II
Toby, predictably, was tapping away at his laptop when she entered. CJ leaned against the doorway for a moment, smiling slightly as she watched him. He didn't look round.
"Everybody else is slacking, you know, Toby."
He answered her with a minuscule movement of his shoulders that was too indifferent to be called a shrug.
CJ grinned and walked around the table to perch beside him. "Toby, it's a wedding," she teased. "Show a little excitement."
Toby slowly looked up, and blinked at her. "I'm excited," he said impassively, and returned to his typing.
She tapped out a little tattoo on the top edge of his screen and peered down at him. "It's the president's daughter, Toby! Zoey? Charlie? Is this ringing any bells?"
He looked at her. "It's a wedding. There will be a bride. There will be a groom. There will be drunken people making speeches. One of them will be the president, for whom I am ordinarily employed to ensure the coherency of the words that come out of his mouth. Fortunately for the sake of my continued mental wellbeing, by this point in the evening I fully intend to be inebriated beyond the point of all comprehension."
The expression on his face was enough to make her rock back on the table and laugh. "Oh, Toby," she sighed, shaking her head. "Toby, Toby, Toby." She flicked up the ends of his collar. He ignored her, and continued to frown over his words on the screen.
"Talking of marital bliss..." she added playfully, "I hear that a certain US Congresswoman has a place on the invitation list?"
That did make Toby look up at her, and he held her gaze with a long and inscrutable look.
This one, however, she elected not to mock. Straightening up, CJ patted him briefly on the shoulder, and went to look for whatever work might be available in a White House light-headed with wedding fever.
Margaret stood up and smiled at him as he approached. The red-headed secretary hadn't always had a friendly gaze for him, protective as she was of her boss, but right now his presence was a courtesy, not a precursor of conflict, and she knew it.
"Good morning, Mr. Vice President."
"Good morning, Margaret." He spared her a smile that was genuine as much as it was polite. It was always good to see loyalty; especially to somebody like Leo, who considering current circumstances was inarguably in need of it.
His conversation with the president about two months ago had been one of the most disorienting experiences this White House had yet hit him with. He'd come up here ready to spew fire over being summoned like a schoolboy, compiling lists of all the political decisions that President Bartlet could possibly have found to make an issue of. Instead, he'd found a quietly reflective president, whose concern was not for his Vice President's actions at all.
Thrown out of gear by the president's sombre face, he could remember how his stomach had dropped when Leo's name had first come up. He'd known - had hated himself for even suspecting, but still known - what was coming next. It was what had come after that which completely knocked him off his feet.
Leo was drinking again. He'd seen it in the president's eyes, and he'd thought for sure that this was to be some painful, terrible discussion about replacement and scandals and God only knew what else.
But the president had only looked him in the eye and said "It's going to be tough for him for a while. And I'd appreciate very much any support you could give him through this."
And he hadn't known what to say. He hadn't-
John had always known - although the grace with which he admitted it varied - that Josiah Bartlet was a good man, perhaps in some ways a great man; and yes, blessed with powers of leadership and oratory that made it extraordinarily difficult to resent him his position. But it had always been something of a minor mystery what there could be in his oddball charisma to inspire such devotion in a pragmatist like Leo.
He wasn't sure he'd realised, until that moment, exactly how fully that devotion was returned. It wasn't even that the president had chosen to stand by Leo... it was that everything in his voice and his eyes and his stance had said that his world had never contained any alternative option.
If Leo's lapse should come out... if it should be learned that the Chief of Staff of the White House had not just fallen back into the depths of alcoholism but continued in his job for months without anybody finding out...
The Bartlet administration had already maxed out its credit limit on scandals, and this one was by no stretch of the imagination small enough to slip under the radar. If it should ever come out that this had gone on and Leo not been fired the moment the president knew... Well, such things the ends of presidencies were made of. Firing Leo, or even quietly accepting his resignation, would have been the safety route, the last chance for a clean and clear escape.
And Jed Bartlet hadn't even considered it. And somehow John Hoynes knew that if it ever did come out, he wouldn't go scurrying to hide behind lies or legal technicalities; he would stand right up there in front of the world, and fight to defend Leo's right to keep his job.
It was almost frightening to wonder if there was anybody in the world who would take that kind of risk for him. Was there? And how could he ever truly know, unless it actually came right down to it?
Leo stood up as he entered, and John knew it would be a waste of time to tell him he didn't have to. "Mr. Vice President."
"Good morning, Leo," he nodded with a smile. They were on first name terms - how could they not be, with the layer of openness and intimacy their shared struggle had laid upon them? - but Leo always liked to greet him by his formal title, even when they were alone. A strange set of contradictions, Leo McGarry; such a rigid structure of formality over such a plainspoken manner. But then, it was a matter of control... and Leo was all about control.
Even looking at him now, knowing what he knew, it was almost impossible to believe that he could ever have lost his grip on that incredible self-control.
The door swung closed behind him, and he let relax as much of the political mask as he ever did. "How are you doing, Leo?" he asked softly.
Leo shrugged, although his face registered anything but indifference. "It goes a day at a time."
"Yeah."
A day at a time. Even now, even decades on, he was still taking it a day at a time. The thought of trying to start it all over again, take it from those first, hellish months when the tang of alcohol had been all too quick to rise in the back of his throat...
Even now, he could taste it; a ghost, an echo of a flavour. But it would only take on tiny drop, the merest hint of a fraction of a drink, for it to rise up and consume him utterly, like a match to so much deadwood soaked in oil.
But these were things that it was hard to speak of however many times you tried, and Leo was never comfortable with them intruding on times when he should be doing his job. "You'll see the president before he leaves?" he asked, before the blanket of silence became too heavy.
John nodded. "We've got a few minutes at the end of the day." The president would be in New Hampshire for his daughter's wedding less than forty-eight hours straight, but he still seemed to feel some form of ceremonial handing over of the country was in order. The idea was simultaneously touching and exasperating, an honour and unbearably patronising. Fairly well par for the course for his interactions with Josiah Bartlet, then. "How is he?" he asked.
Leo smiled sardonically. "His youngest daughter's getting married tomorrow. How do you think?"
"Yeah."
The president adored Charlie Young, everybody knew it. Even so, John was definitely glad not to be in his shoes right about now.
"Hey Charlie."
"Hey."
He suspected every random person who passed him in the corridors could clearly see the zombie-like look of near petrifaction stamped across his features.
He was getting married tomorrow. Married. Married. He was getting up there and saying his vows up in front of the entire world.
Literally. With the number of cameras that would be trained on him, his bride-to-be, and prospective father-in-law... What if he fainted? What if he forgot what to say? What if he tripped over? What if he accidentally said something mind-bendingly stupid?
Thinking of the end result - of actually being Zoey Bartlet's husband - was just about the only thing keeping his brain from exploding completely. His proximity to the president sure as hell wasn't doing anything to calm him.
He was fairly sure the leader of the free world was as fond of him as it was possible to ask him to be. However, when it came to the prospect of 'stealing' his baby daughter, Charlie wasn't at all sure any level of affection could be enough. He was spending as much time away from his desk as humanly possible this morning, dashing in and out of the Oval Office fast enough to hopefully stop the president from dwelling on his presence too deeply.
"Charlie!" Josh grinned widely at him as he approached. "Looking forward to tomorrow?"
"I think I'm gonna die," he answered honestly.
Josh, tower of sensitivity and sympathy that he was, just snickered. "Hey, relax, Charlie, it's just a wedding, you'll be fine," he said, clapping him on the shoulder. Charlie gave him a look.
"And how many times have you been married?"
That silenced him, and Josh's brow wrinkled as he continued on his way. "Okay, but it can't be that difficult, right?" he said uncertainly. "Even stupid people do it."
Charlie ignored that, and called after him. "Do you have a speech yet?"
"Almost!" Josh retorted defensively, as he rounded the corner.
Oh, God. This was going to be a disaster from start to finish.
He just knew it.