Rating: PG
Spoilers: Holy Night, all the Will and Ainsley eps up to that
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: Will and Ainsley trade bad Presidential introduction stories.
Author's Note: When I saw Holy Night I was convinced that this story had to be out there somehwere, but alas, 'twas not to be, so I found myself giving it a whirl. The Ainsley point of view is in the works, but, for reasons that will become apparent, this is not going to be its own little series.

It's been a long day, and most of the people working around the West Wing have already gone home for the night. Which is something that I'm thankful for as I make my way back from the Mess, a cup of coffee in my hand, the nectar of the Gods, to aid me in my rewriting of this part of the speech. Of course, I should really say my latest rewriting. Nor is it going to be the final rewriting.

I seem to have meandered off course in my train of thought, which is something of a measure of how tired and stressed I am right now. As is the slight mixing of metaphors that went on there. Walking through hordes of people, all of whom hate my guts, all of whom are jealous of my working from Sam's old office, has not been conducive to peace of mind today, especially when you consider the fact that I've passed way over the Holy Line of Demarcation. And embarrassed myself in front of the President in the process.

You know, I've just realised Toby was right. I'm feeling the urge to drink. A lot.

But I quash that desire ruthlessly, the better to wade through cartons of paper that are currently decorating the desk that is not mine in the office that is not really mine. I figure if I keep thinking of it like that, I won't freeze up. We can only hope.

I'm at the door of said office, at this point barely noticing the Seaborn for Congress posters and the myriad bicycles, thanking my lucky stars that they ignored Toby's advice and eschewed the shaving cream - though they could just be biding their time - before I figure out that my office is not as empty as I left it.

That in fact, there's someone there.

A woman. Moreover, a woman who is not Elsie, or Bonnie or Ginger. She's wearing a red business suit, so she must work here in some capacity, and her long blonde hair is falling loose down her back. For a moment, I think that it's Josh's assistant Donna, and there's certainly a resemblance, but then I realise that she's shorter than Donna. She's also staring up at the Seaborn for Congress posters as if in a trance, and she jumps when I speak. "May I help you?"

She turns around quickly, giving me a bright smile which I don't return at first. I've seen bright smiles around the West Wing; they usually come attached to a biting comment and/or caustic diatribe. "Hi," is all she says, looking more than a little awkward, I gotta say, and I nod at her, not moving.

"Hi."

I'm waiting for her to make the next move, and to her credit, she does, introducing herself to me. "I'm Ainsley Hayes," she says, extending her hand, and the name sounds vaguely familiar to me, though I'm not quite sure from where. "I'm a Deputy White House Counsel."

Ah, much becoming clear to me. Evidently she's here, even at this late hour of the night to give me more notes. Which will no doubt lead to more embarrassing moments for me in front of the President. Or, you know, anyone else in the West Wing. "Will Bailey," I say, shaking her hand firmly. "Are you here to talk about the notes on the speech? Because if you are, I've got some ideas-"

I'm moving to my desk, getting ready to find the last thing I was looking for, only stopping when I hear her voice. "Oh no, nothing like that. I was just on my way home, and I thought I'd stop by."

She thought she'd stop by? She's never met me, doesn't know me from Adam, and she just thought she'd stop by for no good reason?

This can't be good.

I look back up at her, expecting to see her rolling up her metaphorical sleeves for a fight, instead seeing a face that is totally open, without guile. I put my mug of coffee back down on the table, not paying any real attention to it, so of course, it spills over the rim of the mug, all over some of the papers on the desk, narrowly missing my hand. A quick glance assures me that the papers are legible, if requiring a little attention before I show them to Toby, so I turn my attention back to Ainsley.

I really do know that name.

"You thought you'd stop by," I say flatly, my unspoken question rather obvious.

I expect her to answer the question, to offer some kind of explanation as to why she felt the need to introduce herself to me. Instead, her eyes light all around the office and she asks, seemingly innocently, "You like cycling?"

OK, so she wants to play it cute? Well, nothing doing here; it's late, it's Christmas, and frankly, I'm getting a little tired of this crap. Is it my fault that Sam got me into this? Though the moment I think that, I remember talking to him in California a few weeks ago, him blaming me for getting him into the race for Congress. I told him that he got himself into this, and I have a feeling that if he were here now, he'd tell me the exact same thing.

Which doesn't help me out at all.

"Not so much," I tell her, keeping most of the impatience out of my voice. She doesn't look as if she's mocking me in a malicious way though, instead, there's something of an Elsie vibe about her, as if she's trying to get me to lighten up. So, as I sit down, I wave a hand at the posters behind her. "Though I do have an interest in Seaborn for Congress."

Which, of course, I do. And judging by the way she was looking at those posters, maybe she does too.

She smiles at my words, just a small smile, but it lightens the tension in the office considerably. "This I know," she says, settling herself on the arm of the chair across from my desk. "That's why I'm here actually...I was talking to Sam earlier on, he asked me to look you up, say hello."

Ah. Now, this makes more sense to me. Sam told me about what was in the note that he told me to give to Toby, way after the fact, and from what I know about him, it doesn't surprise me that he's still trying to make my life just a bit easier. Still though, I haven't talked to him in a while, and there's some stuff that I want to know. "Did he say how the campaign was doing?"

She pauses, which I don't think can be construed as good. "He said that he's fighting with…is it Scott?" Oh, I had a feeling that he wasn't going to end up getting along with him, and while Sam told me that himself, it looks like it's getting worse instead of better as time goes by. I nod to let her know that she has it right, so she continues, "On a more or less hourly basis, and that he wishes you were still out there."

I roll my eyes, because I know just how he feels. "He's not the only one," I mutter, and it's only when I see her blink that I realise that I've spoken out loud.

"Is it that bad?" she asks, tilting her head curiously, and while I'm not one to complain usually, certainly not to someone I've just met, I find myself giving her an honest answer.

"See for yourself," I invite, gesturing around the office, taking in the bikes and the posters. Who knows what it's going to be tomorrow "I’m beginning to wonder what Sam got me into." I've decided; I'm blaming it all on Sam, even if he's not here to defend himself. Especially since he's not here to defend himself.

"It does get better." She says it as if she knows what she's talking about, and I can't believe that she does. She's clearly comfortable with being here, she's extremely attractive, she's friendly, and it looks like she's got a sense of humour, why on earth would her tenure here be anything less than perfect?

She doesn't waste any time disabusing me of that particular notion. "When I started here," she says, "I had just appeared on Capitol Beat, where I kicked Sam's ass from one end of the studio to the other."

That's where I know the name from! I remember seeing that appearance, remember never having seen Sam Seaborn, or anyone from the White House, implode like that before. Well, apart from Josh Lyman and his secret plan to fight inflation. My epiphany doesn't stop her though, as she continues apace. "I'm a Republican, I disagreed with large tracts of this Administration's policies, and still do by the way, and a few months earlier, I'd written an op-ed piece declaring that Leo McGarry was unfit to be Chief of Staff and should resign immediately."

OK… that's one hell of a résumé. I mean, it's one thing to hire me on a temporary basis, being as I'm a Democrat who just got a dead man elected in Orange County, and ghosted a speech for the Governor of California that didn't go down too badly, but didn't she say that she's a Deputy Counsel? "And they hired you?" I marvel.

She shrugs with a bright grin. "Boggles the mind huh?" and she's not wrong. She's still got all her powers of speech intact, which makes one of us, and she continues just as brightly. "I still remember what Leo said to me when he offered me the job. 'The President likes smart people who disagree with him. He wants to hear-' What?"

That last "what" I know isn't part of the quote, because she's looking quite curiously at me. That being said, I don't want to tell her what happened today, because frankly, I want to forget that it ever happened. Erase it from my memory.

Which is why I say quickly, "Nothing."

She doesn’t buy it, frowning, objecting to my answer. "It must be something."

I get the impression that nothing but honesty is going to do the job here, so that's what I decide on giving her. "The President and Toby gave me some notes on this section of the Inaugural. Three notes," I tell her. "One of them was a bad note." The look on her face tells me that she doesn't understand what that means, so I help her out. "A bad idea, purposely put there to see how I'd do telling truth to power."

She's nodding, and makes a pretty good guess as to what happened. Though that could be because I can feel the heat rising up in my cheeks. "Presidential lockjaw?" she asks, and I lean back in my chair, rolling my eyes at how two such simple words can bring to mind such pain.

"I wish." If only it were that simple. So I set about giving her every mortifying detail, a catharsis if you will. "First of all, I got to the Oval Office, where Charlie -" Is that his name? Because, you know, with my track record, I'm not so sure. "It is Charlie isn't it?" I ask, and she confirms with a nod. "Charlie told me that Toby, who was supposed to be going to the meeting, wasn't, in fact. I told him that I'd come back later, because no way was I going into the Oval Office on my own; I'm already uncomfortable enough being here, way over the Holy Line of Demarcation without that. Except that the President came out and Charlie told him who I was."

She hasn't interrupted me thus far, and while my pause where I hope that the ground will somehow open up and swallow me gives her another chance, she chooses not to.

"My exact response, on being asked by the President of the United States, into the Oval Office was, 'No, no, no, no, no." Then I couldn't remember his name. I went through Mr Justice, then Mr Bartlet before I finally remembered that his title was Mr President. Charlie said he's never seen a worse first encounter."

I'm about three seconds away from burying my head in my hands, and as it is, I'm looking down at my desk, not at her. So her quiet words, "I have," make me lift my head up sharply. Because let's face it, if there's anything remotely comparable, I'd love to hear about it. Either that, or, you know, alcohol.

"Really?" Hope springs eternal and all that. "Whose?"

"Mine." I'm sure that my jaw drops more than a little at her words, and I stare at her, waiting for her to continue. "It was after the State of the Union two years ago. Capitol Beat were broadcasting from the West Wing. I was on one of the panels, and I mentioned, live on air, that I'd never met the President. Turns out that Sam was watching, and decided that we had to do something about that. I, like you, tried to get out of it, told him that I didn't want to meet the President, that I would be mortified, that I would make a fool of myself, and I thought I'd convinced him of that fact. However, it's hard to talk Sam out of something when he's convinced that he's right."

This much, I know to be true, and I'm really interested to find out what happened next. After all, how bad can it be?

"After appearing on Capitol Beat, I was pretty pleased with myself, so I went to the bar, had myself a drink, and went out to the Sculpture Garden. Where they had just been painting. In January, but whatever. And I sat in wet paint."

OK, bad, but not a disaster.

"Naturally," she continues, "I couldn't walk around in clothes like that, so I had someone run to my apartment to get me a change of clothes, while I changed, temporarily, into a bathrobe from the women's locker room."

She pauses, I think for breath, and I jump in as something strikes me. "They have bathrobes in the women's locker room?"

"Yes." She doesn't wonder why I seized on that, just moves right along. "So I was waiting in my office, which was in the Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue, which to you is the deepest bowels of the basement, where no-ones goes. I think it may be marked with 'Here Be Dragons' on the floor plans. Anyhow, no-one ever came down there, so I thought I was safe enough turning on some music…and I was a little tipsy, I will admit…so I was doing a little dancing, and that's when Sam came in. He just happened to be there, thought the whole thing was mildly amusing, me trying to get him to dance to Blame it on the Bossa Nova. It got even more amusing when I looked over his shoulder and saw the President standing there."

She stops, allowing me to catch up with her, and while it takes a second for her words to register with me, when they do, I'm shocked, mouth falling open, the whole nine yards. "You're kidding me," is all I can manage.

The look I get in return is one that Elsie does extremely well, being best described as withering. "Yes, because this is just the kind of thing that I would joke about," she says flatly.

"What happened?" Because thus far, I'm starting to believe her about it being worse than my story.

"I screamed and threw my drink across the room."

I don't think that a burst of laughter was quite what she was looking for, but if she's offended she doesn't show it, waiting for me to collect myself before she goes on. "He said that he didn't know we had a night-club down here. I, for once in my life, could not articulate a coherent sentence, so Sam introduced us. At which point the President told me that he just wanted to say hello, and told me that a lot of people assumed that I was hired because I was a blonde Republican sex kitten, but that they were wrong and I should keep up the good work."

The President of the United States called her a blonde Republican sex kitten?

I might be the new guy, but I'm not that credulous.

Although she does seem quite serious. "The President said-"

She nods. "Oh, I found out later that that little quote was from Sam. He'd said it when he talked the President into dropping down to see me. This, by the way, is the man you want to get elected to Congress."

Now that she puts it like that, it's quite the scary prospect.

"Wow," I murmur, not quite if it's to do with that thought or the whole story she's just told me. "You're right. That's worse than my story."

"Oh but I'm not finished."

She can't be serious. She just can't be. "You mean there's more?"

"The next morning, having recovered some, not all, of my dignity, but an awful lot of my righteous indignation, I approached Sam and told him that this was all his fault and that he had an obligation to help me fix it. So he said that he'd fix up another meeting for me."

There's no way this can end good. Not if the smile on her face is anything to go by, part embarrassed, part amused.

"However, my nerve only lasted until the time of the meeting, by which time I was worse than ever, seized by an uncontrollable urge to visit the bathroom at regular intervals. The meeting was in Leo's office, and I needed to use the restroom. Unfortunately, I mistook the door to his closet for such a door, and of course, that was when the President chose to make his entrance."

Just to clarify, I gesture with my hand and ask, "While you were-"

Another firm nod from Ainsley. "I believe his exact words were, 'They won't let me smoke inside but you can pee in Leo's closet.'"

There's not the merest hint of a smile on her face, though her eyes are dancing with mirth, and that does it for me. I manage to wait for all of two seconds before I throw my head back, laughing like I haven't laughed in far too long. I wonder briefly if she's going to be upset about that, though I couldn't stop myself even if I wanted to. The thought is rendered moot when I realise that she's laughing too, and it seems to take us a long time to sober up.

"OK," I tell her, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes. "You definitely win."

"I’m glad I could be of some service," she says, as we share a smile across the table. "I do have a point to telling you this though. I made a fool of myself in front of him, he knew that I disagreed with large tracts of his platform. And he still took the time to shake my hand, to tell me that he appreciated me coming to work for him. Right then and there, I forgot about everything else…all the other stuff. President Bartlet is a good man, and I'm honoured to work here."

Her obvious sincerity, from a self-confessed Republican who disagrees with much of the Bartlet platform, impresses me, and I know just what she means. "Yeah," I agree, nodding slowly. "I am too."

I've always respected the institution of the White House, hence the Holy Line of Demarcation between the halls and the West Wing, the line I was loath to cross. Not only that, but I also hold in the highest regard both the office of the President, and the man himself. It's beyond my wildest dreams that I ever thought I'd be working here. I still don't quite believe it; I'm waiting for someone to come to their senses and throw me out on my ear.

"There's something else Leo said to me when I started working here," Ainsley says, and I find myself listening intently. "'Don't worry about Sam or Josh and Toby or CJ or the other Democrats on the hill or Republicans on television. You're here to serve the President.'"

Simple words, eloquently put, and she shrugs her shoulders, standing up. When she speaks this time, I know it's her, Ainsley Hayes speaking, not Leo McGarry. "Don't worry about the posters, or the bicycles, or Presidential lockjaw. Just be Will Bailey. That's what got you here." There's nothing I can say to that, so I just nod. "Anyway," she says, looking over her shoulder towards the bullpen. "I should get going."

"Yeah." My own desk is still covered in paper, and I'm sure my coffee is now undrinkable, that is, if it ever was in the first place. "I've got some stuff to do here…" I look down at the desk, then back at her, feeling grateful to her for coming in here, for reaching out like that. "Ainsley? Thanks for the chat."

She doesn't say anything, just tosses off a grin and a wave, going to the door. I go back to my papers, looking at the notes, looking up again when I hear her speak. "Oh Will?" She's leaning against the doorframe, smiling, eyes still dancing. "Welcome to the White House."

I smile as she turns back around, not able to take my eyes off her as she walks through the bullpen, on her way to who knows where. I'm still smiling as I go back to my reading, my heart considerably lighter as her last words ring in my ears.

"Welcome to the White House."

For the first time, it feels like I am.