Dimly around him the Battlefield Spreading (1/1)
Title: Dimly around him the Battlefield Spreading
Fandom: West Wing
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~2500
Icon: indigo_inferno
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: When Amy wants to know who knows what, she turns up at Josh's apartment in the middle of the night. Episode tag for 5.15 - "Full Disclosure".
Warnings: Non-explicit reference to a historical rape. Probably not for fans of VP John Hoynes.
Author's note: Written for misura for the Fall Fandom Free-For-All
Dimly around him the Battlefield Spreading
“Josh, can I come over?”
He grinned, and bumped the fridge closed with his knee.
“Little Amy Gardner. I haven’t heard from you in three months. How the hell have you been?”
“Josh can I come over?”
He’d missed the vibrating tension in her voice initially, but he could hear it now.
“You’re right outside, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Something wrong?”
“Just open the damn door, Josh.”
He snapped his cellphone shut and unlatched his apartment door, pulling the handle inwards. Amy was standing in the hallway in a long charcoal coat and pale cashmere scarf, briefcase in one hand. The misty drizzle had caught in her hair; gleaming droplets which were causing her hair to curl away from her face.
She bit her lip. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah.” He held the door open and stepped aside to let her through. She stood in the hallway, looking uneasy.
“Do you want some coffee? Or wine?” He gestured in the direction of the kitchen.
She shot him a look, arching one perfect brow. “It’s 1 am, Josh. We both have to be up in about four hours. Can we just go to bed?”
He tilted his head. “Sure.”
She took a breath. Put her briefcase down next to his backpack. “Do you, uh, have some pyjamas I can borrow?”
“Pyjamas?” He ran one hand through his hair. “I thought this was a booty call.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, Joshua. A booty call is when you go to them.”
He stepped towards her, running his hands over her arms. “So what’s this?”
She stepped backwards. “Josh? The pyjamas?”
He looked her up and down, brow starting to furrow. “Amy? Is everything ok?”
“I just-. Forget it. I’ll see you around.” She picked up her briefcase and made for the door.
“Wait.” He held his hands out. “I’m sorry. I’ll get you those pyjamas and make up the spare bed.”
“Your bed’s fine, Josh. We’ve slept in it a million times.”
He bit his lip. “In slightly different circumstances.”
She raised her eyebrow again, looking more like the Amy he knew. “I need to fuck you to sleep in your bed?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. It’s just that I’m in my forties and never really did the platonic sleepover thing even when it was age-appropriate.”
“Well, count yourself lucky then, Special J. You get to have a whole new experience tonight.”
She took off her coat, revealing a black shift dress.
“You came straight from the office?”
She smiled a plastic smile. “Of course I just came from the office. Do I come across as some kind of slacker?”
He shook his head. “I was just wondering if you’d had dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
He felt, not for the first time, like they were sparring. Stepping around each other in an age old dance, that could turn into kicks and punches any second.
They’d never lived together but they’d developed some shared routines. When they’d both cleaned their teeth and climbed into bed, with Amy’s dress hanging in Josh’s closet and the TV news flickering in the background, he realised how much he’d missed this.
They were both jaded. So infinitely jaded by the never-ending Washington carousel of palace intrigue and jockeying for position and getting stuff done. But even if they were too jaded to work as a couple, so consumed by the demands of their jobs that they scheduled sex and takeout plans through each other’s assistants, this part of the day had always been great. Lying in bed with Amy and feeling the hot bursts of her minty breath on his cheek. Feeling her warmth heating the space beneath the duvet. Savouring the smell of her hair.
“I hear the Vice-President is shopping a book.”
They had always talked shop in bed and, just occasionally, while they were fucking. There was nothing, in Josh’s opinion, hotter than a woman who could deconstruct the minority counsel’s office’s opinion on something while you were inside her.
“Yeah. Monday morning quarterbacking of every decision the President ever made.”
“And the women. He’ll be writing about the women he’s had?”
“Yeah, I think any prominent woman Democrat who expects him to maintain a decorous silence is betting the house on eighteen.”
“Am I in it?”
A beat of silence, except for the indistinct murmerings of the talking heads on the TV.
“What?”
“You heard me, Josh.”
“Why would you be in it?”
“Why do you think?”
“You slept with the Vice President?”
“Yes.”
“You slept with the Vice President?”
“Is this need to repeat yourself the critical weakness that resulted in all those moot court sandbaggings?”
“When?”
“During the second set of primaries.”
“While he was VPOTUS? And you were supposedly with John Tandy.” He propped himself up on one elbow, looking down through the darkness at her head on the pillow. “You hated Hoynes. Did you want his patronage that badly?”
As soon as the words were out his mouth Josh regretted them.
Amy rolled away from him.
“Amy. Amy. I’m sorry.” He leaned over and turned on his bedside lamp.
“Turn it off.” Amy’s voice was muffled. “I don’t want you to look at me.”
He realised, with a start, that she was crying. He’d never seen her cry. Not once.
“Amy, it’s okay.” He put his hand on her back and she jerked forward, nearly falling off the edge of the bed.
“Amy, I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re scaring the crap out of me.”
“I swore I wouldn’t do this.” Amy sniffed and reached for a tissue. “I just wanted to know if you had a copy of the book.”
Josh shook his head. “No one does.”
“I should go.”
He looked at her, indistinct, as she drew one hand across her forehead. She looked defeated.
He shook his head again, suddenly wanting her to stay more than anything in the world.
“It’s late. We should both get some sleep.”
She leaned back against the pillows and they lay there in the half-dark, watching pictures from the TV flickering across the ceiling and not touching.
When she spoke, her voice was clear.
“He was on a swing through South Carolina, and I was doing some stuff for the DNC in Charleston. There was some kind of mixup with rooms so his Chief of Staff asked if he could put some of the Veep’s stuff in my room for a few hours, while Hoynes was at meetings.”
She blew her nose, looking like a sick child with Josh’s pyjamas folded back over her wrists.
“I was totally wiped but totally wired, so I took an Ambien.”
Josh nodded. He didn’t need to be told about the sickening buzz of tiredness and adrenaline.
“Before it really kicked in Hoynes arrived. I don’t really remember what happened, but we ended up in bed together.”
Josh froze. “He didn’t seem put off by the fact that you were stoned off your face?”
“It wasn’t like that, Josh.“ Amy sounded bone-weary.
“I’ve seen you when you’ve taken Ambien, Amy. I know what that looks like.”
Josh sat up. Amy flinched.
“He was completely indifferent to you slurring your words and acting like a rag doll?”
“Josh-“
“He doesn’t require any participation from his bedmates? Or even - I don’t know - sentience?”
“Josh, could we not?”
“Amy-”
He paused. Knew that Amy needed to be part of the team that won, and not the team that things like this happened to. Knew that he couldn't say the word that was hanging between them like a bad smell.
“I just want not to be called a whore in his book. That’s what I want.”
“Amy-“ His voice was gentle.
She turned to face him. “I don’t need your pity, Josh. I’m a big girl and this game we both play is a game for big girls and big boys.”
He touched her forehead gently, with the very tips of his fingers. “This isn’t in the rules.”
She laughed, hollowly. “You got shot, Josh.”
His voice was soft. “That wasn’t in the rules either.”
“There are no rules. There are just people who get to play and people who don’t.” She gritted her teeth. “And you don’t get to play from Oprah’s sofa. And you don’t get to play from the front page of every supermarket tabloid. And you definitely don’t get to play if you’re Anita Hill or Monica Lewinsky.”
He took a breath. “Amy, almost every time you’ve come to lobby me it’s been on violence against women.”
“So I’m letting down the sisterhood by not coming forward?”
Josh furrowed his brow. “I’m not saying that.”
“You better not be. Or I might start asking about your case against the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”
There was another beat of silence. Josh tried to find some words.
“I get that you don’t want a media circus, but are you really telling me you don’t care about this?”
“I care about my job, Josh.” Amy’s voice was hard. “I care about what I’ve worked my whole life for. I care about undermining the very issues I’ve advocated for since I got a tampon machine installed in the girls’ bathroom in my middle school, and girls didn’t have to go to the nurse anymore when they got their period.”
Josh’s hand hovered over her hair.
“What about you?”
Amy clenched her fist against the crisp cotton of Josh’s duvet cover. “What about you? Are you happy someone shot you? Of course not. Do you want to spend the next few years of your life playing professional victim? No. You came here to play. Me too.”
Josh stretched out a finger and ran it over Amy’s cheek. “You can’t even tell me that you’re in pain.”
“This from Mr. Forthcoming?”
“Amy-“
“You yelled at the President before you asked anybody for a damn thing. And it wasn’t like you wanted to talk to me about it at all.”
“So you’re emulating my decision to be a jackass?”
Her voice was quiet. “I’m doing the best that I can.”
And there was something about her tone that made him reach for her and pull her into his chest. He realised, with a sharp stab of rage, how much smaller than him she was. How much smaller than Hoynes.
They lay like that for a minute, and she was so hot in his arms, face pressed into the t-shirt he had worn to bed with his pyjama bottoms.
“Amy,” he said, into her hair. “If you ever want to talk to me then I can keep a secret. One player helping out another.”
There was a long silence and she shivered in his arms. Shivered despite the warmth of the duvet over their shoulders and the heat of their bodies.
“It was awful.” She was whispering now. “It was awful and it hurt. And today I feel like crap but tomorrow will be ok. And that’s all I want to say about this ever.”
He dropped a kiss onto her hair and wished, not for the first time, that this wasn’t how this worked.
She was in the shower when he woke up and he flipped on the news and made them both coffee. She walked into the kitchen, fastening an earring, wearing yesterday’s shift dress.
“God bless mothers who encourage you to carry spare underwear and pantyhose at all times.”
Josh grinned.
“Is this for me?” Amy pointed at one of the mugs of coffee, sitting on the worktop.
“Just the way you like it.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Josh. And thanks for the bed.”
“Anytime, Amy.”
She took a sip of her coffee.
“Amy?”
She looked up from the mug and her face was pale under her makeup. “What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.” A beat. “Just that we might need to ask for some help with some attacks on federally funded health projects involving prostitution and sexual health. The Communications office is asking for some policy advice.”
She nodded. “Sure. Just have someone call my office if you need me on the phone today.” She looked at her watch. “I need to get back to it.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Thanks, Josh.” She leaned on the words.
After she’d gathered her bag and coat, and he’d dispatched her at the door with a kiss on her forehead, he thought that he was going to enjoy making sure that there was no second act to Hoynes’ political life.
Fandom: West Wing
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~2500
Icon: indigo_inferno
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: When Amy wants to know who knows what, she turns up at Josh's apartment in the middle of the night. Episode tag for 5.15 - "Full Disclosure".
Warnings: Non-explicit reference to a historical rape. Probably not for fans of VP John Hoynes.
Author's note: Written for misura for the Fall Fandom Free-For-All
Dimly around him the Battlefield Spreading
“Josh, can I come over?”
He grinned, and bumped the fridge closed with his knee.
“Little Amy Gardner. I haven’t heard from you in three months. How the hell have you been?”
“Josh can I come over?”
He’d missed the vibrating tension in her voice initially, but he could hear it now.
“You’re right outside, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Something wrong?”
“Just open the damn door, Josh.”
He snapped his cellphone shut and unlatched his apartment door, pulling the handle inwards. Amy was standing in the hallway in a long charcoal coat and pale cashmere scarf, briefcase in one hand. The misty drizzle had caught in her hair; gleaming droplets which were causing her hair to curl away from her face.
She bit her lip. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah.” He held the door open and stepped aside to let her through. She stood in the hallway, looking uneasy.
“Do you want some coffee? Or wine?” He gestured in the direction of the kitchen.
She shot him a look, arching one perfect brow. “It’s 1 am, Josh. We both have to be up in about four hours. Can we just go to bed?”
He tilted his head. “Sure.”
She took a breath. Put her briefcase down next to his backpack. “Do you, uh, have some pyjamas I can borrow?”
“Pyjamas?” He ran one hand through his hair. “I thought this was a booty call.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, Joshua. A booty call is when you go to them.”
He stepped towards her, running his hands over her arms. “So what’s this?”
She stepped backwards. “Josh? The pyjamas?”
He looked her up and down, brow starting to furrow. “Amy? Is everything ok?”
“I just-. Forget it. I’ll see you around.” She picked up her briefcase and made for the door.
“Wait.” He held his hands out. “I’m sorry. I’ll get you those pyjamas and make up the spare bed.”
“Your bed’s fine, Josh. We’ve slept in it a million times.”
He bit his lip. “In slightly different circumstances.”
She raised her eyebrow again, looking more like the Amy he knew. “I need to fuck you to sleep in your bed?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. It’s just that I’m in my forties and never really did the platonic sleepover thing even when it was age-appropriate.”
“Well, count yourself lucky then, Special J. You get to have a whole new experience tonight.”
She took off her coat, revealing a black shift dress.
“You came straight from the office?”
She smiled a plastic smile. “Of course I just came from the office. Do I come across as some kind of slacker?”
He shook his head. “I was just wondering if you’d had dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
He felt, not for the first time, like they were sparring. Stepping around each other in an age old dance, that could turn into kicks and punches any second.
They’d never lived together but they’d developed some shared routines. When they’d both cleaned their teeth and climbed into bed, with Amy’s dress hanging in Josh’s closet and the TV news flickering in the background, he realised how much he’d missed this.
They were both jaded. So infinitely jaded by the never-ending Washington carousel of palace intrigue and jockeying for position and getting stuff done. But even if they were too jaded to work as a couple, so consumed by the demands of their jobs that they scheduled sex and takeout plans through each other’s assistants, this part of the day had always been great. Lying in bed with Amy and feeling the hot bursts of her minty breath on his cheek. Feeling her warmth heating the space beneath the duvet. Savouring the smell of her hair.
“I hear the Vice-President is shopping a book.”
They had always talked shop in bed and, just occasionally, while they were fucking. There was nothing, in Josh’s opinion, hotter than a woman who could deconstruct the minority counsel’s office’s opinion on something while you were inside her.
“Yeah. Monday morning quarterbacking of every decision the President ever made.”
“And the women. He’ll be writing about the women he’s had?”
“Yeah, I think any prominent woman Democrat who expects him to maintain a decorous silence is betting the house on eighteen.”
“Am I in it?”
A beat of silence, except for the indistinct murmerings of the talking heads on the TV.
“What?”
“You heard me, Josh.”
“Why would you be in it?”
“Why do you think?”
“You slept with the Vice President?”
“Yes.”
“You slept with the Vice President?”
“Is this need to repeat yourself the critical weakness that resulted in all those moot court sandbaggings?”
“When?”
“During the second set of primaries.”
“While he was VPOTUS? And you were supposedly with John Tandy.” He propped himself up on one elbow, looking down through the darkness at her head on the pillow. “You hated Hoynes. Did you want his patronage that badly?”
As soon as the words were out his mouth Josh regretted them.
Amy rolled away from him.
“Amy. Amy. I’m sorry.” He leaned over and turned on his bedside lamp.
“Turn it off.” Amy’s voice was muffled. “I don’t want you to look at me.”
He realised, with a start, that she was crying. He’d never seen her cry. Not once.
“Amy, it’s okay.” He put his hand on her back and she jerked forward, nearly falling off the edge of the bed.
“Amy, I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re scaring the crap out of me.”
“I swore I wouldn’t do this.” Amy sniffed and reached for a tissue. “I just wanted to know if you had a copy of the book.”
Josh shook his head. “No one does.”
“I should go.”
He looked at her, indistinct, as she drew one hand across her forehead. She looked defeated.
He shook his head again, suddenly wanting her to stay more than anything in the world.
“It’s late. We should both get some sleep.”
She leaned back against the pillows and they lay there in the half-dark, watching pictures from the TV flickering across the ceiling and not touching.
When she spoke, her voice was clear.
“He was on a swing through South Carolina, and I was doing some stuff for the DNC in Charleston. There was some kind of mixup with rooms so his Chief of Staff asked if he could put some of the Veep’s stuff in my room for a few hours, while Hoynes was at meetings.”
She blew her nose, looking like a sick child with Josh’s pyjamas folded back over her wrists.
“I was totally wiped but totally wired, so I took an Ambien.”
Josh nodded. He didn’t need to be told about the sickening buzz of tiredness and adrenaline.
“Before it really kicked in Hoynes arrived. I don’t really remember what happened, but we ended up in bed together.”
Josh froze. “He didn’t seem put off by the fact that you were stoned off your face?”
“It wasn’t like that, Josh.“ Amy sounded bone-weary.
“I’ve seen you when you’ve taken Ambien, Amy. I know what that looks like.”
Josh sat up. Amy flinched.
“He was completely indifferent to you slurring your words and acting like a rag doll?”
“Josh-“
“He doesn’t require any participation from his bedmates? Or even - I don’t know - sentience?”
“Josh, could we not?”
“Amy-”
He paused. Knew that Amy needed to be part of the team that won, and not the team that things like this happened to. Knew that he couldn't say the word that was hanging between them like a bad smell.
“I just want not to be called a whore in his book. That’s what I want.”
“Amy-“ His voice was gentle.
She turned to face him. “I don’t need your pity, Josh. I’m a big girl and this game we both play is a game for big girls and big boys.”
He touched her forehead gently, with the very tips of his fingers. “This isn’t in the rules.”
She laughed, hollowly. “You got shot, Josh.”
His voice was soft. “That wasn’t in the rules either.”
“There are no rules. There are just people who get to play and people who don’t.” She gritted her teeth. “And you don’t get to play from Oprah’s sofa. And you don’t get to play from the front page of every supermarket tabloid. And you definitely don’t get to play if you’re Anita Hill or Monica Lewinsky.”
He took a breath. “Amy, almost every time you’ve come to lobby me it’s been on violence against women.”
“So I’m letting down the sisterhood by not coming forward?”
Josh furrowed his brow. “I’m not saying that.”
“You better not be. Or I might start asking about your case against the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”
There was another beat of silence. Josh tried to find some words.
“I get that you don’t want a media circus, but are you really telling me you don’t care about this?”
“I care about my job, Josh.” Amy’s voice was hard. “I care about what I’ve worked my whole life for. I care about undermining the very issues I’ve advocated for since I got a tampon machine installed in the girls’ bathroom in my middle school, and girls didn’t have to go to the nurse anymore when they got their period.”
Josh’s hand hovered over her hair.
“What about you?”
Amy clenched her fist against the crisp cotton of Josh’s duvet cover. “What about you? Are you happy someone shot you? Of course not. Do you want to spend the next few years of your life playing professional victim? No. You came here to play. Me too.”
Josh stretched out a finger and ran it over Amy’s cheek. “You can’t even tell me that you’re in pain.”
“This from Mr. Forthcoming?”
“Amy-“
“You yelled at the President before you asked anybody for a damn thing. And it wasn’t like you wanted to talk to me about it at all.”
“So you’re emulating my decision to be a jackass?”
Her voice was quiet. “I’m doing the best that I can.”
And there was something about her tone that made him reach for her and pull her into his chest. He realised, with a sharp stab of rage, how much smaller than him she was. How much smaller than Hoynes.
They lay like that for a minute, and she was so hot in his arms, face pressed into the t-shirt he had worn to bed with his pyjama bottoms.
“Amy,” he said, into her hair. “If you ever want to talk to me then I can keep a secret. One player helping out another.”
There was a long silence and she shivered in his arms. Shivered despite the warmth of the duvet over their shoulders and the heat of their bodies.
“It was awful.” She was whispering now. “It was awful and it hurt. And today I feel like crap but tomorrow will be ok. And that’s all I want to say about this ever.”
He dropped a kiss onto her hair and wished, not for the first time, that this wasn’t how this worked.
She was in the shower when he woke up and he flipped on the news and made them both coffee. She walked into the kitchen, fastening an earring, wearing yesterday’s shift dress.
“God bless mothers who encourage you to carry spare underwear and pantyhose at all times.”
Josh grinned.
“Is this for me?” Amy pointed at one of the mugs of coffee, sitting on the worktop.
“Just the way you like it.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Josh. And thanks for the bed.”
“Anytime, Amy.”
She took a sip of her coffee.
“Amy?”
She looked up from the mug and her face was pale under her makeup. “What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.” A beat. “Just that we might need to ask for some help with some attacks on federally funded health projects involving prostitution and sexual health. The Communications office is asking for some policy advice.”
She nodded. “Sure. Just have someone call my office if you need me on the phone today.” She looked at her watch. “I need to get back to it.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Thanks, Josh.” She leaned on the words.
After she’d gathered her bag and coat, and he’d dispatched her at the door with a kiss on her forehead, he thought that he was going to enjoy making sure that there was no second act to Hoynes’ political life.