XIII

SATURDAY:

Sam awoke with a crippling backache. When he put his hands out to push himself up and felt the floor beneath them, he remembered why.

He looked down at Steve, who he couldn't help noticing was now wrapped in a rather larger proportion of the blanket they'd curled under than he'd been allotted the night before. "Hey, wasn't that a shared blanket at some point?" he asked, in a voice still foggy with sleep.

Steve blinked guileless green eyes. "It was a preemptive measure. You're a... floor-hog," he finished, somewhat lamely.

Sam yawned, stretched, and winced. He surveyed the empty apartment. "At some stage we should probably get, you know, furniture."

"You think?"

"It would give the decor that little extra sparkle."

"I don't know." Steve sat up, hair mussed. "The chess and cardboard box motif has its moments."

"Yeah, but the facilities leave a lot to be desired." He rubbed his spine and groaned to himself. "I'm too old for this."

"Yup."

He shot his younger boyfriend a venomous look. "Thanks for that."

"Any time."

"I've a good mind to never let you share a floor with me again."

"Ah, but you'll get awful lonely with my side of the floor empty."

Sam stood up, and Steve giggled as he staggered, legs still asleep. "Quiet." He leaned against the doorframe and shook his head to clear it. "I need to go home, get some clothes."

"You have clothes."

"Yeah, but they look like I spent the night sleeping on the floor in them."

"Imagine that." Steve remained lazily tangled in the blanket, apparently untroubled by the hard cold, surface he was splayed against. Sam shot him a look that was more jealousy for that fact than that he got to sleep in.

"Are you gonna stay there all day?"

"Well, it's Saturday, so... probably."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You youngsters today," he tutted. "No respect for your elders, no work ethic, sleeping on floors..."

Steve pouted adorably. "Hey, you were the one trying to seduce me with your devilishly sexy chess playing."

"It was your idea to get the blanket and make like we were camping."

Steve shrugged. "I'm gay; I have a licence to camp." Sam pointed an admonishing finger.

"Okay, that's it. I'm reporting you to the bureau of bad puns and stereotypes."

"You have one of those at the White House?"

"Some days I think I work in it." He came back over to give Steve a quick kiss. "You want to come with me to this thing tonight?"

"The dinner party?"

"You've deciphered my ingenious code," he said dryly.

"Will there be music, food and alcohol?"

"There'll even be furniture," he promised.

"Well now, how could I hope to resist that kind of decadence?"

Despite the fairly grim parade of meetings he was facing before the evening was upon them, Sam's face was split by a wide grin. "Then I'll see you tonight." They parted with a kiss.

Donna woke up, and wished she hadn't.

She reached up a hand and cautious patted the back of her head, just to make sure it hadn't really been sliced off with an axe. Apparently not. Which was a pity, really, because that rather reduced the possibility of a quick and merciful death.

She discovered that she'd been slumped face down on her own couch, still in the clothes she'd been wearing the previous evening. Well, at least she hadn't been drooling.

Boy, you really knew it was a five star morning when that was the first cheerful thought you had of the day.

Donna staggered out to the kitchen, and briefly weighed how much she really wanted to eat toast against how much she really wanted to spend the next few minutes throwing up.

Coffee for breakfast it was.

Mug in hand, she pressed the button on her answer machine, and winced at the piercing bleep. "You have - two - messages," it informed her stiltedly.

"Donna!"

Oh God, not a loud Josh at this time of the morning. She would have jabbed at the pause button if that hadn't involved actual effort.

"Good morning, Donnatella," her boss's voice said exuberantly. "The sun is shining, birds are singing... well, they're probably singing somewhere, anyway... it's a beautiful day!"

She growled at the phone.

"For the record, you didn't do anything hideously embarrassing last night, and your charming, witty and generally wonderful excuse for a boss escorted you home with your clothing, honour, and most of your dignity intact. Have a nice day!"

As the machine bleeped between messages, Donna seriously contemplated throwing something at it. Then Josh's voice came on again.

"And, by the way. You can have the morning off." Suddenly smiling, she started to feel better.

Until she tried to move, and decided that a warm and fuzzy feeling was no substitute for Advil, after all.

Leo sat in his office, very still. He hadn't slept in it the previous night, but he wished he had. His hotel room wasn't safe for him - it wasn't any refuge from the things he was running from. The things he was running from he carried with him, and the only place to escape them was in the blessed mental numbness of working until he was ready to collapse.

There had been no alcohol the night before. That was good. That was very good. He could do this. He could find his control. He could pull himself out of this. He-

He was practically shaking with the desperate need to get drunk. Leo wasn't sure if the way his hands seemed to quake was for real or the stigmata of the weight of guilt that was slowly crushing him to death. Either way, he kept his muscles tensed as painfully tightly as he could whenever he was not alone, burying the evidence.

And nobody suspected. That was the worst of it, the knife in his gut; nobody, nobody suspected. Oh, he couldn't hide completely - not from Jed, or from Margaret, or from Josh - but though they all eyed him concernedly, not one of them had fingered the horrible truth. Because not one of them believed for a second that he could screw up this badly, that he could ever have sunk to this depth. They trusted him, and he was betraying them for every fraction of a second they continued to.

But how could he ever tell them the truth?

But how could he go on this way?

But how could he tell them?

The door to his office creaked open, and he didn't jump. He was too good at this. He knew how to hide the signs; he'd had years and years and years of practise.

Margaret appeared in the doorway, holding a mug of coffee. She eyed him sorrowfully, but said nothing.

Ask me, Margaret. For God's sake, ask me. Just look me in the eye, and say 'Leo, are you drinking again?'

And then I can say yes.

Please, God, somebody ask me.

But Margaret just placed the coffee silently on the desk before him, and momentarily touched his hand in a gesture of support he didn't deserve. And then she was gone, and she hadn't asked, and he hadn't told.

Leo hadn't told anybody, and he didn't know how. He couldn't go on like this, but he didn't know how to stop, didn't know how he could ever make that ultimate betrayal. Couldn't look his oldest friend in the eye and admit that the faith he'd placed in him had been wasted on a shadow of a man who couldn't even trust himself.

He didn't know how to tell anybody, and nobody ever asked.

So the truth never got told.