The first story in this trilogy, "Another Light Missing," was written in a pretty conventional way, with each of us writing different parts and then heavily editing each other.  "Your Next Bold Move," though, was totally different.  The three of us worked out a detailed outline in AIM, and then we kind of sat on it for a long time.  Luna, never the kind of girl to just let stories sit untouched, prodded Jae and Lydia mercilessly, and when that didn't get them to move their lazy bums, she used the outline to write the first bit on her own.  But then when Jae went to visit Luna that fall, they decided enough was enough, and holed up for a week to finish the entire thing.  We took turns at the helm (aka, the computer), but are both responsible for every word -- of which there were 13,000 that week, or 2600 per day.  (It was perfect training for nanowrimo, which both of us completed the following month.)  Of course anything written that quickly needs a huge amount of editing, and our betas rose to the challenge, so if you liked the story, they're the ones you really need to thank.

 

Jae's comments are in green and Luna's are in purple.

 

Your Next Bold Move

 

There's a space in Leo McGarry's office where Will is beginning to feel comfortable, and it's three feet away from wherever Josh is standing.  Today this pins him to the hallway door, because Josh is pacing a wide track around the table.

 

I still love the idea of this opening paragraph, of Will getting past the 'holy line of demarcation' thing but not the thing about the people. Except that it's terribly awkwardly written. Much like this commentary.  And what Luna isn't telling you is that this wasn't originally the opening paragraph.  There was a paragraph before it  -- something about Will's twitching fingers -- but two of our betas (rightly) nixed it.  Dude, I had completely forgotten the twitching fingers!

 

"Once upon a time," Josh says, to no one in particular, "there was a certain kind of unity among Democrats.  There used to be reciprocity.  Statesmanship.  There were gentlemen in this party, and they treated each other like gentlemen."

 

"Exactly how far back in time do you want to go?" C.J.'s voice is dry.  "I mean, am I still allowed to vote?"

 

"You'll have to bribe me for the privilege," Josh says.  His shoulders loosen a little.  He grabs a White House coffee mug off the table and knocks back about half the cup in one swallow.  "I don't want to hear you defend these people, C.J.  I don't want to hear about how compromise is the better part of--whatever.  They walk and talk like Republicans, and they soak up money my party doesn't have to waste.  I don't want to hear a *thing* in their defense."

 

Will coughs.  It's louder than he expected, loud enough that everyone looks at him, as if they'd forgotten he existed.  Possibly they had.  I like this line, so much I think I've used it several times. Twice in this scene alone, as I recall, before the beta.

 

Josh frowns at him.  "What?"

 

"Nothing."  Will pushes his hands back into his pockets.  "Except, I really think that's my coffee cup."

 

In the background, C.J. chuckles, and Toby turns his attention back to his highlighted newspaper.  Josh's expression doesn't change as he looks down at the coffee.  "Great," he says.  "You don't have mono, right?"

"Uh--"  Will's thinking: Is this sexual harassment? Do I have to take it? Mostly, he's thinking, I want my coffee back.

 

"Kidding."  Josh arches one eyebrow like a question mark.  He turns toward C.J. and Toby.  "We should switch the new guy to decaf."

 

Will exhales and leans back against the wall.  Sometimes he's sure he's learning the rhythm here, learning to enter it as a high voice enters harmony--yeah, right, he thinks, I'm the fifth Beatle.  He never knows when they're going to start talking about him in the third person again, when he'll find goats in his office and olives in his jacket or, worse, the other way around.

 

But he doesn't feel sorry for himself: this is the White House.  He shapes the words, turns them over on his tongue, and straightens up again.

 

Just in time.  Leo walks in through the door to Margaret's office wearing such a contented smiles that Will wonders what's up.  "And a very good morning to you all," he says, holding up a folded newspaper.

 

This is us intentionally playing off the tendency in fanfic (including my own) to start every staff meeting scene with Leo storming in, angry as hell about something, yelling "shut up." Even Leo must have good days.  All of which is well and good, but she's gone way overboard with it.  All of a sudden, Leo must be shiny and happy in every cameo appearance.  (Okay, maybe not quite, but it's pretty bad. :-)

 

C.J. raises her eyebrows.  "Don't tell me you're this excited about the Dow."

 

He takes a seat behind his desk and slaps the paper against it.  "It's the first sunny day in over a week, it looks like Richardson's coming over to our side on the hate crimes bill, and I just finished Thursday's Times crossword in pen.  What's not to be excited about?"

 

"I beat the high score in Space Invaders," Josh says.  We figure Space Invaders is pretty right-on-the-mark for a Josh pop culture reference. Will smiles a little, but only a little, because he's barely stilled his hands, barely gotten to the point where he's comfortable calling Leo by his first name. 

 

"Speaking of hate crimes." As Leo puts his glasses on, there's a visible shift in the room.  They're all planting their feet, getting into their fighting stances.  Around here, you have to change gears that quickly.  "The American Law Enforcement Reinforcement Act," Leo says.  "Let's skip over the jokes about the name of the bill--"

 

"It's not the rhyme I'm impressed with," C.J. says, leaning against the edge of the table.  "It's the meter."

 

One of our betas was like, "Nobody would give a bill a name that stupid." But they do. I'm just too lazy to look for examples.  Yeah, Luna fell in love with the full name and I fell in love with the acronym.  (More about that later.)

 

"And by 'skip over,' I obviously meant 'tell one of the jokes, C.J.'" Leo rolls his eyes.  "It's going to be the next thing on the floor, as soon as they vote down 409."  Giddy-up, 409!

 

"Which means Tuesday."  Josh nods to himself.  "It's convenient; it gives us the weekend to meet with everyone we need."

 

"Who don't we need?"  Will asks.  He edges forward and automatically reaches for his coffee cup.  He can't help sighing as he pulls his hand back.  "I mean, from what you've said, we're pushing a pretty big rock up Capitol Hill here.  Who are we *not* targeting?"

 

As I'm reading this, I notice how Toby has no lines. He's comatose this morning, apparently.

 

A crease of irritation appears across Josh's forehead.  "Well, I'm pretty sure that if I went into a room with Lillienfield one of us wouldn't come out, so you can cross him off your list."

 

"Will has a point," Leo says.  He doesn't raise his voice, doesn't even raise his eyes from his desk, but somehow it's clear he's talking to Josh.  It's a remarkable trick.  "There may be a deplorably low number of moderates in Congress, but you're not sitting down with all of them one by one."

 

Josh presses his mouth into a line.  Then he says, "Freshmen.  We need the freshmen."

 

Leo peeks over the rim of his glasses.  "You think so?"

 

"Well, they've been in Washington for almost five minutes," C.J. says.  "Josh thinks they might still be gentlemen.  And women."  The political connection between the Will plotline and the Sam plotline was Luna's idea, but I was skeptical.  I remember asking her in that original outlining session: "Okay, but WHY do they want the freshmen Congressmen in particular?"  We needed some reason for them to go after Sam, and this was what we came up with.  A pretty flimsy plot device, but nobody called us on it, so ha!  Got away with it.  Until now.

 

He ignores her.  "We need them because they need us.  Think about it.  There are twenty-six new guys in the House.  No experience, no clout--hell, half of them are working out of trailers.  What do they need most if they want to keep their seats?  They need connections.  They have to build a relationship with the President, because he got a lot more votes than they did.  That gives us leverage.  We promise a couple of photo-ops, a couple of pens at the bill signing, and we've bagged twenty-six votes."

 

"We only need twenty-five," Toby murmurs.  He just woke up!

 

Josh opens his mouth to ask something, and then they all get it in the same instant.  Nobody needs to say Sam's name.  Will smiles, a small smile of pride.  He can see it reflected on the other faces in the room.

 

Josh lets out a noisy breath.  "I'm gonna have Donna start making phone calls as soon as we're done here.  Hopefully we can get a lot of these meetings out of the way during the weekend, while the senior members of Congress are in their home states playing charity golf.  It'll put us in good position on Tuesday.  Oh."  He spins around, grabbing Will's coffee cup and pointing it at him.  A dimple flickers in his cheek.  "And you can talk to Sam."

 

Will blinks, blinks again, but Josh doesn't disappear.  Here, we had to make the directorial decision about whether or not Josh would actually disappear. Turns out we didn't have the effects budget.  "I can?"

 

"Good."  The wheels of Leo's chair squeak as he pushes it back.  "I have to get to a security briefing."

 

"I'll keep you posted," Josh tells Leo, taking a swig of the coffee.  He makes a face.  "This is cold.  Hey, this is yours."

Will takes the cup without looking at it.  "What just happened?"

 

"I just sat through a meeting that had absolutely nothing to do with me," Toby says.  He gathers his newspaper and pulls himself up from the couch.  "And you're meeting with Sam about the American Law Enforcement--the ALERA vote."

 

C.J. whistles.  "Good save."

 

Before Will can think, they're filing past him into the hallway.  He glances toward the desk, but Leo's already disappeared into the Oval.  Will can't follow him.  So he leaves the coffee cup on the table and follows everyone else, sprinting a couple steps to catch up with them in the hall.  "I'm the Deputy Communications Director," he begins, slightly out of breath.

 

They all stop walking, but Josh hardly turns his head.  "Toby?"

 

Toby aims the end of his rolled-up newspaper at Will.  "I'm deputizing you."  Nobody finds this line as funny as I do. Anyway, I like the way we basically resolved 'Red Haven' in a few lines of dialogue. See, Aaron, it wasn't so hard.

 

"This isn't in my job description."  Will hesitates.  His heart is beating a little too quickly.  "Is it?"

 

The three of them exchange a look, a look that makes Will feel like he has a flashing neon sign over his head reading 'New Guy.'  C.J. smiles at him the way you'd smile at a puppy.  Will hopes he isn't blushing.  That would make it even worse.

 

"Look, Will, you serve at the pleasure of the President."  Josh shrugs.  "If he wants you to play ping-pong with the ambassador from Liechtenstein at two in the morning, then that's in your job description."

 

There's something in Josh's face, something other than amusement or impatience, something cold.  It stops Will from asking why he's pushing this.  Instead he says, "Okay, but you're not the President."

"And don't think that doesn't rankle."  Josh springs away from the wall, and suddenly he's halfway into his bullpen, yelling for Donna.

 

"Well, *somebody* definitely needs to switch to decaf," C.J. says.  She lingers for a second, with her eyes on Will, and then trails after Josh.  Toby harrumphs and heads in the other direction, toward his office.

 

In pursuit again, Will understands why the White House needs its own gym.  Endurance training.  He taps Toby's arm with two fingers and stops him in front of Ginger's desk.  "Are you telling me Sam used to do this sort of thing?"

 

Toby squints at him, edging toward his office.  "Sam was very comfortable having a conversation with Sam, as a matter of fact."

 

"You've known him longer," Will protests.  He's aware that he's long since lost this argument, and that talking to Sam is hardly a chore, if that's what they want him to do.  Still, it's hard to know where the hazing leaves off and the job itself begins.  "Josh has known him longer.  Why doesn't--"

"This conversation's gone on for Sam's entire term," Toby says, and turns away.

 

"You should use those charms on Congress!"

 

But Toby's door is already swinging shut.  Will takes off his glasses and polishes the lenses on his jacket sleeve.  I think this might be the first time Will plays with his glasses in this story. Keep your eyes open.  He pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to banish the beginning of a headache, before he puts them back on.  The blurs in the bullpen resolve into desks and TV sets and people--the people are Bonnie and Ginger, and they're both looking at him curiously.  They don't bother to hide it.  He doesn't even rate the pretense.

 

Will turns away from their gaze and trudges into his office.  *His* office: he stands a little taller.  He hasn't exactly decorated it, beyond a few family pictures and the Ziggy calendar Elsie left on his desk.  One of our betas said: "Please tell me Will doesn't have a Ziggy calendar!" But you know, he totally would. And secretly? He'd kind of like it.  But there's half a library in a box in the corner, along with inkless pens and gnawed pencils and other debris from his desk in the Wilde campaign headquarters.

 

He straightens up, crosses to the other side of his desk--*his* desk--and takes his Oxford dictionary out of the box.  Visual segue-cakes!

 

*

 

Sam places the last of Mike Satchel's folders carefully in a cardboard box and folds the flaps down.  See?  Taking something out, putting something in.  All pretty and symmetrical!  Also, I remember having some discussion early on about whose office Sam would have been moving into.  It wouldn't have been Webb's, because he'd been in Congress for a long time and offices are allotted by seniority, so we just made somebody up.  By 'made someone up', she means 'looked at Bartlet4America.' "This is officially my office now," he says to himself, with a hint of awe.  Then he calls, "Do we have packing tape?"

 

"Not yet."  Cathy comes into the doorway and crosses her arms.  "What are you going to do with that?"  Everybody caught that this is the same Cathy who was Sam's assistant in season one, right?  Good.

"I'm going to have someone take it over to Satchel's office.  As soon as we figure out where that is."

 

She sniffs.  "It's probably in a part of the building with windows."

"I have a window."  Sam turns his back and studies his reflection in the rectangle of glass.  His face looks pale and unfinished, a blur over the darkening sky.  He isn't used to the view yet, if he can even call it a view.  "Admittedly, it only gets sunlight for about thirteen minutes just after high noon."

 

"Charlotte's here," Cathy says.

 

He turns around.  "Why didn't you say something?"

 

"Because I have a feeling I'm going to be the one who ends up dragging that box upstairs to Mike Satchel."  She raises her eyebrows.  "How much have you missed me?"

 

"You have no idea."  Sam smiles and raises his voice.  "Hey, Lottie!"  Charlotte Warrington was envisioned as a little bit Ainsleyesque, but crazier and redheaded.  Lydia HATED that Sam called her Lottie, but we outvoted her on that one.  I love her, and can totally picture her in my head.  She'll probably have a cameo in an original story someday.

 

His chief of staff has short red curls and freckles the same color as her hair, and when she comes in there's an almost giddy glint in her eyes.  Except for a few fine lines, she's still the girl he knew at Duke.  But her suit is tailored, and she draws herself up straight, almost his height.  "Congressman," she says.  An unprofessional grin flits across her lips.  She turns to Cathy.  "Oh, wow, I still can't say that with a straight face."

 

"Well, with that kind of support--" Sam begins to scold, but he can't sustain it.  The word still gives him a sensation of awe that makes him dizzy.  Like he's going up in an elevator that moves too fast.  He shakes his head at both women, both of his employees.  "I'm pretty sure we have work to do."

 

"You've been busy already," Charlotte says, waving a hand at the box on his desk.  "I can't believe you didn't just dump the drawers into the trash.  You've gotta be the most conscientious guy in Congress.  Also, the luckiest."

 

"I don't know about--"

 

"Cathy?"

 

Obediently, Cathy clasps her hands behind her back and recites the article from memory. "'Three days before the election, Webb's daughter entered the Congressman's private office to find her father in the embrace of longtime family friend Melinda Hanson--"

"Okay," Sam says.

"Ms. Hanson had no comment on her relationship with the Congressman, whose attack on his opponent's character had formed the basis of his campaign--"

"Okay!"  He throws up his hands.  He's memorized the story, too, without trying.  It's stuck in his head, along with the voice of a reporter saying Horton Wilde was dead, with Josh telling him about the rainstorm on Election Night.  Josh's voice is the loudest, but none of it is going to fade anytime soon.  And here's the rest of the explanation that resolves "Red Haven."  Although I have to admit that while I seethed at the time, I'm glad now that Sorkin left the end of that episode ambiguous.  This way the fanwriters get to decide for themselves whether Sam is now a Congressman or became a motivational speaker or ran off to Tahiti with Cathy.  We had to have a long conversation about how Sam could've won, and I'd just like to point out that we played the sex-scandal card before Sorkin got around to it. 

 

"See, fate smiles on you."  Charlotte steps forward, pulling Sam's mind away from recent and ancient history.  "And the hate crimes bill is coming to the floor."

 

"Well, fate's doing *something* on me, anyway."  He picks up a notepad with a list of phone numbers.  "Cathy, could you--"

She plucks the list out of his hand.  "I know how to make calls, Sam."  The gesture is familiar, and so is the no-nonsense swish of her hair.

"You know, you could try calling me Congressman sometime."

 

Cathy stares at him for a second with an expression that he's missed.  "Yeah, I don't think so," she says, almost laughing.  So she's missed him, too.

 

"It wasn't even worth a shot, was it?" he says, and reaches for his chair as Cathy strides into the outer office.

 

Charlotte lifts her chin and somehow it's clear she's ready to get down to business.  Ooh, sloppy.  How did our betas let us get away with "somehow it's clear"?  She smoothes her skirt as she sits down in one of the other chairs.  Cheaper chairs than the ones in the White House.  He frowns at himself.  He ought to stop comparing.

 

"This is the thing," Charlotte says, crossing her ankles.  "It's the first vote that everyone's going to be watching.  You have to capitalize on it.  You have to show everyone here, and everyone in Orange County, who you work for."

 

"Show them who's boss?"  He makes the corners of his mouth turn up.  "No, of course, you're right."

 

"Yeah.  All screwing around aside, I'm not the only one who has a hard time thinking of you as a member of Congress.  In most people's eyes you're still a charter member of the Bartlet brigade."  She taps her fingers on the edge of his desk.  "You're still Josh Lyman's Sam Seaborn."

 

Her eyes are serious now, wide and fixed on him so that he can't dodge the look.  He rocks back as if he's been shoved into his chair.  His smile stretches thin.  Behind it, his mouth has gone completely dry.  In case "by Jae Gecko and Luna" and the little hints from "Another Light Missing" hadn't already made it completely clear, here's a neon sign that there's more going on here with Josh and Sam than meets the eye.  What I love best about collaborative writing is that there are lines I love and I can't even remember who thought of them.  "Josh Lyman's Sam Seaborn" is one of those.

 

"Sam?"

"Yeah.  I've seen the same polls as you."  The words scratch his throat.  "It's a good bill for any Democrat who isn't from a district that's predominantly white and wealthy."

"Like the California 47th," Charlotte says.

 

"Like the California 47th."  He checks a sigh, exhales slowly through his nose instead.  "It's a good bill, anyway.  If this had happened a couple months ago I'd have been pushing it onto the floor myself."

 

She leans forward, moistening her lips.  "I really hope that this isn't something I ever have to tell you again, but this vote is not about the bill's merits or your personal--"  A wrinkle appears, then deepens, between her eyebrows.  She pushes her fingers into her hair.  "Your personal opinion.  It's about timing, and it's about perception.  Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but that's how it is if you want to hold onto this office."

 

It all sounds something like the kind of speech Josh might have made at him five years ago.  Sam bites the side of his tongue until it hurts.  He *has* to stop comparing.  "I know that," he says.  "It's just--you know, it takes some getting used to."

 

The wrinkle vanishes, and Charlotte smiles.  "So, the Communications office called to schedule a meeting with you for Saturday."

 

It shouldn't be Communications, he thinks; this bill isn't Toby's baby.  "With whom?"

 

She shakes her head.  "Will Bailey.  I guess they're breaking him in."

 

Sam stretches as he gets out of his chair, lacing his fingers against the tension in the back of his neck.  "I happen to know his desk was left clean and empty."

 

"This is good," Charlotte says, standing.  "You'll meet with this guy, tell him how you're going to vote, and you'll simultaneously score points at home and show everyone in this building that you're not a lapdog.  Which you're not."

 

Her voice is crisp, confident, the way his ought to be.  He swallows hard and looks away from her.  "Yeah," he says.  "I'm the luckiest guy in Congress."

 

She doesn't say anything, but she doesn't leave, either.  He turns to the window, placing his hands on the narrow sill.  His reflection looks like it's wearing thin, and beyond that, there's nothing to see.

 

*

 

"At some point in any man's life, he will wrestle with his conscience and his contributions to the liberty and defense of his country.  Those contributions need not be military to be valuable; that was simply the course of action I chose."

 

Will's dad is like, if Wes Clark wasn't creepy. Well, and like, a LOT older.  We decided that somewhere in the Sorkinverse there had to be a father who wasn't awful, dead, or awful and dead. Will drew the lucky number.

 

Even on a transatlantic phone call, Will can hear the richness in his father's voice, the rough edge of tobacco smoke, the warmth beneath the formality.  He sounds the way he is.  "I really like that," Will says, nodding to himself.

 

Thomas Bailey laughs.  "Thank you, son, but you're not much help to me if all you're going to do is like it."  And let that be a lesson to all betas, everywhere.  But not our betas, who are always delightfully MEEEEAN.

 

Will slides two fingers and a thumb under his glasses [that's two!] to rub the sleep out of his eyes.  "Okay," he says, trying to concentrate, running the words over and over through his mind.  "'At some point in any man's life,'" he repeats.  "Are you sure about 'any man'?"

"Something wrong with it?"

"Aside from the implicit sexism, I'm pretty sure I've met some people who wouldn't know citizenship if it danced through their bedrooms at the head of a brass band."

 

"Ah," his father says, and Will can almost see his eyes crinkling.  "And how many of those people are going to be reading my memoirs?"

 

"There's a problem with that." Will tries hard to stifle a yawn.  "But I'm not going to try and pinpoint it quite so early on a Saturday."

 

"I didn't think about the time difference.  I forget sometimes that you're not still at Eton."  There's a pause that feels like a hug.  "Honestly, I forget sometimes that you're not running down the hall in your shorts and a pair of flippers."  We had a lot of fun with the dialogue here, and the mental images. Tom Bailey is a pleasure, it turns out.

 

"One time," Will says, and smiles.  He tilts his head back against the cushion of Toby's couch, closing his eyes against the sharp early daylight.  "How's Nice?"

 

"As you remember it.  Warm.  Clear.  If this isn't paradise, it's within walking distance."

 

"This is the first day all week we've had temperatures above freezing."  Will scratches the back of his neck, above the cut-off collar of his sweatshirt.  "Which means that we get slush.  Six inches of slush mixed with the sand that's supposed to be melting it.  This isn't paradise.  It's not even California."

 

"How's Operation: Relocation coming?"

"Not bad."  He glances down at the carpet he's sitting on.  "That is, apart from the fact that I'm living in my office, except for when I'm living in Toby's."

 

"What's your relationship like with Toby?" his father asks, in a lower voice.

 

"You know, I'm, I'm not sure.  Sometimes I think we're building a rapport--"  Something in his father's tone registers, then, and Will scrambles backwards and upwards, onto the couch.  He's wide awake now.  "Okay, no, Dad," he sputters.  "Whatever it's like, it's not like *that*."

 

Write it down, all of you, Luna and Jae made a Tobyslash joke. Hell has frozen over, the fat lady sings, and Eminem has an Oscar.

 

"I just asked."

He's glad there's no one looking to see his face turn red.  "I think I'm going to cry," he says.

 

"I'm getting off the phone, in that case. Thank you for letting me read to you."

 

Will draws in a deep breath, filling up his chest.  "Thank you for asking," he says, and means it.  "Have a good night."

 

"Have a good day."

 

His father clicks off; the line goes dead.  Will flips his cell phone shut and gets up. Originally, we had him talking on Toby's phone, which aside from the whole logistical issues of cord length, raised the question of why Will's dad was calling him in Toby's office first thing in the morning anyway. A whole universe of things we'll never know.  He walks around the office with his arms over his head, stretching out the knots in his back that come from sleeping on the sofa.  Even with a backache he's feeling pretty good; it's hard not to come away from this phone call without a little glow of pride.  Will yawns, blinks several times, licks the roof of his mouth.  It's hard to glow when you haven't brushed your teeth, or had a shower.

 

He makes an effort to smooth the wrinkles from his worn-out khakis.  But it doesn't make much of a difference, and he steps out to the bullpen.  Nobody looks at him funny, or at least, not any funnier than usual.

 

Ginger's at her desk, with Bonnie perched on one of its corners and Carol loitering nearby.  They don't look at him at all.  Their hands are full of pencils and clipboards, memos and schedules.  Ginger's fingers hover over the home row of her keyboard, but instead of looking at the keys or the screen, she's shaking her head and saying, "It was the welfare bill.  It must've been the welfare bill."

 

Will leans on the strip of wall that separates Toby's door and his own.  He doesn't like to eavesdrop--no, he likes to eavesdrop, but most of the time he knows better.  His father's voice is still in his ears, though, and he wonders what anyone's relationship is like with anyone.  It's the kind of thing he can't ask, the kind of thing he should already know.

 

"You only think that," Bonnie says, crossing her legs.  "See, I would have dumped him because of the welfare bill.  So would you."

Ginger snorts.  "I'd have to date him first."

 

"Well, Amy did date him.  That proves she doesn't think like us, and God knows Josh doesn't think like anyone.  Except maybe Amy.  I'm saying it wasn't the welfare bill."

 

The purpose of this scene is not only to establish that Will doesn't know much about the relationships that are going on around him, but also to thwart Will's gaydar where Josh is concerned.

 

"How do we know she dumped him?" Carol asks, placing a pencil behind her ear.  Both Ginger and Bonnie look at her like she's suggested the grass is blue, and she shrugs.  "It's possible."

 

Bonnie throws a glance in Will's direction.  Standing there like a statue is just as obvious as shouting.  He takes a fax message from the inbox on the wall and turns it over in his hands a few times, hoping he looks absorbed.  He didn't know that Josh and Amy had broken up; he didn't know that they'd ever officially been an item.  It seems impossibly obvious now, but he never caught on.

 

"Last October," Bonnie's saying.  "Maybe it was when Stackhouse dropped out of the campaign."

 

"No, no.  He was already panting after Donna by then."  Ginger's fingers clatter over the keys.  "Not that that proves anything."

 

"I can't believe Amy would still want to work so close by after all that," Carol says.

 

"She dated Josh," Bonnie points out again.  "So we know she's a glutton for punishment."

 

She did it all for the nookie!  Oh, come on.  How many fangirls do we know who wouldn't?

 

No matter how many times he reads the fax, it doesn't say anything about how this place works.  These underpaid women in the bullpen are still far more aware than him, and far more awake.  He folds the paper, tucks it back into the box, and walks away.  Halfway into the hall he's attacked by a yawn.  He feels the assistants eyeing him and picks up the pace, resisting the urge to look back.  Anyway, he'll bump into someone if he doesn't watch where he's going.

 

Around here he's always walking into and through other people's business, snatches of conversation sticking to him like spiderwebs.  Today he's paying better attention.  He walks from one bullpen to the other, straining to listen and see, to learn.

 

Will learns, for starters, that Toby paces in and out of C.J.'s office without looking up, as comfortably as if it were his own.  "I've heard the list of suspicious characters," Toby says, pacing with one hand on the back of his head.  "Many times."

 

"The Umbrella Man," C.J. calls from inside her office.  "The Black Dog Man.  The Badge Man.  The Dark-Complected Man."

 

I had way too much fun writing the following conversation.

 

Toby makes a sound between a sigh and a groan.  "And every time, it sounds more like a series of Hardy Boys novels."

 

C.J. emerges from her office, leans her hips against the doorframe.  She's wearing jeans and a little less makeup than usual, Will notices; she looks tired.  "Explain this magic bullet to me one more time," she says, and draws a zigzag in the air with her finger.  "It went through Kennedy, hit Governor Connally, did the hokey pokey, turned itself about, and went across town to bite Jack Ruby in the ass?"

 

"Okay." Toby whirls around and holds up his hands, palms out, like he's stopping traffic.  "Quit watching that Oliver Stone movie.  Listen to me very carefully.  In forty years, no amount of study has ever proven anything except that Oswald shot JFK.  Not the CIA, not the Cubans, not the Russians, not the Rat Pack--Oswald shot JFK."

 

She tilts her head back and stares at Toby for a few seconds.  At last she says, "I'm starting to think you were in on it."

 

"I was nine years old."

 

Think hard. Nine year old Toby. Fuzzy curly hair. Big serious eyes. Playing stickball. Reading 'Robinson Crusoe' under the covers. You're smiling, I can see it.

 

"So you had a convenient disguise."  She looks past him.  "Hey, Will, did you need something?"

He backs up a step.  He'd been caught up in watching them circle around each other, listening as they argued without urgency, like they knew exactly how it's going to turn out.  Somehow, he'd forgotten he was standing there.  "No," he says, forcing a chuckle.  "I just--how many times have you had this conversation?"

 

"Apparently, not enough to keep her from doing the list."  Toby drags the heel of his hand across his forehead, ignoring the glare C.J. flashes at him.  "You slept on my couch last night."

 

Will looks down at himself.  "I haven't found an apartment yet," he admits.

 

"Well, find one."  Toby moves away from C.J.'s door, in Will's direction.  "I'm in my office," he says at large, and trudges into the hallway.

 

"Pain in the ass," C.J. says in a friendly tone.  "House-hunting, I mean."

 

"Yeah."

 

"Although, Toby..."  Her eyes seem to darken briefly as they dart away from him, but she holds onto the smile.  "Did you ever consider just getting your own couch?"

 

He nods.  "I will now."

 

She goes into her office, and Will continues toward the stairs.  In the background he hears Leo yelling for Margaret.  Fax machines stammer and stutter, phones ring, CNN drones in its infinite loop.  And this is a Saturday.  It's comforting in a way; this is the only place he's ever worked where sleeping in the office barely raises eyebrows.

 

But the noise diminishes as he gets further down the stairs, fades to nothing but an occasional hum in the heating ducts.  Nobody's in the gym when Will gets there.  He does a few minutes on the treadmill, just enough to break a sweat and maybe burn off a little of last night's Chinese food.  Enough to delude himself that he's staying in shape, before he walks to the locker room, stripping off his sweatshirt along the way.

 

Gratuitous Shower Scene follows. As I recall, I was very insistent when we began outlining this story that we needed Will in the shower. I'm so glad I won that argument.

 

He gets in the shower before it's heated up, and opens his mouth to gulp some of the metallic water.  As he twists the cap off the complimentary bottle of shampoo, he feels himself starting to smile.  He's worrying for nothing, about nothing.  Everyone here has had four years--more, even: decades, entire histories--to learn about each other, to find their way in.  Will closes his eyes as the hot water sluices over his shoulders and down his back.  He has plenty of time to catch up.  And public arguments, and gossip in the bullpen, aren't subterfuge.  It isn't like he's trying to find out who was on the Grassy Knoll.

 

He reaches around the edge of the curtain for a towel, fumbles for his glasses before he realizes he left them next to his locker.  With the towel wrapped around his waist, steam coming off his skin, he edges out of the shower stall.  And hears Josh laugh.

 

Will looks up, and has to squint to see him clearly.  Josh stands just inside the doorway, hands on his hips, wearing charcoal-colored running shorts, a sweatshirt, and a quizzical grin.  "Hey," he says.  "Don't you have that meeting with Sam today?"

 

Will would smack himself if he didn't need to hold up the towel.  Damn.  He wonders how he managed to forget.  "Yeah," he says, hoping he doesn't look completely dumbfounded and dumb.

 

"'Kay." Josh turns away, then changes his mind and turns back.  There's something written on the front of his shirt, small black letters, difficult at this distance.  "You're going to put your pants on first, right?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"Not that I care, but you know, it's cold out, and it's kind of a walk to the Capitol--"  [Insert Seinfeld reference here.]  Josh shakes his head, one eyebrow arched toward his hairline.  The expression of a man who's caught a cat burglar toppling in through his window, red-handed.  In flagrante.  "You'll let me know how it goes.  With Sam."

"I didn't think you meant with my pants," Will mumbles, but Josh can't hear him, or isn't listening.  Just before Josh is out of the room completely, the text on his sweatshirt clicks clearly into Will's mind: Bartlet for America.

 

*

 

Charlotte looks hopeful, but there's a firmness in her voice that Sam recognizes.  It's the tone she used to use with their contract law professor whenever she knew he was about to disagree with her.  She clicks her tongue.  "Now, he's probably going to promise you a photo-op with the President if you--"

 

"Lottie, do you know how many times I've appeared in pictures with the President?" Sam interrupts.

 

She folds her arms.  "You still have to build a new relationship with him as a Congressman.  They're not wrong about that part.  But you can't let them talk you into voting for a bill your constituents don't support."

 

Sam's gaze drops to the desk.  This bill would have been his project if it hadn't been for a promise to a widow and a lapse in judgment on the part of his opponent.  He would be getting ready for the opposite role in this meeting.

 

Cathy looks at Charlotte.  "He's dithering."

 

Sam turns away from them both and walks behind his desk.  "And on my brand-new carpet, no less."  This was one of the few funny lines that's ever appeared in a story with my name on it that I was completely responsible for.  Yes, folks, apparently when left to my own devices, I've got potty humour.  Aren't you glad I usually have co-writers and betas to come up with the jokes?  She underestimates her humor skills, you know.  She cracks *me* the hell up. 

 

"I know that look.  You're thinking about voting for this."  Cathy points at him.  "He's thinking about voting for this."

 

"I'm not ..." Sam's gaze jumps from Charlotte to Cathy.  He sits down.  "You know, I was one of the guys who lobbied Congress last time we did a go-around on hate crimes."

 

Charlotte's carefully plucked eyebrows flatten.  "'We' meaning Congress, or 'we' meaning the White House?"

 

"It was back in 2000.  January.  After the murder of a kid from Minnesota named Lowell Lydell, we rolled out the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.  It was a much less comprehensive bill, but at least it was a start."  First-season continuity!  I had to go back and rewatch the episode to remember all this, but it was worth it.  Couldn't have a trilogy of stories about a piece of hate crimes legislation without mentioning the last hate crimes bill.  It even ties in with how pissed the Lydell kid's parents were about the toothlessness of the last bill. 

 

"Sam."  Charlotte's voice is just shy of a growl.

 

He spreads his arms out at his sides.  "It's just that the irony is staggering."

 

"They know how you feel about this issue, and you can't let him use that against you.  Don't let him appeal to your personal sense of right and wrong."

 

"Right."  Sam spits out the words.  "Because we can't have that get in the way."

 

Charlotte ignores him.  "They're aiming at you because you're the newest kid on the block, but Bailey's even greener than you.  If he's ever lobbied anybody, it was as student council president.  It gives you an advantage."

 

Cathy's peering down at him now.  "Are you going to stay behind your desk the whole time?"

 

"Why?" Sam asks.

 

"Maybe you should stand."  She taps a pencil against the pad of paper in her hands and turns toward Charlotte.  "Do you think he should stand up?"

 

He scowls and pulls away from them.  "Are you two going to help me fix my hair, too?"

 

Charlotte leans over and gives his cheek a little pinch.  "We just want the best for you, honey," she mocks.  "We want your first big meeting to be perfect."  I went back and forth on whether or not this whole bit was sexist, but our betas let us get away with it, so it's probably not as bad as I was afraid it was.  At least no worse than Sorkin himself.  And I love the visual of the two of them mock-doting on Sam.  And you know, it occurs to me that in our original outline for this story, Sam had a male press secretary.  He had a name and a personality and everything, but we never wrote him in.  Poor guy, doomed to survive only in our feeble memories.  Only yours. I'd forgotten his ass.

 

There's a faint knock at the door, no louder than a scratch.  Sam glances up to see Will hovering in the doorway.  "Uh.  Hello?" Will stammers out.

 

Sam jumps to his feet.  "Will."  He's shed the look of a small-time California campaign manager, traded shirtsleeves and a loosened tie for the sleek lines of Armani.  It works for him.  Checking him out!  First hint that the "slashy" label upfront isn't just the Josh/Sam relationship in the past.

 

A look of uncertainty dashes across Will's face.  "There was nobody out front, so I just walked--"

 

"That's all right."  Sam's eyes narrow at Cathy.  "My secretary was just heading back out there."

 

"Right."  She scurries to the door in a flutter of papers.

 

"Will, this is Charlotte Warrington, my chief of staff.  Mr. Warrington was my seventh-grade history teacher.  (Most of the last names I use are from people I've vaguely known, but never people I've known well.)  Lottie, this is Will Bailey."

 

"It's a pleasure," she says, her accent thickening like sugar syrup.  It does that when she meets someone new; it makes her sound deceptively gentle.

 

Will shakes her hand.  "I'm charmed," he says.

 

She looks him up and down and sort of smirks.  "Yes, you are."

 

"Thank you, Lottie," Sam says loudly, and she definitely smirks at him as she bounces out of the room.

 

Will steps forward and almost trips when his shoe catches the carpet wrong.  "Nice office, by the way."

 

Sam stands there, trying to remember whether or not Lottie and Cathy wanted him standing or sitting.  After an awkward moment he gives up and sits down behind his desk.  "Freshman Congressmen don't exactly get to pick where they end up.  It's all about seniority."

 

"No, really.  It's--"  He makes a vague circle with his right hand, reaching for the right word.  He walks to the window and peers out.  Sam's mouth turns up at the corner; Will turns around, smiling.  "Okay, the view could be better."

 

"It's not the North Lawn."

 

"Yeah, but I bet you don't get rubber balls thrown at your head."

 

"You mean Toby hasn't broken that window yet?"  Will's face freezes, and Sam tilts his head.  "Or has he?"

 

"Um.  Actually, I did."

 

He looks at Will over his glasses.  "You broke the window?"

 

"We were arguing about foreign policy." Will looks a little bit sheepish and a little bit proud.

 

In four years, the four longest years of his life, Sam never did any damage to that office.  Will broke a window within a month.  Sam chuckles, partly in surprise, and partly because he can't help imagining Toby's face.  I think this is really illustrative of the differences between Will and Sam--something for which I give Sorkin big points.

 

If it hadn't been for Sam, Will would still be in California running impossible candidates.  Instead he's here playing hardball with a Congressman.  Sam realizes that he's grinning.  Will is, too, with just a hint of curiosity behind it.  "If we were drinking, I'd toast us," Sam says.  We were going for Sam being not only proud of himself, but proud of Will and the fact that Sam helped him get where he is.  I'm not sure that came across.

 

"We could do that later."  Will shuffles toward one of Sam's chairs, and his grin dims to a polite, professional smile.  "But we should probably--you know why I'm here."

 

Sam shrugs and tries to sit a little taller.  "It's a shame our first meeting has to be about something like this," he says, as he crosses to the far side of his desk. It's a shame he has to have this meeting with someone he considers a friend.

 

"Seventeen people were shot for being gay, not a month ago and not a mile from where we're sitting.  You know how important this is."

 

"I do."  Sam's mouth goes a little dry.  It does that a lot.  "I know exactly how important it is.  Especially in the White House."

 

"Right.  So."  Will turns his palms up on the arms of the chair.  "ALERA will probably come to a vote by the end of the week."

 

"Yeah."

 

"It's going to be close.  Lots of people in this building like hate crimes legislation about as much as a poke in the eye.  We're ready for a firefight on this one.  And it means a lot to Josh."

 

He can picture Josh working on this, hunched over his desk, a hand in his hair.  Sleepless, ceaseless.  The mental image works on Sam like sun on snow, and he feels his face soften.  "Yeah," he repeats, not trusting himself to say anything more.  We could both see this in our heads, but god help us if it didn't take something like fifteen rewrites to get it even halfway right.

 

"In fact, yours is one of the few votes we can count on, and I can't tell you how much it helps."

 

Sam presses his teeth together and looks at Will for a long time.  "No," he says.  "You can't."

 

Lines run across Will's forehead; he leans forward.  "Sorry?"

 

"You can't count on my vote, Will."

 

Will blinks, owl eyes big behind his glasses, lips moving as though he can't quite process sentence.  "Okay.  The way you just said that? It sounded like you said you're not going to vote for the bill."

 

His mouth tightens.  "Actually, that's what I'm telling you."

 

"Is it section seven?  Because I told someone from Legislative Affairs they should have moved that up."  Will pauses.  "At least I think it was someone from Legislative Affairs, but--"

"Will."  He keeps his voice level.  "It's not section seven."

 

The way Will's staring at him, Sam could have sprouted antlers.  "How can you oppose this?"  Will asks finally.  "You've written enough speeches on the subject of equality and tolerance to wallpaper the inside *and* the outside of the Capitol.  Last year there were almost ten thousand hate crimes in the United States.  Of those, more than a thousand were motivated by sexual orientation.  And there's nothing--"

 

"Will--"  Sam knows all this already, knows it and wishes he could forget.

 

"--Absolutely *nothing* addressing that in current law, despite the fact that there's been a Democrat in the Oval Office for the past four years.  Despite the fact that you and the rest of the administration were, yourselves, the victims of a hate crime."  A fire's blazed up in Will's dark eyes; he chops one hand down hard into opposite palm.  "There is no earthly reason for you to oppose this bill."

 

"I don't oppose this bill."

 

Another rapid blink.  "What?"

 

"Sixty-three percent of the people in my district do."

 

It must click for Will then; his hands slacken and fall to his knees, and his eyes go dark as ink.  His shoulders slump, only by a fraction of an inch, but still.

 

Sam swallows against the sudden tension in his throat and pushes on.  "I just got elected.  My first official act as these people's representative can't be to tell them that they're wrong."  Love love love this line.  So I'm sure I couldn't have been the one who thought it up.  Nope, sorry, it was totally yours.  :-)

 

Will's mouth opens and then closes, as though he's thought of something to say and then thought twice.  Suddenly Sam can't stand to be looked at this way anymore; his nerves are restless and he's out of his seat.  "I have a roll call," he says, and silently thanks heaven for small procedural favors.

 

"I want to keep talking about this."  Will doesn't say 'please,' but it's there in his tone, and written plainly all over his face.

 

Sam turns away, knowing how much Will wants to change his mind, knowing that the worst thing he can do is let Will think it's possible.  He knows too much about false hope.  "If we have to," he says, and leaves the room.  As he passes through the outer office, Cathy and Charlotte laser him with expectant looks.  He walks past them without looking up.

 

*

 

The door to Josh's office bangs against the wall as he storms inside.  Will follows a step behind, and he's not ready when Josh whirls around, dizzily fast, to face him and ask, "How did you screw this up?"

 

Will scuffles back a little to get that extra inch of breathing room, his toes on the threshold.  "Excuse me?"

 

"What did you say to him?"  Josh demands, leaning forward even further, his feverish face inches from Will's.  "How did you manage to come back here with an answer like this?"

 

"He had his mind made up, Josh."  Will holds up his hands, palms out.  He feels like a referee trying to face down an angry linebacker.  "I was as surprised as you are."

 

"That's not acceptable," Josh shoots back, and then he's off again, pacing a track around his office.  He moves like an animal trapped in an unfamiliar, undersized cage.  "That's *not* acceptable."  Translation: Why doesn't he LOVE me the way I LOVE him? (TM Rob Lowe).

 

"I don't think--"

 

"You work in this building for four years."  Josh pauses by the desk just long enough to jab a finger in Will's direction.  "You spend all that time fighting and pushing for exactly this kind of legislation.  And you walk around in a righteous funk whenever you can't have your way--"

 

"Righteous funk?" Will echoes, hoping that maybe Josh will hear his own words and chuckle, take a beat, take a breath.  Maybe he can get to something rational under the bluster and frustration.

 

But Josh just points at him again.  "How can you come back and vote against this?  It's-- it's-- it's an affront to everything you stand for."

 

Will takes his glasses off three! and studies the faint scratch marks on the lenses.  "Josh," he says quietly, "I'm not Sam."

 

The blur that is Josh circles to the far side of the blur that is the desk.  "And don't think I haven't noticed that!"  Oh, he's noticed.  :-)

 

He puts his glasses back on and comes away from the door, fully into the room. "I'm not Sam, and I'm not responsible for Sam's decisions.  But I do have to say, he has a point."

 

"There is no valid point in Sam's position."  Josh's voice rises, in pitch and volume, on every other word.  His hands are clenching and unclenching like they're trying to squeeze blood from air.  I like this image; I'm fond of the blocking and imagery in this scene. It was very visual, which is unusual for me.  "We're dealing with an opposition Congress that's one generation removed from wife-beating and possum-eating, on an issue that is literally life and death.  Sam's the one--"  He turns toward the window, one hand lingering on the desk.  "He's the one friend we had."

 

"He knows it's important."  Will sighs, remembering Sam's voice, flat and hard as the polling number he reeled off.  "But he's not working for us anymore."

 

Josh turns back from the window, his profile harsh where sunlight meets shadow.  "Yeah, and whose fault is that?"

 

Will lets this fly past him as he walks up to the edge of the desk.  "You would have told Earl Brennan the same thing twelve years ago.  You would have told him it was political suicide to cast a vote that tells your constituents you think they're ignorant and prejudiced."

 

Josh's eyebrows shoot up, and he yanks his chair out of his way, not noticing when it crashes into the wall.  "I would never have tried to convince Brennan, or anybody else, to vote against a bill like this."

 

Will curls his fingers around the edge of Josh's desk.  "So, I take it you were on vacation when this President signed the Marriage Recognition Act?"  Oh, burn! Continuity-having burn! In case you didn't catch it, we're referencing The Portland Trip, and Josh was all angst-ridden about that bill then.  Yeah, and a brilliant idea that was.  All Luna's, of course.  I doctored it, and then she doctored my doctoring, but the idea was hers.

 

He sees Josh flinch and try instantly to cover it, his jaw thrusting out like that of a bulldog or a scolded child.  "Yeah, you're right.  We lost that one, and look how well it worked out for those kids at Dupont Circle.  Here, we intentionally have Josh being totally illogical.  Because marriage rights would've kept people from shooting people, how?  We're not gonna concede this one."

 

"Think about what it's like," Will pleads.  "He can't coast along relying on the liberals in New York and northern California to bail him out.  His entire body of voters can fit inside the stadium at UC Irvine, and let me tell you, as constituencies go, it's a pretty homogeneous bunch."  As he speaks, Will's own disappointment eases a little, a knot inside him starting to give.  Because, really, Sam does have a point.  Will rubs a hand over his mouth.  "They're the ones who hired him, and they're the ones who can fire him again.  He has to do what they want him to do."  Such an interesting tension!  Absolutely.  This is, incidentally, the reason why I said I wanted in on this trilogy when Luna originally pitched it.  (Well, that and the idea of a trilogy of West Wing stories that follows not a character, not a plotline, but a piece of legislation from beginning to end.)  I'm fascinated by the conflicting roles of Congresspeople -- how they're supposed to represent their constitutents, but also accomplish things in Washington, and then there are their own opinions, too.  I loved the idea of exploring that with Sam, especially on an issue that was also personal to him.

 

"I don't care what he tells his constituents when he goes home.  I don't care if he gets up and recites Leviticus at them while tap-dancing on the Constitution."  "You shall not lie with man as with woman...da dum, dum, dum, and all that jazz!"  There's a ripple of something close to laughter underlying Josh's voice, the hysterical laughter of too much stress and too little sleep.  He drums on his side of the desk.  "Here in Washington he needs to build a career, and he needs to start doing that by voting for something he knows is right."

 

That sounds nothing like an argument Josh would make, in any other situation.  Will shifts his weight uncomfortably, edging backward.  He's thought of the shooting at Rosslyn several times over the past month, and it occurs to him now that Josh must be thinking of it, recalling it with memory and body, every single day.  It's no wonder that he's jumped on this bill like it's the last lifeboat on a sinking ship.  There have to be other votes they can sway, other untapped sources of influence.

 

"You know, I don't like Sam's decision on this any more than you do," he tries, forcing his voice to come out low.  "But there's got to be some other way of making this work.  Maybe if we set up a meeting with T--"  T who? Tea Leoni? Craig T. Nelson? The world may never know.

 

"No."  Josh shakes his head, and the shadows around his eyes don't disguise the furious light in them.  "You're going back there.  Tell him his relationship with the White House is his trump card, not a liability.  Does he want to be just another freshman Congressman?  Tell him nobody in Orange County is gonna be surprised to find out that he's a Democrat.  Tell him how important this is.  Tell him it's like-- like the cure for cancer."  His index finger stabs the air again.  "Tell him that."  Two continuity scores in one scene. Huzzah!

 

"Josh.  I don't even know what you mean by that."  Will wonders why he's even standing here, since he's clearly not the one Josh is talking to.  He bites the inside of his lip and decides to say it.  "Why don't *you* tell him?"

 

A shadow crosses Josh's face, but it's gone as soon as it appeared, a fragment of cloud on a fast wind.  "Are you seriously standing in my office trying to tell me who I should meet with?  Do I need to draw your attention to the flow chart?"  He has some left over from the ones he made for Mandy.  Josh makes a big show of looking around, knocking some loose papers off the corner of his desk.  "I think I have one around here somewhere."

 

"I'm just saying that he's your friend.  He's not going to--"

 

"You fix this."  It's more than a note of finality in Josh's voice; it's a Hallelujah chorus of command.  "Get it done."

 

Will looks into Josh's eyes and sees no room for discussion, and less for explanation.  "Okay."

 

Will leaves the office with his head down, too confused to be chastened, but still lost in thought.  Josh has taken this like a body blow, staked a lot more on Sam's vote than a political victory.  Will isn't sure why, much less why it's happening like this.  And we hope that by now, the reader knows a lot more about why than Will does.  (You do, right?)

 

He pauses six inches from Donna's desk and ventures a glance back over his shoulder into Josh's office.  His jaw still in a tight line, Josh scoops the scattered papers from the floor and crushes them in his hand, and fires them, one by one, at the wastebasket.  Then he moves out of the rectangle of the doorway and disappears: the lion rounding the corner to the far side of the pen.

 

Will swallows and looks away.  As he walks down the hall, his mouth is still sour from unfinished sentences and unasked questions.

 

*

 

Sam begins walking down the stairs at the back of the Capitol, leaning into a chilly wind that makes him scrunch his eyes shut.  There's not one member of Congress who hasn't been talking about hate crimes for the better part of a month, but the introduction on the floor of the House today made it official, formal, real.  He used to laugh with other staffers about these opening remarks, all the stiff sentences beginning with "Mister Speaker."  His own rituals now.  We talked about this for a while, about how weird it would have seemed for Sam to have worked for so many years in politics in bars and boardrooms, and now here he is on the floor of the House.  It would have all added to his feelings of disorientation and not being sure he's doing the right thing.  His footfalls are heavy on each step, and he shivers beneath his wool coat.

 

Just behind him, someone calls, "Congressman."  Sam keeps going, until he realizes that word refers to him.  It stops him in his tracks.  He looks back.

 

Andi Wyatt is sitting on the steps, drinking from a big paper cup.  As every West Wing fanfiction reader knows, the spelling of Toby's ex-wife's name has been the subject of much controversy.  Early on, the captioning said 'Andi,' and more recently it's said 'Andy.'  But I come down on the side of 'i' because 'Andy' will always and forever be Andy Keller to me.  And Toby/Andy is JUST PLAIN WRONG, as Toby is STRAIGHT. (Ahem.)  I stick with the original captioning, too.  Her pregnant belly bulges from beneath her coat, and her corresponding grin is nearly as large.  "Took a second, didn't it?" she says, setting the cup down.

 

He can feel his face turning red; he hopes she'll chalk it up to the cold.  "What are you doing out here by yourself?"

 

"I'm drinking hot chocolate and getting some--" She tries to raise herself into a standing position, but it seems like she hasn't figured out how to leverage her newly spherical body.  She ends up leaning back against the stairs behind her, mock-pouting at her own failure.  "Fresh air."  Actually, she's only outside because we were sick of setting every scene in an office.  Now you know.

 

Sam climbs the steps to her.  With that belly and the sun on her hair, she's as radiant as television commercials tell you she's supposed to be.  "Soon enough you'll have a couple of little Tobys and Andis on your hands," he says.

 

She glances down at herself and sort of glares.  "No matter how soon it happens, it's *not* soon enough."  She raises her eyes.  "And let me tell you, whenever they get here?  They're grounded."  Sam offers her his hand and she takes it.  Her fingers are warm in his grip as he pulls her to her feet, making sure she's got her balance before he lets go.  "Thanks," she says, dusting herself off.

 

"I didn't want you to still be stuck out here at midnight," he says.

 

"Please, this is nothing.  Just don't ask how I plan to take off these stockings."  Her smirk sharpens into a more inquisitive expression, and she tilts her head.  "So how are things looking from this side of town?"

 

It's a faster change of subject than he expected, and he considers it as they descend.  Given the experience of the last few days--and the look he saw on Will's face--he'd be willing to trade in his chance to vote on this one.  More than willing to go back in time, to advise, and argue, and nothing more.  It's probably better if he doesn't even imagine that, let alone say it out loud.  "It's a little different when your part of the debate starts after the bill hits the floor," he offers.

 

"Okay, so...you're going to love committee meetings, but casting your vote will be another story."  Her gaze is steady on him, seeking out something she thinks he's trying to hide.  Maybe he is.  "You know yet which way it's going to go on ALERA?"

 

The smile drains from his face.  His eyes flick away from her, then back again.  "Do you know that in Spanish, alera foral is a legal term?  It refers to the villagers' right to pasture their cattle in land belonging to another town."

 

Okay, this one requires a bit of a longer digression.  While I was staying at Luna's, I woke up one morning turning our acronym over and over on my tongue.  It felt Spanish to me, but it wasn't a word I was familiar with (I speak some Spanish, but not a lot).  I really wanted to do something with this if it turned out to be a real word -- Sam speaks Spanish, after all -- so I went over to "google.es" and had it look for 'alera' in all Spanish-language pages.  It showed up quite a few hits, but only in a phrase: alera foral.  I looked up the phrase in an online Spanish-English dictionary, and alas, it wasn't there.  But I would not be thwarted!  I called a friend who speaks fluent Spanish and asked her, and although she didn't know the term, she had a big-ass dictionary that included it.  I have a vivid memory of cupping my hand over the phone and squealing: "Luna!  Luna!  It's a LEGAL TERM!!!"  All that work for one exchange, but I feel better having it in there.  :-)

 

"You're not voting for it," she says, immediately.

 

Sam presses his teeth together.  A couple of teenagers brush past him on their way up.  "I'm *completely* behind all the Washington farmers who want to stow their cows in northern Virginia."  See, this was all Jae.  She is FUNNY.  Aww, shucks.

 

"Are you sure you're not voting no just to annoy Toby?" she asks.  "Because sometimes I'm tempted to vote against things to annoy Toby."

 

This startles him into laughing.  "I'm sure you are."

 

"You know, here's some free advice.  Much as we have to respect the people who elected us, we also have to accept the fact that, well..."  Her eyes lock on Sam's.  "Some of them are idiots."

 

A gust of wind whips through his hair.  "Yeah?"

 

"I mean, come on.  Some of the people I represent are suing me because they honestly believe--I mean, they're completely convinced--that pregnancy is a disability.  And I know for a fact that they're not Amish, either, so that leaves the idiocy thing."

 

Sam slides his hands into his coat pockets, looking away over Andi's shoulder at the cold white columns that loom above them both.  She's trying to keep him smiling, but she's digging for something, and the last traces of his smile are gone.  "I'm sure that's been inconvenient for you."

 

"But I haven't let it get in the way of living my life, or of doing what I think is right."

 

Inside his pockets, his hands turn to fists.  The few tourists around keep darting curious glances their way, but it's too cold for there to be any kind of crowd.  Sam keeps his voice down anyway.  "Andi, your district makes the Upper East Side of Manhattan look centrist, and you practically ran unopposed in this election.  I think there's a little bit of a difference."  Eh.  More about how he wants to get reelected.  That's part of the conflict, but not all of it.  If I had this to write over again, I'd have Sam tell Andi that it's his *job* to represent his constituents by voting the way they want him to.  I kind of feel like we came down too hard on the side of members of Congress standing up and doing whatever they felt like doing, and that's not the message we wanted to send.

 

"The principle is the same."  She shrugs.  "Seriously, if you're doing this to send a message to the White House, that's beneath you."

 

He pulls back from her as if from an electric shock.  "It's certainly not that."

 

She studies him again, and against Sam's will, his stance wobbles a little.  What if she's right?  Maybe, underneath all the things he believes about himself, this vote is just a message that some petty inner Sam wants to sign, seal and deliver directly into Josh's hands.  His forehead creases.  Josh probably believes exactly that.

 

From far away, Andi's voice drifts to his ears.  "Either way, you should remember that you have friends in this building, too."

 

He squints at Andi, struggling to believe that she ever felt this unmoored as a freshman in Congress.  He wonders how long it's going to take before the feeling fades, before the office and the Office conform to him like gloves to skin.  He forces a smile.  "Thanks."

 

"I'm just two floors up from you.  You should come up sometime for coffee or a doughnut."

 

He's always liked Andi, in the small ways he's known her.  But he's well aware that she wouldn't back off from an argument this easily, or Toby would've crushed her completely years ago.  He knows he won't be dropping by until well after the vote, but she leans into him against the wind, and it's clear that she's still waiting for a response.  "You have doughnuts?" he evades.

 

"One of the perks of having been here for a while," she says, with a perfect deadpan on her bright face.  "From what I hear, if you stick around long enough, they even stop stretching the coffee by mixing it with motor oil."

 

"I find that hard to believe.  The coffee in the White House is just as bad."  There's a sudden surge of heat in his chest, visceral and completely unwanted.  He finds himself longing for the comfort of backroom conversations, for the inside jokes and nicknames and shorthand.  The wind lashes him in the face, drawing water from his eyes.

 

Andi's hand finds his arm, a light touch, but insistent.  "It's a good bill, Sam.  I've looked at it closely.  It has your ideological fingerprints all over it.  Think about it like a legislator.  You're a legislator now."

 

No, he thinks.  I'm a politician.  Luna's line, and I love it.  See, I ache for Sam here; what a horrible position to be in.  Whatever he does, it's bad -- some people say he's selling out unless he votes according to what he really believes, and other people say he's not doing his job unless he votes as his constituents' representative.  And really, they're both right.  A man cannot serve two masters.  And all that jazz!  "You should go inside."  He musters up one last smile for her.  "You're going to give birth to Eskimos."

 

She nods, glancing over her shoulder.  Beyond her and the Capitol Dome, the blue of the sky is beginning to deepen, as though they're moving further and further out to sea.  Andi lingers, one step above him, hands folded on the curve of her belly.  "Doughnuts, Sam.  That's all I'm saying."

 

"I'll see you soon."  The promise is just vague enough to leave some room, and Sam doesn't help her back up the stairs.  Instead, he crosses to walk down the Mall.  The first car headlights are coming on, forming bright beaded chains on the street beside him.  It was much easier when he was frustrated at his decisions being overruled.  He can't believe he never considered how hard it would be to overrule himself.

 

The air grows steadily colder as he heads toward his office, and he shoves his fists deeper into his pockets.  The wind picks up speed, hounding him along.

 

*

 

There are times when Will looks at the ink on his fingers, the pen in his hand and the blank sheet of paper before him, and forgets all the words he knows.  This is one of them.  The rough notes on his desk are piled up into something like a scale model of the Himalayas.  It will all get done, he's sure, once something catches inside him.  Something has to strike the match.  I am a world-class expert on writer's block.  Just wait for the third story.  Oh, we both are, baby.  We both are.  Notice that I'm writing comments on a story we wrote in the fall rather than working on my novel?

 

C.J. swings into his doorway, a smile quirking on her face.  "Wilberforce."  This was another of the points I insisted had to be in the story.  She had to call him Wilberforce.  I don't remember why it was a priority, though I still think it's cute.  I remember we had to look up the spelling, because I'd originally typed it as 'Wilburforce.'

 

He raises his head, amused, and grateful to have an excuse for his distraction.  "Now, that's one I haven't heard before."

 

She lets her shoulder rest against the wall.  "I need to know about the remarks for tomorrow."

 

"There are what, four speeches tomorrow?"

"The photo-op with Chirac."  A safer real-world political figure than bin Laden, at least.

Will lets the pen fall from his grasp.  "The press corps is chomping at the bit to find out what the President has to say about our long and illustrious relationship with France?"

"They want to know how long the speec