XX
The silent stretched on for a long moment. "Dad," he said flatly.
"Sam."
"Coffee!" declared Steve brightly. He disappeared into the kitchen extremely fast.
His father gave him a tentative smile, which he didn't return. "Hi, Sam." More silence. His father glanced towards the doorway through which Steve had fled. "I've been talking to your young man. He seems like a nice boy."
"He... is." To say he was completely lost would be understating it more than a little. He shook his head in bewilderment. "Dad... what are you doing here?"
"I wanted to see you."
"Why?" he demanded disbelievingly.
"Because you're my son," he laughed, a little nervously.
Sam scowled. "What makes you think I'd want to see you?"
His father looked at the floor. "I never thought you would. I just..." he trailed off. Sam didn't feel any real pressing need to help him out of the awkward silence.
This was the first time he'd seen his father since... well, since the day his own private world had briefly stopped turning. Twenty-eight years, dad, what could you ever possibly say that would justify twenty-eight years They'd passed the point where Sam wouldn't even answer phonecalls, because, well... he was his father. But to actually see him, face to face...
It hurt. It hurt precisely because he didn't look any different; the familiar stamp of Seaborn features, boyish still at sixty despite the grey at the temples. The same blue eyes, and they were his eyes, and that hurt even more.
In the intervening years, of divorce and betrayal and the shaking of the world's foundations, his father hadn't shrunk or shifted or taken on the look of the devil incarnate. He just looked like dad.
Dad.
Dad, who'd been seeing another woman since before his son was old enough to understand what that was. Yeah, he'd say he was just about due a certain amount of awkward silence.
After a long moment his father ran a shaky hand through his hair. I do that, you always used to that, what else did I learn from you dad, what else did you make me?
When I grow up, I want to be just like my dad.
Was it too late to take back words spoken when you were five or six years old, and a lie was when you said you hadn't taken the last cookie? His fingers flexed, but he didn't want to make fists and he didn't know quite what else to do with them.
"Sam, I just... I just thought you could use some support right now."
"From you?"
"From anyone." He hesitated. "I spoke to your mother."
"She doesn't want to talk to you."
His father sighed sadly, and Sam hated him for it. He didn't have any right to feel sorry, to feel guilty about what he'd done to their family - because if he understood that, if he was capable of feeling that, then how could he ever have done it at all? If his father was a man and not an unfeeling monster, then there had to be an answer to the question, and he didn't want there to be an answer to the question. He didn't want to be living in a world where there could possibly be an answer to the question.
Why? For the love of God, why
"I know that she's- she might be-"
"Don't," Sam said warningly. It didn't matter that his mother was being so wrong-headed he wanted to scream, only that if his father dared to say any word against her after what he'd done-
"I just thought you might need..." His father shook his head. "I was wrong. I'm sorry. I should go."
He hated himself for not saying 'Don't go' almost as much as he hated himself for wanting to.
His father stopped in the doorway, and turned back. "Sam, I- If there was some way I could shield you from..." He sighed heavily. "You're just a guy who fell in love. You think I don't understand that?"
Sam found himself shaking his head in the numbness of disbelief. "Oh, no. You are not-"
"Sam-"
"You are not going to compare this to-"
"Sam." His father stepped towards him and looked him in the eye, solemn and serious. "I'm your father, and I love you, and I know you hate me and I know you have every right to hate me but I love you. And your mother loves you too, and you don't want to listen to her now while she's mixed up because she loves you and she'll come around. She'll come around, son."
Sam could feel something dangerously like tears building in the tiredness around his eyes, and he didn't realise he was still so furious until the words just boiled out. "Oh, is that what you told yourself when you-?"
"Sam." His father held his gaze in a look that lasted forever. "As you're so fond of telling me, you're not the same man I am."
He hesitated for a beat. "Dad..." His voice betrayed him with a crack that should never have been there.
And then, somehow, he was in his father's arms. And it didn't change anything and nothing was any different and nothing was any better but it helped.
It should have been redundant to say that everyone snapped to attention at the president's passage. It wasn't. To categorise the way the White House staff leapt out of their seats as respect for their leader's position would have been a gross misinterpretation of the facts. Today, nobody was standing for the President of the United States; they were standing for Josiah Bartlet, and the look on his face that could set the world on fire.
Toby followed a few steps behind; the taller of the two, but matching the pace only by an effort of will. Today, such niceties as the usual laws of the universe were set aside; today, their leader led, and they would follow if Jed Bartlet walked them into hell. He could feel the fire of tension rising and recognised it; it was a feeling he had marched to once before, through a storm and from a funeral to the podium where the truth would be told. It was that feeling, the one that he tapped into when the words were flowing with the unshakeable certainty of being right.
Power. Sheer, raw energy, boiling off the man ahead of him in waves. He almost fancied he could taste the metallic tang of lightning in the air, or maybe that was something like blood in his mouth where his jaw was locked in place so tightly it hurt.
Nobody had to tell Josh and CJ to fall without speaking in line to either side of him. Right now they weren't advisors, counsellors, strategists. They were warriors, in the service of a man who at this moment was more king than president. Where he led, they would follow, no negotiation and no hesitation.
In the Oval Office the president wheeled around and turned to face them, and nobody in the world would ever have hit on the word 'small' to describe him. His eyes were on fire, and his voice so low and steady it was deafening.
"I want to address the nation."
And they could have said a million things about how it wasn't usual, how it wouldn't be expected, all the ways it could be spun and all the things they should consider. But nobody did.
"CJ, make it happen," he said, in short, clipped tones which brooked no argument. "Josh, do what you do. I want no objections and no complications; this is happening, and it's happening today. Toby, get Sam back here and both of you come to me. I'm gonna say what I'm saying, and you're going to help me do it."
There were a million different reasons why the president shouldn't go on TV to address the nation in a fit of anger over his daughter's boyfriend's attack - and not one of them mattered a damn.
"Mr. President."
"Yes, sir." They inclined their heads respectfully, and made it happen.
It should have been a dark and stormy night. It should at the very least have been overcast, not a bright and sunny Sunday that looked and felt like any other.
There should have been something. Not just him, not just life, not the universe just ticking along as if nothing had changed and his world wasn't tearing itself apart from the inside out.
But nothing was the same and nothing was right, and he just needed something, just something, that would let him stand aside from the world a few moments and come back to himself. Just a chance to teach himself to remember how to breathe.
There should have been something, but there was just him, and that was the way it had always been.
He stood for a long time, considering his purchase. Contemplating, mulling it over, and maybe waiting. Waiting for the sign from God that everybody knew you ought to get when things were like this.
He took his purchase to the cash desk, and the young woman didn't even look at him as she bagged it and took his money. Then he brought it home, and it lay on his bed while he shrugged off his jacket and tie and thought about showering but didn't do it.
Then he picked it up, and looked at it.
Leo regarded the bottle for a long, long time. He still believed, right up until the moment he twisted the cap off, that he wasn't really going to drink it.