And here we go, onto Season 2! I hope you enjoy. And though this doesn't really change anything there are twenty more chapters left of this story!

Disclaimer-Nothing but Jacob is mine.

And on a side note, I like so many other Fanfiction Authors no longer receive notifications via email about reviews/PMs etc. So if you do send any it might be a while, if ever before I get back to you. Please keep that in mind for it is not intentional-If anyone has a fix please let me know.

There will be a second part that follows this...eventually. Each series should cover about seven chapters some chapters several episodes. Flashbacks included when needed.

Also I do not do Private Messaging anymore, any questions stick them in a review and I will get back to you next chapter note.

Also please be aware of a bit of a time jump between these chapters.

Also after much thought and consideration I have decided not to include Mandy in this story. She's there for like one Season and misses half of the episode and while she was an okay character played by a very good actress her disappearance and everything that follows is just too hard to write. So no Mandy. Ever.

And a couple of the episodes are mixed around here but please keep that in mind.

There will be a lot of flashbacks in the Season 2 arc as well

Perhaps Love

Chapter 13-Love Is A Strange And Dangerous Thing

It's Bartlett's third state of the union, Jake is at the White House, his mother is on a mission, his father is drunk, the First Lady is pissed and Sam wants to see Ainsley's underwear. Or something like that anyway.

The third state of the union was as Jake was told time and time again, a very important one. He was told by both his mother and his father, Sam, Josh, Donna, Leo, the President and yet when he pointed out that surely the first one had been the most important it was Ainsley halfway through a sugar donut who had choked with laughter saying that he was funny.

Jake had watched as Sam had brushed the sugar off the side of her face and the tension between the two of them had been at melting point and suddenly had felt the urge to go and have a shower. Honestly it was like Josh and Donna all over again but there wasn't the barrier of the shooting or Josh having been shot to stand in their way.

But the Third State of the Union was on which meant that he was once again spending the night at the White House. This was good because Mrs Bartlett had asked if he wanted to bring some people with him. It was not until Anna had come up to see him at school the next morning that he realised that she had been invited with her fathers by the First Lady herself. She had been gleeful with the invitation to the party and had spent all of lunchtime pestering him as to weather she needed to dress floor length (whatever that was) and then when he had said a nice trouser suit would do she had kissed him on the cheek and that had sent him to cloud nine all day.

Damn women and their ways.

So instead he was taking Harrison who was down to spend an evening at the White House with the President (his words not Jake's). Problem was he was not sure Harrison had been vetted in time but considering there was very little in Harrison's history (apart from his mother's proclivity for ranting about Republicans stripping woman of the right to do…anything whenever one of them did something stupid—which was always to be fair) that would warrant a background check so he thought that they were good.

He managed to get a pretty good seat for the State of the Union in the nearly full communications bullpen and the three of them sat there eating popcorn and drinking soda and listening to the speech alongside everyone else who had not gone in the presidential motorcade.

Upon finishing the place exploded in applause.

"Not bad" Harrison said clapping, "Not bad at all great even if you think about it, you know I might even end up voting for him if he's still here when we become legal"

"Please like your mother would ever let you back in the house if you voted for anyone else other than the Democrats."

"True but my vote is between me and the ballet box. Give me a red who knows what they are doing… "

"Shut up" Anna said with an eye roll. "I thought that was really good. You know I wouldn't want to stand there and say all that in public. He did really good to remember it all."

"Your Dad wrote the entire thing then?"

"Not all of it but a lot of it."

"Nice. So what's he going to do now it's over?" Harrison asked and Jake grinned. This was the third state of the union after all, he was pretty locked in on what his Dad's routine was by now. Actually he was pretty locking in on what his mother's routine was going to be but his Dad's was just easier.

"Dad will come back, go to the party get three scotches and a plate of the sweet potato and cheese puff things and then spend the night interrogating staffers and guest about what they thought of the speech and especially paragraphs that have annoyed him to write and my Mom will help herself to a glass of white wine and the baby lamb cutlets and will then release the press from their shackles so they can go and get their story. Then inevitably they will both end up the night at my Mom's apartment where they will pretend that my Dad stayed the night on the couch and I will pretend that I believe them. Works every time, every year like magic"

Both of them looked at him but Jake shrugged. He was well aware of how his parents worked by now. Part of what he had been working with, with the therapist was seeing things that before he had not been able to see, to use them as tools to know when something was upsetting. Besides. He could read his parents like a book on a good day.

There was a silence and then.

"You think we could nab some champagne?"

"Tried it at the Inauguration Harry, believe me the First Lady has them all whipped"

"Plus I am not looking forwards to a lecture on the demon drink if we get caught" Anna said with a fake shudder. "Perks of being the daughter of a mechanic and a doctor, lots of lessons about drunk driving and it's consequences. Both to the car and to yourself"

"Rats"

There was a silence and then.

"Baby lamb chops"

"Go"

They were sat in his Dad's office three cold bottles of coke and a plate of baby lamb chops that would arguably cause the average person to pay a blind fortune for when his Dad came in three scotches in and clutching his fourth.

"Paragraph sixteen was fine"

"I know paragraph sixteen was fine, paragraph sixteen Jacob was not the problem, what did you all think of the Blue Ribboned Commission"

"Soon as someone explains to me just what one of those things are I'll let you know"

"Mrs Bartlett is on her way so you three will have to move to Sam's office. She wants to ask why the Violence Against Woman's act wasn't mentioned"

"Why not?" Anna asked looking up from where she was nibbling at a lamb chop. "That's a very important piece of legislature that keeps being held up in committee is it not?"

For a second everyone in the room stared at her.

"God almighty" his Dad said in something that might have been mock fright. "It's CJ twenty years ago. Go…go little ones go, I have to be yelled at for reasons I don't know why and I cannot do it with you three here, fly away little birds fly away"

"Oh Christ Dad don't throw up on her dress will you."

"Speaking of dresses your Mom is walking around sans pants"

"Why?"

"Because she didn't see the sign for wet paint"

Jake opened his mouth to ask why when the sign was perfectly clear for all to see but then he closed it.

He figured he was better off not knowing.

He had thrown in the towel and gone home…well…he got driven by a Secret Service agent who was more than happy to do his mother a favour ("I have three boys myself Miss Cregg I wouldn't want them getting a cab this time of night either. No Mike won't mind, we consider Jake part of the detail too don't worry, I'll drop the other boy off while I'm at it considering the girl is getting a ride back with her folks…no…no…don't you and Mr Ziegler worry about a damn thing") around one in the morning. Both of his parents were still working but Jake had twice now fallen asleep on his Dad's couch and after the second time his Dad had put his foot down and insisted that he and Harrison go home. Anna had gone an hour earlier eyes sparkling after having what she called an illuminating conversation with Josh about a woman's right to choose.

(Josh for the record had found it rather frightening that he had been set upon by a fifteen year old and had, had to go back to his office for half an hour while Donna crowed in glee both of them released from the temporarily insanity that was the polling booth that had lost It's power)

So he had slept through the Columbian crisis and had only been made aware that something was going on when he had come back to the White House aware that he had left his phone on his Dad's desk and had overheard Bonnie and Ginger discussing it in hushed terms.

It was not that hard to find his parents after that.

"I brought you both a latte" he said knocking on the door of his mother's office. "And a change of clothes Mom. Had to come back to get my phone but figured…"

Both of his parents stared blearily at him and then…

"CJ our son is magnificent isn't he?"

"Indeed Toby indeed"

"Can the magnificent son have twenty bucks then?"

"And then there's that" came Sam's voice from the door.

"Sam"

"Hey Jake. CJ, Leo wants you to sit in in a couple of meetings about what kind of weapons the drug frontiers might be using, mostly low level stuff but best to go now just in case the press do have it."

"Thanks" his Mom said with a kiss to Jake's head that he tried to ignore.

"Did you sort out Ainsley and the President"

"Yes I did" Sam said beaming. "The President said he was very glad she was working with her and that her father would be proud which for a republican from North Carolina it seems are the magic words. She proceeded to hug me in her office and call me a God amongst men"

There was a pause and then.

"Ainsley called you a God amongst men?"

Sam shrugged at him.

"Well…not in so many words but the meaning was clear. I rode in on my white horse and rescued her from the habitual humiliation of having to tell the story of how she met the president in a towel drunk at the Federalist society and so she can go back to the Andrew Jackson appreciation society with her head held high"

"Wait" Jake said looking and feeling crushed. "Ainsley was in a towel last night and nobody called me? Come on!"

Sam shot him a rather nasty look.

"Why would you want to see Ainsley in a towel?"

His Dad answered that one for him.

"She's gorgeous, get your head out of your ass Sam and ask her out otherwise someone hedge fund manager from Texas earning four times your salary in a week will do so and they will skip into the sunset and have three children and you know one of them will be the V of something"

Jake choked at the look on Sam's face as this revelation swept over him.

"Ainsley doesn't like me like that"

"Dude…didn't she just call you a God amongst men?"

Sam ignored the heavy teasing and leaned against the wall and then…

"You think that she might be interested in me like that?"

"Sam look at my face"

Sam shot his Dad a look and immediately propped his body back off the door frame holding his hands out in mock surrender.

"I'm going Toby I'm going"

And then he was gone.

"Well that was fun" Jake said slipping his phone back in his bag. "You sort it out with the First Lady?"

"Hmm?" his Dad asked head snapping up and Jake blinked because it was a throwaway comment and not worthy of that kind of reaction.

"The First Lady?"

"Oh yeah, differences in the speech I suppose. It happens. She was just…"

"She wanted your head on a platter"

"Yeah, I don't…I wonder if it was more than that"

"Why don't you ask her?"

His Dad shot him a look and Jake shrugged.

"Jacob there is one thing round here you don't want to get into and that is the President's marriage."

"That and you know Mrs B can kill you with the power of her eyes"

"Oh believe me she doesn't need her eyes to kill" his Dad said hauling himself up to his feet and slipping an arm around his shoulders.

"Bonnie grab you fresh clothes?"

"Yeah she had an intern do it. Listen I don't know what time your Mom and I will be home, I think she said something about getting pizza at hers tonight but this Columbian thing could go either way so be warned"

"Get em home Dad"

"Getting them home isn't the problem kid, it's just how. But don't worry about that. Go grab some sleep. You had a long night last night"

Jake opened his mouth to say he wasn't tired but in that way that always happened the second he opened his mouth he was bone tired and exhausted and he yawned proving the point. His bed sounded heavenly he just didn't know if he was going to be able to sleep during the day.

Thinks like that were a lot harder than they looked.

He was halfway to the door when.

"Jake?"

"Paragraph sixteen was fine Dad"

"Paragraph twenty three."

"Perfect"

"Thank you"

And there you go, next chapter will have a bit of a time jump as we head to the end of Season 2. I think maybe three to cover the MS scandal. Maybe four.

Next Chapter-Toby stumbles across the Presidents most devastating secret. One by one the staffers are told but CJ and Toby think their son is safe. Until Charlie stumbles out a new potential secret.