'And I'll use you as focal point
So I don't lose sight of what I want'
-Amber Run
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Watching Jon walk out the door not even fifteen minutes into their meeting was a strange sensation for Daenerys. She wanted to call out and tell him to stop, but after his beating of words right to her gut she wasn't sure she wanted to hear any more than what was said. Instead she slumped down in her chair, placing her elbows on the desk to prop her head up.
That was a disaster – a complete fucking disaster!
She had felt so prepared and superior to Jon before the meeting had taken place due to her experience, the Daario factor and just everything that she represented compared to him. If she hadn't known better she would have said that Jon was just saying all those things as some sort of mind game to make her feel unprepared, just like she made him out to be, but that wasn't his style at all. She knew that after staring into his eyes; pools of truth had stared back at her.
No, he had said everything with such sincerity and passion that it was clear to her that he was just speaking the facts and her now feeling like she wasn't as prepared for this promotion as she originally thought was just a side effect of what he said, but not his ultimate purpose. He didn't play like she knew how to when it came to this competition and that was information she didn't know what to do with.
All her life she had been taught that all people were vindictive and to get anywhere in her career she would have to play a game and outsmart them. She had never thought she was very good at playing this game, but she was good at not trusting and distancing herself from ever being close to someone. Funny how her brother who had taught her that people were evil turned out to be the worst of them all.
On reflection she realized maybe she had known all this time that Jon was not designed in this way and that's why she was uncomfortable around him and unsure of how to be when he was there. What could be more intimidating than someone who meant what they said?
The door opened and she threw her head up, trying to compose herself at the thought that it might be Jon coming back. She didn't want him to think he had affected her the way he had. However it was Daario looking very amused by the whole situation. Daenerys let out a sigh and stood up to greet him halfway around the table, as she noticed he locked the door behind him so knew it wasn't strictly a business meeting.
"What have you done to poor Jon Snow?"
Ah, of course he had gone to tell on her about how she was impossible to work with. And for a second she had thought he was all good and true. This made her smile, because she had been proved again that nobody was completely innocent and could play very well when needed.
Well, he had given as good as he had got, so he should've thought twice about going and complaining about her.
"What has he said?" Daenerys asked with her cool manner, unwilling to give anything away until she found out what Jon had said.
"Nothing. I just thought your meeting was going to go on most of the morning, not just twenty minutes."
Oh… No, she didn't understand this Jon Snow.
"Why is he being considered for the position?" She asked, still slowly joining him alongside the middle of the table. Daario was walking towards her, smiling as if he had been expecting this question for quite some time.
"He's a hard-worker and has some good ideas." Daenerys waited for more to come, but nothing did and so she let out a rather loud, bemused laugh.
"I know lots of people who are hard-working with good ideas, but I don't think I would consider all of them for a management position."
"Tyrion sees potential in him and he's always liked an underdog. He gets a lot of support from his team – he's likeable." She scoffed at this. It felt like a personal dig at her that maybe she wasn't likeable. She was sure she didn't have a reputation of being unlikeable.
Am I not likeable? She tried to console herself with positive words of, 'Yes, Daenerys, you are likeable, after all you like yourself, don't you?' And for the most part she did. Daario wasn't trying to reassure her though, so she had to force the reassurance out of him somehow.
"Okay, so why am I being considered for this?" She asked, a glint in her eye as she leaned against the table and gained his full eye contact.
"Although Jon may possess some good traits," His hands reached over to her shoulders to allow his fingers to trail down her blue blazered chest. "You are the perfect embodiment of what a manager needs."
She didn't think this was true anymore and this was just something Daario had to say if he wanted to keep touching her body with his hands, but Daenerys simply gave a small nod at this.
"And you had nothing to do with this… consideration?"
"Oh, baby, I don't get to consider any of that shit." He moved in closer, his mouth just wanting to do one thing and that wasn't discussing work. She turned her head slightly, offering up her neck to him instead of her mouth as she wasn't done talking – he still graciously accepted.
"So you won't be able to help me over the next month?" He lifted his mouth from her skin slightly to let out a mumbled reply.
"I can help you both, but I won't be able to take preference." He returned to kiss and bite her neck, but she wasn't particularly warming to his touch right now.
She should have been outraged that her Daario factor was no longer applicable to her, but it made things fairer to Jon and to herself. If she got the position it was down to her and her hard work and if Jon got it… well, she couldn't think like that. She figured after their last talk it was clear that being fair was the only thing to do now.
Daario could tell she was unreceptive and lifted his head to see her pensive expression.
"Hey, don't look like that. You know I would help if it was fucking dire consequences, but it's not."
"I'm just wondering what the point of you is now." She said with a smirk that hopefully came across as a joke even though it wasn't the biggest of jokes to her.
"Well, I'm hoping this is big enough of a point for you." He grabbed her hand and softly draped it down to his crotch that was unsurprisingly getting hard at this point.
"I guess it's a satisfactory point." She said seriously before the slightest of laughs escaped her lips.
"And when you get this – and you will get this – we wouldn't have to hide our relationship anymore. We would be on equal footing, it wouldn't be a manager and subordinate relationship."
Great. The man she thought was just her plaything thought that this was a relationship. She had had a year to tell him this wasn't a relationship and she could never see it being one, so that one was on her. However now was definitely not the time. He may not be able to help her, but she was sure he could definitely destroy her chances at the promotion if he wanted to.
"Let's make sure I get it first."
In the silence that followed Daenerys patted him on the shoulder as a signal for him to move for her to go back to where she had been sat. She gathered up her belongings before sighing – despite the scare of Daario's proposal her mind was still wandering back to the problem of another man.
"If you were me how would you handle Jon throughout all this?" It wasn't a question she should have asked based on his resistance to helping her at all, but she thought it was phrased innocently enough.
"Be nice." He shrugged, still clearly disappointed at her lack of sexual desire towards him today. "Jon won't be trying to pull you down or hurt your position to get this in any way, so why don't you just play nicely and work on your tasks together?"
Daario echoing the thoughts Daenerys was having herself was enough to convince her that this was the right course of action.
Continuing on in the same fashion could hurt her development here more than just attempting to get along with him as best as she could. She also knew that after their last conversation she had severely underestimated him before; he came to her with ideas of what they should do and pointed out that her scope of the company was too small, earning her respect as he did so.
In fact he had given her an idea.
"Thank you, Daario." She began to walk around the opposite side of the table towards the exit.
"Baby, we've got at least twenty minutes to screw around a bit." She gave him a laugh at this.
"I thought I already said not to call me baby." She continued walking, not giving him another look. "And I have more important work to deal with than your body right now."
And she dealt with the more important work. She spent the rest of her morning at her desk researching some valuable information in her mission to have Jon turn over a new page for their relationship. That afternoon they both had more training sessions and so just before the end of the morning, she had to physically find Jon's desk. This was something she hadn't had to do before.
Sure, they were both high up enough in their respective departments that they were required to have meetings with two or three other people present, but she had never had to be at his desk for this. Besides meetings between Logistics and Marketing were few and far between.
She scoured the floor that she worked on, telling herself that yes they had definitely been working on the same floor of the building for the past year at least as she sometimes bumped into him at the water cooler. Embarrassingly enough she saw his unmistakeable head of curly black hair only a mere few rows of desks away from her own. Was she really that absorbed in her job that she hadn't noticed the man that she had always found appealing in some way? Or was this a sign that all this time she had been overlooking Jon Snow? Most probably, but she knew that in some way that would change from this point on.
She tentatively approached his desk, stopping as soon as she could hear him clearly speaking to one of his colleagues about what appeared to be a matter of work. Some other people facing her could see that she was approaching and all seemed to be wearing identical expressions of confusion – maybe they knew her and Jon were competing or they were just as surprised as she was to be stood there. She was still staring at that black hair though as she cleared her throat.
"Jon," Her voice sounded a little unsure as she began. He turned his head halfway to not look at her completely, but to acknowledge that he was listening. "Can I speak to you for a moment?"
It still felt like the people near enough to hear her were staring right at her, but she just focused on Jon. He let out a strained sigh before standing up. He gave instructions, or it appeared that way, to the colleague he had been speaking to before and silently came to stand in front of her. Her eyes slowly met his blank, yet still so intense eyes and she came to the conclusion that yes, he was still angry at her.
"Uhm… we can go this way." She pointed behind her and didn't wait for Jon to argue that he didn't want to go anywhere.
She led him to an empty office just along the corridor. Tyrion had said that some people might be leaving soon as his sister had chosen them, but she wasn't expecting the first person to leave so soon. On the other hand though anyone in the finance team who Cersei had hired for specific reasons were probably always going to be the first to leave.
The light automatically turned on as she entered the room and she noted that this was probably a more suitable size room for a two person meeting than the ostentatious room she had picked earlier. She turned her head ever so slightly just to make sure he was still behind her and there he was just behind her, observing the room.
So she was going to have to speak first.
"This belonged to someone in Finance until yesterday. Apparently Cersei was getting him to make the profits look better to competitors… amongst other things, so they let him go quietly." She was trying to gain Jon's eye contact again, but he was now staring out the window. "Or so people say."
He still wasn't reacting. He didn't give a shit who this room belonged to or what Daenerys had to say unless it was something relevant to him. Why did he have to make this so bloody difficult for her?
"I've realized that we both work at desks and we've never had our own office." She was finding it difficult to get to her main point and she knew that was clear to him in the roundabout way that she was speaking in. "We're at the same level and this is a big opportunity for both of us… It shouldn't be taken lightly and should be a fair process where the best person for the job wins."
Daenerys still thought that was herself, but she also meant what she said – this was a big opportunity for both of them. The speed at which Jon's head turned to face her was faster than Daenerys could have ever expected. She could tell by his eyes that he was surprised by what she said and this made her feel more comfortable already in talking to him. She was doing the right thing.
"Is that an apology?" He asked it slowly, full of hope, as he took a step closer to where she stood right next to the desk by the window. There was still so much distance between them that she couldn't reach out and touch him, but for some reason it made her feel as if they were as close as they were earlier during their heated conversation.
"Did you know that at the last charity function 35% of staff were not invited?" She avoided his question by bringing to the table the research she had done that morning. Jon's face softened and much to the shock of Daenerys it looked like he smiling at that. "I don't think it should be like that… We should be inviting everyone as a message that things are changing here, because change starts within the company."
It seemed like quoting Jon was enough to push him over the edge, now nobody could deny that he was smiling.
"I would like that," Jon began, "But we need to focus on what we wanted to achieve which was to show our new image to the competitors. Some employees, like the ones not based in London or people in the field don't need to come, but maybe we can propose something in the future for just staff to show the change."
"We can work on something." Daenerys gave a nod and those were the words that seemed to spark the change in the way that they were looking at each other; instead of friction in their eyes, there was curiosity between them. In fact the silence filled the room so much so that Daenerys felt that she needed to fill it so that they weren't just staring at each other with little smiles like they were now.
"I appreciate the fact that you didn't say anything about how unsatisfactory our meeting was earlier." Jon coughed, breaking the eye contact they had been holding.
"I think I said just as much as you, so there was no need to tell anyone."
Daenerys took another little step towards him and now she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to, but instead she held out her hand halfway.
"I think we can learn a lot from each other if we try to have satisfactory meetings in future."
Jon stared at her hand a little longer as if processing the fact that he would have to touch her and Daenerys tried her best to keep her hand looking strong. As soon as he did bring his hand out though, she became painfully aware of how tiny her hand actually was and especially so in comparison to his. His big hand took hers so that it fit perfectly and shook it. They both glanced up from their hands to the other's face at the same time and that gave the smallest of blushes to her cheeks. She snatched her hand away, suddenly finding this an intrusion upon her personal space and instead just smiled at him.
"I look forward to more satisfactory meetings." Jon replied after he had snatched his own hand and positioned it behind his back.
And she found herself looking forward to seeing him more too.