Archer had always been a deep sleeper, so when the buzzer began to ring over and over, it seeped into his dream for long moments. He was on the beach, toes in the sand, a little seabird staring at him before opening its beak to make that horrible, grating, hideous noise.
By the time he opened his eyes and realized what was happening, rage was racing up his spine, and he didn’t bother putting anything over his naked torso as he stormed out of his room and to the front door. He was utterly unsurprised to find his brother’s PA standing there, tapping the pointed toe of her fierce red Manolos that matched the color gracing her full lips.
“What?”
“You’re late,” Katerina said, eyes narrowed.
“Va-t’en! You’re not my keeper. Rex is not my keeper. I have jet lag. I was sleeping.” He started to shut the door, but her hand caught it with unsurprising strength, and she pushed, breezing past him and standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed. “I’m not going.”
Famous last words, of course, because he was no match for her heated stare. He had known her exactly ten days, which was exactly how long he’d been home, and he already knew he’d met his match. His first day home, she’d dragged him to the Governor’s mansion from the airport, and after a parking lot standoff that would have impressed Doc Holliday himself, he realized she would always win. Which was probably why his brother hired her in the first place.
After a long moment of slow breathing, Archer threw up his arms and muttered a few choice phrases in French about his brother before storming into his room and slamming the door. There was some benefactor luncheon Rex had begged him to attend, and he blamed the fatigue that bordered on delirium which had him saying yes. But he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to participate in any of these performative outings for the press.
He hadn’t asked for this. He hadn’t asked for any of it.
Rex had set his sights on political office just before Archer graduated high school, and it was that alone that had him flooding Europe with university applications. Days after his eighteenth birthday, he was packing his bags and hugging his brother goodbye, bound for Paris in hopes he wouldn’t ever have to return. He liked having the clout on his resume that said I graduated from the Sorbonne, but mostly he just appreciated that he could avoid the political circus his brother was dipping his toes into while he was sitting in lecture halls and darkened astronomy labs.
Archer was a math and astrophysics nerd. He embraced logic like it was an old friend. He didn’t have the mind or stomach for the twists and turns of deception that came with politics. But his brother had always wanted something more than his law career, and Archer was well aware of it. He was aware that Rex would have to hide large pieces of himself, bury himself deep in a closet with several padlocks. He’d have to dodge questions about why he didn’t have a girlfriend, or a wife, or a church. Archer always thought that would work against his brother, and it was why he didn’t have a lot of faith in his ability to win elections.
Of course, Archer had forgotten to take into account the fact that his brother was stylish, charming, young, and incredibly good looking. And it had to be genetic, because Archer suffered the same side-effects of their upbringing, even after his parents were long-dead. He sat around in groups of people whose social skills rarely extended past making jokes in binary code, and he never quite fit in with them. They envied his ability to talk to ‘average’ people, and because of that envy, his colleagues hated him. It left him isolated and too often shunned, which made his work that much more lonely.
It worked for his brother though. A little too well.
He remembered the day with clarity and horror when he found a photo trending on Twitter with his brother’s white cuffed, linen clam diggers and salt and pepper hair swept over his forehead hashtagged with ‘DaddyRex’. Archer had to reevaluate everything he understood about the political game at that point, especially when his brother called to let him know that he was leading the polls.
Rex was stoic, and poised under pressure. He answered all of the