IX

"Hey. Beer?"

"Oh, thanks." Sam twisted around to accept the proffered bottle as Steve crossed over to join him. He flopped down on the couch and frowned at the muted TV.

"What are you watching?"

"I have no idea," he had to admit. They watched a vaguely familiar actor shouting at a seedy-looking character across an interrogation table.

"I sense he's a hot-headed maverick cop who perpetually disobeys orders yet somehow always gets his man," Steve observed dryly. "And look, here comes the cold yet sexy female defence attorney." He looked sideways at his boyfriend. "Now, come, Samuel, tell me what grand thoughts could possibly be distracting you from this slice of quality late-night entertainment."

Sam smirked and leaned back with a yawn. "Oh, just the Swedish Ambassador."

"Pining for his company?"

He chuckled. "No, he's just causing yet another diplomatic incident. Unfortunately, this one might actually be our fault."

"What happened?"

He rubbed his head. "His gold watch disappeared at the party Tuesday night. It was a present from his wife, and she's flying in tomorrow night. He's getting ready to raise a stink about it."

"He thinks he was pickpocketed in the White House?" Steve laughed incredulously. Sam rolled his eyes.

"I don't know what he thinks. But if we don't get this watch back to him, it's about to be the media's turn to start speculating."

"Well, do you have any suspects?"

"Yeah, we think the Transportation Secretary did it," he said sarcastically. " We've had him on our list ever since we noticed how he always takes two or three of those little packets of sugar in the mess when he only needs one."

Steve nodded towards the TV. "If you were that guy, you'd just leap into the room and start slapping people until one of them gave you an answer."

"Yeah, that should go down well," he noted wryly. You couldn't move two steps at a White House function without tripping over fifteen different layers of protocol and diplomacy. How were you supposed to find a thief - if there even was one - in the middle of that?

His boyfriend was, apparently, still living some detective show fantasy. "What you need to do is retrace his footsteps. What did he do at the party?"

"Drink champagne, mostly." Sam frowned. "I didn't see who he was with most of the night, I was too busy watching the president." President Bartlet, despite not having taken in nearly as much alcohol as many of the guests of honour, had ended up alarmingly tipsy after a bad reaction with his cold medicine. They'd hustled him out of the room without anybody being the wiser, but it hadn't left much room for paying attention to anything else.

Especially after his boyfriend had decided to freak him out by pronouncing a swaying, bright-eyed, over-enthusiastically friendly president to be 'cute'.

"He was with that girl he was eyeing up most of the night," Steve recalled. Sam frowned.

"What girl?"

Steve shrugged. "I don't know who these people are. Blonde girl. In the green dress with the-" He made a vague gesture towards his shoulders.

"The-?" Sam echoed the gesture, eyebrows raised. Steve narrowed his eyes.

"Hey, I'm gay, I'm not a fashion designer. You tell me what those things are called."

"I don't even know what-" he made the gesture again- "are supposed to be."

"Well, a lot of good you are." Steve absently draped his arm over Sam's neck, and sipped his beer. "Planning on staying out here all night?"

He tipped his head towards the TV. "Hey, I want to see how this ends."

"Ten bucks says there's a big shoot-out in a warehouse, and the guy in the hat's dead before the next commercial break."

Sam grinned back. "Throw in a show of grudging support from the cold yet sexy defence attorney, and you're on."

They slouched down together to drink beer and watch bad late-night TV.

Abbey walked out to regard him with some exasperation. "Are you coming to bed, babe?"

"In a second." Jed leaned forward again to re-adjust the positioning of the kitten's water bowl.

"Jed, you already picked him up and put his nose in it, I'm sure he'll be able to find it."

He remained worried. "This is a big room. And he's only a little kitten. What if he gets lost? Or trapped? Or scared?" The White House was surely no place for a tiny kitten, still finding its feet. Even the more homely confines of the Residence were still spacious and intimidating.

"I'm sure he'll start howling quick enough if he gets in any trouble," Abbey dismissed. She crossed over to kiss him on the cheek, and gave him a long-suffering look. "I'll be in bed."

"Okay." He regarded his new pet with a concerned frown as she walked through into the bedroom. "You know," he told the cat, "you might be her kitten, but I can see you'd be in trouble pretty quick if I wasn't here to put you straight. So, let's go through this again. Your water bowl's here, and this is your food - but don't eat it all at once, you'll be sick. Your litter tray's over there, and I really do hope you're as housetrained as they claim you are, or housekeeping and I will be having words. And that won't be fun for any of us."

It was fairly hard to tell if these words of wisdom were having any effect. Reluctantly deciding he'd done all he could, he stood with an audible groan, and headed for the bedroom.

Behind him, the kitten made a very forlorn sound best described as 'mewp'. Jed turned around. It was looking at him.

He surrendered. "Oh, come on. Come with me." He carefully scooped up the tiny creature, and carried it with him into the bedroom.

After all, it had been Abbey's idea to get a cat. Now she was just going to have to live with the consequences.

He reentered his darkened office, and almost jumped out of his skin when he realised he wasn't alone in there.

"Jesus, Josh, do you have to-?"

"Sorry." His deputy waved a hand apologetically. "I figured you'd come back here, and-"

"Okay. Yeah." Leo picked up his briefcase and quickly checked through the paperwork on his desk.

"You spoke to him?" Josh asked softly.

"Yeah."

"And-?"

Leo met his eyes. "He didn't deny it." His deputy loosed an explosive sigh, throwing his hands up in disgust.

"Why-? Dammit, Leo, what the hell was he thinking?" he demanded.

"He wasn't thinking, Josh," he said quietly. He'd exorcised his own anger shouting at Hoynes, and now he was just tired. "He was going through a bad time, he screwed up... we can fix this."

His words sounded like so much wishful thinking, even to him, but Josh latched onto them. "We can fix this," he echoed.

"That's what we do," Leo agreed with a shrug, as he snapped his briefcase shut.

"Yeah." Josh tilted his head back, running tired hands through his hair. "We'll fix this," he repeated softly.

"I'm speaking with Hoynes again tomorrow. And we'll need to get McGann's side on this, find out exactly what Bridges knows and what he's been doing with it."

"Hoynes didn't know about the blackmail?"

"He had no idea. He broke it off six months ago, but Bridges has known since the technology bill."

Josh's brow wrinkled. "I'm surprised McGann let him hold anything over her this long. This comes out, Hoynes is the adulterer."

"Yeah, but she's the woman," Leo reminded him. "Whichever way they paint her, she's not gonna like it."

Selena McGann was a tough, independent woman, and incensed as she'd be if the media decided to portray her as the amoral vixen leading Hoynes astray, she'd like it even less if they made her into the poor, helpless, innocent seductee. Even now, there was still a 'boys will be boys' attitude in Washington and the national media when it came to bed-hopping antics. If Hoynes had been the single playboy and she the married woman, he'd probably have got out of it with barely a dent to his approval ratings, but this way around it wouldn't be pretty for either of them.

"We'll have to prep CJ," Josh warned.

"There shouldn't be anything moving on this yet... but yeah," he agreed with a sigh. "And I'll have to talk to the president." They both contemplated that prospect grimly. Jed Bartlet was a man who took his moral standards very seriously - and practised what he preached. "This is not gonna be good for his blood pressure."

Josh rubbed his head as they walked through the building together. "Maybe it's just as well the First Lady got him a cat," he mused. Leo stared at him in disbelief.

"The First Lady did what?"