Cleansing

By Cappuccino Girl

Pairing: Josh/Amy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: They're still all his.
Notes: Post-ep for Posse Comitatus. Thanks to those many many people who constantly inspire me.
An accompanying collage can be found here

Summary: You're very employable, you know.

She could tell everything was disintegrating before her eyes. Plans had gone wrong, and she'd found herself staying at the office way past midnight for three days in a row. Now she was drinking because she hated the fact that he could cause her to have to resign. Resignation was not a concept she was comfortable with.

"I'm sure that when my mom gave me the classic beware-of-the-bad-boys speech at thirteen, she never said anything about how they can make you loose your job too." Amy drummed her fingers on the couch cushion.

"You'll fix it. I did once," he tried to console.

"Your boss is more forgiving than mine. I'm just a joke now. She fucks this guy and he still screws her over. Man, that rings well."

He didn't try to apologize.

"God," she sighed heavily. "What a day. This. Simon Donovan. Anything I've missed?"

"No."

Thumping her elbow down heavily onto the arm rest, she blurted, "This is such bullshit. What you did. My job. What a pile of B S."

"You're very employable, you know."

"Oh fuck employablility, J," she spat, cradling her glass, and as she gestured, some of the scotch spilled onto the coutch. She swore again.

Josh just sat silently in the chair because arguing was never usefull. He arrgued more with her than anyone else he had ever been with, and this fact had never occurred to him until now. They argued about issues and bills and work and vacation destinations and whether Van Morrison was in fact better than Fleetwood Mac. She won that last one of course. He can't remember who won the others because they tended to end in kisses and intertwined limbs between sheets.

"I'm going to have a bath," she mumbled, depositing her glass onto the coffee table.

Josh looked up, and it occurred to him how this argument wasn't even remotely sexy. It was serious, no hypotheticals. She didn't flirtaciously arch her eyebrows when she made her point. He looked at the melting ice in the glass while her bare feet padded across the hardwood floor.

The sound of running water filled the room, followed by subtle floral scents. She'd left things in his place. Socks and sweatpants stuffed in a drawer. Two cartons of grapefruit juice in the refrigerator. A zip disk on his desk. And a glass bottle of pale pink bubble bath. He took a deep breath, and wandered towards the open bathroom door.

Amy sat on the edge of the bathtub, cleaning chipped nail pollish from her fingers while the water ran in.

"I hate resigning," she told him, dabbing the cotton ball with nail pollish remover. She made a face at the smell. "I never quit."

"I don’t either."

She nodded and looked up at him. He was genuinely concerned, so he leant forward and turned off the faucet before the water ran over.

"Now I have to."

"Yeah," he said with a nod.

She rubbed her left thumb with the cotton. Her expresion had determination written all over it. "It's bad, and most af all I hate starting a new job. It's always so damn awkward, and I never know where the coffee maker is."

"You've got everything going for you."

"Do I?" And a smile crept across her face.

She screwed the cap back onto the bottle, and dipped her hands in the bath water, and when she pulled them out they were covered in tiny shimmering bubbles. She shook them off before pulling the deep red camisole she was wearing over her head.

He watched her movements while she undressed. Unlike him, she folded her clothes neatly as soon as she had taken them off and placed them onto the laundry basket. His always landed in a heap on the floor and were picked up once a week, or whenever they started to anoy him.

Her clothes discarded, she gingerly tested the water temperature with her toe before slipping into the steaming tub. He just took a seat on the toilet, noticed how the water sloshed out of the bath when she got in.

She stretched one leg out of the water, placed her foot on the wall tiles. "So, you said I have everything going for me. Care to elaborate?"

Her slick leg looked incredible from where he was sitting. He could have told her that. "You've had great jobs. I mean with the WLC for six years. That's good on a CV, regardless of resignation."

She tilted her head towards him. "That's hardly what I wanted to know."

He grinned, glad that she didn't care whether he was gentlemanly. "Those legs," he said, pointing.

"These?" she questioned, waving the one that was already out of the water around a little.

"Yeah."

She raised her eyebrows. "You want me to get a job by showing off my legs?"

"It'd work on me."

"Well, I know I'm glad you aren't in charge of HRM."

"You want a job?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"So I doubt you'd complain, and you'd never know that was the deciding factor anyway."

"I can tell. You're not particularly subtle when you go all googley-eyed." She rubbed bubbles over her chest and arms while she spoke. He was hypnotized.

"What?"

She leant back a little and regarded him curiously. "I don't know. What?"

'That word. Googley."

"Yeah?"

"Does it even exist?"

'What the hell do you care." She swirled her toe around the faucet, collecting the water droplets that threatened to fall at any moment. "You're kind of watching me there, J."

He blinked. "Sure am."

"You need to be more pro-active if you want this to go where you always want things to go."

The argument was over, so he played along. "Oh come on, you can give me a little more credit than that."

"Can I really?" she teased, and from the way her eyes moved, he knew she was running through her mental checklist.

He stood up and undid the button and zip of his jeans. "This is me. Pro-active, baby. In or out?" He motioned first to the bathtub, then the door.

She tried to stand up but slipped, causing the water to spill out onto the bathmat. Laughing, she shook her head, stretched out her arms and pulled him towards her.

"You're soggy," he said, and he almost sounded surprised.

"And then some," she whispered into his ear, and with one fluid motion she caused him to lose his balance and fall with her into the bath. "To answer your question: both."



~ the end ~


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