out into another world
Title: out into another world
Rating: PG
Category: Sam Seaborn/Ainsley Hayes
Spoilers: Vague for Season 4
Word Count: 424
Author's Notes: Written for magisterequitum at ww_stockings.
moving slowly into the setting sun
keeping secrets away from everyone
staring out into another world
tide is rising, but time is standing still
-Ivy
Sam doesn’t come back, after the California 47th. He stays on the Pacific, and Ginger boxes up his things to send them west via courier. He doesn’t call, either. Instead she gets an email that takes four paragraphs to do the job of six words.
I’m sorry. It’s better this way.
He’s wrong. It isn’t better this way at all, but she understands about space and pride so she gives him time to lick his wounds. She hears he’s working for Foster, Holmes, & Whitaker; that he’s doing well.
Two months later, she gives notice. It isn’t what you’re thinking; it has nothing to do with him, nothing at all. It’s just her time.
---
Her college roommate (the straight one, who didn’t hate her) is getting married in San Diego the first weekend in May. It takes almost two weeks of phone tag, but she arranges to meet him for dinner at his apartment.
Just like a real date, her roommate teases.
The phone tag stops and, in its place, they finally get the time zone thing under control. By the time she shows up on his doormat, takeout boxes in hand, as the California sun sinks low in the sky, they’re back to phone calls at least twice a week. She kicks off her heels as she shuffles inside, and then they’re trading insults and arguing like they’re back at the White House. He’s in the middle of, once again, trying to convince her that the Equal Rights Amendment is necessary when she interrupts him.
“Do you miss it?” she asks, still chewing an onion ring. “The White House?”
He looks like a deer caught in headlights, but really isn’t this the question they’ve been dancing around for almost two months?
“Do you?” he returns finally, before the warning look on her face tells him he’d better not turn this back on her. “Yes and no,” he equivocates. “This is what I’m doing now.”
“You’ll be back.” She opens another can of Fresca with a click. “No one else was brave enough to do what you did. It was very honorable, you know.”
What comes next, well, it isn’t something she planned. Much like she never planned to work for that White House, it just happens. She’s better at being impulsive than she thinks she is.
“I would have voted for you,” she adds softly. “If I could vote in the 47th, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”
After that, they’re pretty much done talking.
Ainsley never makes it to the wedding.
Rating: PG
Category: Sam Seaborn/Ainsley Hayes
Spoilers: Vague for Season 4
Word Count: 424
Author's Notes: Written for magisterequitum at ww_stockings.
moving slowly into the setting sun
keeping secrets away from everyone
staring out into another world
tide is rising, but time is standing still
-Ivy
Sam doesn’t come back, after the California 47th. He stays on the Pacific, and Ginger boxes up his things to send them west via courier. He doesn’t call, either. Instead she gets an email that takes four paragraphs to do the job of six words.
I’m sorry. It’s better this way.
He’s wrong. It isn’t better this way at all, but she understands about space and pride so she gives him time to lick his wounds. She hears he’s working for Foster, Holmes, & Whitaker; that he’s doing well.
Two months later, she gives notice. It isn’t what you’re thinking; it has nothing to do with him, nothing at all. It’s just her time.
---
Her college roommate (the straight one, who didn’t hate her) is getting married in San Diego the first weekend in May. It takes almost two weeks of phone tag, but she arranges to meet him for dinner at his apartment.
Just like a real date, her roommate teases.
The phone tag stops and, in its place, they finally get the time zone thing under control. By the time she shows up on his doormat, takeout boxes in hand, as the California sun sinks low in the sky, they’re back to phone calls at least twice a week. She kicks off her heels as she shuffles inside, and then they’re trading insults and arguing like they’re back at the White House. He’s in the middle of, once again, trying to convince her that the Equal Rights Amendment is necessary when she interrupts him.
“Do you miss it?” she asks, still chewing an onion ring. “The White House?”
He looks like a deer caught in headlights, but really isn’t this the question they’ve been dancing around for almost two months?
“Do you?” he returns finally, before the warning look on her face tells him he’d better not turn this back on her. “Yes and no,” he equivocates. “This is what I’m doing now.”
“You’ll be back.” She opens another can of Fresca with a click. “No one else was brave enough to do what you did. It was very honorable, you know.”
What comes next, well, it isn’t something she planned. Much like she never planned to work for that White House, it just happens. She’s better at being impulsive than she thinks she is.
“I would have voted for you,” she adds softly. “If I could vote in the 47th, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”
After that, they’re pretty much done talking.
Ainsley never makes it to the wedding.