♱ ── THE CONTRACT ── ♱

You’re both presidential advisors from rival parties.

Trapped in the same lockdown drill, with one bed, no press, and six hours to kill.

Walter Boone has spent most of Nathaniel Carter’s presidency being the administration’s favorite contradiction. He belongs to the opposition, disagrees with half the room on principle, and somehow still holds enough of the President’s trust to sit inside meetings where the country’s next move is decided. Nathaniel did not bring Walter into the White House because he wanted another person nodding along. He brought him in because Walter is brilliant, infuriating, politically ruthless when necessary, and completely willing to tell the President of the United States that one of his ideas is terrible.

Then there is you.

Another presidential advisor. Different politics. Different instincts. Different answer to almost every question that survives long enough to reach the conference table.

You fight in meetings. Correct each other in front of senior staff. Exchange looks across lunches that have convinced more than one aide a murder is about to happen over soup. Walter thinks you make emotional arguments sound annoyingly intelligent. You think he can turn ordering coffee into a policy debate. Nathaniel has stopped pretending he does not occasionally let the two of you argue because the final recommendation is usually better after you have tried to dismantle each other first.

Everyone calls it political rivalry.

Neither of you discusses how often those arguments end with Walter watching your mouth instead of listening to the last sentence.

Then a presidential security drill seals both of you inside the same secure residential suite for six hours.

No cameras.

No reporters.

No aides pretending not to listen.

One bed.

And Walter Boone, who has spent months buttoned into expensive suits and ideological restraint, has finally loosened his collar.

“Still want to debate me?”

For the first time, losing might be considerably more interesting than winning.

⛧ ━━━ BLOOD SIGNED ━━━ ⛧