no second acts

And for the last hour, he’s been phenomenal. He only takes two clementines before they serve the actual dinner, he shows off the fun little French phrases his father taught him to some bored-looking Macron aides, and he even complies with Oliver’s requests to give the press some affectionate shots of the Second Family despite the fact that he despises anything that even remotely resembles PDA. At around minute sixty-two, however, the wine starts hitting a little different and he decides that he once again can’t pretend he doesn’t hate this. So he takes another glass of the red chalaue or bordeou or some other French delicacy with too many vowels, making a bee-line to his usual strategy during these events - two hallways down from the main room, close enough that it’s not suspicious but far enough that nobody thinks to venture out to bother him.

Or at least, Vir assumes that no one will think to bother him, but just as he’s finally settled in with a small notebook and pen balancing on his knees, he’s startled out of his thoughts by the sound of someone’s voice. “Fuck, ah, oui, bonjour, baguette,” he exclaims as he drops the pen in surprise. He looks up, only to realize - “Oh, you’re not French.” His shoulders ease a bit at the fact. This is usually the part where he pretends to be apologetic, lamenting a splitting headache or a bad stomach or a half-deadly stroke for how terribly rude he is for leaving the party, but tonight he’s tired of making a genuine effort at Second Gentleman. He’s been tired for a while, actually. Instead, he cocks his head to the side, considering his guest before asking, “You up for a game of Twenty Questions?” He raises the glass of dark alcoholic nonsense he picked up on his way out, taking a sip. “I’ll even let you start.”

VIR ZAFAR’S HON HON STATE DINNER LOOK

@virzafar·

Amanda leaves and Oliver is left with an incredible sense of uselessness, a sense of alright, fuck, and what now? that he can’t quite shake off. So he cancels the last couple of his meetings for the day (or rather, tells someone to cancel them for him) and proclaims the rest of the evening to be a time for self-care - read: drinking the only alcohol in their home (spiked Trader Joe’s seltzer, courtesy of Vir) and rewatching the Bobby Kennedy documentary. It ain’t much, but it’s honest work. 

There’s a noise at the door and Oliver can vaguely hear the sound of Vir coming in, but he doesn’t bother getting up to meet him. He lets him come to Oliver instead, and only when he sees Vir standing at the door of the living room does Oliver give off a little wave for Vir to come join him by the couch. “Hey you, you’re home,” he’s about to say late, but then he realizes that no, it’s just Oliver that happens to be home before Vir for the first time in too long, “on time.” He props himself up on his knees on the couch, which puts him at the perfect height to pull Vir down into a kiss. He realizes that the alcohol on his breath isn’t something he can exactly hide now, but then again, he has no intention of pretending to be something he’s not - not with Vir, at least (not now, at least). “How was your day?”

“- because honestly I’m fine with the rest of the trail mix, but raisins? Like what the hell is that supposed to be about? If I wanted a grape, I would eat a grape. I can’t imagine the kind of monster who lies awake at night and thinks ‘Fuck the grapes in my fridge right now, let me dry them out and watch them shrivel into tiny little demons, and only then will I consume them’. It’s why I can’t stand croutons either. They’re not even real bread, they’re the version of bread that’s been left out to die that white people want to convince me is still a product in and of itself.” He shakes his head with a profound disgust, though his dad can’t exactly see him from where he’s listening on the other side of the phone. As Vir’s been talking, he’s climbed out of the car and made his way to the front door, unlocking it and pushing it open with the expectation of having the house to himself just like every other evening for a good couple hours - or in the very least, enough time for him to get started on dinner. 

Instead, he sees Oliver’s things by the foyer and hears the sound of the television from the other room and thinks, alright, maybe this evening isn’t like the rest. “Hey, sorry, I’m gonna have to call you back later,” he says to his dad before he can fully reply to Vir’s monologue. “Yeah, will do. Aapse pyar karta hoon pita jee.” He presses the bright red ‘END’ and puts his phone in his pocket, slinking off his bag and going over to the other room to investigate. “Hey,” he greets warily. He walks over to Oliver, about to ask him some follow-ups about Oliver’s state, but he’s interrupted by his husband’s lips on his own. It’s a familiar thing, a gesture he can usually melt into, except that Oliver’s lips are lined with an unsettling taste. “You’ve been drinking,” he says instead of answering Oliver’s question. “Why have you been drinking? What happened?”

Kinda. Before Oliver, Vir had a good amount of flings but only two people he was ever actually in love with (check it!). Of those two, he and James kind of stumbled into ‘I love you’ at around the same time, but he was certifiably the first to say he loved Harper. When Harper dropped out of college and left him all on his lonesome without warning, Vir’s heart was pretty fucking shattered, and he definitely didn’t feel comfortable being the first to confess anything to whoever would follow her. 

False. As much as Vir realizes that Hans is conventionally attractive, he wouldn’t fuck him in the status quo for two main reasons: 

1. Hans is one of his best friends (and probably his best in DC) and he’s too close with him to even imagine fucking him at this point, and

2. Though this is suppressed and not something Vir’s actively aware of, a lot of the jocks that Vir used to be fucking mortified of in high school were built very similarly to Hans, so he’s never been the one to actively yearn for the six-packed, muscular types (although his porn search history in college definitely helped him somewhat overcome this). 

     Date: August 15th, 2020 - White House Correspondents Dinner

     Amanda wasn’t exactly sure how or when she’d made a deal with one of the waiters, but since that moment she hadn’t spent a single minute without at least a quarter of her glass filled with wine. Maybe it had been the apparent stress on her face or the small patch of skin she was showing – whatever the reason, she’d be giving this man a generous tip by the end of the night for putting up with her and helping her put up with everyone else. “You ditched the bodyguard,” she pointed out, giving the other a look through the rim of her glass as she pulled it up to her lips to take a sip. Her tone was playful, kind even. She had given him enough crap already. “Did you set him up with someone to keep him away or what?”

     @virzafar·

Amanda mentions Jack and Vir doesn’t miss a beat. “Why, you want his number instead?” he answers with a grin. He wouldn’t judge if she said yes - Vir, despite all his surface-level hatred, can still admit that Jack’s attractive in that rugged, would-beat-your-ex-up kind of way. While Vir himself has never really been too hot for that type, he’s sure other people could probably find an appeal in it. He doesn’t say anything more on the topic though - he’s not really sure if Amanda’s in the business of dating right now, or very much about her private life at all as a matter of fact. He knows she did something more personal a month back that elicited an upset reaction from Oliver, but he never got a single detail and didn’t bother prying after a certain point. Just another closed door conversation he has to become comfortable with never knowing about. “I think he’s on a quick break and doing something like eating or drinking or stretching. At least, so he says, but I don’t buy it. If he’s engaging in any of those human activities it would certainly put a chink in my conspiracy theory about how he’s actually a robot put on this Earth to implant a chip in my brain.” He’s joking - mostly. He nods towards the wine glass in Amanda’s hand. “What are we drinking to forget tonight?”

Esther took a sip of her champagne, browsing around the room. The White House Correspondents Dinner - nothing new for her this year, but by God did she love events like this. Events where people knew her name, where she could float like a princess on a cloud of tulle and charm people with her snakelike smile. She wasn’t going to pretend she wasn’t disappointed when she heard neither William Bell nor Silas Sanford were to be at the party tonight, but she shrugged it off and made sure the rest of the night was more than worth it.

“A lovely night… don’t you think? Everywhere you look… It’s picturesque,” she mused gently to the person standing next to her. “Events like this are simply…. spectacular,” she sighed.

He knows it’s cool and hip to hate white people in this day and age - and sometimes he’ll join in the party with the rest of them - but there’s also a lot that white people do that Vir quietly vibes with. To name a few, he kind of likes the random assortment of rooster mannequins they seem to be obsessed with, he sees the appeal in Cheesecake Factory appetizers, and he’s unafraid to admit that he’s spent one-too-many nights with eyes glued to HGTV. He also likes the way they make small talk over nothing, like how this woman can look at the ballroom of a hotel with its beige wallpaper and off-white lighting and call it picturesque as though Vir’s going to reply with his own astute analysis of the scene to fuel a meaningful discussion. Bless white people’s hearts. 

“It’s definitely something,” he says. “Do you go to these kinds of events often?” Which is to say, Do you have a reason to be at these kinds of events often? Which is to say, Are you important enough to get an invite every time? Which is to say, Oh god, are you notable enough that I should remember your name, because your face looks kind of familiar but what the fuck do I call you?

He rounds a few corners, walks down a couple hallways, and finally makes his way to the hottest destination of the evening - the hotel’s vending machine. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, fishing out a dollar bill to feed into the machine. Vir’s rewarded with a Twix, and he promptly sits on the floor across from the vending machine to go about eating it. “I’m not sharing. I don’t care that the serving size only calls for one half,” he says before he digs into the chocolate. As he chews away, he kicks the vending machine lightly - not out of any spite, but just to do something with his legs. “You know, more people die from vending machines than shark attacks,” he comments off-handedly. “That’d be pretty funny, wouldn’t it? You’re here to make sure I don’t get a headshot in my pretty head and all this time it was vending machines you had to be worried about.” He grins a little at the thought. His flutter kicks lose some speed. “I don’t know how you don’t go crazy, thinking about how I’ll die all the time. Thinking about how, when it happens, you’ll be the first to see it. Although some religions value that, did you know? They tell you that you can’t end up in the Better Place, whatever that looks like, if somebody doesn’t witness your death first-hand, so maybe you’re onto something by stalking me after all.”

open starter

“Yes! Buchanan. This table.” Sybil motions to one of the waiters, who now carries her order which she’d placed outside of the event. He sets the bottles down, several of them, and enough to go ‘round. “What?” She says to her neighbor. “I’m not gonna drink Franciscan.” She gets up and pops one open, this one champagne, white foam bursting down her forearm and onto the table. Without asking, she tends to the stranger’s flute. “So. White House Correspondents’ Dinner, huh?” Sybil starts, like an aunt asking her teenage nephew about girlfriends. “How are we feeling about the First Amendment?”  

By far the most difficult part of this event is sitting like a normal person. Vir is a fidgeter by nature, and his seating patterns usually reflect it - he sits on countertops, on tables, with legs dangling over the backs of chairs or scrunched up to his chest. Now, however, he’s forced to sit with legs on the floor in front of him and his back straight, as though he’s a guest at a royal tea - or worse, a straight man. 

So it’s almost a relief when he hears a voice behind him, allowing him to break his composed sitting style to turn and face her instead. He doesn’t know this woman, she’s not even at the same table as him, but with the champagne in her hand she’s already much better company at this moment than anyone around. “Nothing wrong with it if you share,” he says, nodding over to the bottle and extending his own glass. On cue, she’s pouring some his way, and Vir has to remind himself that he’s supposed to be a Dignified Second Gentleman who doesn’t exist in the same universe as Drinking Champagne Like It’s Water Just To Feel Something. “I say revoke it,” he continues. “I’m personally exhausted by freedom of speech. I'm very over having to value other people's opinions. In fact, don’t just revoke it, reverse it. Journalists have talked for too long - from now on, they only get speeches if they mime them.”

c-papi: i figured it'd be hard for you, i mean.... you're so used to picturing me in various states of undress

c-papi: left them at ms. coleman's house last week. also mom and dad are here, so i gotta keep it cg-13

c-papi: ready to meet the inlaws? where u at boo

vir: not much for me to picture, on your good days it takes a single strong gust of wind to get your single fabric of clothing off

vir: which is to say that this was leading to a compliment about how it looks decent, you should consider wearing clothes more often

vir: and when i say decent i mean 'you clean up nice, kid' in the way that the encouraging older brother says to the scrappy little kid in the coming of age movie, although you're not scrappy nor are you a little kid i'm just conveying a tone here

vir: and when i say older brother i DONT mean in a clueless way, although that's a great movie and a really prime example of mainstream media creating interesting narratives from classical texts. highly recommend watching it

vir: and when i say watching it i dont mean with me. i'm not asking to be put in a dark room alone with you

vir: to be clear, i don't want to fuck you

VIR ZAFAR’S WHCD LOOK