Work Text:
1:
If anyone had told you, that night you first blew Jonah Ryan in that grimy, graffitied bathroom, where you could just make out the no-name band’s metal pounding from across the venue, where you could feel the music’s vibrations through the soles of your shoes, that you would find yourself in a similar position just a few weeks later, you would have laughed in their face and started plotting revenge. Especially if they had implied that it would become, god, an arrangement.
But now that you’re here, you can’t exactly say that you’re surprised. It’s become a pattern of behavior -- fighting leads to shouting leads to kissing leads to messy sex at his apartment or yours or in an EEOB supply closet.
Because it’s -- it’s not terrible. Jonah’s not tactful on his best day, but he somehow manages to keep his stupid, big, caveman mouth closed at work. He’s enthusiastic, too; he’ll do absolutely anything to make sure you’ll keep paying attention to him.
It works. It won’t forever, but right now, it works.
2:
It’s almost risible. The next time you sleep with Amy, it’s more of a surprise than it was with Jonah.
It was always an option. That’s part of why you ended things in the first place: you knew she was going somewhere, that she might just end up being someone you needed to seduce again. It was better to quit before things got messy.
(And there was something else there, you maybe remember, something about she how was as detached and smart and ambitious as you, how it maybe made your heart light up like a goddamn pinball machine -- but you don’t need to think about that right now.)
It actually happens because of Jonah, you’ll remark later. He did something bad PR-wise -- could have been anything, you can’t remember -- that made Selina blow up. You distinctly remember her threatening to deport any American citizen taller than 6 feet.
All that really happens is she makes you pull an all-nighter trying to fix it, nevermind that after a few hours there’s nothing left you can do. You and Amy run into each other in the hall, both clutching near-empty coffee cups and your phones, both desperately looking for somewhere you can hide out beyond the reach of Selina’s wrath.
And it’s probably the exhaustion, but before you know you’ve got one hand on her lower back, and she’s shooing it away but leading you to a closet anyway.
It’s fast, impersonal, nothing like with Jonah. She’s checking her email by the end, before it’s even over.
It’s a goddamn relief. You had nearly forgotten what it’s like to fuck without feeling too exposed, wondering if this is gonna be the mistake that brings you down. If Jonah’s gonna mention it tomorrow. If Jonah can tell you feel something.
Amy won’t tell because whereas you’re out of Jonah’s league (incredibly out of his league, you amend), she doesn’t stand to gain anything from the reveal.
You’ll never look like you feel something with her, because she’ll never let it get that far.
So you keep it up, just whenever you need to let off some steam without going through Jonah’s whole song and dance. It’s not even sex sometimes, just fifteen minutes of vacant making out while you wait for the next emergency to spring up.
It works. It won’t forever, but right now, it works.
3:
The moment that you will later think of as the catalyst comes on a very normal Wednesday night in Jonah’s apartment.
The sex is fairly unremarkable. It’s about getting through the week more than anything else.
But it’s still sex with Jonah, so it stands to reason that even though you’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve it, you’re still being punished with his learned-English-from-porn, stream-of-consciousness, what-is-this-James-Joyce-bullshit dirty talk. You’d like to ignore it, to let it wash over you, like a breeze or light rain, but apparently something catches. You freeze as you register the words.
Jonah didn’t say, “Imagine if Amy was here,” or “What would Amy think?” He said, “Hell yeah, Amy likes this, too --”
Implying, of course, that Jonah knows what Amy likes.
Implying he knows from experience.
“Oh --” starts Jonah, “I mean --”
But you are absolutely not having this conversation during sex, so you press your mouth to his and cut him off.
Jonah brings it up again after. “It’s not, like, frequent or anything--”
“Look,” you say, “I don’t really give a shit what you and Amy do.”
It’s a lie, but it shuts Jonah up.
You do care, though, that’s the thing. Because -- because they’re supposed to be yours. Jonah has been in love with you since you first pretended to want to fuck bread. Amy’s feeling may be more of a murky area, but she definitely feels something -- she felt something when she texted you 20 times in a night while you banged her sister, she feels it every time she blows off some boring, not-emotionally-destroyed asshole in favor of dragging you by the tie and whispering threats as she kisses you.
Jonah’s not supposed to be still lusting after the blonde eight. Amy’s not supposed to have more than one regrettable regular lay.
You’re not supposed to be exclusive, but they’re not supposed to need more than you, either.
Granted, there’s also the aspect of pure curiousity. Questions like, What happens between them? Is it like science, hot meets cold and makes steam? Do they talk about you? And most importantly, How in the fuck did Jonah land Amy?
4:
You’re getting drunk with Amy after work when you finally indulge yourself, allow yourself to voice the words you’ve been thinking all night. You try and make it casual, laugh a little as you say it. “So, you and Jonad, huh?”
She grimaces, momentarily rests her head on the bar. She straightens up and says, “So, we’re done with this whole arrangement now?”
You shoot her a questioning look.
“You know,” she says, waving a hand in the air as she takes another sip of her drink, “where we both pretend we’ve never been down that fucking road?”
You go pale. “You know?”
She smirks. “Oh, yeah. What, you think he brags about me but not you? Don't sell yourself short, Dan.”
You groan. “Remember when we were young? Full of hope and standards?”
“Please. I’ve never had hope, and you banged Jonad within a week of working for Selina.”
“Please never mention that again.”
She rolls her eyes, picks up her drink. “To the Cloud Botherer.”
You meet her toast. “May he always be easy.”
5:
The threesome is almost obligatory.
You’re not going to plan it, Jesus, you’re not that guy. But you’re on the lookout, always searching for the opportunity to find out exactly what happens when Jonah and Amy get together.
There’s a party in D.C.. You catch Jonah’s eye, across the room, shrug at the open bar. He nods.
While he’s figuring out how to ditch Richard, Amy sneaks up on you. You’re deep in conversation by the time Jonah finally approaches.
There’s a tense moment as you all share a look. Everyone wants to get laid, but more importantly, if there’s one thing more embarrassing than… than this, it’s admitting to being the disposable one.
Jonah apparently decides to double his odds. He throws lines at both of you, winking exaggeratedly. You and Amy share a look, and you know you’re thinking the same thing: Why the fuck am I turned on by this what is wrong with me what cruel twist of fate is this?
That’s the moment when you make the decision. You know Amy has, too.
“We’re not doing this at my place,” you say.
“Not mine,” says Amy.
“God,” says Jonah, grinning, “am I going to have do everything myself?”
6:
It’s incredible. Watching them, that is. Jonah’s fucking worshipful of Amy. He’s calm and steady and focused in a way you’ve almost never seen him. Still, somehow his enthusiasm must slip through, because she’s not indifferent anymore. She’s present and excited and open in a way you’ve never seen her.
It would make you feel left out if all of this new-found positive energy wasn’t focused on you.
It won’t work. It doesn’t take a genius to know that three people as fucked up as you all, in a city as fucked up as this, could never be even semi-functional. It’ll go up in flames one way or another.
But there’s something twistedly beautiful there, too. It’s a secret protected only by mutually assured destruction. It’s a quarantine measure. You’re bonded by an inability to form adult relationships. Better the three of you die together in a brilliant blaze than smother out the light of any real person you tried to love.
7:
Jonah cooks breakfast.
That shouldn’t be the thing you fix on, but it is. See, at the start of this Arrangement -- you’ve started thinking of it that way, Arrangement with a capital “A” -- it was just a sexy secret. It was about you and Amy double-teaming Jonah in the office where he’s supposed to be working as a congressman. It was about lying to your coworkers about your weekend plans and feeling like a teenager again, telling your mom that you’ll be good while she’s out of town. It was about knowing the White House must have been a shitty place to work that day, sending Jonah a text and surprising Amy.
It was (is, you correct) about sex. 100%. It revolves around it.
Except that Jonah cooks breakfast every morning. He makes coffee. Instead of sneaking out, you and Amy actually stay and sit down at a table and share a newspaper like… like a couple or something, or at least as people who acknowledge their fuckbuddies with more than shame in the morning.
8:
The group chat is also concerning. What started off as a simple method of organizing hook ups turned into something else the second Jonah realized that neither you nor Amy would dare risk the precarious stability of the Arrangement by trying to leave. Meaning he can spam as many shitty memes as he wants.
Somehow, that feels like just as big a secret as the actually sex. You run into each other for work, and you fight, and you talk, and you very pointedly don’t mention the fact that you’re having a second conversation at that very moment, one that involves in-jokes and emojis and insults that almost read as fond.
9:
You and Jonah go to Amy’s apartment with some justification about getting laid. Never mind that it’s too hot and humid to even consider such a suggestion. What actually happens is that Amy looks mildly annoyed but let’s you melt in her living room anyway, eventually sitting on the floor with you and only looking at her laptop with one eye.
At some point, your phone rings, and you realize with horror that you haven’t been checking it. You pick up the call and try and talk, but it’s your co-worker screaming in your ear about some emergency or other. It shouldn’t be a big deal, except it’s 102 degrees and the first time you’ve been yelled at at your TV job, and it suddenly feels like the walls are closing in around you.
The feeling is compounded by the knowledge that there are two sets of eyes studying you. See, Amy’s seen you panic, and Jonah’s seen you panic, but apart from that brief stint in a British hospital, they’ve never encountered it, or its aftermath, together.
That’s honestly scarier than anything else going on. Suddenly it’s not private, it’s not just a thing that happened once while you were together that you just kind of ignore. It’s a pattern, and here are two very real people looking at your very real panic attack, who could very possibly decide to talk about it and acknowledge it and compare their own “Dan is a Freak” stories.
(Never mind that it’s actually better than usual, that Jonah’s there to hug you and stroke his hand through your hair and ask if you’re okay, and Amy’s there to pry your phone out of your grip and yell at the guy on the other end of the line.)
10:
There’s this day that Jonah is kind of late, and you and Amy kind of kick him out of bed, and he ends up kind of pissed at both of you for a few days.
Somehow, this kinda winds up with you and Amy planning to vengeance-fuck behind his back but really just getting way too drunk and talking about the sasquatch you’re dating.
Somehow this kinda turns into the two of you at his apartment at two a.m. trying to recreate the boombox scene from Say Anything.
He lives on, like, the ground floor, though, so you end up ding-dong ditching him and running down the street, so he has to squint to see you. You’re both shaking with laughter, and Amy is holding up her phone, because she’s the one with Spotify Premium, which is how you’re listening to the muted heavy metal song you sort of think he played for you once.
Jonah rolls his eyes and invites you in, where he tries to get you to drink some water while you explain what you were going for.
And it’s not cute, it’s not coupley, it’s just that when throwing cum is your competition anything starts to look romantic.
11:
You’re at work, being a fucking mildly famous person, when Jonah calls. You swear in your head, tell yourself the iota of panic you’re feeling is just because you’re going to have to listen to whatever stupid-ass thing he deems worthy of interrupting your schedule. You count out five rings before you answer. “Jesus,” you start, “the fuck’s up with you? Ten-year-old make fun of you on Call of Duty? Need me to come handle it?”
“Shut up, asshole,” he says. “I’m fucking pissed.”
You shift, hold the phone between your shoulder and head as you grab a set of notes from a passing assistant. “What’s up?”
He launches into a tirade, and you’re fuming by the end. Amy’s important, she was senior staff to the former President, people can’t just throw her under the bus for their political mistakes --
You open your mouth to agree, when it hits you like bus exactly what you’re thinking. Moreover, you can picture the look on Amy’s face if she ever finds out you had this conversation.
“So?” asks Jonah. “What are we gonna do?”
“Honestly?” And you hate yourself, just a little bit, as you say it: “I think we should forget it. Trust me. This is Amy’s shit.”
You hang up before you can hear his no-doubt moronic reply.
12:
Sometimes one of you will, beyond all reasoning, end up with a real date. A normal, grown-up, human sort of partner.
The person is, in your case, usually leggy and blonde, smart and politically-savvy, the kind of girl you might have penciled into an excel spreadsheet life plan back in your twenties. You’ll spend a week with her, think that this is what you want, this is good, this is the opposite of settling. The next week won’t be half as good, and by the end of the third you’ll be back in Jonah’s bed with Amy curled around you, whispering in your ear about never finding a better blonde female lay.
With Jonah, the person is anyone who’ll put up with him for long enough to qualify as a relationship.
Amy’s relationships are perhaps the rarest, but unsurprisingly, it’s one of hers that marks the only time it looks like one of them might work out.
She doesn’t tell you directly, but somehow it winds up on your radar that Amy is dating a cute, brunette White House staffer. She’s legal council, maybe.
The woman is cute, a full foot shorter than Amy (the thought of her standing next to Jonah pops into your head, and it’s funny until it reaches the logical conclusion, and suddenly you just feel kind of skeevy.)
The relationship kind of defies logic. The woman is kind, a sweetheart, almost, and around her… well, Amy’s not soft, but she’s close. She’s blushy, and awkward, and above all, she’s happy.
You and Jonah get drunk and talk about it once, how it doesn’t make any sense. You don’t talk about the undercurrent of your conversation, how you’re both in a bar on a Tuesday, talking about your ex-fling and her new fling. You don’t talk about how you know the tight ache in your chest is the same in his.
The thing is, it actually looks like it’ll all work for a minute. You and Jonah aren’t perfect, maybe, without her, but you’re good. You’d almost forgotten how good. There’s an urgency there that neither of you had with Amy, an openness, an understanding.
You think a lot about the fact that he’s in love with you, mostly when you want something from him or your self-esteem is low, but you don’t think the inverse until late at night, when you’re almost asleep, when the thought can pop into your head without being chased away with a broom and screaming. You’re in love with him.
The other thought that appears sometimes like this, is the fact that you’re not actually so different. There’s a weird parallel there, in your narcissism, your need to be taken seriously, your fear you never will be. You two work well together. Maybe being in love with the same, unavailable woman could just be another of your shared quirks.
Still, there’s a flood of relief in both your hearts when Amy texts the group, when it lights up for the first time in months, a single emoji and a whole lot of subtext.
You do it at Jonah’s place, and she doesn’t seem to think it’s the time for ceremony or reminiscing. There’s a brief moment of pride, that she chose your twisted little Arrangement before some stranger at a bar for her rebound, but it dissipates when she kisses you, all aggression and teeth and want. You and Jonah both read her body language, the speed at which she’s undressing both of you, and give her what she wants. You fuck like nothing else matters, like you’ve never done it before. You keep her crying out so she doesn’t just cry.
You go for round-two in the morning, and it’s softer, the reprise, sort of sweet and gentle, like you’re trying to offer sympathies with your bodies because you know she’d never accept it from your lips. She slips out afterwards, and you don’t hear from her for a long time. But it’s okay. You’re sure now. You know she’s coming back.
13:
You’re sitting on your bed, phone to your ear, remembering why you don’t call your mother more often.
“Danny,” she says, “you know we’d love to have you here more. And of course whoever you’re with…”
Yeah, Mom, you think, come meet my dates: Sasquatch and Banshee.
You just feed her some bullshit answer about your calender.
The thing is, you’ve always sort of assumed that somewhere down the line you would become -- not someone they like, maybe, but someone who could visit at Christmas at least. You would marry some hot, independently wealthy woman, and you’d pretend to tolerate each other’s personalities for vacations and photo-ops.
That plan sounded great.
You don’t know when you stopped looking for someone else. When you decided that, hey, fuck it, you could settle for the Arrangement, as long as it lasts.
Probably around the same time you realized that all three of you were -- as always, without talking about it -- treating it as an exclusive relationship.
14:
You lose them.
It isn't, like, a conscious choice or anything. You all just get very busy, all of a sudden. Jonah’s in New Hampshire, campaigning for re-election. Amy’s campaigning, too, although still not for herself. You’re up for a promotion at CBS.
You let the real world encroach, and it is a fatal mistake. The Arrangement was great when it was a dirty little secret. It was great when you could pretend that you were doing it because it was convenient, that every time was the last time, just a momentary backslide.
To try and re-start it now feels much too revealing. It feels like admitting that you want this.
The break stretches into years, and the concept of re-starting only feels more daunting, distant.
For one thing, you cross over into fifty. By Dan Egan standards, that’s one foot in the grave. There are people your age sending their kids to college. What if you contact them, and it looks like a midlife crisis. What if they’ve moved on, and you look like the one weird, old guy who can’t let go of his past, desperately trying to cling to what was fun and sexy in your thirties?
It’s easier to ignore. So you let the desire fester, and you pretend that’s all it is. It couldn’t possibly be about missing them.
15:
You hook up with Jonah just once. He’s doing an interview, and he catches your eye across the studio. You pretend you’re free, that it’s all about convenience once again, canceling your plans with the speed and ease of a practiced master.
You kiss him once in the morning and slip out. You don’t wait for breakfast.
16:
The next time you’re all in the same room, that you’re aware of, is at the Inaugural Ball. The good guy won, and you should be celebrating, but all the hoopla is a little depressing. You’re standing there in your expensive suit, thinking about how Laura Montez’s feels like just yesterday.
You see her before she sees you. Amy’s drinking alone at the bar, and she’s as gorgeous and put-together as ever, wearing some red dress that you’ll definitely be careful not to rip. The second you see her you can sense it, you know that’s where the night is going to end up. It’s the first time you’ve felt excited in too fucking long.
You make your way to the bar, sit down and toss some cheesy line about beautiful women and drinking alone. It’s the kind of line you got from sitcoms making fun of the guy using it, and you know Amy knows this, but she’s so surprised to see you she lets it pass. She actually leans forward and hugs you, wraps her arm around your neck and everything.
You spend the rest of the night talking to her, and it’s fantastic. The years haven’t softened her, and she’s every bit the same Amy she was the last time you spoke. You text Jonah, and he shows up very fast without replying. You wonder idly if she texted him, too -- she was definitely looking at her phone, but who knows, maybe she’s as much of an email freak as ever.
It’s without words that you leave the party, grab a taxi, go to a real bar. It’s late, and the place is blessedly quiet. You sit in the back and drink and talk and it’s at once outrageously funny and incredibly bitter.
You, Dan Egan, D.C.’s up-and-comer, are fifty, drinking in a bar with your old flames. And none of you are married, and none of you have kids, and none of you are president.
But what suddenly strikes you, is that you're here with these people, these fucking assholes, who you’ve spent so much of your life fucking and laughing with and hiding from and just plain hiding. What suddenly strikes you, is that hiding them is unnecessary. You’re so old and irrelevant that no one gives a shit if you all hook up. You don’t work in a building where Jonah’s the village idiot. You’re not running for fucking office. Amy’s vice-grip on her pride is… still there, but maybe focused on other things.
And the hiding from… Look, you’re not going to tell them you love them. But you all gave up on conventionality a long time ago, so really, who cares if you don’t say it?
Isn’t the fact that you all start cracking up at the same time kind of enough?
17:
You wind up in Jonah’s apartment -- because fuck, it’s always Jonah’s, just another thing that doesn’t make any sense -- and you stay there. You fuck and eat breakfast and go to work and come home the next evening and you don’t talk about it.
But you’re is still a strategist at heart, so you come to the dinner table a little while later prepared. You lay your hands on the table. “I think the two of you should get married.”
They’re faces are priceless, but you can see them shift as you explain. It’s for the brand. If you’re doing this, if you’re going to stop fighting fate and just settle, you might as well have some legal benefits. Jonah’s got NH locked up, but it’ll still look better if he’s married, something nice and straight and paletable, and Amy, people are sexist at heart, and no one likes the old spinster story.
Besides, if anyone’s getting in a freak accident/being attempted murder-ed, it’s definitely Jonah, and if anyone’s going to be in a sound mind to make medical decisions, it’s definitely Amy.
So they agree, and then there’s a moment where everyone looks at each other questioningly, and because it just makes sense, you’re the one to get down on one knee. “Jonah, Amy,” you say, and you voice is dripping with irony and just a little strained, “would you do me the honor of marrying each other?”
18:
It’s the sort of thing that starts as a joke and then snowballs, but maybe it does make a surprising amount of sense. Where else to have an un-romantic three-person wedding but Vegas?
So you take out your vacation days and fly to Nevada, and you get just as drunk as you have to stomach the wedding in the tiny chapel with all its fluorescent lights and the couple of smokers hanging around in the pews.
Turns out the priest on duty is an Elvis impersonator, and there’s a definite moment where you think that each of you will veto it -- albeit Jonah because he wanted Mr. T -- but it’s like a dare. Everything about it is like a dare.
“Fuck it!” cries Amy. She drags Jonah to the front of the chapel and they quickly recite the shortened vows.
You serve as the witness. You’re there alone, as you kicked out the smokers and vetoed bringing Richard.
For a single, terrible second, there’s another pang of bitterness, an incredible anger, deep in your stomach. Not only are these the people you’re marrying, but you’re not even central, you’re playing third fiddle to Amy Brookheimer and Jonah Ryan, two people who wouldn’t know functional if it was every word in every briefing they read (or didn’t, in Jonah’s case). Two people who, many, many, many years ago, you had thought were weak for you and you alone.
But after they kiss each other, Jonah and Amy both kiss you, respectively, and it’s kind of weird and chaste and doesn’t even make Elvis look uncomfortable.
Jonah tells you he loves you that night. Well, first Amy, then you. He’s lying between you on the hotel bed, and it’s the first time he’s done it that hasn’t been regrettable and during climax. You and Amy share a steely look over him, and then you both repeat it, “I love you, too,” like fucking married people or something.
19:
You honeymoon right there. Stay in Vegas a couple days, then take a short road-trip to a couple different seedy Motel 6s.
There’s something weird about it. Some twisted quality that makes everything seem a little kinder, a little romantic. It washes over everything.
It colors singing along to Amy’s shitty indie and your shitty country and both of you tolerating Jonah’s shitty metal. It colors being shaken awake by the other two under the guise of watching the sunrise, even though it looks exactly the fucking same as a sunset, and you’re 90% sure they’re doing it to annoy you. It colors the gross motel sex, makes the fact that Amy makes you bring your own sheets almost cute.
20:
You come home, and Jonah and Amy release a quiet statement that after a long and pleasant relationship, they finally eloped.
You move the rest of your stuff into Jonah’s apartment.
You go to a jewelry store and buy two rings for them to wear and one for you to just… just have, to wear or look at or buy a stupid fucking chain and hide under your clothes. You’ll figure it out.
You wonder how the fuck you got here.
Still, you fall asleep with Amy’s stupid front pressed against your stupid front, and Jonah’s stupid big mouth against your stupid neck, and he cooked dinner, and you’ve got a system for vacuuming, and you’re texting again, and it’s not really like settling. It’s not really like settling at all.