Consultation

by: Allison

Character(s): Sam, Ainsley
Pairing(s): Sam/Ainsley
Category(s): Romance
Rating: YTEEN
Summary: ...and a little consulting on the side.

He hadn't spoken in a long while and Ainsley had started idly playing with her whiskey glass, tracing her finger in circle after circle along the rim. He wasn't aware of his eyes widening until she had taken the edge of the glass between her teeth and started running her tongue where her fingertip had just been. He must have looked pretty scary, because when her eye caught his she immediately put the glass down and asked, "Sam? Are you okay?"

"Fine!" he replied too quickly. "I'm - fine, nothing's wrong."

Her brow furrowed momentarily, but she chose to let it go. "Okay."

"Would you sleep with me?"

Had she been drinking, she would probably have choked and/or spit whiskey across the table. As it was, she gave an odd involuntary half-cough and said, "I'm sorry?"

His eyes widened even further in complete and total surprise at himself. "Well, that's something that shouldn't have been said."

"Are you drunk?" Ainsley asked in disbelief.

Sam pondered that one for a moment. "I don't think there's really a good answer to that question, is there?" Off her look he continued, "If I say no, then there's no excuse and you'll probably feel free to hit me or, you know, sue me for harassment. If I say yes, you'll think I was only considering it because I was drunk and you'll probably be insulted. So no, I don't think there is a good answer to that question."

"Are you this articulate when you're drunk?" she asked, frowning.

"Probably not," he admitted.

"And you've only had..."

"Two whiskeys," he said flatly.

"So you're probably pretty sober, is what we're saying here."

"Maybe not sober," he reflected. "But definitely not drunk."

"Okay," she said thoughtfully. "Um, I need another drink..."

"Are you sure?" he interrupted.

"Oh, yeah," she replied. "And then when I come back, we're going to have a chat about, you know, this."

"Okay," he managed to say through the paralysis that had just seized most of his body.

She stood from the table slowly, taking her glass with her and walking just about as - Sam wondered whether "sultrily" was a real word - just about as sultrily as one can while wearing flat sandals and a suit skirt. She leaned heavily against the bar with one hip while holding her glass out, and he could have sworn she was flirting with the bartender. He didn't know what the hell had happened, but suddenly Ainsley had gone from the pleasantly irritating thorn in his side to - well - the phrase "sex kitten" entered his mind briefly, but he got rid of it in a hurry. Ainsley was coming back ready, he suspected, to kick his ass.

She dropped into the booth across from him and swallowed half her glass in one smooth move. The glass hit the table with a bit of a thud and the look she gave him reminded him of the First Lady. He gulped.

"So," she said.

"What the hell was I thinking?" he guessed weakly.

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I know what you were thinking."

He lifted his glass to drain a few more drops of whiskey-flavored melting ice. "No, you don't," he replied quietly.

In less time than it took for him to swallow Ainsley had lost about three-quarters of her self-assurance. "I don't?" she asked. She was trying for sarcasm, but she only made it to uncertainty.

"No," he replied, setting the glass down. He couldn't quite meet her eyes, so he occupied himself with wiping the condensation from the sides of his glass with a fingertip. It came back as soon as he could wipe it away. "I wasn't propositioning you."

"You weren't?" That time she made it most of the way to sarcasm.

He laughed shortly. "Okay, maybe I was. But that wasn't the main... point."

"What was?" She sounded more curious than - well - likely to kill him, so he continued without lifting his eyes from his glass.

"It was more of a request for information than a request for - you know."

"A request for information?" she repeated. She sounded torn between wanting to laugh at him and something a little softer.

"Okay, can we just forget it?" he asked desperately.

"Sam!" she said, now starting to laugh. She picked up her glass and started swirling the liquid in it, and that was his only clue that she was nervous. "You mean you weren't asking me to sleep with you, just asking whether I would?"

"Yes?" he said, suddenly no longer sure. He looked up at her without lifting his head, giving her an uncertain glance through his eyelashes that she tried very hard not to find cute.

"Why?" she asked, still laughing to keep herself from thinking too hard about what this conversation might be getting at.

"Because I - oh God." Had he really been about to admit that he'd been watching her and wanting her just then? On the other hand, was there really any other way to go at this point? "I was - I *am* - um, I was - you know what, no." He broke their eye contact and reached for his glass. "I think I need another one."

Her hand suddenly pressed down on his, keeping him attached to the table. "I don't think you do," she said quietly.

He raised an eyebrow in annoyance. "What are you, my mother?"

She matched his look. "Hardly."

"Ainsley, I'm not drunk."

"I know you're not," she replied. "But I don't want you to get drunk."

"Suddenly you get to make that decision?" She hadn't removed her hand, and he hadn't budged, so he stood awkwardly half-bent over the table.

She looked him the eye firmly and seriously. "Sam, I'm part of this too. And I think we should finish it, now, without either of us being intoxicated."

"Finish what?" he asked, veering dangerously close to snide.

The look in her eyes made him stop and banished his annoyance, because he saw how serious she was. "If we end this conversation here, and you get drunk, either we're going to have a fight and not be able to look each other in the eye tomorrow, or we're going to wind up at someone's apartment and not be able to look each other in the eye tomorrow."

She'd won and they both knew it, and he sank back into the booth. "I'm sorry," he said softly, playing with his glass again.

She shook her head and waved his apology away.

"I'm just not sure how this got to where it is," he said obscurely.

She laughed at him again, and this time he welcomed it. "I'm pretty sure it started when you asked if I would sleep with you," she said.

"For you," he said without thinking and watched with odd detachment as her eyes widened in amused surprise. Screwed that one up, part of his brain considered.

She drummed the fingers of one hand on the table as she asked the inevitable question, "So when did it start for you?"

"Probably when I was staring at your legs in your office," he replied. Wow, the logical part of his brain reflected. That was a stupid answer.

Ainsley looked as if she couldn't decide whether to laugh or run. "Okay," she said, trying desperately to sound normal. She drained her glass before asking, "Is there any chance things aren't going to be weird after this conversation?"

"No, I'm pretty sure we've blown that," he said. Their eyes locked and she couldn't help smiling at the sheepish grin on his face.

"Okay," she said evenly. "So -"

"You know what?" he interrupted. "We're adults here, and we're friends, right?" She gave him a confused smile, and he continued, "There is no reason this has to be weird. I - said what I did, before, because I was attracted to you and I was wondering, in a purely philosophical way, whether you could ever be attracted to me. That's all." He sat back and took a shrunken piece of ice into his mouth.

"Yes," Ainsley replied.

"Exactly," he said around the piece of ice. "We can just - wait." He nearly swallowed the ice whole as something occurred to him. "Were you agreeing with me, or answering the question?"

She paused a moment to unravel that. "Both."

He willed himself not to choke, and somehow it worked. "Really?"

A deep crimson spread over her face. "Okay, never mind."

"No, I mean - really?"

She decided to play it casual. "Well, why would you think I wouldn't?"

"Why would I think you would?" he shot back.

"I think I'm lost," she said in such a helpless tone that he burst out laughing.

He jerked his head toward the door. "Want to get out of here?"

Ainsley raised an eyebrow and tapped one fingernail against the side of her glass. "Um, Sam?"

"No!" he corrected quickly. "I mean, just to walk, or something. Just out of here. The smoke is starting to cloud my vision."

She laughed in spite of herself and got slowly to her feet. "Okay."

The night air was mercifully cool, particularly on her burning face after he said, "Really, I'm not trying to get you into bed," and before she could stop herself she replied, "Why not?" When he nearly stopped walking with surprise she laughed shallowly and said, "I'm kidding, Sam."

They were silent for a while, heading by unspoken mutual consent for the Mall. As the brightly lit side of the Monument came into view he asked, "Were you afraid I'd answer?"

"Sorry?"

"When..." He almost decided not to ask her, but finally did. "When I said I wasn't trying to get you into bed, and you asked why - were you afraid I would answer?"

Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but she couldn't decide on a reply. Finally she said lamely, "Sam, I don't know what you're -"

"Were you?" he asked again.

"I don't know," she replied honestly.

They walked further, crossing Constitution and heading out onto the grass of the Mall instead of on the concrete paths. "You want to know why?" he asked.

She was noticeably looking down at her feet instead of at him, but she said, "Sure," in a tone that indicated she didn't think things could get any worse.

He was quiet for a moment, trying to find the right words without crossing any lines. "Because... someone you try to get into bed is either someone you don't ever expect to see again, or someone that you might start dating afterward but it wouldn't matter too much if you didn't. Someone you try to get into bed is... only about sex. That's why." He fell silent, hoping she would understand what he was trying to say.

She took her time answering. "So, what you're saying is..."

"... That I'm not trying to get you into bed because I wouldn't want to sleep with you only once."

She stopped walking and he jerked to a stop beside her. "Okay, wait, that wasn't exactly what I meant either," he amended.

"Let's hope not," she said, looking up and waiting for him to explain.

He took a deep breath and groaned quietly. He and Ainsley had always steered safely clear of emotion - they would laugh and tease and make it clear enough that they had developed an odd friendship, but expressions of sentiment were across a line they had chosen not to approach. Finally he said, in a halting, stilted manner, "I - value our relationship too much to screw it up by doing things out of order."

Ignoring the urge to laugh at him for sounding like a Hallmark card, Ainsley asked with a touch of amusement in her tone, "There's an order?"

"Well, yeah." He had started walking again and she followed him. "Jumping into bed is fine if you don't care about your relationship, but if you do then you don't sleep with someone until - well, until your relationship is ready to change."

"Okay," Ainsley said.

"Okay?"

"Yeah, okay." She didn't look at him, but rather up at the Monument.

"I'm not sure what just happened," he admitted.

She met his eyes in the dark, partially silhouetted against the floodlights. "You gave me a perfectly acceptable reason for why you're trying to convince me that you don't want to sleep with me."

"Okay," he said. He looked back at her questioningly until she broke the connection and wandered away a few feet, gathering her skirt delicately around her thighs as she sank onto the grass.

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3

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