XIII

It was a peaceful summer afternoon, of the sort the Bartlet household seldom saw. Abbey and Jed had returned at much the same time as their respective brothers had finished wandering the streets, and there had been some chatter, and then a brief impromptu softball game that had been hastily halted by Matt when it looked like Abbey was going to humiliatingly defeat all comers. Now the four of them lounged in the long grass, drinking lemonade and not really working up the effort to do anything much. Abbey lay with her head on Jed's belly, tying intricate knots in a piece of grass, while a few feet away Matt and Johnny talked football.

"I missed this," Abbey sighed.

"Doing nothing?" Jed smiled.

"Yeah. It's just not the same, doing nothing on your own."

"I know. I feel so..." He shrugged, causing a grumble of protest from his resting girlfriend. "Sorry. I just feel like... I'm wasting this whole summer, waiting for it to end. I only want to get back out there and- I don't know I what I want to do. But I want to do it wherever you are."

"Mrs. Landingham told me how you've been helping out that poor woman who lost her son. That's really decent of you, Jed."

He sighed uncomfortably, unwilling to let himself off the hook when he wasn't sure of his motives - how much of his efforts were out of genuine altruism and compassion, and how much just desperation to find something, anything, to occupy his time and make the days pass faster? "Yeah, I don't know... I need to feel like I'm doing something, but I don't know what. I'd get a job, but my dad really hates the idea of me working stacking shelves or whatever. I think he thinks it makes it look like we need the money or something."

"Looking at you, nobody would think you need the money," Abbey smirked.

"Oh, you can talk, little miss 'daddy sent me to New Hampshire for three days'," Jed teased, rising up to tickle her enthusiastically. She squirmed away in protest, then settled back against him.

"It doesn't feel anywhere near long enough," she said solemnly. "Only today, tomorrow, and then we won't see each other again until after the summer. And even then I'll be starting my college courses, so it won't be like before."

"I know," he sighed. "This whole long distance thing is really rough, Abbey. I don't wanna be apart from you."

"I'll come see you every weekend," she promised.

"Yeah, but what am I supposed to do Wednesday night when I get a sudden urge to do this?" He rolled over sideways and planted a passionate kiss on her lips. Abbey smirked up at him.

"Well, I can think of a few suggestions, but my chaperone has big ears."

Jed chuckled and pulled her into his arms. "You're a wicked, wicked girl," he murmured close to her neck.

"That's why you love me," she said smugly.

"You bet." He kissed her again.

"So what are you gonna do with the rest of the summer?" she asked him. He shrugged.

"Sit around, stare at the wall..." She prodded him in the side, a shorthand demand for a proper answer. He frowned and considered a while. "I really don't know," he sighed. "I was actually thinking about volunteering down at Congressman Langdon's campaign. But my dad would go spare."

Abbey twisted round to give him a wry smile. "He's not much of a Democrat?"

Jed almost choked laughing at that one.

"Guess not."

"No. Well, actually, I don't know much at all about what his politics are, but he uses the words 'our kind of people' a lot. Whoever they are, I don't think I'm one of them."

"Well, good for you," Abbey smiled at him. "You like Langdon, though?"

Jed frowned. There were politicians he supported of course, and ones he didn't, but most of them left him feeling pretty... huh. There were the bad guys, and then there were... the okay guys. The 'not bad' guys. The 'well, when you consider the alternatives...' guys. But there never seemed to be anybody exciting out there, hardly anybody vibrant and dynamic like a real politician should be.

"Well, you know, I guess. He's better than Peterson. But there was all that business two years ago..."

Abbey gave him a look. "Okay, let's pretend I know nothing about the minutiae of New Hampshire politics."

He let out his breath in a lazy sigh, and lay back. "You're not missing much. I mean, Langdon's okay, but... he's not anything special."

"And you like your politicians to talk as good as your preachers, right?" Abbey presumed.

"And follow through on it," Jed added. "That's the important part."

She grinned at him. "You should run." He snorted, loudly, but she prodded him insistently. "You're a New Hampshire Bartlet - you'd clean up in this state."

"I think I'm a little young," he said dryly.

"I'd vote for you."

"Which would be nice, you know, if I was twenty years older and you were actually registered in this state." He shook his head to himself. "Nah, I'm not a politician. I'd hate... Those kind of decisions would kill me."

Abbey looked up at him and smiled softly. "That's why you'd be good at it."

He held her gaze a moment, and then chuckled and shook his head. "Dear God, I think this is the world's first recorded attempt at seduction via New Hampshire party politics."

She shrugged and grinned at him. "Well, you know. A girl has to tailor her approach to her man."

They laughed together, and snuggled closer in the sun.

Johnny decided he liked the Barringtons. Of course, the fact that he was mildly buzzed after matching beer for beer with Matt went a long way towards making him mellow towards everybody, but still. They were his kind of people. Which made it all the more disconcerting that they were also Jed's kind of people. Maybe they were more alike than they thought.

The afternoon wore on, and the combination of sun and alcohol made him pleasantly dozy. He didn't really give a thought to his father's return until the car was actually pulling up outside the house. He sat up abruptly.

Beside him, Matt also straightened. "Is that your dad?" he asked warily.

"Yeah." He was feeling a whole lot closer to sober right now. Oh, of course, his father wouldn't start anything with people around - but that didn't mean he wouldn't save it up for later. Quite the opposite, in fact.

He glanced across at Jed and Abbey, still giggling together in the grass. "Hey Jed, dad's here," he said. Just exactly as if this was a casual observation and not an urgent 'get your hands off your girlfriend and look respectable right now'.

Jed got the message, all the same. He sat up abruptly, trying with little success to flatten down his ruffled hair. "Stop it," Abbey ordered. She managed to get him looking semi-presentable with a quick but expert hand brushed through his hair and straightening of his collar, while Jed squirmed with embarrassment. Johnny saved that mental image up for later teasing, and got to his feet.

"Afternoon, dad," he greeted, with pasted on false cheer. It was an expression he'd perfected well.

"Jonathan," his father nodded shortly. He came to a halt on the pathway as he registered the presence of strangers in his front yard.

Jed smiled at him with an optimism that was surely woefully misplaced. "Dad, I'd like you to meet Abbey Barrington, and her brother Matthew."

Johnny didn't miss the subtle tightening of his father's jaw, but he'd never failed at playing the coolly polite card when they were in company. "Miss Barrington," he said, inclining his head in a minuscule nod. "My son has told me a great deal about you."

Abbey, bless her, turned on the megawatt charm with no regard for the tension polluting the atmosphere. "Mr. Bartlet! It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

His dad might automatically disapprove of anything and everything associated with his older son's choices in life, but even he couldn't find pretty girls smiling at him actively objectionable. He even unbent enough to accept her offered hand, though it was not John Bartlet's usual policy to shake hands with women.

Matt stepped up to stand beside his sister; without actually doing anything overtly to telegraph it, he exuded warning protective vibes. "Sir," he nodded bluntly. He made little attempt to coat it in more than perfunctory politeness, and Jonathan wanted to snarl at him for not realising that his father might affect not to notice it but he'd take it out on Jed. John Bartlet had been a headmaster too long not to recognise a 'Sir' that was delivered with contempt when he heard one.

He wondered what Jed had told Matt and Abbey about their father, if he'd told them anything. Or was the bad air between Jed and his father plainly visible from the outside? Johnny had always lived too close to the centre of it to know.

"You travel with your sister?" his father said, meeting Matt's eyes coolly. "Commendable. It's always good to meet a young man with a sense of responsibility."

It was almost an art form how his father managed to simultaneously radiate his disapproval of Matt and still take a sideways swipe at Jed.

"Well, you can't be too careful these days," Matt smiled insincerely. "There are some unsavoury sorts about."

"Indeed."

Matt definitely knew something. Abbey looked more puzzled, and uncomfortable at her brother's barely concealed rudeness. Johnny found it difficult to imagine that his brother would have let her know anything more than was painfully apparent from the strained atmosphere. The thing between Jed and his father just... was. It wasn't something to be spoken about.

And yet, in many ways, Jed sometimes seemed almost masochistically inclined to just try and ignore it. He smiled brightly, hopefully at his father. "Dad, is it okay if Matt and Abbey stay for dinner? I'd really like for you to get a chance to meet them."

Abbey quickly made polite noises of demurral, but John Bartlet was nothing if not a rigid slave to what he saw as 'proper' behaviour. He might be internally furious at Jed for extending the invitation, but he'd die before he was willing to publicly retract it. He inclined his head towards his oldest son.

"Of course."

Johnny knew right then it was going to be the evening from hell.