XII

The ribald marks he'd been waiting to make had died on his tongue with the sounds of the altercation outside. He hadn't heard the actual words. The walls muffled the sound, and when they threatened not to, he could always pull the pillow over his head.

"Hey." Jed gave him an exhausted smile. He moved stiffly; Johnny didn't ask him why.

"Hey."

There was a loaded silence as Jed shuffled over to the second bed and eased himself down. He probably could have judged which part of him was hurting, if he hadn't made a lifetime's study of not noticing such things.

The conversation could resume, once both of them were safely staring at the ceiling. "So that was Abbey, huh?"

"Yeah."

"What's a girl like that doing with a guy like you?" Ordinarily he would have dressed it up in much more playfully cruel terms, but there were times and places where it made him physically sick to be harsh on his brother.

"I honestly don't know," he admitted, with a heavily heartfelt blend of bemusement and awe.

"But if you knew, you'd let me in on the secret, right?"

"If I knew, I'd do everything in my power to keep it happening. I can't live without her."

"Don't go talking like that." It was an innocent figure of speech, but such things could scare him at times like this. He was always scared about Jed, and had been for so long he wouldn't have known how to admit it. Sometimes it was bad, sometimes it was worse, and sometimes there was a fragile kind of peace. He never knew which it could be going from minute to minute, and he didn't know how to stop it.

He'd cried, the first night Jed had left home for college. That was a secret nobody would ever know. He'd cried, not because he was gone, but because he was... away. For the first time in forever. But of course, it was only a temporary freedom; the ties that bound Jed to his father for better or worse weren't severed by anything so simple as a few months at a distance.

Jed rolled over to look at him, wincing slightly at the motion. "I love her, Johnny," he said simply, smiling that same soft little smile he wore when he was talking about matters of God or all the other things he believed in with almost frightening intensity. "I didn't even know what that was about, but I do now. I've found her, and I'm never gonna be stupid enough to let her go."

The emotional level in the room was several shades more serious than he was comfortable with, and he sought to defuse it. "You're not gonna burst into song, are you? 'Cause really, I feel there should be advance warning if you're gonna sing."

He was rewarded with a brief snuffle of laughter. "God, no." Jed groaned. "I've been talking so much my throat's red raw."

"That's pretty hard to believe." Jed was nothing if not verbose. He couldn't keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it; certainly he never did when it was domestic peace or his immediate physical health on the line.

"She's so smart," Jed said dreamily. "I think she's way smarter than me," he added. "But I'm keeping that under my hat."

"I don't know about smart, but she's sure as hell prettier than you."

His brother fixed him with a sharp glare. "And she's my girlfriend, so don't even think about trying anything. She'd kick your ass anyway."

Johnny chuckled aloud, mostly at the entirely novel prospect of his brother playing the overprotective boyfriend card. "Ooh, look at you, all grown up at last," he teased. "You get yourself one girlfriend and you think you're king of the hill."

"One is all you need," he pointed out dryly.

"Yeah, but two would be even better."

Jed snorted and shook his head resignedly. "You're pathetic," he yawned, flopping back against his bed.

"Oh, says the boy who's been following his girlfriend around like she's some kind of goddess."

"That's 'cause she is," Jed shrugged. "Now shut up and go to sleep."

Abbey found herself somewhat inexplicably nervous about meeting the fabled Mrs. Landingham. It wasn't as if she was actual family or anything... but Abbey knew Jed wrote to her a lot, and he cited her opinion on things as if she was some kind of ultimate authority. Judging by the excerpts from her letters Jed would sometimes share, she was one sharp lady... and she never hesitated to give him a verbal smack round the head when he was doing something stupid. Abbey wanted to make very sure she didn't come across as one of those stupid ideas.

At least the promise of prim and proper female company had shaken Matt off her tail. He wasn't particularly interested in playing chaperone at the best of times, and it hadn't taken a great deal of coercion for him to convince Jed's brother to help him seek out booze, sports and girls. Huh. Boys were such simple creatures.

Jed, of course, wasn't like that. He didn't have the build or the inclination to play sports himself with any seriousness, although he was developing a distressing tendency to support Notre Dame in football. He didn't even drink alcohol now he was old enough to do it legally, and, well, girls had been pretty much out of the question in the years before the two of them had their head-on emotional collision.

Being introduced to people who knew you only as 'the girlfriend' was unnerving enough, quite without the added load of being 'the girl he left the priesthood for'. That kind of thing might give a girl warm fuzzy feelings, but it added an a extra dose of nerves to the prospect of meeting people who might or might not have approved that decision.

They walked along hand in hand, Jed alternating between nuzzling up to her and excitedly pointing out the facts and features of his little home corner of New Hampshire. It was a tad off-putting to notice he approached both activities with pretty much equal enthusiasm, but dammit, she was nothing if not a sucker for his geeky side.

"Jed!"

"Mrs. Landingham!" Jed twisted around, beaming, and tugged her along beside him by their linked hands. He towed her over to meet a pretty blonde woman in plain but very well turned-out clothes.

"And you must be Abigail." She had a very distinctive voice, and a kind of knowing sharpness to her gaze that reminded Abbey rather of her father.

"Yes. Hi," she smiled. "Jed's told me so much about you."

"I told her you were a crazy crotchety old woman who started stalking me when I was in high school and never left me alone," he said dryly.

"You're not safe to be left alone, you're a disaster of epic proportions just waiting to happen," she said briskly. She turned her gaze to Abbey. "I hope you realise what you've let yourself in for."

"I got a clue the first time he started reciting the rise and fall of the Roman empire in epic detail. I had to stop him drawing diagrams."

Jed gave her a faux-injured look. "It's very relevant to political strategy today," he told her haughtily.

"I'm sure it is, honey." That was just one of the many things they'd ended up discussing on that fateful rainy day when she'd offered him a ride home during the big storm. It was a sobering thought that if the weather had only been different, he might have forever remained to her just that rather cute guy who worked part time in the bookstore.

Jed tilted his head towards her and said to Mrs. Landingham "She humours me, you know."

"It's a dirty job, but I suppose somebody has to do it." She smiled at Abbey. "Just don't do it too often, his head has a distinct tendency to swell up."

"Hey!" he objected, with his best innocent look.

"Don't worry, I always trip him up when it gets him too off-balance," Abbey smiled. Mrs. Landingham gave an approving nod.

"I can see at least one of you's got your head screwed on right. Jed, manage to keep up this habit of finding people with common sense to give you a kick when you're going off the tracks, and there might actually be hope for you after all."

She guessed she'd been awarded the coveted Mrs. Landingham seal of approval.

As he'd always suspected they would, Abbey and Mrs. Landingham got on like a house on fire. Rather too well, actually - it didn't take them long to start conspiring against him.

"I'm still actually here, you know," he pointed out for the fourth or fifth time.

"He has a compulsion to be the centre of attention, had you noticed?"

"I had, actually. Can't sit still when other people are talking." Abbey smirked at him. "You can't even take him to church without him editing the sermon."

"It matters," Jed said plaintively. "When you speak, you have to... you have to use the pulpit. Words are powerful. People should use them properly."

Mrs. Landingham gave him that look she was always so good at, where he wasn't quite sure if she was being admiring or gently mocking, and had more than a slight suspicion they were one and the same. "And you're the one to show them how, hmm?"

He slipped his hands in his pockets and smiled. "Yes, ma'am."

Mrs. Landingham nodded at Abbey. "That's one of the signs."

"Oh, I know that one," she agreed cheerfully.

Jed tugged his hands out of his pockets and folded them across his chest, pouting slightly. Having his true love and his oldest friend and confidante comparing notes on Bartlet 101 was not the most ego-building experience ever. He was sure he wasn't really as transparent as they seemed to think he was.

Abbey giggled at his expression, and leaned in to give him a gentle kiss. "Aw, poor baby." He beamed back. It was impossible not to.

Jed caught Mrs. Landingham's eye, and saw she was smiling fondly. He wondered if she'd known all along that he'd been desperately in need of somebody like Abbey. Probably. She always seemed to know what he was a thinking a few steps ahead of him even beginning to think it.

They were enjoying making fun of him, but he would have been happy for the morning to last forever. As he sat in the sun, the warm weight of Abbey's head against his shoulder and smart, snappy conversation eddying around him, the bruises on his chest and the cold home waiting for his return seemed far away and unimportant.