As the holidays approached, Addy settled in at her new job. The work was as exciting as she'd hoped, even the boring parts, which were punctuated by the thrill of dodging the two senior staffers she studiously avoided. By two weeks in, Addy's talent for writing had been picked up on by the higher-ups, and she'd started to see a shift in focus for her assignments. That meant more press releases and editing, and more time in Ms. Cregg's office, which put her in Mr. Concannon's path more than she would have expected.
After a few weeks of joking comments, she'd had to conclude that he enjoyed teasing her. It was a familiar game for Addy. Her innate kindness was catnip for reporters, at least until they figured out that she was able to give as good as she got. Ziegler was easier to hide from, which she did by pretending not to exist, just like the rest of the men and women who worked at their warren of desks. Once or twice she'd looked up and caught him glancing her way, but without a compelling reason to call her out, he'd just nodded a greeting and moved on.
Based on the reactions of her fellow grunts, even that was unusual. The man probably did it because it was unusual, something to call her coworkers' attention to her and force her to explain it away as best she could. Had Joey known this would happen? Addy had no idea. The truth was, she'd found her interactions with the man fascinating and fun, and part of her really hoped to get more chances to learn from him.
By the first week of December, she saw what Ms. Cregg's assistant meant about being 'not that kind of White House.' Addy had been on congressional campaigns with more forbidding decorum. This group of people were professional, yes, but they all clearly loved their jobs, and so did she.
Nothing made that more clear than her lunch breaks. Addy was friendly with most of the familiar faces at the White House Mess, but after being drawn into multiple conversations with a vivacious blonde named Donna Moss, she started sitting with her.
It didn't take Moss long to pick up on Addy's quirk of avoiding first names, and it didn't take Addy long to pick up on Moss's overall quirkiness. This was reinforced the first time another person joined them at the lunch table.
"Margaret, over here!" Moss called out. The woman who approached was red haired and pretty, perhaps a little older than they were, and her choices of food were odd. She had two kinds of fruit, a tall stack of cheese, one dry roll, and orange juice, something Addy didn't think they even offered at lunchtime.
"Hey, Donna. Did you get a kumquat? I think I got the last one."
"I'm good," Moss said. "This is Addy Blair. Addy, this is Margaret." Margaret opened her mouth as if to complete her name, but Moss actually shushed her. "Addy's the one with the First Names Thing."
"Ahh," Margaret replied sagely.
All Addy could do was blink at the two of them. "Why does it sound like you capitalized that?"
"Oh, I totally did." Moss's tone was breezy. "I've decided to make a Thing out of it. You're going to break, and when you do, someone will make bank."
"Ooh, a pool? How much?" Margaret asked, pulling out her wallet.
Moss did indeed make a pool, much to Addy's amusement and consternation. For twenty dollars, interested parties could pick the staffer they thought Addy was most likely to slip up and call by their first name first, and once she did, the people who guessed right would get to split the money. The whole thing was somehow endearing, and one thing it did do was indirectly introduce everyone to her, which Addy found out when she started asking around to discover Margaret's last name.
Everyone was in on it. Lyman was in on it, which she discovered when Moss took her past her own desk one afternoon and Addy had taken the opportunity to ask around about Margaret. It was hard enough to ask without using her first name, but no matter who she queried, the person would eye the braid in her hair and shake their heads. All of them either outright admitted they were part of the pool, or stated that they didn't want to get on Donna Moss's bad side.
She would have pushed back more, but as the days advanced closer to Christmas, it became clear that Moss was stressing out, despite the lighter workload over the coming holiday. From their lunchtime conversations, Addy gleaned that Josh Lyman had been badly injured in the attempted assassination at Rosslyn. His stress was mounting, and as an empathetic assistant, Moss was increasingly upset about it. So, Addy played along with her 'Thing,' glad she could give her new friend something to distract herself with.
88888888
Something was up with Josh. However, Toby had no intention of asking the other man about it. Josh Lyman was a human stress ball, but unlike the hardened rubber one that Toby liked to bounce off of the wall, interacting with Josh ramped up a person's stress, instead of the other way around. All he could do was watch while Josh tossed himself at the wall, bouncing off in unpredictable and job-threatening directions.
At least worrying about Josh had helped distract Toby from his other interpersonal problem, his unexpected fascination with Addy Blair. It had become a habit to glance over as he passed the door where she worked and see whether she was there, to guess what she might be working on, and to see if she ever didn't come to work with that signature braid of hers.
He hadn't realized how much that fixation was integrated into his everyday behavior until CJ asked him if he was angry at her staff for some reason.
"About a hundred, I'm sure. Why?"
"Seems like every time you drop by you glower over at their desks like you're daring one of them to misbehave again," she teased.
His instinct was to make a comment about deterring new employees from going walkabout, but that was just another indication of Blair's influence on him. Toby frowned at CJ instead and started for his office, thinking back on the last few visits he'd made to the press room. To his dismay, he could remember looking for Blair multiple times this week, and it had been at least two since he'd spoken to her. Probably three, which was a shame, because he'd enjoyed the way her eyes had flashed with indignation when-
Toby stopped stock still in the hallway. He was interested in her.
He stretched out his left hand to steady himself against the wall, and the dull glint of the wedding ring he still wore caught his eye. The ubiquitous sound of Christmas music was enough to make it hard to think, but he had to clear his mind before he got back to his office. It was one thing to be chased by the ghost of Addy Blair as he walked the hallways, but his office was his sanctuary.
Since he was alone for the moment, Toby shouldered up against the wall and took a long, deep breath. He shoved his hands into his pockets, trying for the outward appearance of a man deep in thought. Then, with swift mental motions, he sorted through the folders of his recent days, pulling out the times he could admit he was thinking about her. He laid them out on the desk of his mind, inwardly wincing when he saw just how many there were.
He took stock: he knew what her hair always looked like (effortlessly neat and shiny, the characteristic inch-wide braid holding the hair on one side of her face back) and what color her eyes were (dark, dark brown, and in his memory, almost disproportionate to the rest of her features, expressive and lovely). He recognized her innate attractiveness as a person and compared that with his own reaction to her looks (she was conventionally attractive, yes, but Toby had to conclude in this inward musing that he was actively attracted to her. He recognized his unconscious body language, and even picturing her made him hunch his shoulders and dig his hands deeper into his pockets to hide the ways he was tempted to think about her).
Toby felt the prickling of a blush start rising on his neck and his eyes slammed open. By ignoring this, by thinking it was related to Leo somehow, he had allowed himself to progress further on the path of… of something than he ever would have, consciously. He sorely needed to reframe his mental picture of her as a staffer, as a cog in the machine, or things were going to get much worse- but how? He pinched the bridge of his nose.
"You all right?" a male voice asked.
It was Leo. Toby looked at him, noting the concern writ across his face. The longer he didn't respond, the higher McGarry's eyebrows lifted. It seemed that the question stemmed from more than mere politeness.
"Yeah," he forced himself to say.
"I gotta say, that's not convincing. Do me a favor, wouldja? Don't lose it. I've only got enough give a shit to hold Josh together, and even that's a struggle." Despite his choice of language, Toby knew that Leo was seriously worried about Josh. Both the President and his Chief of Staff saw Lyman as a surrogate son of sorts, a son who was struggling a lot lately. Leo's tone was full of artificial displeasure, taking his frustration out on Toby instead, and Toby recognized the coping mechanism, given how often he used it himself.
Knowing this, Toby couldn't help his smile. "I'm fine." He held up a hand next to his head and swirled his fingers around as if conjuring something magical. "Revelation."
"Good one?" Leo asked, jerking his head to indicate they should walk back in the direction Toby'd just come.
"Not sure yet." Toby responded before he realized what that could mean.
As they walked past the room Addy worked in, he looked over and saw her faced away from him at her desk, fingers absently tracing the clip holding her braid up. He felt a rush of adrenaline. Would she look over and see him, perhaps wonder why he was back in her part of the west wing so soon?
Shit , Toby thought to himself. Shit.
He remained distracted as Leo checked in with CJ and led him into his office.
Toby only tuned in when he heard Margaret earnestly telling Leo that he wasn't allowed to tell 'the new girl in CJ's office' what her last name is. Leo's reaction was predictably disbelieving, and Margaret explained that Donna was trying to win a pool she'd started up based on the fact that 'the new girl' won't use anyone's first names. There was no doubt in his mind that it was Blair.
"Margaret, are you serious with this?" Leo asked.
"Dead serious, sir," Margaret said in that deadpan voice of hers. "Donna's collected almost three hundred dollars by now."
"Isn't it cheating if she doesn't get to learn your last name?" Toby had to ask.
"Just out of curiosity, who are the leading contenders here? Besides you, I mean. Toby's right, that's cheating," Leo added before Margaret could respond.
"Donna, Danny, and CJ. One of the press guys even has the President listed, and Donna wouldn't even write it down with his first name. I think he just wanted to see if she'd do it," Margaret said, her eyes widening. "Neither of you are on there."
Leo's patience finally ran out. "Now, that's a shock. All right, get out, we've got serious things to discuss."
"If you want to participate, you'll need to give Donna twenty in cash before Christmas. Donna says if Addy makes it to Valentine's, we might all have to pony up another five."
"Out!" Leo pointed. Margaret scurried out, shutting the door gently behind her.
Toby bore Leo's glare for long enough to see that he did indeed have a twenty dollar bill in his wallet. If that granted him the permission to think about her a little longer before he cracked down on his little diversion, then so be it.
88888888
It was exciting to know Yo-Yo Ma was going to perform at the White House. Given how pleased Moss was about it, Addy hoped it would help cheer her friend up. Lyman had come to work with a cut on his hand after apparently exploding in anger at the President the day before. That was distracting enough, but because of Moss's position as his assistant, people came up to her expressing their well wishes and concern. When they started commending Margaret for the way her boss had stepped in to support Lyman, Addy found out something she'd somehow missed for over a month.
Margaret was Leo's assistant.
She didn't know how to feel about that. It was one thing to search out news articles and television spots about Leo, she had done that before she worked at the White House. After all, Addy was a political operative, and he worked in the top levels of their party. She'd always tried to keep from digging too deeply into the man's private life, of course, as evidenced by her ignorance about his divorce. Since starting her job at the White House, though, she'd worked hard to keep from seeing the man as anything more than a politician she supported. As such a junior staffer, she didn't really have any more access to Leo than she had in California, except for maybe seeing him walk past- but Margaret did. It was hard not to feel like she'd been deceptive with the other woman, even though she hadn't known how closely the two worked together.
That feeling didn't ease when Moss handed her a note from Ziegler. Toby Ziegler knew exactly how she felt about Leo, and that made any time spent around him fraught. Her impulsive confession to the man about her feelings for Leo had created a strange sort of secret bond that made her anxious. It wasn't that she thought he'd use the information against her, more that she didn't want it to color his opinion of her as a person.
Addy resisted the old temptation to pull down the hairpins from her braid and start chewing on the ends of it as she walked through the bullpen outside Ziegler's office and tapped quietly on his door.
"Come in!" he called out. She walked in, but didn't shut the door behind her. The other two times she'd been in there, the door was closed. The other two times she'd been in there, Ziegler had interrogated her about Leo. That wasn't going to happen today, she told herself. Today would be about something else.
"I need you to write something for me. For Leo, actually," Ziegler said without looking up from the papers on his desk.
Addy almost facepalmed. "Press release from his office?" she asked hopefully.
Ziegler finally looked up. He wore a strange expression, as if actively holding back a smile. "No, a speech. And I can't actually promise that he'll be giving your version. There's a lot going on for both myself and Sam and I've looked at the statements you've written over the past month." Ziegler took off his glasses and rubbed at the indents on his nose. "You're good," he said without looking at her.
Addy stared at him.
"Don't look at me like that. I'm not an ogre, I know how to praise people. If it comes out infrequently that's not on me, it's on the notable lack of praiseworthy behavior exhibited around here!" He held up the folder he had been looking over. "You ever do something like this before?"
Initially, Addy wasn't sure exactly what he was referring to, but logic helped her figure it out. He had to be talking about writing for someone's unique voice, instead of writing a speech for them to perform. The wording of such speeches were meant to either sound extemporaneous, or like something they would write for themselves. It dawned on her that Ziegler must have called for her specifically because this speech was for Leo, and he knows.
Ziegler shook the folder, brows furrowed in thought. "Oh, that's right. That speech for Hart."
Addy took the folder. It was thick.
"Thank you for this opportunity," she said. The words didn't come out as particularly grateful, stuck as they were in her bone-dry throat. She finally had the opportunity to write a White House-level speech, and it was because she'd never graduated from being a lovesick teenager for the past eight plus years.
"Don't look at me like that, please," Ziegler snapped. The words and tone were harsh, but his expression could be charitably described as 'abashed.' Despite his reputation as a bit of a bear, Addy knew him to be perceptive. He had to be able to guess what she was thinking.
"Yes, sir," she said in a low voice. Addy must have pushed the tone of obedience a little too far, because for a split second, Ziegler looked up at her with an expression of pure shock. His eyes almost burned with it.
Addy didn't want to hear what he might say after that, so she fled.
Once she was back at her desk, she sorted through the documents she'd been given. A surge of delight washed through her- the plan was for eight to ten minutes of remarks to the Democratic members of Congress on the night before they'll be sworn in. President Bartlett would be in attendance as well, though he wasn't speaking that night. This was preaching to the choir, a speech about the things they valued and looked forward to trying to do, despite being in the minority. It was a speech of support, given from the Democratic President's Chief of Staff to the people they'd need votes from in the coming two years.
The main speech of the night would come afterwards, a nearly half-hour affair by the Minority leader. There were extensive notes in what she assumed was Ziegler's handwriting about what the speechwriter shouldn't elaborate on. Addy assumes this was because the Leader would be hitting those points, instead.
The speech was everything she'd always wanted to write, and it would be given by the man she'd spent way too many years obsessing over.
Addy got to work.
The next time she came up for air, she had a tentative beginning written and was feeling confident about the segue she'd just put in. It was nine PM.
"Not sure you get overtime. I know I don't," she heard from across the room. Addy looked up to see the Press Secretary.
She let the folder fall shut and smiled. Before saying anything, she saved the speech under the codename that was also in the folder. Instinct told her that Ms. Cregg might not know about the assignment. The same instinct prompted her to tuck the folder into her bag to take home with her. Addy would have wanted to do that anyway, but she had a sense that her job probably wasn't important enough to deter nosy coworkers from looking around, and her desk didn't have a lock.
"Heading out, then?" Cregg asked, and Addy nodded. It seemed like CJ wanted to walk out with her, so she packed up her things as quickly as she could and shrugged on her coat. "Have any plans for the holiday?" the other woman asked as they navigated the hallways.
"Just peace and quiet. We have a small family, and I'm all that's left at this point. I don't like horning in on any of my friends' family gatherings, so I'm going to stay home," Addy confessed.
"I totally understand," Cregg said. She sounded sincere, and Addy relaxed a bit. "There's quite a push here for the traditional, but I'll let you in on the fact that I've spent at least two holidays spent with other senior staff and a few bottles of beer."
"I'm glad to hear it. There's something uncomfortable about the way traditionalists look at you when they realize you're not among their august number," Addy laughed.
"Like the President," Cregg murmured. "Not that I'd ever say that without employing ventriloquism."
Addy looked over to see that Cregg had an overlarge grin on her face.
The two of them talked a bit more on the way out of the White House, parting ways with genuine smiles. Once she got home, Addy set an alarm to keep herself from staying up too late, and opened up the file yet again.
88888888
Working on the speech was a joy. Addy probably spent more of her free time on it than she should have, but personalized speeches about aspirational things were the reason she'd gotten into the business in the first place. She used the last pages of her favorite notebook from California on it in the evenings and brought the hand-written pages in to type them out into the file, finishing up the day after New Year's.
Addy knew that her assignment had bypassed several levels of hierarchy, so she was suddenly shy about the file itself once she was done editing and ready to print. She babysat the printer, snatching the hot pages as soon as they shot out of the tray. Danny Concannon wasn't in the building to haunt her today, but she still rushed to secure the pages in their folder once the ink was dry, holding the whole thing to her chest in relief.
Would Ziegler like it?
That was the real test. Her steps slowed the closer she got, and instead of knocking on his door this time, Addy stopped just outside.
"He's in there, just knock," one of the ladies in the bullpen told her, not unkindly. Addy's face flushed when she realized that what she appeared to be doing was asking for someone with much higher office standing to announce her. Swallowing her nervousness, she knocked. Her first strike was weak, and Addy took a minute to gather herself before knocking again, more confidently this time.
"Get in here, then!" Ziegler called out from inside.
"I think I've changed my mind," Addy whispered in a hiss to Bonnie. Instead of showing sympathy, the assistant got up, leaned over, and opened Ziegler's door, shoving it wide before sitting down. Addy was left standing in the doorway, feeling sheepish.
"Well?" Ziegler said, lifting his head. His reaction to seeing her in the doorway was an easing of the deep frown he'd been sporting. It was enough of an infusion of courage for her to walk in. She shut the door, offering a rueful smile as she held up the file.
The door was closed for McGarry discussion, as usual.
"Just dropping this off," she said, holding up the two files.
"Nice try. I should make you sit here and watch my face as I read it," Ziegler threatened, almost sounding like he was teasing her. Addy didn't really know how to react other than with abject terror, and it showed, apparently. "All right, don't make that face. Go on, get out."
As before, his delivery sounded almost affectionate, and Addy squeezed her eyes shut in embarrassed confusion as she sought to get the hell out of there. As she closed the door behind her, she heard Ziegler grunt.
"Nice first line," he said.