XIX

"Hey."

"Hey." Sam smiled and sat back as Josh appeared in his doorway. The Deputy Chief of Staff hovered awkwardly, seeming uncomfortable.

"So... Charlie still alive?"

Sam hesitated. "There was... shouting. But now it's all gone quiet."

"Ah."

"Yeah." Good or bad sign, who could say?

"So... you wanna go grab some lunch or something?" Josh shrugged.

"Sure." He laid aside his work and stood up. It was funny, but he had much more of an appetite lately. There'd been a period when it was difficult to muster any enthusiasm for eating at all.

He felt about thirteen years old trying to pin all the sudden changes in his attitude on one new relationship, but the fact was that having Steve was a big part of it. It was like having an anchor, somebody there for him outside of work to stop him getting swept up in a tide of depression and carried away. The fact that Steve was a guy was immaterial, or should be. It was the fact that Steve was his that mattered.

They walked down to the White House mess and picked up their food. "So, what did you want to talk to me about? Peterson? Sex-Ed?"

"No- no," Josh cut him awkwardly. "I, um, I just..." He hesitated. "Donna mentioned that you were seeing somebody."

"Oh." Oh. "Um, yeah. About that, I..." Josh cut him off with an upraised hand.

"No, let me finish," he said quickly. "Anyway, Donna mentioned that, and I just realised that, you know, she knew and I didn't. I... We..." He threw up his hands. "We don't talk anymore, Sam! Why is that? What happened? When did we stop being friends?"

Okay, apparently this conversation wasn't about what he'd expected it to be about. Sam sighed heavily, and looked at Josh seriously. "I don't know," he admitted. "We just... I don't know, maybe it's my fault, I've been so-"

"No," Josh refuted firmly. "No, it's me. I've had my head up my ass for so long, I've forgotten how to be a friend."

"Josh..." Sam ran a hand through his hair and shrugged. "Seriously, I, it's as much me as it is you. I've been... depressed, I guess. I was feeling so bad, I just didn't want to talk to anybody." He offered his old friend a bright smile. "But I'm better now. I feel a lot better."

Josh nodded slowly, and focused on his meal. After a moment, he spoke up suddenly "So, uh, you're seeing somebody?"

"I..." He laughed nervously. "Okay. Okay. This could be a little-"

"You can tell me anything," Josh insisted earnestly, looking him in the eye.

Sam hesitated, and then blurted. "I'm dating a guy."

Josh choked on his coffee. He coughed for a moment, and then met Sam's eyes. "Okay. Would this be by way of getting me back for being inattentive, or-?"

"This would be by way of being reality," he admitted.

Josh blinked for a few moments. "Ah... okay, have I been way more detached than I thought, or is this, you know, new?"

"It's new," Sam confirmed with a quick nod. He hesitated for a long moment. "Are we, you know... okay?"

"Sure," said Josh, too quickly. But then he smiled, and laughed at himself, and shrugged. "We're okay," he agreed.

A moment later, they were back to talking policies and strategy. And Sam decided maybe they were okay, at that.

"Daddy?" Zoey hesitated in the doorway. As her father smiled and held his hands out to her, she rushed forward in relief.

"It's okay, sweetheart, I'm not mad at you," he promised, kissing her hair affectionately.

"I'm sorry, daddy," she choked. "We just didn't want to- we didn't want-"

"I know, honey, I know."

As Zoey pulled away from her father's arms and ran to embrace Charlie, Abbey reached out and squeezed her husband's hand. He smiled gently at her, anger broken as she'd known it would be. By all accounts the shouting from the Oval Office had terrified passing staffers, but when she'd earned eternal admiration by daring to step inside, she'd found her husband and future son-in-law sitting quietly together. They'd both looked a little tearful, and not from anger or distress, either.

"You're a wonderful father, Jed," she told him softly, pressing a kiss to his cheek. He smiled and cocked an eyebrow.

"I'm not a wonderful husband too?" he demanded lightly.

She pretended to look him up and down. "Oh, I think there's still room for improvement."

Before he could summon a playful rejoinder, Charlie and Zoey turned to face them, hands still entwined. Looking at them together, Abbey was at a loss as to how anybody could see Charlie's dark fingers wrapped around Zoey's light ones as anything other than beautiful.

Jed smiled at the two of them. "And I guess now you're gonna be thinking about setting a wedding date? About twenty years in the future sounds about right," he added, with a definite growl back in his voice. Just because he'd resigned himself to giving away his little girl didn't mean he was going to do so easily.

"We're willing to wait until after the end of your term in office," Charlie told him quickly. "We were going to anyway," he explained, with a rueful glance at Zoey. Abbey couldn't imagine how hard it must be for them, wanting so desperately to be able to promise themselves to each other and constrained by politics and prejudice. No wonder they'd felt the need to make some kind of secret pact.

As if reading her mind, Zoey piped up "Mom, dad, I'm so sorry we kept this as a secret. We just didn't... we didn't want all this fuss to happen."

Abbey smiled and gave her a quick hug. "Sweetheart, I understand why you did it. But I wish you could at least have told your father and I." She sympathised completely, but the fact was that 'First Daughter hides engagement from parents' made for even messier headlines than if it had been publicly announced.

"I know," Zoey said miserably. She looked at the floor for a moment. "Is all this publicity gonna be a really bad thing?" she asked quietly.

Her father smiled fondly, and clapped her on the shoulder. "Well, that's what I've got a press secretary for," he said comfortingly.

"Okay. What do we do now?" Charlie asked, still clasping Zoey's hand.

Jed smiled. "We have an engagement party." Abbey shot him a look. "Just a small, private affair," he said quickly. "We'll have it tomorrow night - why wait? Just us, a few of the staff - and, Charlie, bring your sister. This should be about family."

"Okay," Charlie said, beaming. Abbey wasn't sure what had transpired between the two men after their shouting match, but the absolute devotion the young man displayed to her husband was shining stronger than ever.

Jed was still in paternal mode. "Now, the two of you won't be able to go out together for the moment, I'm afraid." They both nodded soberly. "But if, you know, somebody should happen to have asked the White House stewards to set up a lunch table for two in one of the-" Zoey cut him off by launching another big hug.

"Thanks, dad!" she said delightedly.

He smiled down at her. "You two go on and celebrate now." He kissed her on the forehead.

"Come on, Charlie!" She grabbed her fianc by the hand and practically dragged him out of there.

Abbey smiled, and leaned against her husband's shoulder. "Young love is so beautiful."

"And it only gets more beautiful with time." He kissed her, gently, and when they finally parted, she laid her head against his chest to look up at him.

"I love you, Jed."

"I love you too." He took a deep breath, and for a moment seemed sad.

"Jed?" she asked softly. That one syllable, the name that could mean so many different things, just as hers could when he said it in return, was enough of a question.

Jed closed his hands around her own, and led her over to the couch to sit down. "Okay," he said quietly. "Abbey, I have something that I probably should have told you much sooner than this..."

Leo stopped as he saw the First Lady coming towards him. "Abbey." His automatic smile twisted into a frown as he noticed that she looked slightly tearful. "Is everything okay?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she brushed him off with a smile. "It's just..." She took a deep breath. "My little girl's getting married."

"Yeah." Leo grinned back. "Is he-?"

"Oh, he's cooled off, like we knew he would."

"Still, wouldn't want to be in Charlie's shoes for a while."

"No." She shook her head slowly in wonder. "It's all so... so hard to believe. Is it really so long ago that they were all toddling around the farmyard falling over their feet?"

"It's really not," Leo said, thinking of Mallory. His little girl, that he'd missed so much of growing up. The Bartlets were lucky.

No, not lucky. They deserved everything they had with their children; Jed Bartlet knew how to be a good father. He was the lucky one - lucky that Mallory had still managed to turn out all right despite his best efforts to screw up her childhood, lucky that she was even still prepared to talk to him.

Abbey sighed heavily, perhaps caught up in reminiscing as much as he was. "I just wish..." She shook her head. "Sometimes I just wish things could stay the same."

"I know what you mean," Leo sighed in agreement. "Yeah, I know what you mean."