fearlessfan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fearlessfan) wrote2006-04-19 01:52 am
fearlessfan) wrote2006-04-19 01:52 am
Entry tags:
rip, wips
Went through the old hard drive, and came across a couple of things that I started and haven't been able to get anywhere with.
Fic the first, which is being put to rest because try as I might, I can't get past the second section.
The thing is, he's not really her brother.
Their father left her mother when Trina was five, went off on a three-month-long movie shoot and never came back. The day before he was due home, Aaron had a P.A. move his stuff out while Trina and her mother were at the grocery store buying his favorite kind of cereal, one of those grace notes in a story that’s not funny at the time but could become funny later, if you’re that kind of person.
Trina isn't.
~
The first time Trina met Lynn, Logan couldn't hold his head up and Lynn had already lost the pregnancy weight. Trina's mother hated her for this and a hundred other things, and so Trina hated her too. It worked that way when Trina was five, still missing her father, still loving her mother.
Hating Lynn wasn't hard. She lived with Trina's father and Trina didn't; that was enough. There was also the way Trina's father looked at Lynn, and the way they looked together, standing with their heads bent over little Logan, resting in his crib in the nursery that happened to be the second-biggest bedroom in the house. Bigger rooms were supposed to go to bigger people; Trina knew that. Trina was bigger, five, almost six, pains in her ankles from the inches she gained over the summer. She wanted to complain, but couldn't forget the cold look on her father's face whenever she complained, said she didn't want fish for dinner or fruit salad for dessert.
She learned to keep it to herself.
Fic the second, being put to rest because I'm about to get jossed by the actual show, and also, I can't get Ainsley's voice right.
~
Sam calls from California an hour after Ainsley's meeting with Leo McGarry.
"You're leaving?"
They don't talk as much anymore. Ainsley tells herself she's moved past thinking of him as a missed opportunity, but something in his voice reminds her of her first few weeks in the White House, when everything was new and strange and possible.
"I am," Ainsley says. "The Bartlet Republican mascot will be leaving the building at the end of the month."
"That soon?"
"That's the plan," Ainsley says. "How is California?"
"Sunny," Sam says. "Warm. The usual."
Silence stretches across the line.
"I can't believe you're leaving," Sam says. "I might not be back in time to say good-bye."
Something in his voice, a note of regret that's more than polite, makes Ainsley hold the phone a little tighter. She wants him to follow up, to say something else, to suggest drinks or dinner or coffee. "What's going on out there, anyway?"
"I don't know if I can tell you. You are, after all, the enemy." His voice sounds the way it usually does, his words clipped in a way that would have sounded cold from another person, but are warm and sincere from him. It's the kind of gift that will get him elected, if not this time, then the next.
"Sam." The joke was old eighteen minutes after she walked through the doors as a White House employee for the first time.
"I know," Sam says. "You're not the enemy, Ainsley. Even when you leave you won't be."
"Oh Sam, you do make a girl blush."
~~
At her new job, even the lunch room smells like money. It's after seven on a slow Tuesday ten days after Hoynes's resignation, and Ainsley is alone there with her thoughts and one almost-overripe pear. She leans against the granite countertop and admires the tasteful art on the walls, takes another bite and thinks about Joe Quincy sitting in her old office.
Ainsley's first office in the White House, the one she's sure Joe's sitting in now, was damp and gray and smelled vaguely of mildew. It took Ainsley three weeks to discover the precise arrangement of air fresheners and fans necessary to make the space livable. She wonders if Joe Quincy will know how to do that, or if he'll just sit there, sweltering and smelly.
She pushes herself up on the counter and crosses her legs demurely at the ankle even though she knows everyone except Kate the overanxious paralegal has left for the day. She picks up the smooth black phone above the sink and dials.
"Joe Quincy."
"Joe, this is Ainsley Hayes."
There's a pause, and then his voice again, wary. "Hello."
"Hi there," she says, turning the pear in her hand to search for another good bite. "So I hear you're continuing the grand Bartlet tradition of Republican White House counsel, and I just wanted to call with a few friendly pointers. First of all, get a fan."
"Okay," he says, and then, still cautious, "Is this really Ainsley Hayes?"
"Of course it is," she says, and then remembers. "Oh, no. What have they done to you?"
"They haven't done –"
"Joe," Ainsley says. "Remember who you're talking to."
Joe tells her.
"Oh," Ainsley says, scrunching up her nose.
"Yeah," Joe says. "It's worse than a fraternity here. At least they do most of the planning is alcohol impaired. These people are stone-cold sober, and they have graduate degrees."
"It'll get better." Ainsley sets the pear down on the counter and starts licking the fingers of her left hand. "I mean, you'll always be an outsider, and you'll never quite belong, but eventually they'll stop moving your car on your lunch break."
"They can do that?"
"It's White House, Joe. They could move your apartment building if they filed the right paperwork," Ainsley says, sticking her feet out to admire her navy blue pumps. "But they're good people. If you ever had to be alone in a building full of people, it's not a bad building to be stuck in. Even if they are woefully misguided Democrats."
"Right."
"And you're serving your country," Ainsley says, and hops down from the counter. "So listen, you're going to need at least three fans, two air fresheners, and a can of Oust to start with. Do you have a pen? You really should be writing this down."
~~
The flight is delayed, her shoes are too tight, and Ainsley is about to tally up another frustrating thing when she sees him. Sam Seaborn, big as life, stands by one of the Arrivals/Departures monitors. He's standing next to a clump of people with tired faces and Ainsley can tell by the distant set of his features that he's forgotten where he is and why he's there entirely; the person next to him has picked up his bag and left by the time Ainsley's finished walking over, and Sam hasn't made a move.
"Sam Seaborn," she says, and he starts. Turns and, she's glad to see, smiles.
"Ainsley Hayes." He says her name like he's opening an unexpected gift.
"In the flesh," she says, and thinks: Now what? Now's the time for a hug if they're the hugging type. Ainsley isn't sure. Sam isn't either, it seems, and so they both stand there for a moment, cautious of the distance between them.
Finally Sam closes it by reaching out and clasping her shoulder. "It's good to see you," he says.
"You too," Ainsley says, adjusting the strap of her carry-on after he takes his hand away.
After that there's a patch of silence just long enough for Ainsley to size him up, see what's changed and what's stayed the same in the time since they last saw each other. He's better-looking than she remembered, mostly because her memories of him are always clouded by other things – the arguments, the debates, the silly Sam stories. She kind of forgot the stunning first look up close, how part of her became sixteen again, blushing at the interested smile of a boy she thought out of her league. Not that he is, of course. Ainsley, wearing her favorite blue blouse, blonde hair sleek in a ponytail, knows that on a good day she can maybe outclass him.
"So, are you coming or going?"
"Going," Ainsley says. "Visiting my sister. The flight's delayed and so I'm trying to –"
"Find something to eat?" He's smiling when he says it.
She is too when she answers, "As a matter of fact, I am." She pauses a moment, considering, and then barrels ahead. "Want to –"
"I'd like that," Sam says. "There's a good sandwich place around here somewhere. I don't know if they serve Fresca, though."
Ainsley can't help smiling. "We'll risk it."
They've walked a few feet when Ainsley reminds him about his luggage. He runs back and picks up a medium-sized bag, grins sheepishly as he walks toward her. The bag is expensive and well-made in a quiet, impossible to miss way, kind of like Sam himself
~
Ainsley's got a thick deli sandwich on her plate and Sam Seaborn sitting across from her: It's probably the best Friday night she's had all month. She asks him how he is (fine) and he asks her how she is (fine too), and then he finishes mixing the dressing into his salad and says,
"So, are you still with the PFW?"
"I am," Ainsley says. "I heard you took a job with a law firm in LA."
"Whitcomb Dunn," Sam says. "They do a lot of environmental law. I've been working on some cases dealing with the ramifications of irrigation in the southwest."
Ainsley has her mouth full of a bite of her thick deli sandwich, so she just nods.
"It's good," Sam continues. "I like it. The people are nice."
Ainsley swallows. "That's good."
"Yeah, it is good," Sam echoes, in a way that feels unfinished. He pushes at the salad in front of him, then asks, in a quiet voice, "Do you miss it?"
Ainsley doesn't have to ask what he's talking about, or think hard about the answer, even though she's spent most of her time trying not to think about it at all. "Yes. You?"
Sam nods, looking down at his salad. When he looks up again, he's smiling, but it's a funny kind of smile, the kind of smile Ainsley knows is just the flip side of sadness: the smile you wear when someone turns down a date, or explains that they've chosen someone else for the position.
He asks her about her job, and she tells him about her office (three windows) and her coworkers (all Republican).
Sam cringes at the second part. "All of them? Really?"
"Every last one," Ainsley says. "We stay up late at night coming up with ways to destroy the middle class."
"I knew it," Sam says, with a triumphant poke of his fork.
Ainsley grins.
~
Sam walks her to the gate even though it's out of his way, which she says is silly but doesn't mind at all. Josh Lyman was the type of person she expected to find in the White House when she came: brash, brilliant, bulldozing over everything in his path. Sam's flashes of gentility and grace still unsettle Ainsley, make her stomach twist oddly and remember the White House those first few days, the magic of discovering principle and dignity in a Democratic administration.
"It was good to see you," Sam says when it's time for her to get in line, and this time he hugs her. "Take care of yourself, Ainsley."
Ainsley smiles after he lets go, says, "You too."
She leaves. The line at the gate moves quickly, full of anxious people kept waiting too long, and soon she's handing over her ticket, answering the bored attendant's questions, moving to get on board. She looks back before walking through the archway; she knows that other people would have left already but of course Sam still stands there. He raises his hand in a tentative wave, a gesture that would have looked awkward and strange from anyone else but is endearing from him. Her heart jumps in a funny, familiar way, and she smiles back, waves at him to go, and turns around confident that he'll stand there, waiting, until he's sure she's gotten on board.
Fic the first, which is being put to rest because try as I might, I can't get past the second section.
The thing is, he's not really her brother.
Their father left her mother when Trina was five, went off on a three-month-long movie shoot and never came back. The day before he was due home, Aaron had a P.A. move his stuff out while Trina and her mother were at the grocery store buying his favorite kind of cereal, one of those grace notes in a story that’s not funny at the time but could become funny later, if you’re that kind of person.
Trina isn't.
~
The first time Trina met Lynn, Logan couldn't hold his head up and Lynn had already lost the pregnancy weight. Trina's mother hated her for this and a hundred other things, and so Trina hated her too. It worked that way when Trina was five, still missing her father, still loving her mother.
Hating Lynn wasn't hard. She lived with Trina's father and Trina didn't; that was enough. There was also the way Trina's father looked at Lynn, and the way they looked together, standing with their heads bent over little Logan, resting in his crib in the nursery that happened to be the second-biggest bedroom in the house. Bigger rooms were supposed to go to bigger people; Trina knew that. Trina was bigger, five, almost six, pains in her ankles from the inches she gained over the summer. She wanted to complain, but couldn't forget the cold look on her father's face whenever she complained, said she didn't want fish for dinner or fruit salad for dessert.
She learned to keep it to herself.
Fic the second, being put to rest because I'm about to get jossed by the actual show, and also, I can't get Ainsley's voice right.
~
Sam calls from California an hour after Ainsley's meeting with Leo McGarry.
"You're leaving?"
They don't talk as much anymore. Ainsley tells herself she's moved past thinking of him as a missed opportunity, but something in his voice reminds her of her first few weeks in the White House, when everything was new and strange and possible.
"I am," Ainsley says. "The Bartlet Republican mascot will be leaving the building at the end of the month."
"That soon?"
"That's the plan," Ainsley says. "How is California?"
"Sunny," Sam says. "Warm. The usual."
Silence stretches across the line.
"I can't believe you're leaving," Sam says. "I might not be back in time to say good-bye."
Something in his voice, a note of regret that's more than polite, makes Ainsley hold the phone a little tighter. She wants him to follow up, to say something else, to suggest drinks or dinner or coffee. "What's going on out there, anyway?"
"I don't know if I can tell you. You are, after all, the enemy." His voice sounds the way it usually does, his words clipped in a way that would have sounded cold from another person, but are warm and sincere from him. It's the kind of gift that will get him elected, if not this time, then the next.
"Sam." The joke was old eighteen minutes after she walked through the doors as a White House employee for the first time.
"I know," Sam says. "You're not the enemy, Ainsley. Even when you leave you won't be."
"Oh Sam, you do make a girl blush."
~~
At her new job, even the lunch room smells like money. It's after seven on a slow Tuesday ten days after Hoynes's resignation, and Ainsley is alone there with her thoughts and one almost-overripe pear. She leans against the granite countertop and admires the tasteful art on the walls, takes another bite and thinks about Joe Quincy sitting in her old office.
Ainsley's first office in the White House, the one she's sure Joe's sitting in now, was damp and gray and smelled vaguely of mildew. It took Ainsley three weeks to discover the precise arrangement of air fresheners and fans necessary to make the space livable. She wonders if Joe Quincy will know how to do that, or if he'll just sit there, sweltering and smelly.
She pushes herself up on the counter and crosses her legs demurely at the ankle even though she knows everyone except Kate the overanxious paralegal has left for the day. She picks up the smooth black phone above the sink and dials.
"Joe Quincy."
"Joe, this is Ainsley Hayes."
There's a pause, and then his voice again, wary. "Hello."
"Hi there," she says, turning the pear in her hand to search for another good bite. "So I hear you're continuing the grand Bartlet tradition of Republican White House counsel, and I just wanted to call with a few friendly pointers. First of all, get a fan."
"Okay," he says, and then, still cautious, "Is this really Ainsley Hayes?"
"Of course it is," she says, and then remembers. "Oh, no. What have they done to you?"
"They haven't done –"
"Joe," Ainsley says. "Remember who you're talking to."
Joe tells her.
"Oh," Ainsley says, scrunching up her nose.
"Yeah," Joe says. "It's worse than a fraternity here. At least they do most of the planning is alcohol impaired. These people are stone-cold sober, and they have graduate degrees."
"It'll get better." Ainsley sets the pear down on the counter and starts licking the fingers of her left hand. "I mean, you'll always be an outsider, and you'll never quite belong, but eventually they'll stop moving your car on your lunch break."
"They can do that?"
"It's White House, Joe. They could move your apartment building if they filed the right paperwork," Ainsley says, sticking her feet out to admire her navy blue pumps. "But they're good people. If you ever had to be alone in a building full of people, it's not a bad building to be stuck in. Even if they are woefully misguided Democrats."
"Right."
"And you're serving your country," Ainsley says, and hops down from the counter. "So listen, you're going to need at least three fans, two air fresheners, and a can of Oust to start with. Do you have a pen? You really should be writing this down."
~~
The flight is delayed, her shoes are too tight, and Ainsley is about to tally up another frustrating thing when she sees him. Sam Seaborn, big as life, stands by one of the Arrivals/Departures monitors. He's standing next to a clump of people with tired faces and Ainsley can tell by the distant set of his features that he's forgotten where he is and why he's there entirely; the person next to him has picked up his bag and left by the time Ainsley's finished walking over, and Sam hasn't made a move.
"Sam Seaborn," she says, and he starts. Turns and, she's glad to see, smiles.
"Ainsley Hayes." He says her name like he's opening an unexpected gift.
"In the flesh," she says, and thinks: Now what? Now's the time for a hug if they're the hugging type. Ainsley isn't sure. Sam isn't either, it seems, and so they both stand there for a moment, cautious of the distance between them.
Finally Sam closes it by reaching out and clasping her shoulder. "It's good to see you," he says.
"You too," Ainsley says, adjusting the strap of her carry-on after he takes his hand away.
After that there's a patch of silence just long enough for Ainsley to size him up, see what's changed and what's stayed the same in the time since they last saw each other. He's better-looking than she remembered, mostly because her memories of him are always clouded by other things – the arguments, the debates, the silly Sam stories. She kind of forgot the stunning first look up close, how part of her became sixteen again, blushing at the interested smile of a boy she thought out of her league. Not that he is, of course. Ainsley, wearing her favorite blue blouse, blonde hair sleek in a ponytail, knows that on a good day she can maybe outclass him.
"So, are you coming or going?"
"Going," Ainsley says. "Visiting my sister. The flight's delayed and so I'm trying to –"
"Find something to eat?" He's smiling when he says it.
She is too when she answers, "As a matter of fact, I am." She pauses a moment, considering, and then barrels ahead. "Want to –"
"I'd like that," Sam says. "There's a good sandwich place around here somewhere. I don't know if they serve Fresca, though."
Ainsley can't help smiling. "We'll risk it."
They've walked a few feet when Ainsley reminds him about his luggage. He runs back and picks up a medium-sized bag, grins sheepishly as he walks toward her. The bag is expensive and well-made in a quiet, impossible to miss way, kind of like Sam himself
~
Ainsley's got a thick deli sandwich on her plate and Sam Seaborn sitting across from her: It's probably the best Friday night she's had all month. She asks him how he is (fine) and he asks her how she is (fine too), and then he finishes mixing the dressing into his salad and says,
"So, are you still with the PFW?"
"I am," Ainsley says. "I heard you took a job with a law firm in LA."
"Whitcomb Dunn," Sam says. "They do a lot of environmental law. I've been working on some cases dealing with the ramifications of irrigation in the southwest."
Ainsley has her mouth full of a bite of her thick deli sandwich, so she just nods.
"It's good," Sam continues. "I like it. The people are nice."
Ainsley swallows. "That's good."
"Yeah, it is good," Sam echoes, in a way that feels unfinished. He pushes at the salad in front of him, then asks, in a quiet voice, "Do you miss it?"
Ainsley doesn't have to ask what he's talking about, or think hard about the answer, even though she's spent most of her time trying not to think about it at all. "Yes. You?"
Sam nods, looking down at his salad. When he looks up again, he's smiling, but it's a funny kind of smile, the kind of smile Ainsley knows is just the flip side of sadness: the smile you wear when someone turns down a date, or explains that they've chosen someone else for the position.
He asks her about her job, and she tells him about her office (three windows) and her coworkers (all Republican).
Sam cringes at the second part. "All of them? Really?"
"Every last one," Ainsley says. "We stay up late at night coming up with ways to destroy the middle class."
"I knew it," Sam says, with a triumphant poke of his fork.
Ainsley grins.
~
Sam walks her to the gate even though it's out of his way, which she says is silly but doesn't mind at all. Josh Lyman was the type of person she expected to find in the White House when she came: brash, brilliant, bulldozing over everything in his path. Sam's flashes of gentility and grace still unsettle Ainsley, make her stomach twist oddly and remember the White House those first few days, the magic of discovering principle and dignity in a Democratic administration.
"It was good to see you," Sam says when it's time for her to get in line, and this time he hugs her. "Take care of yourself, Ainsley."
Ainsley smiles after he lets go, says, "You too."
She leaves. The line at the gate moves quickly, full of anxious people kept waiting too long, and soon she's handing over her ticket, answering the bored attendant's questions, moving to get on board. She looks back before walking through the archway; she knows that other people would have left already but of course Sam still stands there. He raises his hand in a tentative wave, a gesture that would have looked awkward and strange from anyone else but is endearing from him. Her heart jumps in a funny, familiar way, and she smiles back, waves at him to go, and turns around confident that he'll stand there, waiting, until he's sure she's gotten on board.
no subject
The day before he was due home, Aaron had a P.A. move his stuff out while Trina and her mother were at the grocery store buying his favorite kind of cereal, one of those grace notes in a story that’s not funny at the time but could become funny later, if you’re that kind of person.
Trina isn't.
SO amazing! I wish you wrote more. (HINT!!!!)
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)