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Amy Brookheimer is a fucking lightweight.
It’s been too long since she’s had a drink, what with her having to run a campaign and all, and she has to stay focused and sober. Fucking tequila. Fucking Dan. She winces. Those two phrases should not be in the same sentence. She remembers how he gave her the once over earlier and how she was so blatantly disappointed when he told her he wanted access to the White House. Oh. Oh. She is the President’s Chief of Staff, for fuck’s sake. Of course he wants access to the White House. What did she think he was going to say? That he wanted her to give him another chance?
She can’t remember the last time she has gotten this drunk this fast, except for the time when she found out that Dan had been chosen as campaign manager over her. She ended up stumbling around with Mike, Gary, and Ben, and then they ended up slinging cum at Jonah’s door and running away, screaming, like a bunch of pre-pubescent teens.
Dan’s clearly not as drunk as she is and she finds it infuriating.
“Amy, this is a PR disaster waiting to happen,” he says, as they stumble out of the bar. “We can’t have this plastered all over Politico, you know this.” She wants to fight him on heading home because she’s fine. Except, she can barely walk and he is right, even though she doesn’t want to admit it. This is a disaster waiting to happen, and his place is closer.
She stumbles a bit up his steps, but he catches her. “Careful,” he says. His hands are on her waist, warm and inviting. Her head is throbbing. She hates this.
She feels as though this has been happening a lot lately, him lightly touching her arm to calm her down, since she’s been doing a lot of shallow breathing with everything that's been happening. She’s surprised she hasn’t passed out from the sheer lack of oxygen.
“Wow Dan, couldn’t wait to get your hands on me, huh?”
"Don't flatter yourself. I don't want you bleeding all over my apartment. Do you know how expensive it was to get those hardwood floors?"
Amy just rolls her eyes and leans against against the cool brick wall as he fishes out his key.
“Come on, Brookheimer, inside." He says as he turns the lock and pushes the door open, waving her in.
“Alright, alright, jesus.”
Once they’re in, she drops her purse and coat onto the living room table and plops down unceremoniously on the couch. She takes off her heels. Her feet are killing her.
The next thing she knows, something comes flying at her. It’s a blanket. “What the hell?”
“I’ll drop you off at your place tomorrow, save you the walk of shame,” he says, smirking at her. His voice gradually recedes, as he turns and walks further into the kitchen.
“Yeah, keep dreaming. Like that’s ever going to happen,” she says.
As she pulls the blanket off of her and slings it over one end of the couch, he comes back with a glass of water.
“Here,” he says, as he hands the glass to her and sits down next to her. “You’re going to feel like shit tomorrow.”
She takes a sip of water, before setting the glass next to her purse on the table and studies him for a second. His tie is loosened, his sleeves are rolled up, and she can smell his aftershave. He actually looks concerned, which makes it even worse.
It always throws her when Dan does something for her, like when he saved her from having to stay with her family at the hospital, and when he stuck Richard on Jonah. He did say that she owes him one, but he hasn't asked her for any favors recently. And Dan never does anything for anyone, unless it's politically advantageous for him and he gets something out of it.
“Why are you being so nice?” She asks, suspiciously.
“You want to end up on the front page of The Hill?”
“Tell me honestly.”
Oh, now he’s fucked. He hates it when she does that, when her eyes get all wide and her face becomes open, it’s all searching and earnest. She's definitely wasted. It’s rare to see her like this. He’s only ever seen her like this a couple times, once after their three dates. It happened after they went on their last date, when she thought he’d call her again.
He prefers her biting comments. That, he expects. Most of the time, anyway. Sometimes she’ll catch him off guard, and he’ll have no witty comebacks, no snappy one-liners. He’ll just blink a couple times, standing there blankly like a fucking idiot because she’s Amy. And he’s Dan. Dan with a plan Egan who can’t keep up with her at times, and fucking loves the challenge.
“Because…” he says, as he leans in closer. “I meant what I said, that we could still be great.” He looks so sincere, she wants to punch him. His face is close enough that she can see all of his freckles and it’s disconcerting.
Why does he have so many goddamn freckles?
He brushes a few strands of hair of her face, tucking it behind her ear, and strokes her face with the lightest of touches. His eyes dart to her mouth.
That’s when she leans in and kisses him.
And he kisses her back.
He tastes familiar, but this is different. He deepens the kiss as her hands travel from his neck to his hair and he makes a little sound of contentment. They shift a little and she ends up with her back against the arm rest. He starts trailing kisses down her neck. They’re gentle kisses, and bordering on a little too intimate, but she turns to give him more access anyway. He turns his attention back to her mouth, before breaking this kiss.
“Ames,” he says, breathily. Their foreheads are pressed together, his arm wrapped around her back, the other is on her face, while hers around his neck.
“What?”
“We can’t…” he says. Again with the we. She really fucking hates this.
“You don’t want to?”
“I do, you have no fucking idea, he says, with his voice all low, and she shivers.
“Just, not like this.”
She pulls her head back a little to look at him.
Not like this? What the hell has gotten into him lately? If she didn’t know any better, she’d think Dan was acting almost...decent? It sobers her up just a bit, but she doesn’t move.
“Did you get a fucking head transplant or something?” She says, incredulously and he laughs, and that’s the last thing she remembers before falling asleep.
Dan’s not sure if she remembers anything from that night. He thinks she might, but they don’t talk about it. He continues to calm her down when she’s about to lose her head and he plans brunches for them and refers to them as we, and us, which makes her stomach twist in a way that she refuses to accept.
Amy does remember, but she doesn’t bring it up. It’s not like she sometimes wonders what it would be like, if they did get together, it’s not like they would be unstoppable or anything. And so they continue to compare their data and notes over shared lunches and meetings at his place and hers. And they work well together, because thats what they are in some sense of the word, whatever that means.