Rating: PG
Pairing: Leo/Ainsley
Spoilers: I think we're well into AU at this point, but everything up to the end of season three to be safe
Feedback: Makes my day
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site The Band Gazebo --Anywhere else please ask first.
Summary: She's become accustomed to the whispers...
Notes: For Heidi, who asked for Leo fic, and who introduced me to LiveJournal and the Writer's Choice group in the first place - http://www.livejournal.com/community/writers_choice - this week's theme was "Whispers"

She's become accustomed to the whispers that follow her along the halls of the White House, the same whispers that have followed her around ever since she began working there. She'd hoped, once upon a time, that the whispers would fade as time passed, as people got used to her presence there, a wise man having told her that the others would come around. She'd held on to those words like a drowning man to a life preserver, waited for them to come true.

But they never had.

In fact, if anything, the whispers have grown louder as time has passed.

First, the whispers came because she'd kicked Sam's ass on Capitol Beat. Then because she was hired to work there, a Republican lawyer in a Democratic White House. She'd expected seconds glances and whispers, but not the dead flowers and obscene card that had been left on her desk her first day there.

Things had looked up when Sam come to her rescue like a knight in shining armour, banishing the evil trolls from the White House forever, but that hadn't stopped the whispers. The subject had simply changed to his chivalrous defence of her, and somewhere in the midst of it all, people had begun to whisper as to his true motives.

She'd tried not to listen to those whispers, because Sam was her friend, only her friend, and she was grateful for that much. Until the night that he reminded her that she was a blonde Republican girl and that no-one liked her.

She knows that he was only trying to calm her down before she went back on television, she knows that he didn't mean it, not really.

But she'd never have had those Pink Squirrels were she not trying to chase the thought from her mind that he'd hit a little too close to the bone.

The end result of that night, the worst Presidential meeting in the annals thereof, was also whispered around the White House, as was the tale of the subsequent meeting that Sam organised, and she was mortified, and as usual, buried her head in the sand.

But there was no burying her head in the sand when the MS scandal hit, and she was the only Republican in the White House Counsel's Office, and people were once again looking at her as if she was the enemy. Nor did the whispers die away; they lasted right through the Congressional hearings, through the censure and beyond.

They persist to this day.

Except that she's stopped caring, because she's realised that the whispers don't know her, that they just know the idea of her. They can't touch who she is inside. Not that she worked that out for herself, she had help, from the wise man who, on her first day at work in the White House, helped her to find her office, told her that things were going to be fine.

This is a man who's been vilified by Republicans, over his drug abuse revelations, over the MS scandal, over his beliefs. He was the one who was put on the stand by one of her oldest friends at Christmas, and despite all that, he can still put his politics aside and see her for who she really is.

There are times, most of the time in fact, that she can't believe they're doing this, that they're hiding this relationship from everyone, that they're having this relationship at all. There are times when she imagines what the whispers would be like if people heard about it, what they'd say if they knew.

But as they lie together at night, and his voice whispers in her ear, and his touch whispers over her skin, she knows she doesn't care about the whispers.

She just cares about him.