This will focus on Annabeth's new "acquaintance" and the Lyman household to begin as I had complaints that I hadn't said a lot about the Lyman's life. It does provide a bridge to the next chapter, though, so will end in a crowded conference room, with Gordon telling us about his background. I actually wrote this months ago in the last week before the Easter break, so it's a lot longer than most of my chapters. ;p
Josh came into his dark house, slumping down on a sofa with a sigh of relief. He hadn't been home in three days, not since the Convention. Donna had been berating him about spending time with his family, but there was never time. He knew how Santos must have felt during the first election. Juggling a half supportive wife and, not one but two small children with making time to run a campaign. His eldest Josiah was now six years old, and had the looks, neediness and energy of a small puppy, a wild mop of hair grew on his head and, despite Donna's best efforts to calm it down, it had a definite "Josh" air about it, Rebekah, three years younger was considerably calmer than her older brother and a miniature, rounder version of Donna. He heard a crash from the hall, here it came, The Human/Puppy Cannonball. Josiah crashed into his father.
"DAD!" Josiah could not speak quietly. "MUMMY, DAD'S BACK. YOU'RE BACK, DADDY. HAVE YOU BROUGHT ME ANYTHING? CAN I HAVE SOME MILK, DADDY? I WANT MILK! I WANT MILK!-"
"Okay, I'll go get you some."
"-I WANT MILK, I WANT MILK, I MANT WILK!"
Donna walked in, wearing a dressing gown and carrying a small screaming bundle, which usually could be referred to as the "calm" child, Beka. "Good to see you again." Her voice was dripping with sarcasm, and large dark circles beneath her eyes indicated that this happened regularly.
"I thought we were shipping them off to Gran's." Josh said pouring a small mug of milk for his son, before relieving his wife of the screaming bundle. Gently bobbing, up and down of his heels and shushing his youngest had an almost instant effect on her. She stopped screaming, and began sucking her thumb. For some reason Josh had always had more success at calming down his children than his wife.
Donna turned back towards her bedroom, groaning loudly. "Enjoy putting them back to bed, Joshua."
----
Annabeth sat in Josh's chair; she was covering him for a couple of days, while he caught up on sleep and having a family. Something she had never succeeded in gaining. There had been about fifty boyfriends, but she had always known from the moment she set eyes on them they weren't right. After 2005 her expectations in them had risen to a bar that she doubted anyone would ever meet. Some men were just too full of themselves, not to mention sure of themselves. Everything was about themselves.
A knock on the door brought her out of family-pining-mode. "Come on in."
"Hello. I'm Leon, Leon McBeth. Sorry t-t-to disturb you so early." Leon had an English accent, Private schooled, disguises the accent underneath, Annabeth considered, with a stutter. "I'm with The G-Guardian p-paper. I'm from Manchester so it always seemed like the p-p-paper for me."
"It's fine. I take it I can help you with something?" She stood up to shake his hand. He was a little under a foot taller than her.
"I c-can help you. I ho-p-pe. Miss Schott." He was middle aged with light brown hair that was beginning to grey round the temples. In contrast to Annabeth's irate generalisations on men, he was unsure, not nervous but obviously did not wish to inflict whatever he had come with upon her. "The p-pap-p-a-par-az- the media have got hold of P-P-Peters' criminal record. It's not g-good." He handed her the file. "I th-thought I should p-probably b-break ranks and see Mister Lyman ab-bout this, b-but I was d-d-directed t-to you. There are v-vandalism charges on th-three counts, p-participation in v-violent p-protest. Nothing for ab-bout fifteen years b-but the op-p- the Rep-publicans are g-going to love this. Someone should make a state-statement."
Annabeth stared at him; British journalists even if they're on your side don't tend to be a Campaign's best friend. Usually it would be a lawyer that came in at ten o'clock in the evening to tell you that. She could think of only one unfortunate reason for his intervention. "Are you gay, Mr McBeth?"
"C-call me Leon. And no. I just want t-to see a D-Democrat in office for a few more t-terms. I d-don't want F-Fuller to lose over something that his husband d-d-did over fifteen years ago, that maybe could be averted b-by someone t-telling the right p-p-person, rather than finding out on the news lat-t-ter."
"Josh is going to go ballistic."
"G-g-gun control, abortion, g-gay, d-d-deaf VP and an act-tivist of a husband. If I was a p-pessimistic chap, I'd say you were screwed."
Annabeth looked over the file. "We're screwed."
----
Josh's phone rang from his bedside table, and as he leant over to answer it he felt a sharp elbow dig into his ribs. "I love you too, darling." He responded as he blearily answered the mobile. "Annabeth. Annabeth, it's twenty past ten can't this wait till lat-"
He rolled of his bed and began pulling on a pair of trousers, one handed, the other holding the phone to his ear. "Wait a second, I've gotta get a shirt on." He put the phone back up to his ear after trying to put on one of Donna's shirts. "I want everyone- I don't care if they're in Rome, or Sydney they are in HQ in one hour. Everyone in. Simon, Joey, Gordon, CJ, for Christ's sake, find Toby while you're at it."
"Donna, set up the web cam. I'm going to need your help."
She groaned. "You always need my help. Can't you do something-?" Josh dragged her bedcovers off and left the room with them slung over his shoulder.
"See you in a couple of hours, honey."
----
To say the conference room at HQ was crowded would be a vast under-exaggeration, the table had been wheeled out and four laptops sat on top of filing cabinets, each with a webcam window open. The great and the good of the campaign and prior campaigns were gathered together. Up on webcam, Donna Moss-Lyman with Josiah curled on her lap was looking increasingly irate, Jed Bartlet (nobody was entirely sure how he had found out about the emergency meeting at eleven o'clock in the evening), taking part in his first official meeting as senior advisor to the Democrat Presidential Campaign, President Matt Santos, who had been alerted by Sam (both men had been in office late) and Danny Concannon, who had received a tip-off from CJ. As well as the four on webcam, Toby Ziegler, Annabeth Schott, Sam Seaborn, CJ Cregg, Will Bailey, Arnie Vinick, at Santos' request, Leon McBeth, Rona Beckman, Charlie Young, who had been hired for legal assistance, Simon Fuller, Joey Lucas, and Kenny Thurman, many other members of the campaign team and finally, in a corner, was an extraordinarily meek looking Gordon Peters, all standing or sitting in the room. Finally, Josh attempted to storm in, causing a slight snigger from Toby, as he got stuck squeezing past Annabeth, Leon and Charlie.
"Right, guys. I know it's late, and I'm sorry sir," he nodded towards Santos and Bartlet. "for getting some of you out of bed. I guess the "I want everyone" was taken more literally than I intended. We are here, cause less than seventy-two hours after Senator Fuller won the nomination, we have hit a roadblock that will occur within the next five hours. Thanks to Mister Scott for bringing it to our attention. Okay, we all knew this was going to be difficult anyway due to the… policies held by the senator..."
"Please, call me Simon." Simon groaned.
"…which we obviously managed to overcome them to win the nom. But now we are faced with the problem of his husband…"
"That's a new one, The Problem, I might call my next album that." Gordon attempted to lighten the drowsy and tense atmosphere, but failed dismally so shut up and went back to looking guilty.
"… Gordon Peters."
Jed raised his hand. "I think, Josh, we should give Mr Peters the chance to tell us what the Problem is himself."
Several people nodded, Kenny translated for Joey, who nodded slightly later than the others. Gordon shifted his chair to be facing the others slightly better. "I think what Josh is getting at is that some people don't think that I would make a great role model for their children, and suchlike. Which in part, I believe is the role of the First, er, Gentleman.
"Um, my background isn't exactly what you'd call to the line. I went off the rails in my teens, but I swear I had as good a reason as any for it."
Simon snorted, "I didn't go off the rails."
"You're smarter than me, that's why it's you running for President and you that got the scholarship to Oxford. Plus, your parent's didn't care…"
Donna interrupted quietly, "Some of us would like the story so we can get back to solving Josh's Problem."
"Sorry, Ma'am. Right, my parents kicked me out of the house when I was fourteen; a year after Simon's brother was… you know. They said I was a sinner and, well they yelled some pretty awful things at me, so I moved in with some band members, Simon was in Britain, Oxford, he offered to let us stay at his place-"
"Which was abandoned and trashed when I got back."
"-I forgot to lock the door-" Gordon whipped round defensively. Josh cleared his throat at the same moment as Jed, Santos and Toby. "Anyway, I fell in with some nutcase vegans. Meat Is Murder, So Let's Murder People types, I didn't realise that's what they were though. I obviously knew they were radicals but... By the time I was sixteen I had a six month prison sentence, for three counts of vandalism, one where a butcher's was completely trashed, the man's wife was badly injured by some of my fr- accomplices. Anyway, I got shit scared by Simon, over mail, into turning myself in and grassing on the others. I appealed after two months and was let out.
"I moved back to Massachusetts, but I had nowhere to live. Again. So I had to make a bit of cash through music, built my life up again. Vegan still, but I avoided the guys who had got me into trouble. Then, I swear everything was on the straight and narrow after that."
Joey/Kenny spoke first. "This is going to blown up well out of proportion."
Toby nodded. "And it wouldn't actually take too much puff."
"All the media have t-t-to d-do is shift the wording here and th-there, and they can safely make it look like you were one of the guys who d-did the actual at-t-tacking."
"I did just as bad. I encouraged them."
"You did what?!" Simon's eyes flashed round.
"Don't look at me like that Simon, I didn't stand at the side going "that's it, Larry, bash her brains out next." I was well gone by the time they were doing that. CCTV shows it. But I helped plan the trashing, and six guys with bats, what the fuck did I think was going to happen?" Gordon buried his head in his hands. "How was I meant to know that this would affect a campaign fifteen years into the future? I'm sorry, Si. I'm really sorry."
"I should have realised this would come up at some point." Simon put an arm round Gordon and held him tight. "Really I should have remembered to tell Josh shitloads, but with everything going on…" He trailed off.
Chloe, Donna's assistant, who had been the only person monitoring the news, in the outside room suddenly burst in. She looked at the assembly in astonishment, confused as to who to report to she announced to the room in general. "There's been bombings. London, Vancouver, New York and Paris. All over the news, all at the same time roughly. There's no death toll yet, but it's likely to be large. Very large. Nobody's taken responsibility yet either."
Santos picked up a phone which had just begun ringing. "Sam, Rona, I need you two back." His line cut off and the two left the room in a hurry.
Bartlet spoke. "Josh, I hate to say it but… our problem is going to be a tiny article on page twenty for three weeks thanks to this. It sounds bad-"
"-but those bombings just saved your ass, for the moment." Toby finished. "Can we go now?"
Now isn't that an easy way to overcome a difficult problem.
Over 2,000 words. My new record.
Please review even if you didn't like it or only have "constructive criticism" to give. Tell me what you think of Leon. He's going to buy Annabeth coffee in the next chapter, where will this lead?