Title: Bipartisanship
Author: ScarlettMithruiel
Classification: R
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Author's Note: Sorry if this is crappy. I wrote it 3:30 or so in the morning, so not entirely awake. I'm sorry if this seems a little angsty. Please enjoy. And no beta, so all mistakes are mine. I hope they're in character. And it shifts POV kind of in the middle, which is a bit odd, I suppose.
Sam Seaborn was uncomfortable. And it wasn't emotional discomfort. No, emotional discomfort would require the presence of Adam, his fiancee's father. Emotional discomfort that he had received in all his time spent in her house. Thank God he was leaving today. He was in physical discomfort. He felt squished and there seemed to be a weight on his hips. He elicited a groan as it shifted. A weight that moved. He opened his eyes. He was in one of his deepest states of grogginess ever. The blurs started to fade and definitive shapes began to replace them. Ainsley was on his lap. Ah. That explains the weight. Suddenly, like walls closing around a claustrophobic, he realized where he was and what was going on. He bolted under the covers and away from her touch. She laughed softly.
"Sam?"
"Ainsley, we're in your parents' home. Your childhood home. Where your father is never more than a hatchet's length away." She rolled her eyes.
"My father isn't going to kill you, Sam." Shepulled the covers backand kissed him. When she pulled away, he resumed speaking.
"Ainsley, any other place, I would be glad, if not overeager. But here?" There was a knock at the door. "You see?" he hissed.
"Ains? You awake yet?" The deep rumble of her father's voice boomed through. She called out a reply.
"Yes, daddy. I'm up."
"All right. Get that boy…"
"He has a name!"
"All right, all right. Get Sam up. Breakfast is going to be ready in a couple minutes." Upon the sound of her creaking stairs and her father's loud steps, Sam felt it was safe enough to peek out from under the covers.
"You can't tell me," she said, positioning her hands on her hips, "that you're scared of my father."
"Yes, I can…and I can be grammatically correct about it too. No dangling modifiers or anything." A smirk danced on her lips and he smiled. She walked over and kissed him again.
"Get dressed and we'll go down to breakfast." He dressed casually, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and they headed down to breakfast, hands linked. Upon entering the kitchen, Sam noted that Ainsley's eyes said that someone familiar that she wasn't expecting was sitting at the table. Besides her mother and her father, there was another guy, and something primitive inside him told him to be jealous and angry. He certainly could muster up the jealousy but the rage wasn't in him. Not at the moment.
"Hey, Ains," Adam greeted with a big, toothy grin. "Remember Zach? He was your Prom Date." Yes, well beyond the formulation of jealousy stage. She flushed and walked over, sitting in an empty chair. He followed and sat in the one beside her.
"Zach Edelbert," greeted the man.
"Uh…Sam Seaborn," he replied, taking his hand and shaking it firmly.
"You're the Democrat."
"Yeah."
"So, anyway, Ains, he's been dying to see you since Senior Year." Sam heard a bit of a matchmaking tone in the man's voice. He could recognize it immediately due to his mother's incessant attempts at matching him with a girl she met through a friend at the weekly canasta game. He usually declined, although her "matchmaking" voice had been catalogued into his mind, like the President's signals.
"Whatcha been up to, Ainsley?"
"Well, I'm enga—" Her father interrupted.
"She's been doing tons of stuff, hasn't she? She went to Law School, and became a lawyer. She was on Capitol Beat and she completely creamed Sam there. He didn't know where Kirkwood was, can you believe it?"
"Kirkwood?"
"It's a city, Zach," Ainsley replied. "Besides, I'm enga—"
"And then, she got hired to work for the White House! Can you believe it, Zach? Those goddamned Democrats, no offense, Sam, wanted her so they could figure out what they were doing."
"Dad!" her voice rose to a shrill pitch. "I'm engaged, Zach."
"Oh," he replied. An awkward silence followed. "That's nice."
"It's nothing serious, Zach," Adam continued. "I'm sure that she'd still be willing to…"
"Dad!" Her voice was still shrill, but she was serious. Her tone meant that she was angry. Adam puffed up his chest in a show of masculinity and glared at her. She returned the stare. "Can I speak to you out on the back porch, please?" Her tones were curt. He nodded. The sound of chair legs scraping against hardwood could be heard, and then, steps.
She walked out onto the back porch. "Dad, what are you doing?" He said nothing. "Are you trying to set me up with Zach? Dad, for God's sake, I'm engaged!"
"Don't say His name in vain."
She sighed, exasperated. Leave it to her father to pick up on a detail rather than the message. Missing the forest for the trees. "I'm engaged, Dad. You can't set me up with Zach. I'm about to be married and all. What is your problem with Sam?" She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. "Hm? What is wrong with him that you find it such a crisis for us to get married?"
"That boy isn't right for you, Ainsley!"
"And how do you know?"
"I know. And you remember to respect your elders. Your mother and I were a match made in Heaven, and I know when a match is right and when a match isn't. And that boy isn't right for you."
"And Zach is?" She huffed out a breath in frustration.
"No. But he's better for you than that Sam kid." The shrill ringing of her cell phone alerted her to another matter. She quickly answered it. "Yeah? No. Go ahead, Josh. I don't care. Yeah. I'll be over then. Bye." She clicked off the phone and faced her father.
"Daddy, I love you to death, but I love Sam. And no matter how much you want me to be with Zach, it isn't going to happen." A silence followed."I'm leaving." With that, she headed up to her room to pack the scant things she had brought.
She returned to the bus and caught up with him. "Hey, Sam!" He paused in his movement. He had changed from his t-shirt and jeans to a suit. "I'm sorry about my father." He looked up and she saw the torrent of conflicting emotions in his eyes.
"I think," he began, his voice raspy with emotion, "that we should postpone the wedding." She stopped breathing and only when the burning pain in her chest begin did she start again.
"What?" she whispered.
"Not indefinitely," he instantaneously replied. "Not…forever."
"You're not doing this because of my father, are you, Sam? We can get married without his blessing, you know. He's just…living in the past." He shook his head.
"I love you, Ainsley. And I know that you love me. But I'm not going to split up your family. I don't want us to get married without your parents or your family there. I don't want you to have this grudge against him because of me." He paused and looked at her. "If you want to…keep the ring on, that's fine."
A sense of honesty compelled her, and before she knew what she was doing, she reached for the ring and was slowly loosening it off of her finger. She pulled it off and handed it to him. Her hands were shaking badly. He looked at her state, obviously concerned. "Ainsley, are you all right?" She nodded absently. "I have to give a speech. Why don't you go on the bus and lay down." She nodded again, her eyes strangely devoid of emotion.
She did not know how she had managed to get onto the bus without tripping or falling. She walked down the length of the bus to the back, where the beds were. No, not beds. Sleeping spaces. They were too small to be called beds. She crept into an empty one and sealed the curtains. And in the emptiness of the enclosed space, she wept.
