Note: Posting this a bit early because the whole framework around Toby figuring out the President's lie about MS is tough, and I don't want to sit in that hard moment for too long. Instead of doing straight canon rehash, I've constructed my own incremental puzzle to solve between our pair, and things will start to look up for the next chapter. The romantic arc has Addy in the dark about how she's feeling until she's not, so I apologize if it does feel like there's not enough of her side of it yet.

Soon!

Advise That Mistakes Are Inevitable

Leo was patient.

Leo was matter-of-fact, even calm, in the face of Toby's pressing questions.

Addy was right, Leo was keeping something from him.

Damnit.

Toby was going on two hours of cramped sleep on his office couch- but it was paying off, because now the bit was in his teeth. Leo knew something, and if Toby couldn't figure out what it was with available information, he would damn well keep asking questions until McGarry ordered him to stop or told him what the fuck was going on.

Hoynes knew, which meant the President was in on it, too. It had to be about the election, but Toby was 99% sure there wasn't a plan to find a new VP. That left the idea that Bartlet wasn't going to run at all, which would track with the way prominent Republicans were posturing- but Abbey Bartlet's frosty behavior toward her husband didn't fit into that scenario at all. She was a good First Lady, but Toby had the impression she would be just as happy to go back home to Manchester and be done with the whole gig.

At around ten AM the staffer he'd asked to collate news about the Vice President tapped at his door and handed over the day's folder. Inside was a bombshell, maybe even the bombshell. If Hoynes was making a speech about energy issues in New Hampshire under the guise of 'happening to be there' while on vacation? That meant he was running for President. There was no other interpretation. It was time to go back to Leo- but when?

Andie Wyatt was most receptive to new ideas at noon, but Leo McGarry was at his lowest ebb for patience in the late evening.

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Toby had just decided he'd wait another hour before going to see Leo when there was a tap on his door. Addy was there, coffee in hand. He'd completely forgotten to tell her not to show up. She took one look at him and figured it out, though, and the pleased look on her face sent his heartbeat racing. Addy Blair was sharp as hell, and he found that incredibly sexy.

"I won't ask, don't worry," she said, stepping inside. "Full disclosure: Sam's still here too, and I gave him the other cup."

"The other cup?" Toby asked, trying not to look glad that Addy pushed the door shut behind her before walking over with the coffee. He was on edge about challenging Leo, and he didn't want to share this time with anyone but her.

"I usually drink the other half of the thermos in the evening after I bring you some, but this time I gave it to Sam," she said, settling onto the couch. "So did Leo tell you, or did you figure it out and confirm it with him?"

Toby was still hung up on the idea that the two of them basically had a coffee date every day, separated by the outside wall of his office. "Hmm?" he asked, gulping down multiple sips, which burned the roof of his mouth. "How expensive is that thermos!" She looked away, which meant very, but then her question caught up with him. "Both. I figured it out and he'll confirm it after I talk to him tonight."

"You're that confident before you even find out if you're right?"

"I'm right," Toby said, picking up the coffee cup and warming his hands around it. "Leo's just going to have to deal with it. Nothing can stay the same, stay secret, not at the White House."

"Don't say that, my livelihood depends on it not being true!" Addy groaned. "I mean, that situation is better than it was, and I'm on the other side of it now, but the problem with brilliant men is they tend to remain brilliant. And letting go is hard."

He huffed out a humorless laugh. "Yeah, you don't have to tell me that." Toby didn't look at her, and she didn't say anything. They stayed like that for a long minute until he gave in and looked over, resolutely keeping his gaze above her waist, so he couldn't check for garters. Her sightline was fixed on his hands around his coffee cup, and she looked like she was trying to figure out if he'd fire her for speaking her mind. "Out with it."

"It's none of my business," she murmured before standing up- but still she looked at his hands, before lifting her gaze to his face. They looked at each other for a few seconds. Toby was greedy for the way the moment made him feel, but after a long moment he cleared his throat. He had to focus on the coming confrontation.

"Well if we all kept to that norm, I wouldn't be hounding Leo about whatever he and the President are keeping from me," he groused. Her blinking surprise reminded him that he hadn't actually talked out his theory with Addy, meaning he'd never brought up the idea of the President being deceptive too. "There, I overshared first. Your turn, or get out."

Addy made for the door.

"Goddamnit! Humor me," Toby demanded. Had she noticed his ring was missing? What had she been thinking just now?

"You used up my overshare quota in my first week here, Mr. Zeigler. You'll just have to wait till it resets!" she said, opening the door. After stepping through, Addy looked back and offered an encouraging smile. "Good luck with the thing."

"Thanks," he said, holding up the mug in a salute. The right thing to do would be to remind her not to bother with more coffee tomorrow, but when it came to Addy Blair, Toby knew he wasn't focused on the right thing to do, and he had no will to change that.

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"Addy, thank god, we're drowning here!"

It was Josh, speaking from Sam's office. She walked over to peer inside and found both men paging through what looked like a future speech.

"He's exaggerating, but we could use some help, primarily of the humorous variety," Sam said in greeting.

"You didn't… spike the coffee you gave Sam, did you? If so, can I have some?"

"I'm fresh out," Addy told Josh. "What makes you think I'm funny?"

"Anyone would be funnier than this," he retorted, tossing the stapled pages at her. There was zero chance she'd have been able to catch the hamfisted throw, and they both watched as the document landed in a heap on the floor. "I'm gonna be the bigger man and not earn myself a sexual harassment lawsuit," Josh said, but instead of picking them up so she wouldn't have to lean over to grab them in front of him, he turned his back on her and sat back down.

"See, now that was funny. Unfortunately, it's the kind of funny that doesn't get you laughs at the correspondents' dinner," Sam cracked, getting up to snag the speech off of the floor.

"That's because some of the press are women now," Josh said. She could tell he was grinning even though he was facing away.

Addy responded by rolling the pages up and smacking him on the back of the head with them.

"Yeah, I deserved that," her target allowed. "Roosevelt Room, Sam? I'm gonna go get Donna, the two of them even each other out." With that, Josh vaulted out of his chair and made it to the door as if she were chasing him to do it again.

"I can't believe I was excited to work here," Addy called out after Josh, noting that he wasn't the only one walking through the mostly dead bullpen area. It was time for Toby to confront Leo, it seemed. She wondered if there would be yelling, and if so, whether they'd be able to hear that from the Roosevelt Room.

"Hey, that gives me an idea. Do you mind running off a few more copies of this? I'll round up some more folks, see if we can punch this up by the end of the night," Sam said, handing her his copy of the speech.

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Hours later, Addy was really wishing she hadn't given away her coffee. So much had happened, from arguing about the Equal Rights Amendment to the ongoing saga about Josh's flowers for his 'anniversary of hiring' Donna, but the two things she needed to happen were elusive. They hadn't come up with much of anything for the speech, and Toby hadn't joined them yet. Her notebook was still closed, as she'd joked that she'd only open it up to jot something down if she could think of something funny for the speech.

When Josh still hadn't returned and Donna hadn't come back from looking for him, she decided not to squander the excuse to go see if Toby was back yet. None of it was her business, of course, but Addy saw herself as his support person when it came to this mystery. She didn't know Toby as well as his coworkers, or as well as she knew Leo, but she didn't think he would ghost their meeting unless something big and awful had happened. That possibility got larger the longer he spent in the Oval.

She was just shutting the door to the Roosevelt Room when she heard a noise from the direction of Leo's office. On looking over, she saw Toby standing completely still outside the closing door. He looked lost, bereft, shaken.

He caught sight of Addy and for the second time that night, they just looked at each other, letting everything else fall away. Toby didn't move, but his right hand at his side kept clenching and releasing. She tried to pour support and sympathy into her expression, and they stood like that for many long seconds until the group working on the speech in the room behind her broke out into raucous laughter.

Toby started toward her, and she turned away, unable to stand the bleak expression on his face any longer. She went to wash her face and hands at the sink in the restroom, stepping back into the meeting to find the group of punchdrunk speechwriters she'd left behind pitching their awful suggestions to the boss.

It wasn't until she sat down that Addy realized Toby had chosen the seat beside hers. Her notebook was open to the back page in front of him, and he had her pen in his hand. Something told her that he hadn't wanted to be alone with his thoughts long enough to fetch his own supplies.

"I'll grab your notebook and something to write with, be right back," she whispered to him, but Toby reached out and clamped a hand on the armrest before she could swivel the chair to get up.

"This is fine. Let it go," he said.

Addy looked down at his ringless left hand holding her in place and nodded. He left it there for a few long minutes before pulling back, his arm brushing against hers just like it had in the Oval Office when she'd first met the President. She didn't dare say anything, but Addy hoped he felt heartened by the contact, because she certainly felt comforted by it.

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The Next Day

She didn't need to know what secrets Toby had figured out, the combination of facts that had unlocked whatever horrible truth he'd learned the night before. All Addy wanted to do was help her department move smoothly, above and beyond her regular duties. Even if that meant offering the Communications Director the best coffee she had access to or spending four hours agonizing over bad jokes in a terrible speech with the Deputy Chief of Staff.

Addy would have thought Toby would understand that she wasn't asking for details- but when she knocked on his closed office door the next night, he didn't answer. His office blinds were cracked enough for her to see him look up at the sound.

He didn't call out, and he didn't get up. Addy gave his coffee to Sam.

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Two Days Later

Lying was the worst of all vices for Toby, which was probably why he had ended up on the outs with so many politicians before Bartlet. This President was supposed to be different. It wasn't that he didn't understand the motivations behind the lie or the coverup. He did- but that didn't make it any less wrong.

The worst part was that he still firmly believed that Josiah Bartlet was the best man for the job, the person he'd walk through fire to support as President of the United States.

And now, thanks to the lies that had been told, walking through fire was exactly what Toby would have to do. There was no room for doubt or weakness anymore, and that's why he sat still to the sound of Addy Blair's knock.

He wasn't trying to keep her out, or rather, he was, but out of his heart, out of a room where she could figure out something was deeply wrong by virtue of their unspoken understanding.

Someone at her level could not know this set of facts, though she would by the end of the year, Toby was certain of that. The President's MS was a time bomb with a jumble of identically colored wires attached, and every single one of them led to explosions. It was Toby's job as the Communications Director to figure out which was the least damaging wire to cut, hopefully without taking himself down with it. That Leo would consider bringing Toby into the campaign and then the White House without telling him the most important message he'd ever have to manage was breathtakingly insulting, and Toby was struggling to reckon with that.

Last night, Addy had given up after two knocks. Tonight she knocked for four. Would tomorrow be eight or six? He was in love with her either way. It was as inevitable as the subpoena he'd receive once the President's illness went public.

Toby watched her walk away from the door, taking a sip of the coffee cup she'd been planning to give him, and a horrible thought occurred to him.

Addy Blair was a living, breathing, beautiful conflict of interest. If President Bartlet didn't run again, if President Bartlet couldn't run again, that would mean Toby would be out of a job in eighteen months. Hell, he could lose his job sooner, given the- what had Hoynes said? The vastness of the things he didn't know? Obviously there was no way he'd screw up on purpose, but any temptation at all was probably a bad thing, and Toby was plenty tempted.

"Shit."

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A Few Days After That

Things were different at the White House. There was a pall in the air; multiple closed-door meetings, less joviality, and an overall sense of doom punctuated by Toby Zeigler's anger, at least in Addy's part of the West Wing. Every time she heard his raised voice she was flooded with the strangest sort of grief, but she was afraid to examine whether that was because he was deliberately throwing dirt on the embers of rapport they'd started to have, or because she knew that whatever he'd figured out was clearly eating him alive.

It wasn't that he was uncommunicative at other times, either- in fact, Zeigler had given her more work in the past week than he ever had in the past, something she was trying not to take personally. It had occurred to Addy that he might be trying to give her so much to do that she either resented him and left him alone or was simply too busy to have the inclination to knock on his door with peace offerings. If so, his plan had backfired.

She still knocked at his door, still knocked more each night than the night before, but Addy had decided not to go exponential on the man. Tonight, she'd knock ten times and then give up, because at this point, she was trapping him in there with her expectations, and it made zero sense why he hadn't yell at her about it. He'd yelled at everyone else.

"Gotta admire your tenacity," Sam said, sipping from the mug she'd given him. The rest of the coffee was still in her thermos, because there was no way Toby was going to open his office door, and she'd spilled it on herself yesterday getting mad at him for not giving in and accepting that there were people outside his bubble who wanted to help.

"Don't, I'm a wuss. I went for additive instead of multiplicative. It doesn't matter anyway, I'm going to give up after tonight," she sighed. "He wins the grump war as the reigning champion, as usual."

"It's cyclical, don't take it personally. Though I'm biased, because this coffee is seriously amazing!" Sam patted her on the back as she knocked the tenth time, walking her back to her desk to gather up her things.

"He opens the door after I leave, doesn't he?" she asked, watching Sam's face. As soon as the words left her mouth, a kind of shuttered facade slid down in her colleague's expression. The question had been impulsive, and she hadn't been prepared to be right. Addy took in a deep, steadying breath and nodded. "See you tomorrow."

"See ya," he agreed, heading into his office.

Before she left, Addy set up the thermos under her lit desk lamp, a passive-aggressive 'I know what you're doing' message that was probably a bad idea.

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Toby punished himself for the evening's shortcomings by staying later than usual, even though 'usual' had been pushing past midnight on the best of days. There was a particular irony to how thirsty he was, but that was a just punishment, one he was imperfectly alleviating with small trips for water.

With no one left to avoid, his thoughts turned toward the task he had before him. Resentment had no respectable place in politics, a sentiment that Toby had been chanting in his head on an hourly basis lately. Did he resent that he had been placed in a position to defend Bartlet's decision? Yes. Did he understand why he had to be in that position as the Communications Director? Absolutely. It still didn't make the confrontation with CJ over the leak investigation any more comfortable to experience.

He hadn't handled that at all well, which was becoming somewhat of a theme. Ironically, leaks weren't a big concern right now. With a misstep like lying about a life-threatening medical condition, every single person in on the secret knew better than to leak it. Even if he did feel compelled to say something out of patriotism, Jed Bartlet was a better President than John Hoynes ever could be, and therefore the better person to steer the country through this crisis of his own making. CJ's resentment over having to go through the miserable motions of investigating that leak ended up making the truth land better, and wasn't that just peachy?

Disappointment was an equally familiar emotion, one he had learned to thrive under in past jobs. It was becoming more common in this one, driven in part by his professional frustration and subsequent higher standards. Toby knew he was being unduly harsh, but they were going to deal with heavy adversity soon enough. He might as well toughen everyone up for them.

Walking through the darkened bullpen, he saw a bright blue taped note stuck to the printer and went to investigate. Bonnie and Ginger handled his gruff hollering better than most, but one thing they would not brook was impatience when the infrastructure was down, so he wanted to be prepared for a printer issue.

It wasn't an 'out of order' sign, but a note of encouragement.

You're living through history! Make it matter.

"Oh, we will," he muttered wryly, looking around at the darkened work area. The desk lamp was still on at Addy's desk, and despite his better judgment, Toby walked over to investigate.

The infuriating woman had set her thermos underneath the lamp like she was taunting him with it. Toby reached out, hovering his hand around it for a few seconds before swearing under his breath and snatching it, stomping off into his office.

Every other part of his life was monumentally screwed up right now, but if all he could have from Addy Blair was her coffee, then he damn well would enjoy it.