Rating: PG
Pairing: Leo/Ainsley
Spoilers: Everything up to Gone Quiet
Feedback: Makes my day
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site The Band Gazebo (helsinkibaby.ahkay.net) Anywhere else please ask first.
Summary: Ainsley and Cliff have dinner.
Author's Note: This story is the product of one of the freakiest things that has ever happened to me while watching this show. I was alone in my house, thank goodness, having my own little WW-athon, and in the middle of Bartlet for America, I was looking at the scene where Cliff is going toe-to-toe with Gibson and all of a sudden, a realisation bammed me over the head. Followed immediately by a scene from this. This one's for Heidi, who's been waiting patiently for it, and Jayne, who emails me at midnight, wanting to know when I'm next posting.

I realised something today, for no particular reason. I don't know why this little fact leaped out at me, but it suddenly hit me that I've been working in the White House for over a year now. Considering that when I first took the job, after my first day especially, I had doubts about my ability to last a week, never mind a full year, I really should have marked the occasion in some way, shape or form, but with all the drama that's been going on around here, I suppose it's not surprising that I had other things on my mind.

But when I came to the realisation of the length of my tenure here thus far, I realised something else. That I had no thoughts of leaving any time soon. That even though I'm a Republican in a solidly Democratic White House, there's nowhere else that I'd rather work. These people that I've become familiar with, that I've befriended, are some of the most worthy people that it has ever been my honour to know, and I consider it a privilege to spend time in this White House.

I know that I realised that a while ago, but every now and then I realise it again, and it seems like I’m finding it out for the first time.

Which is not to say that it's always easy, and in fact, while today's events made me realise just how much I've come to like the people who are running this administration, it also served to remind me of our differences, which are not as insurmountable as I first thought. The event of which I speak is, of course, the quote that was repeated all around the White House, all around the country in newspapers, on radio and televisions shows in all its glory, or lack thereof.

One would think that the Republican Majority Leader, having long been touted as one of the leading candidates to be a candidate in the next election would have a coherent answer mapped out to the inevitable question, "Why do you want to be President?" One would imagine that he would have it laminated on an index card which he carries around with him perpetually, studying it at every opportunity like a senior coming up to finals. One would imagine that he spent hours practising this reply which has been laboured over by his speechwriters, honing the delivery so that it sounds sincere, true and spontaneous, not at all rehearsed.

Evidently not.

And I take a moment to consider what the hell Ann Stark is doing in her Chief of Staff's office if she didn't make sure that he was studying just such a card.

Although I suppose what she spent today doing was tearing her hair out in frustration at her boss's bonehead answer, and I'm not in the least bit ashamed to admit that I took a great deal of glee in that particular image.

Nor am I the only one.

I know for a fact, because I was told, and because I saw her from a distance, that CJ Cregg danced through the bullpen with the wire reports, spreading the glad tidings. I also know that the quote was copied and pasted on to emails and that they were sent all around the West Wing. Photocopies were also passed around, and rumour has it that CJ is considering getting the quote printed on T-shirts as Christmas presents. Reaction from the rest of the Senior Staff has been much the same as CJ's, and it's filtered on down to the lowliest intern.

I have to admit, I can understand why. I may be a Republican, and there are many areas where I will follow the party line with a smile on my face, but when it comes to our "esteemed" leader, quotation marks an absolute necessity, I merely grit my teeth and pray for justice to be done in the next election. I do not like him, I have never liked him, and when I heard that he'd given Ann Stark the job of his Chief of Staff, I finally had a concrete reason not to like him, because I can't stand that woman. And if that sounds petty and childish, I really don't care. Ann Stark, as I explained to Leo in January, is a barracuda, a woman who will stoop to any lows to get what she wants, without any thought of consequence or of who she might hurt. She's the kind of Republican woman who gives all Republican women a bad name, and while she can do a good job for her employer, occasionally, she screws up, and there's always some poor schmuck under her who takes the fall. It's never Ann's fault.

I wonder who the poor schmuck is today?

The fact that I can laugh at the quote is beside the point here. I'm a Republican; I have to laugh at the quote. It's that, or I cry. I mean, this is the great political mind that's leading my party? What else can I do?

However, when you have every Democrat in the West Wing, or what seems like it anyway, looking at you, and sniggering over what that idiot said, it tends to grate on your nerves after a while.

So you can see why I'd be looking forward to getting out of the West Wing for the night, and even more so why I'm looking forward to spending time with someone who won't mock me for being a Republican.

"Hey." I get a big smile and a hug from Cliff, and he laughs as he lets me step into his apartment, seeing the two bottles of wine in my hand. "I hope you're not driving," he says in mild disapproval, but he takes the wine anyway.

"I took a cab," I told him, a wise move on my part because I feel the need to get a little inebriated tonight, let off a little steam with one of my best friends.

"That kind of day?" he asks as I follow him into the kitchen, and I see that his table is set with all my favourite dishes from our favourite Chinese place. My stomach growls at the spread before me, and he laughs. "Don't answer that."

I grin at him, and we sit down and tuck in, and we talk as we eat, about mutual friends and happenings at work and out of work, but there are some areas that we avoid totally. We don't mention hearings or subpoenas or witness lists, we don't mention anything that might have come across my desk, we don't mention anyone that he questioned during the day. No matter what Leo might think, or might have said during our one fight and several discussions on the matter, that's a line that we don't go near. We both know that it's a conflict of interest, we both know what's at stake, and neither one of us are willing to compromise our careers for our friendship, or vice versa. So it's easy for us to stay away from the danger areas.

Over dinner, the reason for my stressful day comes up. "You mean, you didn't hear?" I ask him, when I realise he has no idea what I'm talking about.

"I was tied up all day," he tells me, and I skilfully push away the thoughts of what he was doing. "They asked him the question?"

"He was in Cleveland Ohio last night, and they asked him," I confirm, taking a gulp of my wine.

"And?" He studies my face for a moment as I shake my head. "How bad could it have been?"

I laugh at the innocence of the question, standing up, going to my briefcase. I grabbed one of the photocopies that was going around, I admit it. "This must be seen to be believed," I call back over my shoulder.

"Well, if it stops you cold in the middle of dinner, I'm inclined to believe you," he deadpans, and gets a venomous glare from me in response.

"Funny boy," I growl, taking another sip of wine when I sit down. "Ready?"

"Shoot."

"In answer to the question, 'Why do you want to be President', he replied, 'The reason I would run, were I to run, is I have great belief in this country as a country and in this people as a people that go into making this country a nation with the greatest natural resources and population of people...educated people. We have the greatest technology of any people of any country in the world along with the greatest - not the greatest, but very serious problems confronting our people and I want to be President in order to focus on these problems in a way that uses the energy of our people to move us forward,-" Something makes me pause here, "- basically.'"

When I finish, I lift my eyes from the sheet of paper, and it's all I can do not to burst out laughing at the look on his face. His lips are pursed in concentration, his eyes are darting from left to right, and I can almost hear the wheels turning as he attempts to make sense of it. I know that he's probably trying to make some deep, profound comment about it, but all that comes out is, "Huh?"

That does it, and I'm giggling uncontrollably. "Can you imagine the reaction it got in the White House?" I ask him, and he nods his head, still in shock.

"I can't believe she let him out of the office without a prepared answer." Cliff's thought, when it comes, is just what mine was and I shrug my shoulders.

"Maybe she did and he couldn't remember it." He lifts an eyebrow at me, and I'm surprised. "Oh Cliff, come on. I know that he's the leader of the party and all that, but you must admit that he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer."

"You're not going to go all Democrat on me, are you?" he asks, leaning back in his seat, his eyes twinkling, but I'm not laughing suddenly.

"You think that he'd be a better President for this country than President Bartlet?" I ask him. "You think he could do a better job, this moron who can't string a sentence together? You think that things would be better if we had Ann Stark behind the scenes, pulling the strings?"

"You don't think that's what happens now?" Cliff counters. "You don’t think that McGarry's in and out of the Oval Office all the time, whispering in Bartlet's ear, telling him what to do?"

"That's not what happens," I tell him, although Lord alone knows, it's not the first time that such a charge has been levelled. The second that thought passes through my head, I know what Cliff's next argument is going to be.

"You said it yourself Ainsley. The piece you wrote when he came out as an alcoholic. You called him a danger to himself and others, said that he wasn't worthy of being the White House Chief of Staff, that he exerted an inordinate amount of influence on the President." Damn the man. Cliff has dutifully read every op-ed piece I've ever done, has seen my every television appearance, although since I'm mostly representing the White House, he rarely comments on them. I should have known that he'd be able to throw my own words back at me.

Those words were written before I knew Leo, before I knew the White House, knew how things work. I was a different person then, at least, it certainly seems like it now. So sure that the Democrats were misguided in their beliefs, that the President was a fool, his staff egomaniacal glory hounds.

"I was wrong," I admit now, my hands balled into fists on my lap, my food all but forgotten.

"Excuse me?" Cliff laughs in what sounds like shock, and I don't doubt it is, because I don't think he's ever heard me back down over anything before.

"I said, I was wrong." I say it louder now, more firmly, my hands going on to the table, leaning forward in my chair, my best Capital Beat posture. "That's not the way things work in the White House, that's not the way things are. These people, this administration, they are doing their best, they are doing what they believe is right and good. I may not always believe that they are going the right way about it, I may not always agree with them, but I do not ever doubt their intent. They worship Josiah Bartlet, they would follow him into the fires of Hell, and every single one of them would do it with a smile on their faces. He inspires faith, and confidence, and he is nobody's puppet."

I pause for breath, and Cliff manages to get in one word before I cut him off again. "McGarry-"

"Leo McGarry did mastermind the Bartlet for America campaign, yes," I admit. "Without him, there's no way that he would have won the election. There's no way he would have even run. And yes, Leo wields a huge amount of power in the West Wing. But if you think, if you seriously think that a Nobel Laureate, a graduate of Notre Dame and the London School of Economics, a man whose love of trivia and powers of oratory are unequalled, if you think that a man like that is anybody's puppet, then you're fooling yourself. The President would never let Leo use him like that, and Leo would never use him like that anyway. He is a good man Cliff. He's fought in Vietnam, he's overcome alcohol and Valium dependency, and he is the glue that holds the Bartlet Administration together. And just like the rest of the Senior Staff, he's not doing it for power, he's not doing it for glory. He's doing it for the good of the American people, for their betterment, in their best interests, to the exclusion of his own."

As I talk, I'm thinking of the man who befriended me when hardly anyone else in the White House would, the man who was my friend first and slowly became more. The man who only has to smile at me to make me feel better, the man who knows me inside out. The man whose arms I go to sleep and wake up in. The man who wakes in the middle of the night from nightmares about Vietnam and who won't talk to me about them. The man who looks so tired when he drags himself in the door at night. The man that I've fallen head over heels in love with, the man I can't imagine my life without.

And I come to the realisation that Cliff is looking at me, not with anger, not with amazement, but more with amusement than anything else. "You're turning into a Democrat," he accuses, my speech having seemingly confirmed his earlier diagnosis, and he laughs.

I can hardly remember the last time I heard Leo laugh. Not a real laugh, the kind I heard all the time at the start of our friendship. And the contrast of that realisation, and Cliff's booming laugh now has me flustered. "I am not," is all I can manage, and he nods vigorously.

"Oh, you are. Either that, or you've got a crush on McGarry, I'm trying to work out which…" His voice trails off, and I know that it's because of the redness that's flooding my face. His jaw drops in amazement, and I duck my head, getting redder and redder. "You don't!" His voice is shock and horror, and something in between, and I shake my head.

"I do not." My protest is feeble, but it's not a lie. Not strictly.

"You do!" He's laughing again, and I can feel tears coming into my eyes, and I try to push them back, but I'm not having much luck.

"I don't have a crush on Leo McGarry."

He must hear something in my voice, because he stops laughing. There's a long silence at the table, broken by one word. "Ainse?" There's a question in there, and impending doom is hanging over us. All I can do is lift my head slowly to look at him, and he sees it in my eyes. "He's not…you're not…" I don't say anything, don't do anything, can't do anything. All I can do is stare across at him as his chair scoots back along the floor with a horrifying scrape, and he stands up, backing away from me. "He's not the guy…"

Too late I remember that he'd been teasing me a few weeks ago, that I'd told him that I was seeing someone, someone who was a Democrat. He'd nearly made me cry then too, and he'd backed off. He'd guessed that much because Cliff has the unerring ability to read me like a book, and that's just what happened here too. And now, one of my best friends has uncovered my little secret, and he's looking at me as if I'm something that just crawled out from under a rock somewhere. There's horror and shock and disappointment and a thousand other emotions there, and I can't look at him anymore.

"Ainsley," he says again when I don't respond. "Tell me you're not sleeping with Leo McGarry."

"I'm not sleeping with him." My words are a whisper.

His voice is like iron. "I don't believe you."

"I'm not sleeping with him," I repeat, looking up at him now, meeting his eyes head on. "I'm in love with him." A single tear slips down my cheek, and I swallow hard, because if it kills me, that will be the last tear he sees over this.

He runs a hand through his hair, then both hands, and he begins pacing up and down. "You did not just say that…" he mutters. "I know you did not just tell me that…"

"We didn't mean for it to happen," I tell him, begging him to understand. "It just did…we talked and we spent time together and we got along really well…"

"You think?" It's an explosion as he turns to me. "Actually, that's a great question. Did you think at all about what you were doing? About who you were doing it with? Have you totally lost your mind?"

"Maybe I have," I admit, and I can feel hysteria not far off. "Maybe I have. But I don't care. I don't care about the hearings, I don't care about the White House, I don't even care about my career, or my reputation, or anything that you're thinking of. I met a man Cliff. A nice man, that I could talk to, who would listen to me. A man who was my friend. And somewhere along the way, without knowing why, or even knowing it was happening, I fell in love with him. And I don't know how I got along without him. I want to spend the rest of my life with him."

That's the first time I've ever said those words to anyone, the first time I've ever even thought them. And they seem to take some of the tension out of the air because Cliff sighs, and he comes back to the table and sits down. He pushes his plate aside, and so do I. "How long?"

"We've been friends since I started to work at the White House. But we've only been seeing each other since May."

"May? You kept this quiet for nearly six months? Six months when the White House was under greater scrutiny than usual?"

I nod, because nobody has to tell me what an achievement that was for us. "We know what's at stake Cliff. We don't want the Administration to suffer because of us. But we're not going to suffer because of it either. If that means keeping our heads down, then so be it."

He sighs. "And no-one knows?"

"You're the only one."

He shakes his head, laying his palms flat down on the table in front of him, staring at them. "Ainse, I'm questioning this guy in a month…"

It's the first time he's ever mentioned the hearings to me, and I reach over and grab his hands. "One has nothing to do with the other. You can still be my friend and do your job."

His smile is sad and he lifts one eyebrow as he looks up at me. "Can I?"

Fear settles into my heart. "The hearings are to determine whether he knew about the President's MS and did he help to cover it up. It's not about Leo's personal life. It's not about me. No-one else knows, no-one's going to bring it up. It's not an issue Cliff."

"Maybe not to you."

He sounds older than I've ever heard him, and I'm feeling suddenly very old myself. "This shouldn't affect our friendship," I tell him, and it's only when the words are out of my mouth that I wonder what I mean. My friend questioning my lover in a Congressional Hearing? Or the fact that I'm dating a man who is the antithesis of everything Cliff thought that I'd ever want in a man?

"I love you Ainse, you know that." One of his hands closes over mine and the contact makes me feel better. "And there's nothing that can change that. This…" He blows air between his lips, shaking his head and chuckling slightly. "It's gonna take a bit of getting used to, that's all."

"He's a good man Cliff," I find myself saying, remembering as I do the look on Leo's face when I used those exact words last week.

He nods slowly, patting my hand. "Yeah."

We sit there in silence for a long time, until I speak. "I should go," I whisper. He nods, and walks me out, hailing a cab for me, giving me a hug as one pulls up.

"You take care of yourself, ok?" he orders.

"Yeah, you too." We stand there for a second longer, and I'm about to get into the cab, but there's something I have to ask him. "Cliff? We're ok, right?"

He hesitates. "Yeah." There's a smile on his face that doesn't quite go all the way up to his eyes. "Yeah, we're good."

I smile, but I know it doesn’t reach my eyes either, and I fight back a feeling of nausea all the way home in the cab, because despite our words, things have never felt more wrong. The journey back to my apartment seems even longer than usual, and once I do get home, I throw my keys on the hall table, calling out as I close the door behind me. My words bounce back to me, and I realise that he's not home yet. A glance at my watch tells me that I shouldn't expect him for another while yet, since I'm home rather earlier than I thought I'd be, but at least it gives me the time to get out of my work clothes and pull myself together somewhat.

And that's exactly what I do. A change of clothes later, with my hair pulled back tight in a ponytail, I scrub my face until I think that I've taken off the top layer of skin along with today's makeup. My cheeks are practically glowing pink when I hear the front door opening, hear him calling my name. "Just a second," I reply, giving myself one final look in the mirror, hoping that I can manage to not fall apart in front of him. At the last minute, I pull at the scrunchie that's holding my hair back, letting it fall around my shoulders, and, taking another deep breath, I go out to the living room.

He's standing in front of the couch, looking around for me, and he turns when he hears me approaching, and his face lights up with a smile when he sees me. "Hey," is all he says, and he begins to move in my direction. I meet him halfway, and he slips an arm around my waist, kissing my lips quickly in greeting.

"Hey," I say, and I'm relieved that my voice sounds normal. "Good day?" We settle down on the couch, me snuggled into the crook of his arm, and I wonder suddenly when this domestic tranquillity at the end of the day became the norm for the two of us.

He shrugs with the shoulder that I'm not resting on. "So-so," he tells me, and I know without asking that that's still a step up from some of the days that he's had in the past few months. "There was a thing with a sub that we thought had gone missing…"

"A submarine? You lost a submarine?"

"Well, not me technically."

"Sure. Because you tease me about losing my keys, so I would imagine losing a submarine would be far worse than that."

He chuckles at my bad joke, before continuing. "The President, you'll be pleased to know is on the ballot in New Hampshire, although he couldn't go personally…"

"Why does he want to go personally?"

He waves a hand dismissively. "It's a profound statement about democracy. But because of the submarine, he couldn’t go. He had to have a meeting with Albie Duncan." His voice is dry, and I know without looking at him that he's rolling his eyes right now. "Who he can't stand."

"But it all worked out ok in the end, right?" Because if it hadn't, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be here now.

"Yeah," he nods. "The sub had just gone quiet to avoid a destroyer. Which is what we'd thought all along, but, you know." There's a shrug, then a pause, and when he speaks again, there's a total change in his tone of voice. It's one of humour now, and I can imagine the smirk, just as I can imagine what's coming up next. "And then, there was a certain quote from the Republican Majority Leader."

I can't help it. I groan, burying my head in his shoulder. "Can we not talk about that?" I plead, and I can feel him shake with laughter.

"I'm not the only one to mention it then?" he wonders, and I sit up straight.

"Oh, no-one's mentioned it." His mirth is infectious, even after the conversation I've had with Cliff, and I can't help but smile too. "But there have been knowing looks and smiles and smirks… and I'm pretty sure that CJ is going to have it printed on T-shirts soon."

"Nah." He shakes his head. "Place mats."

I smack him lightly. "You see what I have to put up with?" I'm laughing when I say it, but his face instantly turns contrite, and he takes the hand that I smacked him with, holding it in his.

"I'm sorry." I'm about to ask him why he's so serious all of a sudden when I remember the huge fight we had a couple of weeks ago, when I told him about how bad things had been in the immediate aftermath of the MS announcement, people avoiding me, not trusting me, and the like. He hadn't a clue that things were so bad, and I think that he felt quite guilty about that. At least, that's certainly the impression that I'm getting now.

"It's ok," I tell him, bringing our joined hands to my lips as I smile at him, hopefully reassuring him a little. "I can't really blame them…I mean, you saw the quote…"

"Many times," he agrees, and that little smile is still playing around the corners of his lips. "Many, many times…"

I roll my eyes at his obvious pleasure. "And did anything else of note happen today?" I ask, hoping to get away from this subject, because if it goes on any longer, I might just cave and tell him how Cliff reacted.

He considers the question for a moment. "Nah," he finally decides. "I did what I had to do, and then I came here." He's looking across at me with a look in eyes with which I'm very familiar, and I find myself smiling across at him.

"And I’m glad you did." I'm moving closer to him as I talk, and my eyes close as his lips turn up in a smile.

"So am I." And that's the end of our talking for the moment as I lose myself in the feel of his lips on mine, his hands against my skin, his touch a sensation that somehow manages to be totally familiar and yet completely new every time. My head is spinning pleasantly when we finally draw apart, and our clothing is in considerable disarray as, without a word still, we lift ourselves from the couch and make our way into the bedroom.

Much later, I'm resting on his chest, and I can tell from the steady rise and fall that he's asleep. I lift myself up slightly so that I can see him better, noticing not for the first time how much younger he looks when he's sleeping, how relaxed he seems now. He's looking better than he did this summer, I must admit, but when he's awake, I can see the strain that current events are placing on him. But when he's asleep, it's a different story. When he sleeps, he's the Leo that used to visit me in my office after hours. He's the one who laughed with me over cheesecake and chocolate cake in the coffeehouse down the street.

When he sleeps, he's my Leo, the man I fell in love with.

And then he wakes, and leaves this place, and when we're in the White House, he's Leo my boss. And sometimes, even before he leaves this place, he shuts me out. Like when he wakes up in the middle of a night from a nightmare that he won't talk to me about. I wake up with him, I go to get him a glass of water, and sit with him while he drinks it, and then I hold him until he sleeps again, all the while hardly saying a word, just being there for him in silence. But I can see the terror in his face, feel it in his beating heart, in his trembling body and it kills me that he can't share it with me.

And now I have something that I can't share with him.

He can't know that Cliff knows about the two of us. Aside from the fact that it would cause the row to end all rows between us, I know what Leo would feel he has to do, namely, disclose our relationship, and Cliff's knowledge of it. Which would hurt Cliff professionally, and cause a media feeding frenzy. To say nothing of how it would affect our family and friends. No, it's much better that Cliff and I keep this quiet, just between us.

This is the first secret that I've ever kept from Leo, and I can only hope that it's the last, and it doesn't make me feel a bit better to know that I'm doing it in a good cause. I just hope that he'll realise that if he ever finds out about it. I also hope that I haven't just lost a good friend over this whole thing. Cliff's always been there for me, and the way things ended tonight makes me sick to my stomach.

The one thing that I can hold on to right now is Leo, and the fact that he's worth all of this. So I kiss his cheek and lie down beside him, pressing myself as close to him as I can. His arms tighten around me automatically, and I tell myself again that Leo is worth all this.

I'm still doing that as I fall asleep.

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