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Fanfic advent day 6
Tumblr prompt: Jack is a corrupt politician and Peggy is a government agent who investigates the charges against him, Daniel is Jack's assistant who cannot seem to stay out of Peggy's investigation and wants to help.
This is one of those prompts that I sat on for a long while because I really wanted to write the full version of this; it’s such a fantastic idea! For now, however, here’s a snippet of what will hopefully become a longer story eventually. (I am starting a "longfic ideas" tag for these on Tumblr ...)
--
Peggy had played the empty-headed secretary role before; it wasn't her favorite by far, but she was good at it ... at least as long as she didn't have to do too much of the actual secretarial work, which she definitely was not good at. But, well, part of the role's "charm" was that not being a particularly good secretary was built into it.
What she hadn't really counted on was nearly constant, well-intentioned help from Sen. Thompson's primary aide.
It wasn't that he was pushy about it, or inappropriate; it would have been easier to ignore him if he was. No, he was just helpful. Constantly. If she dithered with the coffee things just outside Thompson's office while trying to listen in on a phone call, "please call me Daniel" Sousa came over to ask if he could show her how Thompson liked the coffee made. If she faked dropping documents to get a look at them, Daniel picked them up for her. He was everywhere, and it seemed that she could hardly drop a plausibly deniable thumbtack without Daniel noticing from across the room.
She was well aware that he was doing it simply because he was good at his job. People like the person Peggy was pretending to be -- brand new interns, fresh from out of town -- tended to mess up paperwork in ways that Daniel had to fix. And it wasn't just her; she noticed Daniel's tendency to take the other office staff under his wing as well, gently redirecting them or helping them fix mistakes when they slipped up.
Unfortunately, Daniel being good at his job was making it very hard to do her job. In retrospect she wished she'd decided to embrace a different cover, one who was efficient and good at her work and capable of being left alone for more than five minutes.
She found herself brainstorming ways to get Daniel out of the way for a day or two. Perhaps an out-of-town meeting? No, that might remove Thompson from the office as well, thus defeating the purpose of chasing off Daniel. A press conference that required personal attention? A manufactured family emergency?
Poisoning his coffee was probably going too far.
This is one of those prompts that I sat on for a long while because I really wanted to write the full version of this; it’s such a fantastic idea! For now, however, here’s a snippet of what will hopefully become a longer story eventually. (I am starting a "longfic ideas" tag for these on Tumblr ...)
--
Peggy had played the empty-headed secretary role before; it wasn't her favorite by far, but she was good at it ... at least as long as she didn't have to do too much of the actual secretarial work, which she definitely was not good at. But, well, part of the role's "charm" was that not being a particularly good secretary was built into it.
What she hadn't really counted on was nearly constant, well-intentioned help from Sen. Thompson's primary aide.
It wasn't that he was pushy about it, or inappropriate; it would have been easier to ignore him if he was. No, he was just helpful. Constantly. If she dithered with the coffee things just outside Thompson's office while trying to listen in on a phone call, "please call me Daniel" Sousa came over to ask if he could show her how Thompson liked the coffee made. If she faked dropping documents to get a look at them, Daniel picked them up for her. He was everywhere, and it seemed that she could hardly drop a plausibly deniable thumbtack without Daniel noticing from across the room.
She was well aware that he was doing it simply because he was good at his job. People like the person Peggy was pretending to be -- brand new interns, fresh from out of town -- tended to mess up paperwork in ways that Daniel had to fix. And it wasn't just her; she noticed Daniel's tendency to take the other office staff under his wing as well, gently redirecting them or helping them fix mistakes when they slipped up.
Unfortunately, Daniel being good at his job was making it very hard to do her job. In retrospect she wished she'd decided to embrace a different cover, one who was efficient and good at her work and capable of being left alone for more than five minutes.
She found herself brainstorming ways to get Daniel out of the way for a day or two. Perhaps an out-of-town meeting? No, that might remove Thompson from the office as well, thus defeating the purpose of chasing off Daniel. A press conference that required personal attention? A manufactured family emergency?
Poisoning his coffee was probably going too far.