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[theirlawyer]

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."

Comments

[imnotrobin]

"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."

[theirlawyer]

"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.

[imnotrobin]

"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."

[theirlawyer]

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."

[imnotrobin]

"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."

[theirlawyer]

"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."

[imnotrobin]

"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."

[theirlawyer]

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.

[imnotrobin]

"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.

[theirlawyer]

"For my sake and the industry of ice cream makers out there, I really hope you don't screw things up," Ainsley says, folding her napkin over her lap and calling the waiter over because despite their conversation, what she really wants is something to eat to tide herself over. She orders more than what she probably needs, but it's a big night, isn't it? "Why do you think you'll screw it up, Sam?" she follows up with curiously.

[imnotrobin]

"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.

[theirlawyer]

"Now, see, I very much doubt that and do you know why, Sam?" Ainsley poses the question as she regards him, cocking her head to the side as she folds her napkin firmly over her lap. "Because no matter how much you've ever done stupid things in your past and I know all about those things, I wrote about them, there's something different this time," she says, an air of arrogance and smug knowing in her voice. "Do you know why?"

"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."

[imnotrobin]

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."

[theirlawyer]

"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."

[imnotrobin]

"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?"

[theirlawyer]

"There were a few guys in recent days," she admits, running her finger along the rim of her wineglass as she tips her head to the side slightly, trying to remember if any of them were actually worth recalling or whether they were as forgettable as the last. "Nothing serious, really. Work didn't give me much time to think about those sorts of things."

"You?"

[imnotrobin]

"An accidental call girl and Leo's daughter," Sam says. It's ridiculous, really, his dating life, but he can't be anything but honest with Ainsley.

"Nothing in the last year or so. I've just had so much on my mind lately that I haven't found the time to do anything for myself. This is the nice thing about the hotel - I like not having to feel guilty about recreational time."

[theirlawyer]

She knows about both of them, but the way Sam says it has her hesitating as she raises her brow and sips from her glass of water, beyond grateful when her salad and her mozzarella sticks show up. "Now, see, Sam, you're going to have to clarify that for me. Accidental call girl? I don't remember seeing that as a profession during career day." She's poking and teasing, but it's one of her favorite hobbies.

[imnotrobin]

"I didn't think that was what she was when she met me. She told me she was a law student at Georgetown," Sam explains. "Which is actually true. She was most definitely a law student at Georgetown. But tuition is tuition, so...she had other employment as well."

He isn't ashamed about his friendship with Laurie and he thinks there shouldn't be any issues for her or him that she so happened to be in a vice profession at the time he met her.

[theirlawyer]

"Hence the accidental." She's heard this story before, but never really from Sam himself, which is pretty important to her if they really are going to try this dating thing. "If she weren't a call girl, do you think you'd still be dating her?"

[imnotrobin]

"Possibly? I liked her a lot but she was in a different place from me. There was a pretty large age and professional distance." Sam is not so blinded as to think the only thing keeping them apart was Laurie's profession; there's a vast ocean between a man who has been practicing law for at least ten years and someone who hasn't passed the bar yet.

"I want someone who is my equal. I don't want to date someone who hasn't had a chance to find out who she is and what she likes."

[theirlawyer]

That bodes well for Ainsley. After all, she's more than a little set in her ways, knows what she likes, and who she is. In fact, she'd worried that who she is would be one of those things that Sam couldn't look past, so to hear otherwise is actually more than a little bit of a relief. "Well, then," she says, lifting her wine glass. "Here's to dating someone on your level who knows where they are in their lives."

[imnotrobin]

"I wouldn't want anything less," Sam says, lifting his own glass in response. "Now that we've hashed out terms, how am I doing? Am I passable enough to get a second dinner date or are you still undecided? I've been told I'm fairly persuasive when it comes to these things."

[theirlawyer]

"Well," she says as she sits back in her chair and studies him like she's looking at a problem instead of a person. "You're handsome. Smart. Quick-witted, though unfortunately your politics lean a little too left for my liking. You know enough to take me out for food, but also to let me help you with your work. I think you might even get a kiss at the end of tonight," she says teasingly, but still her stomach flutters to think of that.

[imnotrobin]

"Oh? That's a banner day." The idea that he might get to kiss Ainsley at the end of the evening has him a little nervous and excited in a way Sam hasn't been about a woman in a long time. He suspects this was a long time coming. He's never been able to resist someone who can go head to head with him and when that someone happens to be a beautiful woman with a mind that can run circles around his, it's just inevitable that he's going to fall for her. Ainsley just had to be there for that to happen, no matter how much he might have tried to deny it in the past.

"I'm looking forward to your decision."