"Sam, honestly, you're going to need to cut down on your caffeine intake or take up a hobby!" Addy said from the doorway to his office. Between his pacing and Toby's ball bouncing, she was starting to miss being stuck in a room full of desks with no privacy.
"It's nice that you can just roll your chair over here to yell at me. Cuts down on missed productivity!" he said, angling toward his own desk chair like that was why he was on his feet. She knew better, though. Sam had been pacing around in his office for at least twenty minutes. She waited, and as she'd expected, his expression turned defensive. "I just don't think we should be mad about this. CJ was clear from the podium; the Surgeon General didn't actually say any of the things that they're attacking her for-"
"If I could time our rebuttal to those complaints, how far would we get before everyone stopped listening?" she asked him.
Sam sighed. "It's not fair, and I'm sick of bending to this!"
"So push back, if it'll make you feel better. One of these days you won't have to be overruled, it could be today," Addy said sympathetically. She started sit-walking her chair back through his doorway, but the wheels were sticky. After a few tries she just got up and pushed it back to her desk to the accompaniment of Sam's laughter.
88888888
For the third time that day, Toby reminded himself that he hadn't just invited his ex-wife to meet at lunchtime because he was trying to avoid having Addy and Andie in the same fifty feet of space. In a job like his, that kind of stress was just asking for trouble. No, it was because when their marriage was falling apart, Toby had spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to calculate what time was best to talk to her- instead of actually listening to what she was saying.
In a bizarre way, knowing that Andie Wyatt was most receptive to suggestions at midday was useful for his current job. Toby supposed that was why he had that job instead of being her husband anymore.
Andie was very good at her current job. She had never been the kind of person to be blindly loyal just because of who he worked for, even if it was the leader of their party- but he'd admired her for that, still did. As they argued about getting Gilette on the blue ribbon commission, Toby was also reminded why he found that so frustrating. His ex wife never gave an inch, even when she knew better.
You're thinking in absolutes again. Stop using 'never' and listen to the woman! he admonished himself.
"You're drifting, did I piss you off that badly?" Andie asked around a mouthful of danish. There was a tiny bit of triumph in her eyes, since he'd told her not to touch it. "Come on, you knew I wouldn't say yes right off the bat. I never have, have I?"
Toby scratched the top of his head. Reading his thoughts in an argument was a talent of hers, unnerving as it was. "I used to take that as a challenge, but that was before I had a million things on my desk that I can't get to without your help with this thing," he said without bothering to temper the edge of anger in his voice.
"Did you eat? Maybe you should have something."
He started pacing, ostensibly to look for his rubber ball to throw at the wall instead of her head. "You don't have to mother me-"
Andie sucked in a breath and immediately started choking. Toby made for her, reaching out to slap her on the back if she needed him to, but she held up a hand of her own, the other at her throat. After a long sip of water, she waved him back down into the chair beside her.
"Stop hovering, I was just-" she stopped herself, her lovely features twisting into an uncharacteristic frown. "Stick your hands in your lap instead of on me, would you? Something just went down wrong."
"Sounds familiar," he quipped, but rested his hands on his lap, figuring if he did at least something she wanted, it might help.
"I was right! Oh, Toby. I'm glad," she said, her voice soft and fond.
Andie was looking at his hands.
Shit. The ring.
"That's not- There's no hidden message to this, okay?" he protested, fisting his left hand uncomfortably. The urge to hide it was overwhelming, but that wouldn't help, and it was a weak motivation anyway. "I just forgot."
"No no, I'm serious, that's good, it's a good step, really," Andie said, her tone thankfully morphing away from affection back towards her regular confidence. "In fact, it might explain how weird Sam was when I-"
"No one else has noticed," he mumbled, getting up. He needed to move around, shed some nervous energy. "Hasn't been long; this might be the first day I meant to put it on and habit took hold."
"I think it's a really good thing for you. Means you're growing into the job, maybe," Andie joked, referring back to his compliment about her position as a Representative.
He let his tone speak for itself. "Eat your danish."
"Okay, okay," she said, holding up her hands in surrender.
Toby half-sat on his desk and scrubbed his (right) hand over his face, keeping the left firmly grasping the edge. He allowed himself to glance down at it, noting that the indent from having worn the thing every day for years was starting to smooth out. Unbidden, his mind drifted to the dangerous fact that even if he wanted to replace it with a different ring, it would be a while. Given Andie's ability to suss out his thoughts, it was time to redirect toward their argument, or she might ask the one thing he probably wouldn't be able to lie to her about: was there someone new?
"All right, catch-up time is over," he said, snagging his ball out of a container on his desk. "We need you on this. If it comes from us, Gilette is just going to say no. You know it, I know it. Stop making me beat around the bush- what do you want?"
"Now, hang on a second-"
Her strident tone meant Andie had something to chastise him over, and she wasn't going to let up just because he'd given her something she'd wanted for a long time: a visual sign of letting her go.
Loving her hadn't been enough to stay together, despite how exciting it had been. A familiar feeling of helplessness crept up, and to combat it, Toby raised his voice. At least with her colleagues, he had a sense of how to get them to listen, but not Andie.
Never Andie.
88888888
"Shutting the door doesn't help with those two," Bonnie was saying to Ginger when Addy got back from lunch. She set her thermos and bag down at her desk and looked around to see what they were talking about. It didn't take long.
Inside Toby's office were two figures circling each other, their raised voices never getting through more than a fragment of a sentence before the other person interrupted. She'd never actually seen him that upset for so long. Usually whoever Toby Zeigler fought with gave in or gave up by now.
"Who's in there with him?" Addy asked, her curiosity overcoming workplace etiquette.
"Congresswoman Wyatt," Sam said quietly from his own doorway. "Ex-wife."
"Zeigler's ex? I didn't know he'd been married. Though, I mean, that part's not surprising," Addy blurted out.
"What, being divorced? Yeah, the only reason the rate isn't higher among actual politicians is that most stay together for optics and suffer. It's the staffers that drive the statistics."
"Right," she said, fighting her feelings of embarrassment. What she'd really meant is that the idea of Toby being married wasn't surprising; he had a way with words, and given how private and discerning he seemed to be about who was worth his time, she could understand a woman finding that very attractive. "Well, there's someone for everyone, right?"
"Several, sometimes," Sam shrugged. "I really like her, but they didn't suit. Too abrasive." A thump sound coming from Zeigler's office had both of them looking over, but it was red rubber ball related. "There, see? If he's not cramming it down her throat, then they're okay in there."
"I suppose there are worse habits to have," she sighed, walking back to sit at her desk.
Sam leaned out of his door to look at her. "If you like, I can try to find a better hiding place, this time."
"What?"
"It's the only way he'll organize his stuff in there," he said, grinning. "He'll get stuck on something he wants to figure out and goes looking for it, doubling up his time by going through his shelves and drawers. Works like a charm."
"He has to know that's what you're-"
The door to Toby's office opened, and the two occupants walked out, looking as unperturbed as two people could be after spending fifteen solid minutes yelling at each other. Addy allowed herself to swivel her chair to watch them go, noting the other woman's height and the rich red of her long hair. A dozen questions crowded into her mind, each more nosy than the last: what district did Congresswoman Wyatt represent? Had the pair known each other before the campaign? Did she represent the kind of woman he was attracted to in temperament, looks, or both?
Addy spun back around and stared blankly at her computer screen, shaken by the flood of personal questions that had popped up. Since when did she-
"You generally have to turn it on first," Sam whispered over from his doorway.
"I don't know how I ever got on without you," she whispered back sweetly, making a horrid face at him.
"Pay's probably worse than what Shallick would have offered, but most of us stay for the people," Sam said in a lofty voice. "Making history's just a perk."
88888888
The Bartlets were still fighting.
Not in a way that would clue the press in, maybe not even anyone else but the people that spent time working closely with them, but they were definitely engaged in a war, albeit a cold one. Toby couldn't shake the feeling that it was related to his own conundrum. The damned mystery was like a sea creature whose tentacles stretched into multiple water tanks. As long as he limited himself to looking at one at a time, he'd never see enough of the damned thing to figure out whether it was an octopus or a kraken.
He'd caught a break with Hoynes' insult, though it didn't feel like it at the time. The Vice President was an expert at dodging questions, and he had an exquisite sense of timing. For him to have shot back at Toby's (pertinent, penetrating, pressing) questions with a snide jab about what Toby himself didn't know? It was a hint, and a surprisingly sloppy one, at that.
Toby knew he couldn't keep spending sporadic moments thinking about this. It was time to figure it the fuck out, and not stop until he did. Every night. As long as it took.
He grabbed his rubber ball and started bouncing, doing the same in his mind with fact after fact, searching through them for connections.
88888888
Toby was in the process of crumpling up a page full of weakly connected events in disgust when there was a tap on his open office door.
"Do you have a place for this?" Addy was standing in the doorway with a steaming cup of coffee.
She was a welcome but dangerous sight. Toby was drained to his lowest ebb, and all but five percent of his willpower was tied up in the mystery he was unraveling. In a vain attempt to ward her off, he looked at his watch, then back at the cup. "It's five after ten at night!"
"You've been up past midnight for the last three nights in a row, but if you want to do it again unaided, I can always drink it myself," she said loftily. "You should trust me. This is delicious."
He scoffed. "Nothing that's worth drinking is still open at this hour of the-"
"It's home brewed," Addy interrupted cheerfully.
"Did you microwave it?" Toby couldn't help asking. The dirty look she shot him was probably well deserved, but then she turned her back on him to leave. "Wait, I take it back! Don't go." He hurriedly made a space on the desk next to where he was working. Watching her walk back in felt like a small victory, despite the suspicious look on her face.
Addy waited with her arms crossed as he picked up the cup and sniffed it. She couldn't know how the combative position accentuated her curves for him, and he couldn't tell her even if he wanted to. Toby took a sip and let out a sound of contented surprise.
"I wouldn't offer anyone microwaved coffee, you know," she frowned. "I just own an absurdly good thermos."
"Perhaps I judged you too harshly," he conceded after a longer sip. "My compliments to your thermos and you. This is very good." After greedily drinking half of the mug, Toby set it down and pinned her with a look. "All right, you've successfully bribed me, what do you want?"
"I want you to figure it out, the thing you're stuck on. "Don't worry, I'm not asking what it is," she said earnestly. "I'm sure everything about your dilemma is far beyond my pay grade. It's just that, you're you, so it's definitely important, and if you're up so late with it-"
"How do you know that?"
Addy offered him a tiny smile with her shrug. "Shared file. You added some changes to the thing I wrote yesterday. Timestamp says 1:15 AM."
"Fair enough," he allowed.
"Anyway, I call that my brain blend. If you like it, can I bring some for tomorrow night? Shit, that sounds- Uh, well, good night, then!" Her words sped up at a commensurate rate with how awkward they sounded, ending with her rushing out of his office like something was chasing her. Toby was left with an excellent cup of coffee and a pleasing warmth in his chest that made him feel tipsy.
Addy Blair had noticed he was puzzling something out. She'd brewed coffee at her home sometime before seven that morning and then ensured it stayed warm so she could give it to him more than twelve hours later. It was the kind of thing a long-term partner would do for a special occasion- not even! Hell, if they knew President Bartlet or his wife had done something like this for each other it would ease a lot of worries about optics for the coming election.
"Don't read anything into it," Toby whispered to himself before taking a long, glorious sip from Addy's 'brain blend.'
As if taking its cue from his ex-wife's penchant for rejecting good advice, Toby ignored his own.
88888888
Addy wasn't much of a morning person, but working at the White House had a way of overcoming minor things like hating the winter air on the way to work. Add to that the self-appointed task of making coffee for her troubled boss, and she found that mornings weren't even the worst part of the day anymore.
Anymore, the worst part for Addy was trying to get to sleep, and she couldn't help but wonder if she and Toby Zeigler had vaguely similar problems. Thanks to the importance of her duties, she was able to ignore her curiosity about his dilemma, but late at night, after she delivered his brain blend, all that was left was to wonder what could be so baffling as to stump someone of his caliber? She'd drift off thinking about it and wake up to do the only thing that could help: get to work on time, do everything to the best of her ability, and give the man some really good coffee.
Tonight he was on his computer instead of hand writing. Addy knew she should just walk away and let him finish his thought, but she felt a pang at the idea of missing his look of happy gratitude- and she did already have the coffee cup ready.
The solution came to her in a flash of brilliance, and Addy toed off her shoes so they wouldn't make as much noise. Then she snuck into the room and set the coffee cup down with exaggerated slowness before heading for the door again.
Toby's amused voice stopped her dead in her tracks. "Did you seriously think taking your shoes off would be less distracting?"
"You were in the zone!" she said, eyeing her shoes in the doorway before turning around. "They make noise."
"I promise you, having a beautiful woman sneaking around in my office is more distracting than hearing her shoes," he said, chuckling into the coffee cup as he took a long, contented sip.
Her heart flared in her chest and she stared at him.
"What? I'm your boss, not dead. Unless you're offended, in which case you'll go to Leo and then yeah, I'll probably end up dead. He likes your work, I think I'm safe to say that without risking losing you as an employee now," Toby said, clearing his throat against the nervous gravel that appeared in his tone.
"Thank you. For both of those compliments, in the spirit they were given," Addy said quietly. "It's the least I can do to help. Bringing coffee, I mean," she added, a flush rising up her cheeks.
He seemed to sense the embarrassed barriers she was throwing up and looked down at the desk to rearrange some things. "Good. The coffee helps, but it would probably be easier on you if you just gave me the name of the thermos brand and where you get the beans from?"
"I doubt it. My best friend works for a boutique distributor. She sends it to me at cost, but I have to promise not to- I doubt it," Addy repeated. Over-explaining was a quirk she struggled with in social situations, and having it happen now was confusing. "I should quit while I'm ahead," she added, wincing. "Good night."
She was busy slipping on her shoes when Toby got up and walked over to her.
"Come to think of it, you can help with something, if you don't mind. About Leo." He was speaking in a quiet voice, possibly to avoid being overheard.
"Okay?" Addy said warily.
He scratched the top of his head, seeming to search for the right phrasing. "His demeanor seemed- I assume you've watched a lot of interview footage of him, is that fair?"
She looked down. "Yeah."
"I work with him more closely than you have, but this- this wasn't like he is with senior staff. During our conversation he… it wasn't evasive, but it was…" He started pacing, and Addy stepped back inside his office, pushing the door shut.
Door closed for Leo discussion! her helpful brain supplied.
"I asked him questions, things he should be curious about. Things that if he wasn't curious, he should have gotten annoyed with the line of questioning and sent me on my way," Toby said, stopping in the center of the room and looking contemplative.
"But he didn't?" she prompted.
"No. He was patient. Helpful, even."
She thought about it. "Evasive?"
"No."
"Paternal?"
He snapped his fingers. "Yes. Indulgent would be another term for it."
"He's like that on the morning shows when there's a deal coming he knows the details of," she said, thinking aloud. "Or when there's bad polling information but he doesn't want to discourage voters by looking worried. He gets this…" she paused, searching for the right word, just as Toby had.
"He knows something. Hoynes knows something too. Damn it!"
"Fatalistic. That's the word I was looking for," Addy said. "Leo gets grandfatherly when he can't change whatever it is. Just wants to move past the issue and get back to work. If you keep at him and he continues doing it, you can be sure he knows something he doesn't want to tell you." Toby was staring at her now, and she bit her lip, worried she was overstepping. "Not that I would know any better than you would, but I've been watching his interviews for years, longer than Bartlet's been in the White House-"
"Don't fret, this was helpful. Thank you," he said, looking over his shoulder at his desk.
"I'll scram, you apply this to your hypotheses, and I'll see you tomorrow," Addy said. She slipped out the door and closed it behind her without waiting to see what his response was, if any. She could recognize his 'hide mode' face when she saw it, especially when it was cross-bred with his 'thinking' one. She had some thinking of her own to do, anyway.
He thought of her as beautiful, and she'd helped him in multiple ways. That felt like more than just a professional achievement, and the resulting high lasted most of the journey home. Her thoughts were in such a jumble when she got there that Addy fumbled with her keys for a full minute before she found the right one.
The only thing that brought her down was remembering that she'd once again had a personal conversation about Leo McGarry with the door closed, but even that had felt different. Her heart hadn't beat with shameful anticipation, at least, not about Leo.
Addy paused her teeth-brushing and frowned at her reflection. The errant thought fled, leaving her strangely nervous in its wake. She reminded herself that it was only natural to feel disconcerted about a personal compliment at work, especially from someone she thought the world of.