BettyXDaniel Fic: Day and Night
Title: Day and Night
Fandom: Ugly Betty
Pairings: Betty X Henry, Betty X Daniel
Rating/Warnings: R, sexual situations, profanity
Summary: To Daniel, the differences have always been as clear as day and night.
Note: Any comments, constructive criticism or-- hell-- even flames for this fic are much appreciated! This is my very first foray into the "Ugly Betty" fandom, and I'd love to know what worked and didn't work for UB fic readers. I'm really thinking of launching into a multi-chapter fic that explores the love triangle explored in this fic-- and I'd really like to know if it's a decent idea... or so unbearably stupid that this post should be cleansed with fire. Thanks for all your help-- and for taking the time to read this in the first place!
In the mornings when Daniel sees her, she is both more and less than what he expects. Smiling at him as she enters his office every day with his daily cup of coffee, Betty Suarez is neat and prim and respectful and reliable and the single kindest person-- and employee-- he's been with in his entire life. During the course of the day, she always hands in her work early, always lets him know when she'll be taking a day off ahead of time, and always works to the best of her capacity on every task he hands down to her. Even after a hard day's work, she's willing and able to enter in brain storming sessions with him that can easily lead to them spending the entire night together, strategizing over what type of layouts would work best for Pop Icon #43 as opposed to #31. And after one full year of working together, he's willing to admit that she's saved his ass as Editor in Chief of Mode more often than he can remember. If it hadn't been for her, he wouldn't have even lasted his first month on the job.
All told, she isn't doing so bad for a girl who his father hired as much for her... unconventional appearance as for her credentials.
And in turn, for all of her hard work, Daniel learns to overlook some of the... eccentricities she displays at work. He's learned to be judiciously blind to the times she has come to work dressed looking like a hooker from Rodeo Drive or spilled secrets of their holiday issue during networking parties, or leaked unretouched photos of perilously "overweight" celebrities to the tabloids. In their slightly mad game of tit-for-tat you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-yours, he figured they were about equal in the number of times that they had gotten each other into trouble. And when all was said and done, he can't afford to lose an employee as dedicated as Betty is, even though he promises himself that when it's time to let her go for better and brighter things, he will help her as best as he can.
During the day, Daniel is both very fond and a little embarrassed of his assistant, who still dresses up for Halloween, scandalizes the women in the fitness department by passing out free empanadas at the cafeteria and looks far, far too happy when Henry from accounting comes up every day to take her out to lunch when Daniel doesn't have her tied up with extra work.
During the day, Daniel does his best to protect her from Wilhelmina, does his best to live up to her high expectations, and does his best not to grit his teeth when her new fiancée (who is ridiculously in love, who always touches the side of her face when he wants her attention, and who always receives the brightest of her smiles) escorts her home after another late night strategy session Daniel could have easily driven her home from.
During the day Daniel tells himself to think of Betty as the sort of bright little sister he would have been proud to have if his parents had not spectacularly flamed out on their marriage right after he was born. And in the sun lit hours he mostly sees her in, he can almost convince himself that that's all she's ever been to him the entire time.
But somehow, it's always different when he thinks of her at night.
At night, it doesn't matter how unfashionable her figure is, or how dowdy her clothes are, or how often she reserves the most genuine smiles of her day for someone else. At night, it doesn't matter how people would gossip if People's Sexiest Man Alive for 2006 suddenly went from dating supermodels to secretaries that barely made a living wage. At night, it doesn't matter what his father would say or how his mother would erupt into laughter if they ever saw him consorting with a dumpy little girl from Queens who came from a public college and who got her job as his assistant because she was the only recent college graduate in the city his father thought he wouldn't fuck.
At night, it didn't even matter if the woman in question was engaged to someone else and ridiculously happy about it and has never so much as given him a second glance out of the corner of her eye anyhow.
At night, none of this matters because she is somehow always still with him despite everything else against him in the world. At night, she is every body pressed against him on his bed spread, every set of lips eagerly parting against his mouth, every pair of legs wrapped tight around his waist and every voice calling out his name in the absence of light. At night, she is every pair of eyes that gazes at him, every tender breath that stirs against the nape of his neck, and every phantom woman who had ever told him that she believed in him and wouldn't give up on him, no matter what stupid, ridiculous, hopeless thing he managed to do this time.
At night, she's everything he wants and nothing he can have and he thinks that if he does not come to terms with this soon, he might finally drive himself mad.
In the sun drenched hours he usually encounters her in, Betty Suarez is everything Daniel Meade knows he shouldn't desire and realizes he won't ever receive. But in the dark, she's every woman he wraps himself around in an effort to forget her, his in a way that even reality can't disrupt.