him.

“I beg your pardon?” Bernstein said, as the pretty redheaded secretary from the National desk blushed and dropped her gaze to her feet for a moment before repeating herself.

“I said, that was a real nice story you wrote. About that check.”

Bob could almost see the gears turning in Bernstein’s head, bringing him around much too slowly to the conclusion while the poor girl in front of him waited awkwardly for his reply.

Finally, Bernstein blinked. “Oh, well, that was, you know - I didn’t really… Woodward actually…”

It was painful to watch. Bob had a duty to step in. That was what partners did for each other, right?

“He gets tongue-tied around pretty reporters,” he said, deliberately mistaking her job title in the hopes that the flattery might make up for Bernstein’s oblivious rejection. “What he’s trying to say is thank you.”

The secretary - Cindy, Bob thought - smiled faintly at him. “I can see that.” She paused, then added, unconvincingly, “you did a good job too.” 

Bob managed to suppress a roll of his eyes until she had gone, with one last disappointed look at Bernstein. Bob sympathized. How anyone could look that combination of sweet and rakish like Bernstein did and not know he was an absolute chick magnet was almost unthinkable. Which was why Bob spent so much time actively trying not to think about it.

“I can write, you know. I went to Yale.”

“You didn’t have to tell her that,” Bernstein said, still blinking slightly but a note of his usual terseness making its way back into his voice as he spoke. “She knows how this shit works. People share bylines all the time.”

The urge to roll his eyes returned, stronger. “I was doing you a favor, idiot.”

“Well, don’t next time.”

“Well, I won’t,” Bob parroted, mocking. It was no skin off his back if Bernstein didn’t want his help getting a date. Girls only ever complicated things; this story was much too important to them both for either of them to waste time on that.

Chapter 2: Trust (AKA "The Stans Shakedown")

Notes:

I was gonna post the second chapter of Dress Up Just to Get Undressed today but it's not readyyyyyyyy :( so that's tomorrow!

The unfortunate fact of it was that partners meant working together, and working together meant getting along. And that was easier said than done.

It had gotten much easier after they began sharing a byline, and Bob patted himself on the back for having been the bigger person and extending the olive branch first. And it continued to get easier with every reconciliation, once they’d had time to lick their wounds and apologize and reaffirm their commitment to the story and to each other. They were even, tentatively, becoming friends.

Still, they argued so often over a single word in an article - a single article in an article, because sometimes in versus on was make-or-break between suggestion and accusation, no matter how often their colleagues rolled their eyes at the sheer petty minutiae of the arguments - that agreeing over an entire three-word phrase almost called for a celebratory drink.

“We can’t say ‘Stans shakedown cruise’,” Bob said, squinting at the scribbled quote in the margins of Berstein’s notes from his conversation with Haynes. He had become an expert in Carl Bernstein’s handwriting over the past few months, and he’d even learned to ignore the fact that Bernstein consistently spelled Stans with a z. It wasn’t even worth mocking him over anymore.

Bernstein nodded, frowning at his typewriter. “Definitely not.”

Though he’d never admit it, Bob preferred watching Bernstein write to writing himself. His face went through so many minute changes as he typed and paused, typed and paused, searching for the exact phrasing to sell the story no one else seemed to be buying. The process was alien to Bob, who wrote straight through and only afterwards gave any thought to clarity, but he liked observing it from the outside. Surely Bernstein’s pensive brown eyes and straight, serious brows were better suited to that sort of thoughtful expression than Bob’s own features would be. Surely Bernstein wouldn’t find watching Bob type as mesmerizing as Bob found him .

He shook himself free of the thought. “It sounds lascivious.”

“That’s a ten-cent word, Woodward; sure you want to use it?” Bernstein said, glancing up for just a second to grin at Bob and take the sting from the words.

“Fuck you,” Bob replied easily. “It does.”

At that, Bernstein stopped typing altogether and turned fully in his chair to face Bob with a smile much wider and - dare Bob say it - more lascivious than only a moment ago. “To you,” he said, batting his eyelashes and adopting a breathless, eager tone straight out of a pornographic movie. “ Oh, baby, take me on the Stans shakedown cruise. Has no one ever talked dirty to you?”

Bob felt his stomach twisting into a riot of nerves and excited, panicked questions. He couldn’t square his understanding of brash, unpolished Carl Bernstein with the pleading look he’d just been given, the wide, shining eyes and the sheer earnestness on Bernstein’s face. He felt hot. None of this was right; Bernstein was just a man he worked with, someone who annoyed the hell out of him most days and commanded his respect on the rest. Nothing more. Not someone whose voice on those ridiculous words would echo in Bob’s head until he fell asleep that night.

He snorted and looked away. “Yeah, you, just now.”

Bernstein laughed at him. The guilty lurch of pride he felt at having amused Bernstein almost made Bob want to throw up.

---

It was late and the air in the parking garage had progressed from chilly to uncomfortably cold, but Mark seemed reluctant to leave. He had told Bob all he was willing, and so, when he had asked about “this Bernstein fellow”, Bob hadn’t felt able to refuse him the same candor. Besides, it was no hardship to talk about Bernstein - for good or for ill, he tended to inspire strong feelings, and Bob and Mark had built first a friendship and then a working relationship on gossip.

Mark had smiled as he listened, even laughing aloud at a few points in Bob’s recitation of his initial rivalry and fragile new friendship with Bernstein. Now, though, when Bob had finally run out of things to say, his face was once again grim.

“You’re playing a dangerous game.”

Bob sagged against the concrete support pillar shielding the two of them from the worst of the night breeze, heedless of the cold seeping through his jacket. He considered feigning ignorance, but there was no point. Mark knew Bob’s greatest secret; they held the keys to each other’s undoings. That was why they trusted each other.

“I know,” he said quietly. Mark had known him since he was just a stupid kid chasing after sailors and probably couldn’t have spelled the word discretion. Mark had seen him take stupid risks before. If anyone knew what a reckless Bob Woodward looked like, it was Mark.

“Do you? I think if you really knew, you’d be exercising a hell of a lot more caution.”

“I am being cautious.” Bob tried to put the strength of conviction behind the words, but it was a conviction he didn’t feel. He was being stupid and incautious, letting himself get too comfortable. If he kept on this trajectory, sooner or later he would slip up and Bernstein would join the exclusive club of those who could, in fact, blackmail Bob - and worse, he would be the one member on whom Bob had no dirt in return.

Bob didn’t like to think of his friendships in that way. Especially not his friendship with Bernstein, which had been founded from its very first hesitant steps on a pact of mutual honesty. But to do anything other than lie would have been foolish.

Mark hummed, low and contemplative, and stubbed his cigarette out on the ground. “Do you trust him?”

“Yeah, I do,” Bob said, discovering as he spoke that it was the truth. And that only made everything worse. “I do. But I want… I don’t want to do anything to make him stop trusting me.”

“Then a word of advice,” Mark said, a parting shot over his shoulder as his receding footsteps echoed off the cavernous concrete ceilings. “Smile less when you complain about him.”

Bob watched him walk away, tracing his fingers over his own lips. Smile less? He rarely felt like smiling at or even about Carl Bernstein on the best of days. Trust Mark to offer his advice as cryptically as possible on this as well.

---

Bob, fresh off five days straight of twenty-hour workdays and so dead on his feet that Harry Rosenfeld actually frog-marched him to the elevator to ensure he went home and slept, consequently missed the excitement of Carl’s call to Mitchell and the ensuing bombshell quote.

“You’re not gonna believe it,” Carl announced, appearing like magic the moment Bob had settled into his desk chair, still groggy but feeling less like he might black out if he stood up too fast. Carl, who looked just as tired, was nevertheless nearly vibrating with the desire to share his news.

Bob hated to burst his bubble. “I read it this morning; I saw what he said.”

“Not all of what he said.” Carl grinned. “He said her tit. Katie Graham’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer.”

The words hit like a jolt of caffeine directly to Bob’s veins. He sat up straight to gape at Carl. “What? Why didn’t we print that?”

“Bradlee wouldn’t let me. Said people would get the gist.”

“It’s not about the gist. It’s the tone, and the - the fact that it’s Mitchell -”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Carl said, laughing. “It’s the Stans Shakedown Cruise all over again.”

Perhaps it was the tiredness, or perhaps just the giddiness of victory, but in that moment the memory of Carl simpering at Bob in one breath and mocking him for his prudishness in the next seemed like the funniest thing that had ever happened to either of them. “Oh baby,” Bob started, smiling nearly too wide to get the words out and indescribably pleased when Carl eagerly picked up the joke.

“I’m gonna catch your tit in a -”

“Alright, we don’t need to keep repeating it around the office,” said Harry, who, Bob had forgotten, had come over alongside Carl to deliver the news. “This is maybe one we don’t want to leak.”

“Come on, Harry, lighten up,” Carl said, without any heat. “Mrs. Graham already said it was funny.”

Bob shook his head, sobering. He had also forgotten what it felt like to hear Carl’s voice take on that syrupy, cajoling tone. Better to steer the conversation away from the chance he might wind up hearing it again. “No, Harry’s right. We don’t want to give those fuckers any more ammunition against her. Can you imagine Dan Schorr talking about her tits on air?”

All three of them paused to consider that horrifying prospect. Then Harry, with a wry shake of his head, left them to it.

“You,” Carl said, pointing his pen accusingly at Bob, “are a prude. It’s almost like you’ve never had your tit caught in a big fat wringer before.”

“You know, no one’s ever offered,” Bob said mildly as he tried to quell a small but growing inner discomfort. Much as he tried not to care who or what Carl slept with, somehow hearing him talk about Katherine Graham’s tits was, for Bob, far worse than hearing it on television.

Carl shrugged, as inscrutable as Bob wished he himself could be. “Shame.”

Chapter 3

Notes:

who me? back?

The best thing about federal clerk Mel Burke, aside from his big brown eyes and unfairly perfect ass, was that he had much more to lose than Bob did. Mel was going to be on the Supreme Court someday, if he had any say in it, and he was not going to jeopardize that just to tell Ron Ziegler that CREEP’s Public Enemy Number One-and-a-half was a queer.

He wasn’t the best conversationalist Bob had ever slept with, but he was convenient and he knew the rules of discretion well enough that Bob never had to remind him to keep his teeth to himself. Usually.

“Sorry,” Mel said wryly, tracing a fingertip over the already-purpling bruise above Bob’s collarbone. He didn’t sound all that apologetic, but Bob, still catching his breath and waiting for the feeling to return to his fingers, couldn’t quite bring himself to be annoyed. His shirt would cover it so long as he didn’t loosen his tie; no harm done.

“‘Sfine,” he said sleepily. Sex didn’t normally take that much out of him, but something about this night, the way Mel had pressed him into the mattress and held him there without mercy when Bob asked, the unfamiliar thrill of it… something about this night had been different. Bob didn’t want to dwell on it.

Mel chuckled, sweeping Bob’s sweaty hair off his forehead. “Shouldn’tve let me fuck you if you didn’t wanna get bitten. I’m only docile when you’re fucking me.”

“Great incentive to never let you do it again, then,” Bob said, with a tired grin that Mel swiftly kissed off his lips. “Put your goddamn clothes on and get out of my apartment, you savage.”

There was no question of Mel staying the night. Not with who the two of them were.

Bob had never even considered wanting Mel to stay before. But now, thoroughly well-fucked and feeling much more vulnerable than he usually did after sex, the thought of going to sleep alone seemed less attractive than every other time he’d remained sprawled across the sheets and watched Mel slip out the door with a cheery, “see ya next time!”

It had been a long few months between that last next time! and this one. Everything since the break-in had been such a whirlwind that Bob hadn’t even noticed the time passing until Mel, shrugging off his coat in Bob’s front hallway, had asked, “so who’s this Carl Bernstein guy you’re replacing me with?”

“Not a replacement,” Bob had said, laughing, “a colleague.” But it had felt wrong, and he had changed the subject quickly. He hadn’t wanted to talk about Carl with Mel.

Mel heaved himself off of Bob’s chest with a groan and began to gather his scattered clothing. Bob watched him, sleepy-eyed, and forced the words please stay down his throat until they stopped coming back up and instead sat queasily just below his breastbone. It wasn’t Mel’s company that he wanted, just someone’s. Just not to be alone.

“Well,” Mel said, lingering with his hand on the doorknob. “See ya next time. Tell Carl Bernstein hi for me.”

“I will,” Bob said, unthinkingly. He wouldn’t.

Carl was out of town, anyway. That was why Bob had taken the night off in the first place, and why he hadn’t just called up Carl to come over and go over leads again when he felt the loneliness starting to creep in at the edges of his vision. That was why he didn’t want Mel to leave.

---

The bite mark had faded quickly, and by the time Carl returned to the office the next day - the seventh Sunday at the office in a row, which had begun to feel distressingly ordinary - it was only an indistinct bruise. Bob wasn’t taking any chances, of course, but that morning he had called it faded enough and had allowed himself to tie his tie as tightly as he normally did, trusting that any flash of yellowish skin could be mistaken for shadow.

He got away with it until lunch.

It was almost as if Carl were looking for it, Bob thought, considering how quickly his eyes had snapped to the faint mark on Bob’s neck. His eyebrows went up and he let out a low whistle.

“Nothing blackmailable, huh? So, what’s the scoop?”

Immediately, Bob clapped a hand over the offending spot, then just as quickly let it drop. Covering things up only made you look guiltier. “No!” he said, too loudly. “I mean - it’s not - it’s nothing.”

He watched Carl’s eyebrows draw together in confusion and suspicion, and then, when Bob refused to elaborate, lower further into something that looked like hurt. “Sure,” he said curtly, turned back to his hamburger, and didn’t speak to Bob for the rest of the meal.

They made a good show of normality on their return from lunch, but Bob felt the tension between them growing as the afternoon wore on and the story Carl had been carefully assembling over the weekend while Bob was getting fucked within an inch of his life stalled. It felt worse than even some of their earliest, angriest fights all those months ago, but in the end, the story made it to print.

Carl didn’t seem to share Bob’s relief. “We nearly missed our fucking deadline,” he growled, glaring at the floor as they waited for the elevator down to the street. “Again.”

“Well if you didn’t take so long rewriting it,” Bob snapped, striking back on instinct.

Carl turned his glare on Bob with a snarl. “I wouldn’t have to take so long if you wrote it better the first time around -”

“If I wrote it better the first time around your name wouldn’t even be on the byline!”

Bob regretted the words immediately. He saw Carl’s shoulders slump, the anger draining from him, and the hurt from their silent lunch returning as his eyes dropped from Bob’s face back to the floor. For a second, Bob thought they might have lingered on his neck.

“Go knock on doors, Woodward,” Carl said tiredly. “I’m going to bed. I’ve done enough with my weekend.”

“So have I,” Bob protested. He didn’t understand what had upset Carl so badly, but he didn’t want to end the night on such a sour note. If they could just get in the car so they could talk, away from the prying ears of the Post offices, then he could try to fix things.

Carl barked out a bitter laugh. “Yeah. Clearly.”

The elevator doors slid open before Bob could ask what he meant, and Carl didn’t look at him once during the ride down.

---

Carl’s knock came at Bob’s front door half an hour after Bob himself had made it home, which meant that Carl had hesitated only a few minutes before hopping on his bike and following. Carl hadn’t wanted to end the night on a sour note either. That knowledge settled warm and relieved in Bob’s chest and made him careless, and so he unbolted the door to let Carl in without sparing a thought to the state of his apartment. Or, more importantly, his bedside table.

Carl didn’t speak as Bob trailed him out of the entryway and waited, half-expecting a resumption of their argument. Finally, Carl shrugged, gaze skittering away from Bob’s face to land somewhere behind him, and sighed. “Listen, I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have said that you… that you…”

He seemed to have lost his words, staring transfixed at something Bob couldn’t see. Before Bob could turn around and look, Carl let out a strangled, falsely bright chuckle. “So, the girl, she - she didn’t reciprocate, huh?”

For a second, Bob didn’t follow. Then, as Carl’s gaze darted to Bob’s face and away again, fixed somewhere around Bob’s bedside table, it clicked. There was nothing wrong with leaving a tub of lube on the nightstand under ordinary circumstances - even Carl, eager as he was to insinuate that Bob was too wound-tight for his own good, wouldn’t think anything of it aside from the obvious. But with a love-bite still glimmering beneath Bob’s jaw and KY beside his bed, there were other inferences to be made.

Stupid. Bob had assured Mark he wouldn’t slip up, and there he was leaving incriminating evidence out for anyone - for Carl - to see.

“No, I,” he began, without any plan as to how to continue. “I mean, it was - you know how some girls don’t get as - it’s just a little extra. To help. You know.”

It was a half truth, if you looked at it cock-eyed. Bob hoped his stuttered explanation and flaming face could be chalked up to the fact that, while Carl was not shy about his exploits with the fairer sex, Bob never spoke about them - chiefly because he didn’t have any, and rather than putting the effort in to concocting elaborate stories he tended to let his general reputation for prudishness do the talking for him. The version of Bob Woodward his colleagues knew would indeed plausibly stumble over discussing details of the female anatomy.

It didn’t make lying to Carl feel any less scummy.

At the very least it did seem to have satisfied Carl’s curiosity and banished the hunted look from his eyes and the suspicion from his voice as he laughed awkwardly and quipped, “sure she wasn’t just not that interested and trying to spare your feelings?”

“Reasonably,” Bob said, thinking back to the possessive ferocity with which Mel had kissed him. His hand spasmed, but he didn’t lift it to touch the telltale bite mark that had so enraged Carl over lunch.

Carl saw it anyway.

“Right. I guess not,” he said, sounding as awkward as Bob Woodward’s heterosexual persona ever did. “You could have just said.”

“I didn’t want you to know I’d been slacking off, when you were busting your ass in New York. I just… needed a stress release,” Bob said. It felt good to say something truthful, for once. Even if it wasn’t the whole truth.

Finally, mercifully, Carl was back to his usual self, with a grin and a sly, “well, I’ve certainly been there. Did it help?” And with that, Bob knew he was forgiven.

“Definitely,” he lied.

Notes:

Title is from Nixon's lawyer James St. Clair's argument before the court on Nixon's tapes lmao; it's actually a really weak comeback on his part but I think it sounds cool out of context.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 5 of Woodsteimber