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Sep. 28th, 2014 01:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Ainsley pinches at the bridge of her nose, trying to fight off the will to sleep. It's been so busy in the White House ever since the President had started to call meetings with a good deal of the legal staff, which meant they weren't available for the day-to-day and Ainsley's workload had dramatically increased. It meant that it was pushing ten at night and she's genuinely unsure if she should leave.
What she wants now, more than anything, is just a night off. The trouble is, if she's here, then she's tied to her phone and that means it's not really relaxing. What she needs is that hotel. Whatever strange logic governed it meant that no time had passed since she and Sam had accidentally wandered into it and right now, she loves the idea of a weekend away when all she does is sleep and relax and rest.
There are two problems in this.
The first being that she can't find a door that opens there and the second being that she doesn't want to go alone. She begins the long walk up from the Steampipe Trunk Distribution Venue towards Sam's office, not surprised to still find him at work. She raps her knuckles lightly on the glass separating his office from the bullpen and pokes her head in the door.
"Do you ever wonder what our lives would be like if we had normal 9 to 5 jobs?" she wonders, in place of an actual greeting. "I don't know what I'd do with myself, honestly."
What she wants now, more than anything, is just a night off. The trouble is, if she's here, then she's tied to her phone and that means it's not really relaxing. What she needs is that hotel. Whatever strange logic governed it meant that no time had passed since she and Sam had accidentally wandered into it and right now, she loves the idea of a weekend away when all she does is sleep and relax and rest.
There are two problems in this.
The first being that she can't find a door that opens there and the second being that she doesn't want to go alone. She begins the long walk up from the Steampipe Trunk Distribution Venue towards Sam's office, not surprised to still find him at work. She raps her knuckles lightly on the glass separating his office from the bullpen and pokes her head in the door.
"Do you ever wonder what our lives would be like if we had normal 9 to 5 jobs?" she wonders, in place of an actual greeting. "I don't know what I'd do with myself, honestly."
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Date: 2014-10-24 06:21 pm (UTC)"If I were to say this wasn't a work related dinner or a dinner between coworkers or a dinner between friends, would you still want to go?"
It's simply testing the waters a little. There's no safer place to do that than here in the Nexus where nobody else from DC is around.
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Date: 2014-10-26 03:08 am (UTC)"You'd better not be putting me on just for a prank," she warns, feeling her heart constrict with nerves, slightly.
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Date: 2014-10-26 03:21 pm (UTC)"I would never prank anyone about something like this but much less you, Ainsley," Sam says, utterly sincere. "I would never hurt you like that. I just wanted to test the waters and see if you were interested before...putting myself out there."
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Date: 2014-10-26 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-29 01:12 am (UTC)"Good, now that we've gotten the hard part over with, let's have dinner? I'm sure you're starved by now." Sam is more nervous now that it seems that Ainsley is actually interested and for someone who makes a living writing speeches and crafting policy, he's awfully tongue-tied in his personal life.
He leads her over to a table and pulls out her chair. It's the little things that make a dinner into a date and he wants it clear that this is a date.
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Date: 2014-10-29 06:03 pm (UTC)Ainsley has a dozen questions that she wants to ask, but doesn't know if this is the appropriate time to register them. After all, it's not like she wants to ruin this first dinner amongst more-than-friends with too many questions, but she still can't help her curiosity. "Sorry, before we order..." It turns out she can't wait.
"What sort of arrangement are you looking for? Is this just one dinner? Or would you like something more?"
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Date: 2014-10-30 03:07 pm (UTC)"Well, I would like to get through dinner without flubbing it. Other than that, it's up to you, isn't it? To decide whether or not you want to keep going out with me?"
Sam really hopes that she does. It'll take a lot of the pressure off.
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Date: 2014-10-30 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-11-02 01:13 am (UTC)"Well, that doesn't help with the pressure," Sam says. He thinks he can get through this without ruining it and he hopes that his tendency to crumple when it really matters with a woman won't occur tonight. He cares more about Ainsley than he has anyone in a long time.
"You women have it easy, you know. You hold all of it in the palm of your hand. We have to do our best to impress you and make you want to go out with us again but you? You just have to show up, more or less, and we're going to want to go out with you whenever you want."
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Date: 2014-11-02 01:42 am (UTC)On the outside, it might seem like she's getting charged up and fiery, but this is Ainsley's wheelhouse and she does love arguing with Sam.
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Date: 2014-11-03 01:31 am (UTC)"You could show up in your bathrobe with no makeup and I would still want to go out with you," Sam argues back. Maybe she's right about it being expected of women and there's a lot less expected of a man but in the specific case of Ainsley, it doesn't matter. She always impresses him.
"You just have to show up."
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Date: 2014-11-03 03:09 pm (UTC)"I believe we have a history of me showing up in just my bathrobe," Ainsley says, though the flush in her cheeks says that it's far from her proudest moment and were it not for the fact that she's still somewhat keen to keep Sam's reaction to the debacle in her mind, she might be blotting it out of her memory completely. "And the Bossa Nova," she admits, sipping at her water through the straw.
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Date: 2014-11-03 06:16 pm (UTC)"See? That actually made me like you more," Sam says, grinning at her with the smugness that comes when he wins an argument.
"So in the case of Ainsley Hayes, White House counsel, you can just show up and I'm going to want to go out with you every day of the week."
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Date: 2014-11-04 03:38 pm (UTC)Ainsley flushes pink in her cheeks, having not expected to find herself a relationship while working at the White House, though she can't deny that the moment she'd met Sam on that program, she'd felt something. She'd convinced herself it was just the determination to crush him on national television, but maybe it'd been more than that. "You're lucky, too, that you're as gorgeous as you are," she says as casually as she can.
"Because I can definitely get on board with seeing that face more than once a week outside of work."
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Date: 2014-11-06 01:54 am (UTC)"Oh? How many times a week, you think?" Ainsley being interested in him is a pleasant surprise and it's a little more shocking than Sam wants to admit to himself. He enjoys her company - she's a vibrant, brilliant, beautiful woman - but he doesn't agree with her politically and he thought that might put a damper on their personal lives. He's glad to see it apparently does not.
"Because I could go for several nights a week. You might have to negotiate me down."
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Date: 2014-11-06 09:46 pm (UTC)"And how did you know that negotiating with you is one of the things I enjoy most in the world?" There's a sticky sweet sort of drawl in her voice that she usually only hauls out right before she entraps the prey and does her damage. "Seriously, though," she goes on, dropping away a lot of the pretense. "I'd like to do this regularly, if we could. If it goes well," she amends. "I'd like to do this, then."
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Date: 2014-11-07 04:36 am (UTC)"Then we should do this," Sam agrees. He lowers his voice a little, trying to pitch it as warm and intimate so she doesn't miss his meaning.
"I would like to try to do this here in the hotel at first. I like the idea of a place where we can spend time together without having to explain it to other people. Eventually, I want to take you out in DC too but I just...I don't want the press latching onto it or the other staffers making it into something it isn't. I want a chance to get to know you without a lot of external pressure."
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Date: 2014-11-07 04:40 pm (UTC)While Ainsley is in agreement with a sort of training wheels phase for the both of them, she can't help raising her brow in Sam's direction, wanting to clarify one little, teensy, bit of a thing before they go on. "And doing this here wouldn't be because you're ashamed to be seen with a Republican, would it?" She doesn't think it is, but she wants to make sure of every possible little detail before they go into this.
She wants to start this in an open and honest manner, if they're going to.
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Date: 2014-11-08 04:54 pm (UTC)"Not at all," Sam insists. "We already know that you can put me in my place on national television so, really, there's nothing more embarrassing about being with a Republican in public, is there? Dating you is not going to embarrass me. You know, until I screw it up."
It's a very distinct possibility that he will and he wants Ainsley aware of that and, additionally, wants her aware of the fact that anything he does to screw it up is not intentional.
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Date: 2014-11-09 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-11-09 06:42 pm (UTC)"I'm going to screw it up because I really care about you," Sam says, ordering his own food. It's entirely too much but he hopes that he and Ainsley can share the best bits from each others' orders and have a spectacular, elaborate and a little bit ostentatious of a meal.
"If I cared about you a little bit less, I could be smooth and suave and incredibly confident. I'm good at that. But because I care about you as much as I do, I want to impress you and that usually means that I fall flat on my proverbial face in the dating department."
Just ask Leo's daughter about that.
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Date: 2014-11-09 10:16 pm (UTC)"Because I won't let it get to the point where your screw-up breaks something. I haven't yet, have I? One successful legal counsel for the White House, sitting right here."
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Date: 2014-11-10 12:04 am (UTC)Sam laughs. It's true. Her job as White House counsel is to clean up the messes that come out of the West Wing and Sam is as responsible for those screw-ups as anyone else.
"Ainsley, you should know that my gaffes are almost always ill-timed and rarely intentional. I like you, I care about you and I want, very much, to pursue this with you. I think it'll be good...no, great. I think we'll be great together."
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Date: 2014-11-10 07:22 pm (UTC)"Well, you took me out for dinner, so you already know the best way into my heart," she admits with a fond smile, tapping her napkin against her lips to hide that affection. It wouldn't do to look too enamoured by a Democrat, now would it? "How about you and I take this one date at a time? Maybe if we're not fixated on the future, we can worry about enjoying the present."
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Date: 2014-11-11 12:09 am (UTC)"Yeah. Live in the moment," Sam says. It doesn't come naturally to him. He's always been a planner and he'd always suspected he would be married long before now. That hadn't worked out - the job with Gage Whitney or the fiancee but he thinks maybe he and Ainsley could have something good as long as he keeps it low key and no pressure.
"Has it been a while since you've seen anyone?"
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