VI
"Hey, Toby." Sam wandered into his superior's office, and closed the door. Toby raised his eyes to him over the top of his laptop.
He sat down uninvited on the edge of the desk. "What's going on with Josh and Leo?"
Toby somehow conveyed a shrug without actually moving his shoulders. "I'm not inside of that loop."
"And you're not curious?" he demanded.
"In my experience, the loop generally widens to include us and everybody else in a ten mile radius, and then we wish it hadn't."
Sam narrowed his eyes. "You know, you've become very cranky of late, Toby," he chided.
His boss gave him a look. "And this surprises you how?"
He lightly dropped down from the tabletop. "I'm just saying."
"Well, don't. In fact, don't say anything. Depart my office area. Cease to bother me."
"Fine," he shrugged easily, and wandered back out into the bullpen. He approached Bonnie and Ginger. "What's up with Toby? He seems kinda moody."
Ginger blinked at him. "Something needs to be up with Toby for him to be moody?"
Sam shrugged as he sat down. "I don't know, he just seems- Do you know if something's up with him and Andy?" Toby was hardly the most forthcoming about his love life no matter where it happened to be going, but Sam was sure he'd detected something in the air in recent days. Toby's default position was terse and surly, but he was even further off in that direction than usual, and other than the mysterious problem that was occupying Leo and Josh, he couldn't think of anything work-related that could be behind it.
Bonnie frowned as she passed by with a sheaf of paperwork. "Andy seemed pretty upset when she was here the other day," she offered. "I think Nikki's worried about her, too."
"Who's Nikki?" Sam wondered, twisting around to follow her progress across the bullpen.
"Andy's assistant," she reminded him.
"Hmm." He nodded to himself. Yes, it seemed his suspicions had been right, although what use it was to him to know that was debatable. Playing relationship counsellor to Toby Ziegler was not a job to be taken on by the faint-hearted.
He was still trying to figure out whether or not he was faint-hearted when Carol arrived.
"Sam?" she smiled cautiously. "Any progress on the watch thing? CJ's going through the roof."
He grimaced. "Marsha Mantell says her cleaning crews haven't seen it, and for what it's worth, I believe them."
"I know Marsha," Bonnie volunteered.
"She's good people," chimed in Ginger.
"Yeah."
"You think it was stolen by one of the guests, then?" Carol asked him.
Sam sighed heavily. "It's certainly starting to look like it," he agreed with a groan. He stood up. "I guess I'd better go talk this over with CJ, figure out our next move."
Donna wandered through the bullpen, troubled. Once again, there was a scandal threatening to loom large over the administration... Once again, she knew about it earlier than a lot of other people - some of them higher up the chain of command than her.
It was an odd and rather isolated position she kept finding herself in. She was not one of the senior staff, not even senior among the assistants, but Josh relied on her so much more than the others did on their assistants that she had to know things earlier. And then that left her the only one at assistant level in the loop, which led to her being drafted into all sorts of operations...
She supposed it was a sign of favour and advancement, but it bothered her because she didn't feel like she'd earned it. She wasn't Donnatella Moss, assistant who was so useful she got cut in on all the major plans, she was Donnatella Moss, who got cut in on all the major plans because Josh was hopeless without her.
"Donna!" She turned as a smiling First Lady hurried towards her. Talking of being part of unlikely operations...
At least this one, she felt she had sufficient qualifications for.
"Ma'am! Did he-?"
"The delivery was a great success," she smirked. "The kitten is installed in the Oval Office. And, much as my husband may kvetch and complain about it, by this point you couldn't take the thing away from him at gunpoint."
She had to smile. "He likes the kitten?"
"Oh, he's hopeless, Donna, hopeless. Show him something small and fluffy with big eyes, and he'll immediately try to take it home and mother it. He's not safe to take past a zoo, I'll tell you that now. There's a reason we don't let him do photo-ops with animals."
Donna smirked. "I thought that was Leo's decision, after the penguin that-?"
"Yes, well, that too." The First Lady smiled. "He'd be dangerous if you let him loose with anything bigger than a cat, you know what a klutz he is. No, a kitten is about his limit." She grew more serious. "It'll be good for him, I think," she said softly. "His children are all grown and starting families of their own, and I can't be here as much as I want to... He needs something to make this place feel more like a home."
She was silent for a moment, and Donna glimpsed the rarely seen woman underneath the tough and elegant mask of the First Lady. Abigail Bartlet loved her husband very much... and she was worried sick about him.
Abbey raised her head, and offered the younger woman a fragile smile. "It'll be good for him," she said again. "There aren't enough things making him happy in his life right now... and he needs all the comfort he can get."
Donna could only smile and nod, the weight of what Josh had just told her sitting like a bitter-flavoured stone in her gut. There could well be another big political explosion coming the president's way - and none of them were sure right now he could stand to have a greater burden on his shoulders.
He made an effort to shake off the rest of his tiredness as he reentered the White House; the president would need him to be at the top of his efficiency. Charlie shrugged off his jacket at his desk, and walked into the Oval Office to make his boss aware of his return.
The sight he was greeted with gave him momentary pause.
"Sir?"
"Hello, Charlie." His father-in-law gave him an absent nod, the majority of his attention still focused on the small black and white kitten that was happily roaming along the top of the Kennedy desk, rubbing up against the corners of the photo frames. Charlie could already think of several ways that could end in disaster, and rather hoped it wouldn't turn out to be his responsibility to deal with them should they arise.
"I leave you alone for five minutes, Mr. President, I come back and you've got a kitten?" he said incredulously.
The president scowled. "It's Abbey's kitten, not mine. Nobody asked me if I wanted a damn-" The kitten butted his hand insistently, and instantly his tone shifted into utter delight. "Did you see that? Hey, fella... Hey, fella, come here. Do that again. I'm over here."
Well, Charlie reflected, shaking his head, at least the president seemed happier than he had in a while. However, it rather appeared his responsibilities had just expanded to include handling the president acting like a big kid... and, he had a sinking suspicion, cat-wrangling.
Some days, he wondered how the hell he'd ever ended up in this job.
"Mr. Vice President? Leo McGarry."
"Okay. Thank you, Janine." John put down the report he'd been reading through and straightened up.
Relations between him and the White House Chief of Staff, while always fractious, had certainly warmed over somewhat since the shocking revelation that Leo had slipped off the wagon for several months last year. He'd gained a new appreciation for the bond of loyalty between this man and his beloved president, and that in turn had made both of them more comprehensible in his dealings with them. He still found the kind of near hero- worship with which the Bartlet camp regarded their president somewhat difficult to stomach... but he was beginning to understand that perhaps somewhere in the centre, there was a kernel of reason behind it.
Of course, he'd always been forced to acknowledge that Jed Bartlet was a man worthy of admiration - and that, in a strange way, made playing second fiddle to him all the more galling. If he'd lost out to a truly unworthy opponent, there was refuge to be found in contempt and cynicism, but losing to a good man left him in the uncomfortable position of being second and wondering whether that was exactly where he'd deserved to come.
And losing to a good man who'd concealed an Achilles Heel that might have cost him that victory... That had taken him a long, long time to come to terms with. Even if the American people had shown their faith in him by electing Bartlet for a second term, John Hoynes would never entirely forget the election that had been won under false pretences... or the deal he'd signed up for that had fallen by the wayside.
It was hard, to know that you should have won, but the man who'd stolen your victory might be using it better than you could.
But that was water under the bridge, at least in the eyes of the Bartlet administration, and whatever reason Leo might be here had nothing to do with any of that. "Leo," he greeted with a bright smile as the shorter man walked in.
"Mr. Vice President," Leo nodded stiffly. Leo McGarry was a man who stood rigidly on the formalities of office. He'd known Jed Bartlet for decades, but John had never heard him call him anything but 'Mr. President' or 'sir'.
John walked around the desk to join him. "Janine said you and Josh have been trying to get hold of me," he noted. "What's up?"
Leo failed to relax out of his formal posture, and John could feel his attempts at good cheer draining away. There was a confrontation brewing.
"We've recently come into possession of some information that, frankly, we find pretty troubling. And-" He interrupted himself. "Mr. Vice President, I'm afraid I have to ask you an awkward question."
He could have laughed, but not with any humour in it.
Awkward questions? When had the Bartlet administration brought him anything but?
"Then perhaps you'd better go ahead and ask it," he said, voice noticeably cooler. Leo was a straight-talker, and John Hoynes had little patience for prevarication. Whatever the hell this was, they might as well get it out in the open.
Leo was silent for a long moment, looking at the floor - not with any aura of guilt or awkwardness, but as if he was gathering himself for whatever he was about to start. Finally, he raised his head, and looked the Vice President in the eye.
"John, I have to ask you... are you having an affair with Selena McGann?"
For a long moment, he stood frozen. And then he exploded.