My Cup Runneth Over
Rating: Older Child – references to consensual sex but no descriptions or details
Characters: Jed Bartlet, Abbey Bartlet, Zoey Bartlet, Charlie Young
Summary: "Here's the thing, though. I never saw you study when you were in med school."
Author Notes:
Possible spoilers through end of series, possible spoilers for "Holding Hands on the Way Down through "The Third Birch Tree on the Left".
There has been some discussion about when Abbey started Med School, given the statement in Season 1 that Jed and Abbey had been married for 32 years and the statement that Abbey had been practicing medicine for 26 years in Season 2. For the purposes of this story, I need to have Abbey in Med School right after she and Jed married, which I have occurring after Jed got his PhD and after Abbey got her BA. One way to do this is the combined PhD/MD program, which takes, depending on how much can be done over the summers, six to eight years, rather than the normal four for the straight MD degree.
"My Cup Runneth Over" is originally from the musical "I Do! I Do!". It was a stand-alone hit for Ed Ames on the popular charts in 1967, which just happens to be the year in which I have set this story.
Not mine, never were, never will be.
Feedback and constructive criticism welcomed
November 8, 1967; Brookline, MA; 4:50 AM EST;
Sometimes in the mornin' when shadows are deep
I lie here beside you just watching you sleep
Abbey stretched and told herself that enough was enough; it was time. But winter had made its first foray into the Boston area and in the darkness, the bed was warm, and Jed's sleeping body was even warmer.
"Come on, up and at 'em, Barring – Bartlet."
After four months, there were many things, many nice things, Abbey was still adjusting to, including a new last name.
Jed turned over and his arm, heavy in sleep, came across her waist. Abbey resisted the urge to snuggle down into the bed, to rest her head in the furry heat where that arm was attached to Jed's shoulder. She still had 60 pages of Gross Anatomy and 30 pages of Genetics to read before heading off to class today.
Abbey had always been an early riser and she did her best work before noon. Once she got through her introductory courses at Wellesley, she had tried to schedule most of her classes for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, or early afternoons. She usually got all her reading and writing done by dinner time. Of course, there were times when she had to work later into the night, but not that often. And, with the small diamond ring on her left hand, she didn't have to juggle a boyfriend along with everything else in her life.
Nothing could have prepared Abbey for the changes in her life that had occurred since that July morning in her grandparents' parish up in Vermont when she and Jed became man and wife. Her mother had tried to explain; her cousin Leah had tried to explain; even Father Tom had tried to explain. But being married, being married to Jed, was the most wonderful experience in the world.
The sex was a big part of it, but it wasn't the sex, per se. The normalcy of the sex was a big part of it. Abbey (and Jed) had learned that "normalcy" and "specialness" need not be mutually exclusive. Just because the other was right there, whenever the urge struck, did not mean that the other was taken for granted, but the security of knowing and the confidence it provided moved Abbey's physical and emotional satisfaction from love-making to a dimension she couldn't have imagined that first time with Jed more than three years ago.
At first, Abbey wondered if the fact that she and Jed spent most of their engagement apart, seeing each other only every three or four months, made their experience different, made it more like that of couples who did not have intimate relations before the wedding. But when she asked Leah, the tall redhead just smiled and said that it was the same for Jared and herself. "I think it has something to do with the vows," Leah said.
She really needed to get out of bed. And although the bed was cozy, it wasn't as if the bedroom was chilly. Jed's starting salary at U Mass Boston wasn't huge, but between it and the money from his trust fund (interest only, and not even all of that), they were able to afford this nice little first floor flat in a newly modernized building only a few blocks from Harvard Med.
In a few hours, Jed would awaken and join her in the kitchen. Depending on the time, he might try to draw her back to the bedroom for a morning quickie; in any event, he would fix breakfast for the two of them before sending her out the door and off to her classes with a kiss on her mouth and a gentle pat on her ass.
Ah, well, she was lucky in one respect; there was always the weekend. Unlike undergrad, the Med School didn't schedule Saturday morning classes.
Abbey pressed her lips gently against the side of Jed's face before slipping out from under the covers.
And sometimes I whisper what I'm thinking of
My cup runneth over with love
9:45 PM EST;
Sometimes in the evening when you do not see
I study the small things you do constantly
Jed Bartlet stepped from the sidewalk and onto the walkway leading to the triple-decker where he and Abbey lived. As he did so, he thought to himself that while he would probably feel differently during the snows of January, right now he liked the nights when he had to park their little used VW Beetle several houses away. On those occasions, like tonight, he would pause outside the building and just watch his wife through the window.
There was no way to describe the gamut of emotions Jed experienced doing so.
Pride.
Abbey possessed a brilliant mind. Just yesterday, Abbey told him that her Genetics professor had approached her about applying for the combined MD/PhD program that the Medical School was starting next year. The man said that Abbey combined the talent for research with the talent for empathy in a way that he had seen in less than 50 students over the course of his thirty year career. Abbey also confided to Jed that Dr. Hallesay's words were doubly edifying because the man was one of those who had initially expressed misgivings when the woman whom the school had admitted as "Abigail Barrington" showed up for the first day of class as "Abigail Bartlet". At least, Abbey had told him, the man realized that with the addition of gender and marital status to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, she would have a strong case should the Med School try to rescind their acceptance.
Sensuality.
Compared to some of their acquaintances, Jed and Abbey were relative virgins on their wedding night. Yes, they had been intimate for three years, but they had been separated by the Atlantic for most of that time. But in terms of their bed (not to mention other places), Abbey was skilled, enthusiastic, agile, athletic, energetic, and, most of all, available.
Wonder.
Many a night, when standing like this, Jed would see Abbey sorting his socks, folding his underwear. It had taken him at least 30 minutes to convince her that between his salary and his trust fund, they could easily afford to send his shirts and her blouses to the cleaners around the corner between the pizza place and the cobbler. And he had had absolutely no luck at all with the idea that instead of doing their other laundry herself, that they pay for the wash and fold service. But he had to admit that it worked out kind of nice. The laundromat was on the other side of the pizza place, and there was a small bar on the other side of the laundromat. Once a week, they would order a pizza, start the laundry, then pick up the pizza and sit in the bar eating pizza and drinking beer while waiting on the washers and dryers.
Tenderness.
A lot of times, on Mondays and Wednesdays, by the time he got home, Abbey would have fallen asleep over her reading, and tonight was no exception. When he saw her like that, her head bent over the heavy textbook, he wanted to do nothing more than protect her, provide for her, cherish her.
As one of the two new hires, Jed was assigned the least desirable classes. He taught two classes of Intro to Micro-Economics, one on Mondays from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM and one on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM. On Wednesdays, he taught Intro to Macro, also from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM.
They had decided that the best living arrangement would be to find a place as close as possible to the Med School, within walking distance if possible. As a faculty member, Jed would get parking privileges, so they invested in the little bug. If he had had to use public transportation from Brookline to Dorchester, it would have taken a lot longer as there would be buses involved as well as the MTA, but the drive wasn't that bad. Still, by the time class was over, and after class conversations had taken place, it was rare that he got home before ten on Mondays and Wednesdays.
This would be their life for the four years. Or six, if Abbey did the combined degree program. After that, well, there was her residency and wherever that might take them. And he did not see himself teaching in Dorchester for the rest of his life. Whatever the future would bring, they would face it together.
Jed started at the sound of a car slowing down, glanced to the street, and saw the local police patrol. He waved and headed to the front door. The last thing he needed was to be picked up on suspicion of being a Peeping Tom. And, more importantly, Abbey was waiting for him.
I memorize moments that I'm fondest of
My cup runneth over with love
July 3, 2010; Awasiwi Odanak Farm, NH; 6:30 AM EST;
In only a moment we both will be old
We won't even notice the world turning cold
Abbey woke up early, as she almost always did. She reached over for Jed before opening her eyes, but then opened them when she felt nothing but warm and rumpled sheets. She had a pretty good idea where her husband might be, so she slipped on a robe and headed to the stairs to the second story.
Jed stood in the doorway to Zoey's bedroom and slipped an arm around Abbey's shoulders.
"Where did the time go? She was only a baby just two months ago, right? And not only is our youngest daughter getting married; our oldest grandchild is a bridesmaid. And Annie will be 23 in a couple of months; she could easily get married herself soon. We could be great-grandparents in a year or so."
Abbey had suspected that Jed had no idea about Annie's sexual preference, but now she had proof. Sometime after the excitement of the wedding calmed down, she had better tell Annie to have a heart-to-heart with her grandfather. Not that Annie's choice would prevent her from either getting married or from giving them great-grandchildren.
"Ah, Jed, are you going to do your normal father 'my baby is too young to be given to that guy' thing?" Abbey laughed.
"No. I mean, she'll always be my baby, but Charlie is the closest thing to a son. I know that the two of them are meant for each other, will be happy the way you and I were, the way you and I are. It's just going by so fast. Maybe it's the flat."
In one of life's delicious little ironies, Charlie and Zoey would be starting their married life in the same first floor apartment in Brookline that had been Jed and Abbey's home while she was at Harvard Med. When the two of them went over last week with some of Zoey's stuff, Jed and Abbey spent some time walking the neighborhood and reminiscing. The pizza place and the bar had changed hands, but the same families were running the cleaners and the laundromat. However, the current owner of the building had installed space-saving stacked washer-dryer units in each of the flats when she upgraded the building right after buying it, so Zoey and Charlie would not spend time going between the pizza place, the bar, and the laundromat.
"Perhaps," Abbey said. "Those were wonderful years, weren't they?"
"Yes, they were. But all of them have been wonderful, Abigail Anne Barrington Bartlet. Thank you for coming into my life."
Later that afternoon
It had gone off perfectly, Abbey thought to herself. Zoey had been a beautiful bride, Charlie a handsome groom. The bridesmaids were gorgeous, the ushers and groomsmen striking. Jed had had no problems either walking Zoey down the aisle or presiding over the wedding ceremony. Danny and Liz had proclaimed their scripture selections flawlessly. The weather was perfect, both at the church and here at the reception. The caterers did their jobs professionally.
It had been nice, this past year, being able to plan a wedding without all the controlled hysteria that had accompanied Ellie's somewhat rushed White House event. There had been some fuss and ado, given that fact that Jed was a former president. And the presence of the Santos' as well as Charlie's new boss, the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, meant ramped up security, but Zoey and Charlie pretty much got the wedding they wanted. Third time's the charm, as the hackneyed saying goes. Or the fourth, Abbey reflected, although she and Jed hadn't really done much for CJ and Danny's, other than throw their weight (and their money) around. Naturally, the two of them would be offering their assistance, financial and otherwise, when Deanna married her Air Force astronaut. Jed had been an enthusiastic participant in the planning was had been only slightly more nerdy than usual with his cornucopia of arcane wedding trivia. Maybe the two of them should go into it – wedding planning – as a new career move.
Abbey waved once more to the departing helicopter and then reacted to the discreet pressure of her husband's hand caressing her backside.
"What do you say we take off on our own little honeymoon?" Jed whispered in her ear.
"And what do we tell the sitting President and First Lady, who are spending the night at the farm? And the throng of guests we are hosting for Independence Day tomorrow? Not to mention the rest of next week with CJ and Danny here for a few days and all of us going down to Cape May after that?"
"Then I guess we'll have to hold our own little honeymoon in whatever bedroom we find ourselves. I don't want to miss one second of loving you."
And so, in these moments with sunlight above
My cup runneth over with love
My cup runneth over with love
With love