Note: Happy Thanksgiving!

Or Control the Narrative

Having a secret was simultaneously thrilling and awful.

Addy abandoned her plan to leave a Grace Note on Air Force One out of necessity and logic. It would be too easy to narrow down the possible culprit, given the select number who'd gone on the trip. That it was easier to realize that now than it had been before The Kiss was sobering, as though she'd somehow unlocked a greater understanding of consequences now that she'd done something 'wrong.' If only she'd managed to get some sleep, along with those realizations…

"Hotel room's not as comfy as a guest room at the farm, I'm guessing?" Donna nudged her as the plane took off.

"Donna!" Addy hissed. She looked around to see if any of their neighbors seemed to have overheard.

"What?" Her friend was unrepentant. "If you didn't do anything wrong, hiding things makes it look like you think you did. I practically live my life by that mantra, let me tell you."

She guessed that Donna was alluding to her own as-yet-unvocalized attraction to Josh, and the parallels there were a little much for Addy's sleep-deprived mind. "Well, on that note, the best way to look like I didn't do anything wrong is to sleep the sleep of the morally unperturbed."

"That tracks," Donna said, adding thoughtfully, "Unless you're the kind of person who talks in their sleep…"

The thought of what she might reveal by accident kept Addy awake for the whole flight, eyes closed, body locked in one seemingly relaxed position. There wasn't a way to know if she talked in her sleep; she always slept alone.

88888888

Toby and Addy avoided each other that first day back, mostly out of circumstance, at least on his side. She spent a good portion of the afternoon on CJ's side of the West Wing, and he spent his time channeling his anxious energy into some of the best writing he'd managed since finding out about the MS. Given that the worst (as in, the legislative recriminations, now that they were through some of the personal and public ones) was yet to come in that regard, he was grateful there was something nebulous but positive to look forward to in regards to Addy.

Despite himself, Toby found himself examining his surroundings and their accompanying lack of privacy in a new light. There was nowhere in the White House to conduct a clandestine affair, not as the Communications Director. He forced himself not to look up where she lived, resolving to work the question into an innocuous conversation, but they were going to have to use their combined powers of creativity to their best effect.

It was another puzzle, and he liked those. It would be something to look forward to among the subpoenas, Presidential recriminations, and unexpected snags they had in store.

"Toby, did you see this?" Sam looked entirely too awake and animated for 7:15 AM as he breezed through the door, then leaned back to call out, "Addy?"

"I don't think she's here yet, what should I have seen?" Toby asked, realizing too late that he ought to have reversed the order of importance of the two statements.

"Article by Danny Concannon about how the White House started to prepare for the MS allegations as early as January."

"What? Who the hell gave him that idea?" Toby stood up and reached for the paper Sam was carrying, but the younger man held it to his chest.

Sam read from the paper he wouldn't hand over. "-of Communications spread out the workload among new and established speechwriters in a clear attempt to prepare for the gathering storm. The text of the speech, billed to be given by Chief of Staff McGarry, had already been distributed and finalized, only to be tuned with a careful hand for the President to deliver, instead. Blair is hardly a newcomer to speechwriting, but-"

Toby snatched the paper away, panic rising in his throat. "This is utter-"

"Yes it is! Do you remember me saying it was strange that Danny stopped hounding us about who wrote that speech?" CJ said from the doorway. "What are you going to do?"

"Nothing!" Toby burst out. "I can't say anything. He knew it wasn't me or Sam, and he suspected it was Addy, but to pair it with this… conspiracy theory, I, I… I-"

"It feels a little vindictive, if I'm honest," Sam said, leaning on the doorframe. "Did he reach out to you at all about this?"

"No," CJ said. Her brows were furrowed, and she was looking up at the ceiling as though trying to recall something. "Can I see that? I threw my copy at the wall in my office."

Sam's response was to pull the newspaper free of Toby's incredulous grip to hand it over.

"Oh, you'll give it to CJ," Toby groused, but the two of them ignored him.

"Solo byline," CJ noted. "Hmm."

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking, Samuel, that Danny's covering for someone else, someone who thinks they know something. I think this is a test balloon." CJ thrust the paper onto Sam's chest and started for the door.

"Trial balloon," Toby called after her, earning himself a death glare from CJ as she stalked away. "This would be a non-story without the speculation," he said, mostly to himself. "You think this is Danny trying to tease out the timeline?"

"I hope not. There's enough resentment in the open, we don't need to go digging up the rest of it." Sam leaned out into the bullpen for a few seconds. "Want me to send Addy over when she gets here?"

"Thanks," Toby said.

As it turned out, he had to spend almost all morning on the Hill putting out fires as a gesture of goodwill to the Minority Leader. Toby got back to his office to find lunch waiting for him on his desk. There were two to-go containers with sticky notes on top in block lettering.

One said, This was your last order. The other said, This was a guess.

The first was a salad, the second was his favorite sandwich, the one he stopped ordering because he was going to gain too much weight to fit into his favorite pants. That was a push-pull argument he had with himself way too many times, and included deliberately forgetting that he knew where to get a larger size. Underneath the sandwich's wax paper was a third note. I respect the way you do things you dislike because they benefit others.

He snatched the note out of the styrofoam container to keep it from getting greasy. It hadn't been hard to figure out that his culinary benefactor was Addy, but he hadn't expected this! It was almost a Grace Note, but it was personalized to him, rather than an annoying caricature of what encouragement looked like. He felt understood, and it made his heart grow like some kind of political grinch.

Toby flicked his eyes up to the doorway and, seeing no one there, folded the note into a tight square and placed it inside his wallet.

88888888

Addy was having a surreal day, and it was only lunchtime.

In her experience, people generally didn't care much about who wrote what, and if they did, they might make a comment or two on the day the speech was given. If anything was brought up months later, it would be in context for work, asking for something similar to a phrasing done before, or highlighting the way the text set up some initiative that they're now putting into action. So it was distinctly strange to have multiple people remark on her clandestine speech thanks to the column written about it.

What was driving her crazy was the associated conjecture that she was brought in to prep for the Multiple Sclerosis revelation! Annoyingly, her career trajectory did have a certain unusual speed to it, and Addy did see a certain logic to Danny's assertions, wrong though they were. The article got some things right, but not for the right reasons. Toby was the reason things had gone as smoothly as they had, but not because of machinations behind the scenes. It had been because he'd forced the issue.

"I lost you again," CJ said. Addy had spent most of the morning in her office strategizing when they could, and working when they couldn't talk.

"Crap, I'm sorry. I'm just- this is nuts! How do you deal with this?"

"One of the best ways is to know you didn't do anything wrong," CJ said simply. "When you screw up, it's much harder. I'm sorry to say that being in the news now probably means they'll add your name to the subpoena list. You'll want to think about the things you don't want anyone on the planet to know, and whether that matters, because these people will sense deception like sharks sense blood." Carol stepped in to hand over a note, offering a thin smile of encouragement to Addy. "Speaking of sensing blood, the President requests your presence in an hour."

88888888

Toby was in Leo's office talking about the progress (or lack thereof) he'd managed on the Hill when the President 'wandered' in.

"Oh, Toby! Hey, I got a few minutes," Bartlet said, pointing at the Oval Office over his shoulder with a thumb. "Can I steal him?" he asked Leo.

"Certainly, sir," Leo said.

"Perfect." Bartlet led Toby into the Oval, where he immediately saw that there was a chess set laid out on a small table that must have been brought out for that particular purpose. The President headed right over, settling onto the couch on the side that left Toby with the black pieces. "We won't have time for a whole game, but- shall we?" he said, gesturing.

"Of course," Toby said, concealing a wince. He was not at his best mental form, and Bartlet was known to hold fairly high expectations for his opponents.

"You should know that I've taken it upon myself to engineer a shuffle in Ms. Blair's command structure," Bartlet said as they made their first moves. "I wanted to do it myself, but then I realized that it might make someone take notice, you see. So I'm already in a position to second-guess myself."

It was a set-up, and Toby had earned it fair square.

"That's not a very comfortable position," Toby observed. The move he'd just made was part of a complicated strategy, one he usually didn't manage to stick with as well as he ought to, but they wouldn't make it through the whole game anyway.

The President's expression was sour. "Yeah, that's going around." He rested his fingers on the piece he'd just moved, clearly trying to decide if he wanted to change to a different move. "I've been thinking about what Leo would say if I told him about my current dilemma."

"He'd tell you to accept her resignation," Toby said quietly.

"Yeah." Bartlet lifted his hand off of the piece. "Problem is, if either of you resign, Danny Concannon's fishing expedition will look like they hooked us."

"True," Toby said, executing the next move in the sequence.

"My hands are tied, I'm saying," Bartlet said, making a move that lost him a piece to Toby's gambit.

"True."

"I'm always not very nice when I'm losing, I can admit that."

Bartlet made his next move. Toby sat back and smiled rather than continue the pattern of responding with 'true,' even though they both knew it would be applicable. They weren't using a game clock, but if they had been, he was running out of time to move a piece. Toby's next action was a tricky one, a move that looked like a concession, but was aggressive if understood properly by his opponent. Would the game last long enough for that to become clear, or would Bartlet know what he was doing right away?

He leaned forward and made the move.

"I'm going to ask you something that I won't ask her, and you'll just have to live with the sexism. Are you in love with her?" Bartlet asked. He wasn't really looking at the board anymore.

"Yes."

The President clearly thought he was playing both a physical and a mental game, right now, but he'd ostensibly asked that question two days ago when he asked if it was 'serious' between them.

Toby's answer hadn't changed. All that had really changed was how it felt to admit the truth out loud.

"So now that you've been faced with a tough choice, a moral choice, and you picked the less than honorable option, will you finally get off your-" Bartlet broke off, watching as Toby moved his Rook into a vulnerable position. After a long moment of staring him down, during which Toby saw a host of future options including resigning in disgrace, staying on a full second term, and everything in between, the President said, "You can be a real bastard."

"True," Toby said.

A knock at the door yielded Charlie, and the two men shared a look. Bartlet heaved a sigh and stood up.

"I'm gonna have someone take a picture of the board, so we can finish it up another time," he said, crossing over to his desk. Toby followed, confused. Seconds later, Charlie escorted Addy in.

88888888

A few minutes earlier…

Addy had been a bundle of nerves since she'd been told about the President wanting to see her. She'd been preparing herself for him to see the light about his decision not to let her resign, but Danny's article had undoubtedly shifted that calculation. That made the substance of the upcoming meeting a complete mystery.

Objectively, she'd struggle less to find a new job now, thanks to that article, and there was at least one silver lining- a possible public relationship with Toby. His compliments had been humbling and exhilarating and a million other adjectives that completely took away her ability to think clearly. Not only had his ardor convinced her of his attraction, but he'd complimented so many things that she liked about herself! Addy had already loved spending time with Toby, learning from him, getting the chance to surprise him, challenging him to do what he thought was right, and now? Now she felt like she'd won a clandestine jackpot, albeit one that would cause a scandal if anyone were to find out why she was so happy.

No matter what happened in the next few minutes, she wasn't ashamed of her feelings, and there was a glorious freedom to that.

Charlie's watch alarm went off, and he stood up and offered her a shy smile. "It was a good speech. He liked it," he told her as he got up and went over to knock lightly on the door to the Oval.

"Thank you, that helps," she said, meaning it.

Charlie didn't respond, as he had preceded her into the Presidential office. Addy followed him, her posture adjusting to fit the importance of the room. Toby was there already, standing in front of the Resolute desk, looking down at the floor.

"It seems congratulations are in order, Ms. Blair," the President said without getting up. "The spotlight that's been thrown has tossed a wrench along with it. I assume CJ has gone over the management change with you already?"

"Yes sir," Addy said, walking over to stand beside Toby without looking over at him.

"Good. I said to give me time to think, and I have. I think you're both crazy." Bartlet rubbed his temple with one hand. "I should let you resign, but-" He dropped his hand and sighed, looking exasperated. "I have the power to pardon people convicted by a jury of their peers. What I don't have is the power to stop people from making assumptions about my Presidency if I let you go." He looked at both of them in turn, expression as severe as she'd ever seen it. "I've decided to grant you both an exemption to the rules of conduct. Don't squander it."

She couldn't have heard him right.

Addy looked over at Toby, who was standing with his mouth half open. "Sir-"

"Don't you dare argue with me, Zeigler. Take the gift I am giving you and on your way out, send Charlie back in, will you?"

"Uh, okay. I mean, yes, sir. Thank you, sir," Toby said, stuttering over his words, his eyes a little wide. Bartlet looked almost gleeful at the idea of making his wordsmith speechless, and Addy bit her lip, elated and confused.

Was that something the President could even do?

Toby finally reanimated. He reached out a hand, and Addy took it instinctively, realizing only after she'd done so that he'd probably been trying to guide her out of the room with a hand at her back, instead. To his credit, Toby's stride paused, but he didn't stop, and when she tried to pull her hand free, he tightened his grip, only letting go when they reached the door.

"Miss Blair, do you play chess?" Bartlet asked, right after Toby had opened the door to leave.

She turned around. "No, sir. I'm afraid I had a bully in high school who played and I took my disgust out on the entire game."

"I could teach you," Toby said. "If you're interested."

"I- okay," she said, flustered. Before she had a chance to really ponder the last ten minutes, he was speaking quietly to Charlie, and, conscious of appearances, Addy went ahead to her desk, pleased but shaken. The bullpen area was unexpectedly empty of the usual suspects; Sam and Toby were both out, Bonnie's desk had a note that she was at lunch, and Ginger had a dentist appointment. Without the others there, there were fewer people milling through.

Addy took the opportunity to leave the next Grace Note.

"I beg you, take courage. The brave soul can mend even disaster." -Catherine the Great

88888888

The next few days were full of the kind of maneuvering that made Toby actually enjoy his job (sometimes). The Special Counsel had issued a subpoena for him, as he'd expected, but he'd also issued one to Addy. It made sense after the article, but Clement Rollins was a straight shooter, not the kind of person to believe in vague conspiracy-esque allegations in a single piece, even if it was written by Concannon. That development along with the way their opponents seemed antsy by the measured, fair process that Rollins had set up told Toby that CJ was right. They needed an adversary, someone to be cutthroat and unfair.

The stuff with Campos and his possible defection to Buckland was more worrisome, but Toby had some tricks up his sleeve. He was polishing up some careful language for Sam to use in his meeting with Campos as a treat to himself when there was a knock on his open door. It was Addy.

"Approval numbers," Addy told him, holding up an envelope. "She said, and I quote, 'Rollins made a snide comment about the things we don't have paper records of, so if he wants more paperwork, I'm happy to oblige.'" As she walked in, she seemed to be noting the sightlines from the door to the chair in front of his desk, because she didn't stand or sit there. Instead, she settled herself onto the chair adjacent to his couch.

"The guy keeps a diary with the kind of detail that would make a biographer cry, or so I've heard," Toby said. "Did she want a response?" He didn't necessarily want her to leave, but he suspected she wouldn't lurk without a reason.

"She wanted you to dig up something to send back with me, in the interests of giving the Special Counsel what he wants. Great campaign there, by the way. I'd say the House announces by the end of the week."

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. "Randall Thomas is smart enough to get elected in a tough district, but not smart enough to realize he's being played like a fiddle."

"That's how he got elected," she observed, crossing her legs. Toby glanced up at the door and saw that both Ginger and Bonnie were on the phone and less likely to overhear anything said quietly in his office.

"In the interests of the propriety you're clearly trying to set here, I should probably tell you that when you sit like that, I can see your garters."

Addy's face flushed red almost instantly, and she stood up so quickly her ankle turned. "Shit!" she gasped, hobbling over to the chair in front of his desk. He stood, meaning to come over to help her, but she waved him off. "When were you going to tell me?"

"When could I tell you?" he asked once he was seated again. "I filed it away in the 'how to be a coworker' folder. It's only when those files get cross-threaded that it's a problem."

"The least you could do is stop being smart as hell all the time, it's very distracting," Addy muttered under her breath.

"You first," Toby shot back, resisting the need to loosen his tie. The heightened banter was stimulating, but if the two of them didn't figure out a way to relieve their tension in other ways, it was going to get them caught. "You rest it a second, I'll find something to send back over to CJ." He pulled over a folder and sorted through it, noting that Addy's expression had shifted to a look of concern. "Still hurts?"

"Hmm? No, I'm just-" She lowered her voice. "Is the President's judgment compromised? Not just with this," Addy said, gesturing lightly between the two of them. "But, I mean… everyone who works here is smart. We can figure out a way to shift me to a friendly senator's office or something. He gave in too easily."

That gave Toby an idea, but it definitely wasn't the sort of thing he'd want to write down for CJ. He stood up. "Any kind of strategy we pull will get teased out by the committee. We don't need to be giving them any more ammunition right now." He closed the folder, picked it up, and walked around the desk. He didn't need it, but he was in a hurry, and didn't want to lose his train of thought by explaining himself. "I'll head over there with this myself, I need to ask her something."

"Not like I don't have plenty to do after spending the morning over there," Addy said agreeably as they walked out of his office. "At least the press doesn't have my direct number!"

As soon as she said that, her phone rang, and they gave each other a look.

CJ liked his idea about name-dropping some opponent Senators as people who approved of Rollins' work as Special Counsel so far, which would goad the House even further along the path of announcing an investigation. The whole strategy made him feel better about the legal stonewalling he planned to do in his own testimony. If all went well, he'd learn more about their plans than they would about his. With dueling investigations run by two different organizations with two very different goals, the White House was about to get a lot of information about what their opponents and their sometime-allies thought about the President's handling of his MS. Information that would help a great deal with re-election.

As he sat waiting for CJ to finish with a phone call, all there was to do was listen to the television she had running in the background.

"-and you're right, Bob. The White House needs a PR win, here, but I gotta be honest with you, I don't know where they're going to find it."