Chapter Text
Amy left Selina’s office through the side door, walking firmly, steadily, towards the ladies room. In a minute she’s going to find Mike, and in a minute, she’s going to dive into google and work out which journalist might possibly be sympathetic, and in a minute she’s going to look at her calendar and try to figure out when she could (hypothetically) have gotten pregnant.
In a minute.
Amy hides in one of the cubicles. She hugs her knees and counts to ten and does not cry and does not cry and does not cry.
She wishes she could be surprised that Selina would do this to her – but she isn’t – not even the slightest. Now that it’s happened, she realises it’s what Selina had been gunning for the whole day,
Amy had spent years building up a reputation for competence, for reliability, for not-being a complete fuck-up. She can kiss all that goodbye now. And yes, it’s better than being fired, but… the thought of having something so private clawed over and speculated about by the press makes her feel nauseous.
(Which, presumably, is exactly how Selina had felt. Amy’s so honoured she chose to share).
She’s dabbing at her eyes with toilet paper when she hears the door bang – and then a pair of very obviously male shoes come to a stop outside her cubicle.
“I know you’re in there.”
It’s Dan, because of course it’s Dan. She doesn’t want Dan to have anything to do with this, so, naturally, he’s the first to chase her down. (She wants Mike, or, better yet, for a low-level natural disaster to distract the attention of the press).
“Go the fuck away,” Amy says, and her voice sounds normal (so, borderline furious with him). That’s good.
“She didn’t actually fire you, did she?” he says, and the glee she’d been expecting to hear isn’t quite there. It’s that, really, that propels her off the toilet and out of the cubicle. If she can get through this conversation with Dan unscathed, she may just about be able to survive everything else.
She tries to shoulder Dan out of her way when she opens the door but – much to her irritation – he doesn’t even pay her the courtesy of moving a single inch (to save her dignity), but stays solidly in place, grinning down at her.
She really does hate him. It’s the closest she’s been to him, really, since… well, never mind since when, and his smirk is not helping with anything.
“Get out of my way,” Amy says, and Dan holds up his hands, all innocent, and steps back. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
He just shrugs. “This isn’t even the worst thing you know I’ve done today.”
Amy bends to throw some water on her face – she feels like she’s had a headache for days, her feet are killing her, and the way Dan’s looking at her is making her twitchy.
“Seriously, you’re not fired, are you? We both know it should be Mike.”
“No,” Amy says, straightening up and tugging her jacket into position. (If she had lipgloss with her, she’d put some on for this conversation). “I’m not fired.” Dan looks… Dan almost looks glad (though with him, how could you ever know?) “I’m just recovering from a… a very distressing miscarriage.”
To his credit, he puts it together in only a few seconds. Amy can’t look at the grin on his face, so she continues, “I need you and Mike to identify the right journalist, but I’ll set it up. Since it’s only semi-official.”
“Right,” Dan says, “Want me to find some miscarriage factoids, so you don’t get it obviously wrong?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Amy says, looking at his tie and hoping he won’t ask. He doesn’t, but he does just stare at her, and eventually she cracks. “I already know. I had a… it wasn’t like Selina, it was a surprise, I thought it was just normal cramps and then…” She brings herself firmly back under her own control. “Anyway, it was… it was almost a relief, since the father wasn’t exactly –”
“Did you tell him?”
She is so glad he’s interrupted her – another thirty seconds and she’d have shared the whole horrible story. (It had been in the middle of finals, so she hadn’t had the time or energy to feel anything about it, though she’d wondered about it from time to time in the months after. She thought about it a lot whenever she was with her sister. There but for the grace of god… but at least she’d aced the exams).
“No. What would be the point? Just an FYI, we’re not anything anymore, but my uterus rejected your baby, thought you’d want to know.” Her voice still sounds more raw than she’d like, and Amy bites down on the final words to stop it. (On the plus side, Dan’s the last person in the world to act sympathetic, which is good. Sympathy just upsets her).
“It wasn’t me, was it?” he says, eyes narrowed. (She hates when he looks at her like that, all…examining).
“Do you think I’d be telling you if it was? You can rest easy – to my knowledge your twisted Egan sperm has never taken root – though I’m sure someone somewhere has this kind of story about you, the way you behave.”
(She’s never told anyone about the miscarriage. She’s never really known how to feel about it. And at first, she’d been too busy, and then it had been too upsetting to think about… and then… she hadn’t known anyone who wouldn’t find her relief borderline obscene).
Dan still looks suspicious, and she adds, “It was years before we even met, so relax please. Your attempt to look sympathetic or whatever that face is is just… you’re going to sprain something.”
“I can do sympathy,” he says, and Amy scoffs. She might have to appear to believe Selina’s lies, but she sees no reason to offer Dan that courtesy. “I can,” he says, and hugs her.
It is the single most awkward expression of affection Amy has ever experienced. She’d had her arms crossed, meaning one of her elbows is poking Dan in the ribs, her nose is smushed against his tie, and for one horrible moment it feels like her hair is going to get tangled in his cufflink.
(And none of that matters, because whenever Dan touches her – still – there’s a moment where her mind goes completely quiet, she’s not even thinking, just feeling him. She hates him. He smells of… of Amy doesn’t know what, something warm and masculine, and he feels strong, like he could hold her up for days on end. She hates him so much).
“Are you always this stiff?” he says. “You realise, you’re going to have to convince the journalist you’re a woman not a mannequin?”
Amy tilts her head back to look at him. “Somehow,” she says, “being in proximity to you, doesn’t make me feel I can relax.”
“Do I make you nervous?” he says, and he’s grinning.
“No.” She says it flatly, because it’s the truth. (She could only be nervous if she wasn’t sure what he was going to do – but she knows that, whatever scheme is bringing this behaviour on, it’s entirely self-serving). “What do you want?”
Dan pulls back a little then, though his hands still rest on her upper arms. Amy wants to shrug them off – but she doesn’t, because she can’t let him know she finds it distracting when he touches her.
“Who will you say the father is?”
And Amy’s mind goes suddenly, horribly blank. She hadn’t thought that far ahead, but clearly Dan has, because he keeps rattling on. “You’re not dating anyone, and if you say you are, they’ll catch the lie in about ten seconds. Which means it’ll have to be Jonah.” Amy doesn’t know what face she makes, but it must be spectacular, because he laughs.
“Absolutely not,” she says. “Selina might be… I will not be blackmailed into saying I let that oversized human crane touch me, there are limits.”
“Well then,” Dan says, and he squeezes her arms slightly for emphasis. “There’s only one other option.”
Amy takes a step back from him. “No.”
“It’s what everyone’s going to think anyway.”
“No they’re not, that’s… why would they think that?”
“Please Amy, do I have to explain it to you in one syllable words?”
“Well maybe, because I’m drawing a complete blank. Seething contempt is not the same as –”
“You just get so energised,” Dan says, and Amy flushes. He so smug, so certain that he has some kind of power over her. “Every time, and people notice it, notice the tension – ”
“There is no tension! You are the worst person in the world who isn’t actively feeding crystal meth to infants.” Dan smiles at her, like she’s being cute. “Despite what you might love to tell yourself, you have less appeal for me than a sweaty jock strap.” (Which was true, partly because once it hadn’t been, and the gap between who he really was, and who she’d thought he was, was so enormous…) “And, also, you were dating…Alice from the Speaker’s Office until, oh, a minute ago, so –”
“Jealous?”
“Not at all,” Amy said. (She remembered how it had felt).
“She had no illusions about me – and neither does anyone else, so… they’re still going to think it’s me.”
“I don’t care,” Amy says. “It’s a private, and the father isn’t involved in politics, so I’d rather not discuss it.”
“Yeah, that won’t at all sound made up.”
“That’s the line, and I will shove it down your throat myself until you say it.”
“You see, Amy, this is the kind of thing I’m talking about.”
“Are you that desperate for people to pity you, really?”
“I’m trying to avoid another scandal when they start digging for this non-existent father. Who else is going to lie about something like this for you? Really, I’m doing you a favour.”
“I’m three years younger than you not twenty-five, so… there’s no way I’m believing that.”
“Fine. I’m doing you a favour and generating some goodwill – which this office doesn’t have a whole lot of, so… it’s a win-win.”
Jesus, he must think the conversation with Selina had completely addled her brain. “Dan,” Amy says, speaking as distinctly and clearly as she can. “I would have to be out of my mind to trust you with… anything really, let alone… And this whole thing, it’s enough without you making it worse.” She closes her eyes for a moment, feeling all the dread again. “My Mom is going to be heartbroken.”
“Oh yeah, she will.”
She’d forgotten – or tried to – that Dan had met her. “I’m seriously going to kick you in the shin.”
“Again, Ame, when you say things like –”
“Please,” she says, getting tired of him. “If one of us is touchy or grabby or whatever, we both know it’s you.”
“Can’t help it if I like the way you feel.”
“Ugh,” she says. “You might want to rehearse that line in the mirror a few more times, so it sounds in the same zip code as sincere.”
“Do you want me to sound sincere?”
“No. I want you to get the fuck out of my life, but… we have work to do.”
She pushes past him then, enjoying the declarative sound of her heels on the floor (it gives her a feeling of strength). When she opens the door, Dan stretches his arm over her and closes it, startling her. Amy looks back over her shoulder at him as he says, “If it had been me, would you ever have told me?”
“No,” she says, like it’s a stupid question (because it is). “Tom – the guy – he would have been devastated, which is why I never said anything, but you… you would have been glad. You’d have been delighted. And that’s the only thing I can imagine that’s worse. So, no, I would never have told you.”
“I don’t know,” he says, looking down at her with smiling eyes, and with that… caressing tone in his voice that always makes her want to slap him. “When I think about it… it could be kind of hot.”
She knows exactly what he means – and it’s not exactly a surprise that he’d get a macho kick out of it – which is why she tosses her head and says, “I don’t want to know.” She yanks the door open. “Wait thirty seconds before leaving.”
“Why? Afraid it’ll look we were having a quickie?”
“For you this would be a longie,” Amy says, and leaves. (Which is not entirely true, but he’s worn her down to her last nerve, so she doesn’t really care).
She leaves – calls Mike to her office – and between the three of them, they come up with a plan (and Gary gets her some Advil, which… Amy forgives all of his transgressions, past and future, for that).
Mike and Dan throw practice questions at her, but Dan drops the Baby-Daddy stuff for a while (and Mike seemingly never thinks of it). But, to Amy’s complete lack of surprise, he does his level best to convince the journalist that he is the doting boyfriend when she does arrive.
Amy doesn’t really know why he’s so keen to be the (fictional) father of her (fictional) baby, but she squashes the speculation anyway.
(Everyone still thinks it was his).
(When she realises this, it makes her hate him more).