XXI
"Hey, Donna." Sam smiled warmly at her as he approached. "Is Josh-?"
"He's in a meeting," she told him apologetically. He was still in there with Ashley Bowers; she hoped whatever her boss was saying was getting through to the young secretary. He seemed like a good kid. "Do you want me to-?"
"Oh, no. No. It's nothing." Sam leaned back against the wall beside her desk.
"Just looking for company?" she guessed.
"Yeah," he admitted with a slightly sheepish smile. "CJ's gone out to dinner with Danny, Toby's snuck out somewhere; I sent all the assistants home early. And now it's, you know, kind of creepy out there in communications."
Donna had to smile. "Why don't you go home?" she suggested. Sam just shrugged. She got the sense that he was preoccupied about something.
Well, she wasn't doing anything useful here. She stood up. "Want to go down to the mess and see if we can scavenge some food?"
"It's a plan."
The mess turned out to be almost empty of food, and wholly empty of other staffers. "Guess when the president takes an early night, everybody takes an early night," Sam observed as they took a table.
"Yeah." Donna examined the last available slice of cake and tried to decide whether, having bought it, she actually wanted to eat it. "What's up, Sam?"
"Nothing," he said innocently, a hair too quickly. She waited, knowing it wouldn't take long for him to break. Sure enough, it didn't. "It's-" He shrugged and shook his head at himself. "You'll laugh."
"Try me."
"My boyfriend thinks the president is cute," he blurted.
Donna burst into an uncontrollable flood of giggles. She covered her mouth with her hand, and looked up at him. "Sorry." She calmed herself down. Then got one look at the expression on his face, and immediately started giggling again.
"Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say," he said wryly, picking disconsolately at his sandwich.
Donna wrestled her laughter under control. Eventually. "Sam..." she sighed, shaking her head. "Are you seriously-?"
"No!" he sighed explosively, slumping back in his chair. "I just- I know- It's... I told you it was stupid."
Compassion gradually won out over the desire to mock mercilessly. "What's on your mind, Sam?" she asked him gently.
He remained tilted back in his chair, head bent at an angle that probably gave him an excellent view of the light fixtures. "It's just- it's ridiculous, I know it is, but it freaked me out."
"I don't think it's unreasonable, Sam," she pointed out, unable to totally banish amusement from her voice. 'Cute' was, well... not an entirely inaccurate term for Jed Bartlet in a bouncy mood, once you came to think of it, but it lacked a certain presidential dignity. "You didn't upset Steve, did you?" she asked, sobering up a little. That didn't sound much like Sam, though; irrational jealousy was much more Joshua Lyman's forte.
"No. He just mocked me."
Donna smiled. "Then, Sam, what's your problem?"
He sat up slowly, with a heavy sigh. "I don't know," he said, rubbing his face. "I mean, I didn't think it was that unreasonable at first... I mean, who wouldn't freak out if people started going around calling the leader of the free world 'cute'-?"
"It's not unreasonable," she agreed. And snickered.
Sam massaged his forehead, looking honestly troubled. "But then I just started thinking, well, maybe it's not reasonable, maybe it's me and I'm freaking out too much. Maybe I've still got a whole bunch of hangups I didn't even realise I had. I mean, I've got Steve - I love Steve - but what if there's some part of me that still- what if I have this thing deep down where I still feel like thinking other guys are attractive is something wrong, something to freak out about?"
"Oh, Sam." Donna smiled at him kindly, and leaned her head against his shoulder. "You worry too much, you know that? You're a good guy, and you worry too much."
He looked sideways at her. "You think?"
"I'm sure." She ruffled his hair.
"So," Danny smiled at her across the table. "You read my book?"
This was a rather different venue than either a dinner party with a few dozen other guests, or a completely private dinner late in the White House. She was too conscious of the other guests around her, too conscious of the fact that from the outside, this would look too much like a date.
Too conscious of the fact that it couldn't be allowed to do anything more than look that way, and even that was pushing it further than she ought to.
She nodded, in mid-swallow, and gestured with her fork. "Mmm. I did."
"Well?" He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
CJ almost teased him, but honestly won out. "You're a great novelist, Danny."
"Thank you." He had a way of smugly accepting compliments that ought to be obnoxious, but somehow retained an edge of charm.
"You should write more books."
"I will, when I'm not so busy."
There was a brief, slightly awkward silence as they thought all the things that went unsaid. Then both of them spoke up at once.
"Danny-"
"CJ-"
They smiled wryly at each other, and she nodded for him to continue. He took a deep breath.
"CJ, I'm a journalist. It's what I do. It's what I love," he said, but despite the conviction behind the words, his eyes were sad.
She looked down at her meal. "I know," she said softly. He was silent for a moment.
"I probably shouldn't have come back," he said quietly.
CJ met his eyes, and gave him a melancholy smile. "I'm glad you did."
He smiled back, but for a while, neither of them could find anything else to say.
Despite the fact that the president was no longer working, Charlie remained at his desk. He was ostensibly catching up on paperwork; Leo doubted he was doing much more than pushing it around the desk and glaring at it.
He considered stopping by, and decided that would get him nothing more than a brush-off. Well, he was the White House Chief of Staff; he might as well use protocol to his advantage. He returned to his office.
"Margaret? Send Charlie down here, will you?"
She frowned. "Charlie's still here?"
"Yeah."
"It can't wait until tomorrow?" He wondered whether it was his own fatigue level or Charlie's she was worried about. Probably both; nobody could ever accuse Margaret of not having enough anxiety to go around. He levelled a glare at her that they both knew he didn't mean.
"I'm paying you to argue with me now?"
"Okay." She scuttled off.
"And Margaret?" he called as she reached the door. She turned to look at him. "Go home."
She eyed him suspiciously. "Will you?"
"As soon as I've spoken to Charlie," he promised, glowering. This whole damn building was stuffed full of people who were entirely too concerned with their opinion of what other people needed.
Here came a prime example now right.
Charlie stood almost rigidly to attention, his obvious inner frustration lending a stiff air of formality to his usual politeness. "You wanted to see me?"
"Yeah, sit down," Leo ordered with a cursory nod.
"Is this about the president?" he guessed.
"No, it's about you." He leaned forward. "I have it on good authority you're in danger of doing something pretty stupid, so this is a friendly warning before you screw things up with Zoey, and by extension, the one guy in this building you most definitely don't want to piss off."
"Excuse me?" Charlie drew back in indignant disbelief.
"You're pissed off, and I don't blame you," Leo said with a shrug. "But shutting out everybody else in the world isn't gonna help anybody, so I suggest you kick that in the head right here right now."
The young aide narrowed his eyes, anger beginning to rise visibly to the surface. "With all due respect, Leo, I really don't see how it's any of your business."
"You work in this building? It's my business," he said bluntly. "The president's worried about it? It's my business. You're married to the president's daughter, it's my business."
"Apparently it's everyone's business," Charlie noted bitterly.
"Yes, it sucks," Leo agreed shortly. "And I'd love to fix it for you, but there are a load of crazy people out there who are pretty damn resistant to being fixed, and we can't make it illegal just to be crazy 'cause that's the price you pay for living in a democracy. And nobody's trying to tell you that it's fair, but it's reality, and you're not telling me you didn't know that when you married Zoey Bartlet."
Charlie looked furious. "They want to destroy all traces of an unborn baby because it has my blood in it, Leo, do you have any idea what that feels like?"
"No. Of course I don't." He looked him in the eye and spoke forcefully. "But I've been a husband, and I am a father, and I've been good enough and bad enough at both along the line to know the difference. And you can be as angry as you like 'cause it's not fair, but you don't get to play the martyr card. You signed up for the best and worst, and that didn't just mean hers. You married her and now you're gonna have a kid together, and you don't get to make the call on whether you think you're ruining her life or not. If you want to kick a trashcan, go kick trashcans, but you don't get to go around shutting out your own wife because you're too pissed at the world for screwing up your chance to be the perfect husband for her."
He paused for a beat. "And stay away from bottles of whiskey. They never help."
Charlie was silent for a moment, and then let out a long, slow breath. "I don't get drunk very easily anyway," he said quietly.
"Yeah, neither do I. That was a lot of the problem right there."
There was a long silence. Leo leaned back in his chair.
"Don't screw this up, Charlie," he said more softly. "I know you're mad. You've got every right to be mad. You've got every right to be spitting furious. But don't let it get in the way. Don't let them make you so bitter you destroy yourself, because that's worse than anything they could ever do to you." He looked the young man in the eye. " You've got the chance to do it right. I didn't do it right. And no matter how much Jenny and Mallory say they forgive me, I've paid for that, and I'm gonna be paying for that for the rest of my life."
Charlie looked down at the carpet, and said nothing.
"Talk to Zoey," Leo advised. "Shout. Kick things. Throw a few things, if it makes you feel better. Just don't take it all on your own shoulders, because all you're gonna do is end up hurting everybody that you're trying to protect."
He sighed quietly, and then slowly nodded. "Okay."
"Good man."
Charlie turned and headed for the door. He paused as he reached it, and looked back with a curious frown. "Leo... who told you I kicked a wastepaper basket?"
Relaxing, he allowed himself to smile. "Put it this way. We can handle the Kremlin. We can handle the Middle East. We can handle the world's most efficient espionage agencies. But if Margaret's network of informants ever goes over to foreign intelligence? We're in trouble."
Charlie managed a slight smile in return. It was a reassuring sight. "Yeah."
"Talk to Zoey."
"I will. Goodnight, Leo."
"Goodnight, Charlie."
The door fell quietly closed. Leo sat back in his chair, and thought about missed chances.
