Consultation

by: Allison

Character(s): Sam, Ainsley
Pairing(s): Sam/Ainsley
Category(s): Romance
Rating: YTEEN
Summary: ...and a little consulting on the side.

In a rare moment of quiet at the eye of the hurricane Donna and Margaret sat close together, huddled in chairs in Leo's otherwise empty office, waiting for someone to need either of them. The other assistants had gone home when the rest of the staff left for the press conference - except Carol, of course, who was still with C.J. somewhere - having been told by their respective bosses that the day was over. But that was back when they thought that more than the day was over - that the whole thing was over as well. Donna had gathered that much from Josh's face, and Margaret had heard one or two things she probably shouldn't have. That was before the President had thrown everyone for a loop. In the back of the press conference they'd squeezed each other's hands till they hurt and gasped quietly with joy, squealing softly once the room erupted and they knew no one would hear them anyway. Now back in Leo's empty office - he was in the Oval having another tense meeting with the President and Babish - the gravity of the fight before them had begun to sink in. They were both still thrilled that the President was going to run, that they didn't yet have to lose the jobs, the excitement, and the people (the two men in particular, truth be told) who had come to mean everything. But there were other considerations. Donna was thinking of Josh, of how the spirit had just begun to come back into his eyes and his walk before this happened, and of how he was already beginning to look weary again. She knew relations between him and Toby had been more than usually strained lately, and she didn't know why but she prayed it wouldn't last. Josh still needed all the friends he could get, and she wasn't sure whether he was ready to gear up for a fight of this magnitude - not yet. Margaret was thinking of her boss as well, predictably worrying that the stress might turn him to drink - but really she knew his strength and knew that that was unlikely. What really worried her was a bit more insidious. She knew Leo's incredible capacity for self-sacrifice, for fading into the background, for political martyrdom if necessary. Leo had known about the President's MS for over a year. Few people would believe that Bartlet's Chief of Staff and his best friend wouldn't have known long before that. Margaret knew that this job and the companionship of these people were the only things keeping Leo alive in Jenny's absence. She also knew that he would take the fall if he thought it would keep Bartlet in office, or get him reelected, or keep the administration from going under. And she knew what that would do to him.

The door to the office swung open, and they both jumped guiltily as Leo entered the room. Margaret expected a sarcastic comment about gossip and/or loitering in his office, but instead Leo only said quietly, "Donna, Josh needs you." A flush crept into Donna's cheeks, embarrassment for having been caught not doing her job. As she passed Leo he actually stopped her with a hand on her arm; then while Margaret was looking away he said softly, "It's okay, he just needs you now." Donna nodded mutely, and she must have looked upset because Leo actually reached up and smoothed her hair back from her face - something he hadn't done since Mallory was twelve - before sending her on her way.

"Margaret!" Leo started to shout, modulating his voice when he turned around and remembered that she was already in the room. "I need you to pull something for me. We may have it, or Josh might - but Donna's going to be out, so if you can't find it here just go into his office. It's the file with the President's yearly health evaluations..."

"We have it," Margaret replied immediately. "The First Lady came looking for it once. What do you want me to do with it?"

"Ginger's gone," Leo reflected. "Give it to Sam. I'll attach a note."

When she handed the thick file folder to Sam and motioned toward the attached note, his brow crinkled in confusion. "'As many heads as possible?' Am I supposed to kill people?"

"I think you're supposed to discuss it with someone else," Margaret replied in her usual dry tones.

"Ah."

"Josh?"

He shook his head. "Josh and Donna are with Babish, and Josh never practiced law anyway." He heaved an enormous sigh. "No, I know what he means."

Margaret looked at him neutrally. "Good luck."

"Right."

He descended the stairs to the basement slowly, both because he didn't really want to get there and because every footfall sounded like cannon fire in the unnatural silence. When at last he couldn't put it off anymore he pushed her door open and leaned inside. "Ainsley?" he asked meekly.

She looked up from a desk covered with tall stacks of paper. "Hey, Sam." She sounded every bit as distracted but not quite as energetic as usual.

He came into the room and closed the door behind him, although the need for secrecy had been pretty well eradicated by the press conference. "Did you, uh - did you watch the thing?"

Ainsley stopped typing away on her laptop for a moment. "The press conference, not the interview. I taped it at home in case I needed to watch it later."

"There probably won't be a test," Sam said, his tone not really teasing.

"Not for me there won't," she said, resuming her typing. "There might be for the President."

"You want to watch it later to see whether he said anything potentially damaging?" he guessed.

"Other than the fact that he has a degenerative neurological disease and concealed it from the country?" she asked, eyebrow lifted. "I want to watch later and see whether he admitted to anything illegal."

"Distinction noted," Sam admitted. "So - what are you doing now?"

She shrugged. "Flipping through old depositions, old cases where people were accused of lying under oath in somewhat grey circumstances - nothing really useful but it makes me feel better."

"Makes you feel better?"

"Like I'm doing something," she clarified.

"Want to do something?"

She looked up and stopped typing again. "What?"

Sam slapped the file he was carrying onto her desk, carefully avoiding the other piles. "The President's yearly health evaluations. Look through them with me, give me your opinion."

She considered him for a moment, her eyes drifting down toward the file. "Okay."

He settled into her extra chair with a look of confusion on his face. "Ainsley?"

"Hmm?" She was already reaching for the President's medical files and clearing away the other clutter on her desk.

"Where do you stand on this?" Sam asked carefully.

She met his eyes, hers slightly widened. "Where do I stand on this?"

"Where do you stand on this?"

She took a deep breath and paused. "Do I think he did anything wrong?" Her mouth twisted in a little grimace. "Running for President and not telling people that you may eventually be incapable of doing the job is morally questionable - whether the concern is completely valid at this time or not. Do I think he did anything illegal? I hope not. I like the man, I don't want to see him go down - but I honestly don't have enough information to tell you whether that seems likely."

Sam patted the medical file, seemingly satisfied by her answer. "Well, then let's work on some of that information."

An hour later, after skimming through files until their fingers were rubbed raw and their eyes burned, Ainsley and Sam faced each other over her desk. "So," she said.

"So."

"MS doesn't show up in any of the standard tests done at a routine physical." She flipped back to the most recent exam report and made imaginary check marks as she went down the list. "Blood pressure, heart rate, weight, cholesterol screening, blood sugar, iron, prostate... plus a few bonuses: no cataracts or signs of glaucoma, full range of motion in all joints - well, full for fifty-six, anyway." She sighed. "When you go to a doctor and you fill out the medical history, it asks about hereditary diseases: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension. They don't ask about MS; it's not a hereditary disease."

"No," Sam replied.

"You know all this already," she stated plainly. It wasn't a question.

"I've been through it with the First Lady," he confirmed.

She shrugged. "Then -"

"Because there's more, and you'll find it," he said. "Go on."

"Go on?"

"Go on," he nodded. "Go - I don't know, follow that thought to its logical conclusion."

"Sam," she began, frustration creeping into her voice.

"Ainsley," he interrupted before she could scold him. "We're going to appoint the most vicious Special Prosecutor we possibly can. That's the only way anything can be salvaged of his image. Whoever this person is, he's going to have obscure points coming out of the woodwork. Babish is busy working on the big stuff; we need someone who can anticipate these off the wall interpretations of the law, and Leo thinks that's you."

"What about you?" she asked after a moment.

"He said something about 'as many heads as possible.'"

She smiled for the first time. "Are you sure he didn't mean..."

"Probably not primarily, but I haven't ruled out violence as an answer."

She laughed a little, then sighed again. "Every medical history form also has a blank for 'other.' Now, it could be argued that 'other' refers only to other hereditary conditions not already listed on the form, in which case he's still technically not leaving anything out."

"Right."

She gave him a look, still frustrated that so far she was only coming up with things he'd already thought of. When he looked innocently back at her she gave up and said with a little groan, "Let's talk some more about full disclosure."

An hour and a half and nine total collective trips to the mess and the restrooms later, they sat in nearly the same positions but slightly the worse for wear. Coffee sat cooling in mugs on her desk. Sam's jacket was off, his tie loosened, and his top button undone, so that he looked vaguely like Clark Kent about to tear his shirt off and reveal the Superman outfit underneath. His hair was considerably sloppier after hours of running his fingers through it. On one of her trips to the bathroom Ainsley had given in and ditched her stockings and work shoes, sliding her feet into an old pair of sandals she kept in her briefcase and propping her bare legs on another extra chair. She had tugged her long hair into a ponytail and shed her jacket as well. In the middle of a sentence about disclosure and military secrets she had completely trailed off, leaning her head back against the chair and twisting a pen in her fingers. Sam had barely noticed when she stopped talking, because for the last five minutes he hadn't heard a word she'd said anyway. It actually wasn't until she rolled her head to the side and called, "Sam? Hey, Sam?" that he realized he'd been staring at her legs stretched out bare in front of her.

"Sorry," he said hastily. "I uh - kinda fell asleep there."

She sighed and closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Me too."

"You want to quit for the night?" he asked.

She lifted one arm and looked at her watch. "It's only ten."

"You're right, what kind of full day is that?" he asked, his eyes sparkling just a little.

She gave him that look, the one that clearly said he was being cute but she was pretending not to notice. He gave her the warm smile that look always elicited, and for a moment neither of them talked and the air crackled as it sometimes did when they were together. She laughed shortly, and then stopped and groaned under her breath. "I think I broke a rib," she complained.

"Doing what?" he asked, amused.

"Well, that's the thing. I haven't done anything," she said, her brow furrowed. "It's just been tender for the last week."

"You know you can break a rib just by sneezing or laughing," Sam said.

Anyone else would have laughed at him for knowing that - or possibly for believing it - but Ainsley only crooked an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Apparently."

"And here I thought I was just being a weenie," she said, leaning back in the chair again.

"Well, I wouldn't rule that out," he teased.

"Right," she said, laughing again. "Ow."

"Should probably stop that," he offered.

"Shut up," she said, but she was smiling.

The look on her face - tired, affectionate, and weirdly contented - made him say something he wouldn't have dreamed of under other circumstances (although the view of her legs had probably affected his judgement slightly as well). "Come on, let's get out of here," he said.

She raised her eyebrows again. "Let's get out of here?" she repeated.

"Sure, let's go," he said, not yet completely losing his nerve. He tilted his head to the side and tried his charming look. "We need drinks."

Ainsley very slowly lifted first one leg, then the other off the chair and set them on the floor. The action caused her skirt to ride up her thigh a bit, and he could have sworn she was flirting with him. "You think I'm going to go for drinks with you?" she asked.

His smile got a little broader and he tried the deep, seductive tone. "Yes, I do."

She got to her feet and came over to stand practically over him, leaning down slightly as she said, "You know Sam, guys think that kind of thing works, but it really doesn't."

He managed to keep a straight face long enough to say, "It really does, Ainsley," and then broke into a grin. She laughed as well and shook her head.

"Fine," she said, heading back for the desk and shuffling her things together.

"Fine?" he repeated, shocked.

She turned back, an annoyingly self-satisfied smile on her face. "Sure." Then she hesitated and some of her assurance faded. "I mean, if you want to..."

"I suggested it," he reminded her, standing up. Her sudden uncertainty gave him the warm, protective-like feeling that she sometimes inspired.

"Okay," she said with a tiny hint of a smile. While he pulled himself together, shedding his tie and trying to straighten his shirt, she eyed her bare legs and sandals and finally said, "Oh, what the hell." She opted for simply grabbing her things and walking out like that. He clicked off her office light and pulled the door shut for her, and with his hand at the small of her back they walked out and up the stairs.

Sitting at a perfectly stereotypical dark corner table in a fairly quiet downtown bar, Sam found himself again falling into a reverie, staring somewhere between his glass of whiskey and Ainsley's general rib area. When she tilted her glass so that the ice clinked against it he started and looked up to meet her eyes.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said with a laugh. She gave him a wry look as she sipped her own whiskey and he said, "I don't think I was thinking about anything. I was just... being."

Her eyebrows lifted, but she seemed to understand. "Why, what are you thinking?" he returned.

She shrugged and took another swallow; he watched her throat move and then looked hastily up at the light glinting off her hair. "I was... trying not to think about full disclosure," she confessed.

He laughed again, but this time he meant it, and then he caught sight of her face and stopped laughing. She looked - not right, somehow. "What?" he asked in the sincerely concerned voice that they didn't often show each other.

She frowned and started to open her mouth several times without actually saying anything - at moments like this she reminded him of C.J. - before finally asking, "Sam, do I - am I - do you think I - or I don't know, maybe both of us - are we -"

"Ainsley," he interrupted, "would you please ask me something?"

His mock-irritated tone seemed to snap her out of her hesitation. "Do you think I'm the kind of person who can't talk about anything but work?" she asked, looking him straight in the eye.

His brow furrowed to match hers, and he considered carefully while swallowing whiskey. "Well - no."

"You don't sound very sure, there," she said worriedly.

"Well," he said. "It's like - yes, talking to you almost always involves politics. But politics isn't just work, you know, it's - it has to do with everything. It has to do with education, and economy, and philosophy, and morality - it's everything. Politics the way we do it is just - life. Talking about politics doesn't mean you're talking about work, unless you're talking specifically about a bill we passed yesterday."

She still looked unsure, and he asked, "Did someone..."

"What?" she asked, frowning across the table.

"Never mind."

"No, what?"

"Never mind."

"Sam..." she began.

"I was about to ask something extraordinarily personal and probably pretty rude," he said. "Never mind."

She paused a moment, swirling her glass again. "Did someone tell me that?" she said finally. "Is that what you were going to ask?"

He wavered for only a second. "Yes."

"Yes."

"Yes?" he echoed, not sure whether that had been the answer to his question.

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Sam," she started, in that tone that clearly meant, 'leave it alone.'

"No, who?" he asked again.

"Doesn't matter."

"It does matter," he said. "Whoever he was, he was wrong."

"Sam..."

"Seriously, what did -" He stopped himself and lifted his glass to his lips, draining it. "I'm sorry. I have no right to pry."

She swallowed the rest of her glass - nearly a quarter of the way full - at once before setting it down and saying, "I had only been out with him twice. He commented that I 'talked shop' an awful lot and said something like, 'What if I tried to make you have a whole conversation that had nothing to do with politics?' I just - I wasn't real surprised when he never called again."

"Did you really want him to?" Sam asked in disbelief.

"I guess not," she admitted, tracing circles on the table. "That doesn't mean it wasn't insulting when he didn't."

"True," he said, smiling. "Well, he was wrong, and also an idiot."

She gave him an affectionately dry look. "Sam, not knowing that politics is life doesn't make you an idiot."

"No, but walking away from you does," he replied. It took all of three seconds for his face to start burning, but he ignored it and drained some of the whiskey-flavored melting ice from his glass. By the time he was able to look back at her she had recovered from her own shyness and managed to hide her shocked pleasure.

After a long moment of awkward silence she finally asked, "What do you think is going to happen?"

He raised an eyebrow. "With - the thing? The President?" He found himself looking hastily around to make sure no one was within earshot, before remembering that everyone knew now anyway. "I don't know."

"Deciding to run again is a good sign, right?" Ainsley pressed.

"This President has never lost an election in his life," Sam intoned.

"You think he's going to start now?"

Two pairs of tired blue eyes met over the table. "I hope not," Sam answered soberly. "It would be a hell of a time for a first."

That almost made her laugh because she understood perfectly that he was joking, but not really. She rested her elbows on the table and looked down, breaking their eye contact, as a sudden wave of exhaustion swept over her entire body. When he asked softly if she was all right she replied without thinking, "I've never been so tired in my life."

He hesitated before asking, "Physically tired, or..."

"Tired," she repeated. "Physically exhausted, mentally drained, and so tired of dealing with all this..." She didn't finish, but she didn't have to. She shrugged and looked up at him. "I'm sorry. You've been dealing with it for so much longer than I have, and I'm just whining... and it's not, you know, that I don't want to help." The apparent non sequitur didn't disturb him in the slightest, and she went on, "I don't like what's being done, what's going to be done to a good man and, if I'm forced to admit it, a good President. I want to help you - you all, I mean - I want to help all of you, the staff, to defend him as much as possible..." She trailed off, face burning from her little slip and train of thought completely derailed by the look on Sam's face. She had expected amusement at her usual nervous rambling, but this time she'd seen only exhaustion and a probing awareness she'd never sensed with him before. It made her, if at all possible, even more flustered.

Sam noticed that she was flustered, but he was too busy to wonder why - busy praying she wouldn't notice where his thoughts had been going. He reflected, as she swallowed another sip of whiskey, that sometimes it took so little. The smallest things - the flush on her cheeks, the alcohol, the way he licked his lips, the rise and fall of her chest that indicated a slightly disturbed breathing pattern - could turn the awkwardness and tension between them into a completely different kind of tension. He didn't have to wonder whether she felt it - the air had thickened between them as a result of completely mutual awareness. He did wonder whether they were both drunk and that was why this was happening, after so much time and in the middle of so much frustration. Of course, maybe that was the answer after all. He only knew that he was torn between sleepy sentiment and raging desire - one side of him wanted to confess his growing affection and then fold her in his arms and fall asleep, and the other side was quite sure that both talking and sleep could wait until he knew what her lips tasted like. There was also a third side telling him quite forcefully that she'd been drinking and was worn out and frustrated, and that her reaction might be the reaction of a woman in that state to a nearby man, with no real distinction between her friend Sam and anyone else. In short, it was possible that her body wanted someone, and that her mind had no intention of that someone being him.

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3

| << Back | Send Feedback | The National Library |