Rating/Pairing: PG, Leo/Ainsley
Disclaimer: The West Wing is not mine, nor ever will be mine.
Spoilers: Post ep to "Ellie"
Summary: Why wasn't Leo at the screening of Dial M?
Archive:On my site, The Band Gazebo Anywhere else, ask first
Feedback: Yes please!
Author's Notes: Seventh in the Stolen Moments series; after Reports, Statistics and Divine Intervention, Of Divorces and Desserts, Cookies and Children's Choirs, Loose Lips, Of Peanuts and Lord Fauntleroy and A Bigger Night.
All hail uselessknowledge.com, home of useless trivia.

I lean back in my chair and take off my glasses, leaving the report that I was reading to one side for the moment. Hell, for the night, I might as well be honest with myself. Today hasn't been one of my better days; having to fire the Surgeon General, who is an old friend of mine, doesn't rank high on my list of priorities. To top it all, we also have the thing with the movie, and the President was in here, asking my advice about Ellie. Like I know what to tell him about her…she's always been a mystery to Jed, and she's held herself aloof from me as well. And I think I'm a little jet-lagged from the trip.

What I'd really like to do right now is go home and curl up with a good book.

That thought really did sound better in my head. I picture myself, in my apartment with a cup of coffee and a book and it just doesn't do it right now.

But I think I know what would.

Before I can think myself out of this, I pick up my phone and dial an extension number. Even as I'm punching in the numbers, listening to it ring, I'm telling myself that this is a stupid idea, that she's not going to want to hear from me, that she's probably gone home for the night…

"Hello?"

Well, that's that then. "Hey."

"Hey Leo." It sounds very much like she's smiling. "How are you?"

"I'm trying to think of reasons not to go to the President's movie screening tonight."

She laughs lightly. "I heard all about that," she tells me. "What did Charlie choose?"

"'Dial M for Murder'."

"That's a good movie. You should go."

I swivel back and forth on my chair slightly. "I've seen it. Besides, you don't want to see a movie near the President if you can help it. He talks all the way through it, then you have to analyse it with him afterwards, and there's a quiz…"

She's laughing again now. "Sounds like fun."

"I was gonna head home," I tell her. "But I thought that I might stop and get coffee first."

There's a long silence at the other end, and I know that she knows what I'm asking her. She doesn't let me down. "Fancy some company?"

I smile. "I'll meet you at the place?"

"Twenty minutes?"

I check my watch - I can be there in twenty minutes. "I'll see you then."

I get my guy, who is almost giddy at the thought of an early night, to drive me home, and I walk the couple of blocks to "the place." We don't even have to say the name or location anymore, it's long since become our regular haunt. The first night we met here was the night that my divorce papers came through, and since then, it's become something of a habit with us, that when we get tired of talking in my office or her office, we end up here. It's quiet, so we can talk without being interrupted, or worrying who's going to see us. Not that there's anything to see. We're just two friends, talking about the day's events.

I get there before her, like always. And like always, I see the regular staff nod and smile at me as I seat myself at what's become our usual table. But no waitress comes over to take my order. They know. They know that there's someone coming and that I'll wait until she gets here.

And like always, when I sit here waiting for her, I have time to think about what I'm doing here. Time to convince myself of what I just said. Time to dismiss the inevitable memories that come up of an angelic choir of children, of the rapt attention on Ainsley's face as she listened to them, of the feel of her hand in mine. Time to put the memory of the softness of her cheek against my lips away. Time to convince myself that any emotions that I may have been feeling either that night or since are a figment of my imagination.

Then she walks in, pausing at the door to check that I'm here already, knowing just where to look. She's all bundled up, and her cheeks are pink from the wind she encountered on the walk from where she parked her car. When she sees me, she smiles and comes straight over.

And my heart does something funny that it's been doing since Christmas, or maybe even before.

I can't help but notice that as she walks over, the staff nod and smile at her, and she nods and smiles back. "Hey," she grins, as she pulls out her chair. "Been waiting long?"

I shake my head, admiring the view as she throws her coat on the back of her chair and shakes out her hair before sitting down. Before I can say anything, our waitress comes over, pad at the ready. "Let me guess," she grins. "Cappuccino and cheesecake for you Sir. And for you Ma'am, a decaf mocha latte with chocolate cake, cream and fudge sauce."

I must look surprised, and Ainsley laughs. "I guess we're creatures of habit, huh?" Her eyes dance as she looks at me. "That'll be fine," she tells the waitress and all I can do is nod, trying not to read anything into the fact that the waitress knew just what we were going to have.

"So," Ainsley turns her attention to me. "How was Japan?"

I shake my head. "Trivia filled," I tell her wryly. "Did you know, for instance, that the Japanese National Anthem is only four lines long? Or that the distance from Honolulu to New York is greater than the distance from Honolulu to Japan? Or something that has always confused me, and I know you, that there is, in fact, a distinct difference between Japanese and Chinese chopsticks?"

"Really?" She looks as if she doesn't know whether to laugh or be amazed that I could reel all that off.

I nod authoritatively. "Oh yes. You see, Japanese chopsticks are pointed at the eating end, whereas Chinese chopsticks are blunt." She laughs at the information, and I shake my head, affecting more irritation than I actually feel now, although at the time, my words had been true enough. "By the time he was through with chopstick etiquette, I wanted to stab him with one…although I'm pretty sure that's taboo."

She raises an eyebrow. "Chopstick etiquette?"

"It's big over there. And I'll have you know that the President was very proud of me because I didn't fail his quiz on the plane home."

"Aah." She looks as if something now makes sense to her. "And you didn't want to blow your perfect record on 'Dial M' so you rang me instead?"

I give an exaggerated shrug. "You caught me." For my troubles, I get a packet of sugar thrown at me.

"It's nice to know where I stand." But there's a smile on her face, and I know that she knows I'm only teasing.

I smile back, letting the silence speak for a moment. "I could've done without the homecoming though."

"The Surgeon General?" she asks.

"And Ellie."

The waitress comes over, placing our order in front of us with a cheery smile. Ainsley waits until she's gone before speaking. "Why did she call Danny?" Her expression is curious, and I know what she's struggling with, the same thing that I'm struggling with. With all the protocols, all the restrictions that Jed placed on the press when dealing with his daughters, I don't know why Ellie would go against them like that.

But all the same, I can't resist teasing Ainsley a little. "You mean besides the fact that he's cute?"

Her face is priceless. She blinks, looking at me in shock, fork frozen halfway to the plate. Then, as she looks at my face, the incident that I'm referring to clicks in her head, and she flushes crimson, the fork dropping onto the plate as she hides her face in her hands. When she peeks out again, her voice is higher than I've heard it in some time. "Did Sam tell you everything?"

"Yep." I do what she failed to and spear a mouthful of cheesecake, chewing it slowly. I've waited for a while to drop that particular bomb on her, and I'm enjoying the effect.

She takes a sip of her latte, and I can literally see her composing herself. She blinks quickly, eyes darting everywhere. "Well, I can see that I'm going to have to watch what I say around Sam in the future."

"You're just finding that out now?" I ask. "The Bossa Nova didn't teach you that?"

She takes a deep breath, going even redder, if that's possible, before scrabbling around for a comeback. "Are you going to answer my initial question, or are you just going to make fun of me?"

Another mouthful of cheesecake gets chewed slowly. "I'm thinking," I explain to her outrage. She affects a pout and lights into her cake, and I take the time to frame my response. "I don't know why Ellie did it. I know that Millie's her godmother and she worships her. And that she's never had a good relationship with her father."

Ainsley's eyes widen. "I thought that the President had a good relationship with all his children."

I shrug. "With Elizabeth and Zoey, sure. Especially Zoey. She's the youngest, and he just adores her. But Ellie…Ellie always gravitated more to Abbey. I never saw anything unusual in that…it happens with kids. And during the campaign…she wasn't around as much as the others, sure, but she was in her final year of college. I didn't expect her to be."

"How did the President react?"

I give her a look. "As you'd expect. And he came to me for advice."

An expression of curiosity comes over her face. "I thought you got on well with your daughter."

I pause, spearing a piece of cake to buy myself some time. She's heard me mention Mallory, and we've talked about Jenny, but I've never gone into detail on my relationship with my daughter. I'm not sure why I haven't. Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that they could be sisters, and that my feelings for Ainsley, try as I might to deny them, are nothing like daughterly. "I do," I tell her finally. "Now. But there were a lot of years that I wasn't there for her. If it wasn't politics, it was booze. We've made a lot of progress the last few years, but I still…" I wave my fork around, trying to figure out where I’m going with this.

"There's a long way to go?" she guesses.

"Yeah." I sigh. "We're better than we've been in a long time. Even though there was a dip when Jenny and I split up. But we're good." I look at her. "What about you?"

Now it's her turn to take a bite of her cake, chew it slowly. She goes one further than me, taking a sip of her latte before she speaks. "I'm of the Zoey persuasion," she tells me finally.

"Ah, a Daddy's girl." I have a sudden image of her standing in my office, telling Jed about her father. Her eyes were shining and she looked overwhelmed, and I put that down to meeting Jed. Now I'm not so sure. "I know you said he's proud of you. Is he in politics?"

"You read my FBI file and you don't know?" I think she's teasing. Her tone is teasing, but the tone doesn't match the look on her face somehow, so I don't say anything, I just wait for her to continue. "He's a lawyer," she tells me. "His father was in politics, but Daddy didn't want anything to do with that himself. He's a partner in a firm in Raleigh."

"That's where you grew up?"

She nods. "In the suburbs."

"And your mom?"

She shrugs, smiles brightly, and I find myself bracing myself for what's to come. "Momma died when I was six," she tells me simply. "Breast cancer. My grandmother, Daddy's momma, moved in to the house, because she said that Daddy could hardly take care of himself, never mind two little girls of six and eight."

Her voice is soft and far away and I remember her speaking of her grandmother in my office at Christmas, and I can all but taste the cookies in my mouth. "She's the one who taught you how to bake?"

She grins. "And cook, and sew, and dance and play the piano and all the things that good little girls do. Or did." She wrinkles her nose. "Gramma raised us the way that she was raised…some of my friends found her a little eccentric I think. She was your perfect Southern Belle, and I often think that if she saw me now, she'd be horrified. She never thought that politics was any business for a lady."

Her eyes were dancing when she spoke, and her accent got deeper and more pronounced at the end there as she imitated her grandmother's speech. "I'm sure that's not true," I say, meaning every word.

"Yeah, I know." She chases a blob of cream around the plate with a piece of chocolate cake, her voice wistful. "Gramma died during my freshman year of college. I still miss her."

She leaves her fork down, mouthful of cake and all, and my hand finds its way across the table, on top of hers. Her head lifts and she meets my gaze, a small smile touching her face, and she turns her hand over so that it can grip mine, and squeezes tightly. We let the silence speak for a long minute, then she smiles again, but she looks uncertainly at me. "You want to try some cake?"

Instinct makes me raise an eyebrow - in all the times we've met here, she's never veered from her first night stance, that she'll share anything except dessert. But her free hand is pushing the plate towards me, and she's chewing her bottom lip. I grin at her and push my own plate to the centre of the table, where it sits beside hers. "Let's share."

We polish off each other's cake, and our hands stay joined the whole time. The waitress, still smiling, comes over and asks if we'd like anything else. We look at each other and decide not, and the waitress smiles again and leaves the bill. This leads to our usual argument over who's going to pay, and this time, I get the better of Ainsley, by virtue of the fact that she paid the last time, under my strong protests if I recall.

We stand to leave, and I take her coat out of her hands and help her put it on, pulling her hair out from the collar before she turns around and buttons it. We walk out, and I shiver as the February air hits me. "It's a cold one," I note.

She turns and smiles up at me. "I didn't notice." There's a flush on her cheeks, and it doesn't look like it's the cold that's doing it. Then she turns her head, looking in the opposite direction to my apartment. "I'm parked down this way."

I think of my apartment, my nice warm bed that awaits me. I think of the walk to her car. The decision makes itself. "C'mon. I'll walk with you."

"You don't have to-" she begins to protest, but I hold out my arm and she stops talking.

"I insist."

She slips her arm through mine and we walk down the street in silence, the same way we walked at Christmas. And just like that night, when her apartment arrived too soon, now her car arrives too soon. "Thank you for the coffee," she says, as she turns to face me, after we stand there for a few seconds, just looking at each other, not saying anything.

I find the wherewithal to say, "Thank you for the company", from where, I'm not sure. There's one thought in my mind that's overpowering everything else, and it's that I want to kiss her. She's so close to me, she's looking up at me, and every instinct that I have is telling me that this is the time.

So I take a half a step closer to her.

Only to lose my nerve at the last minute and hug her instead.

I expect her to be surprised, but she wraps her arms around me tightly and holds me, and we stay that way just a little too long for it to be only a friendly hug. When we step away from each other, she gives me another small smile before getting into her car and driving away. Some people might think it's strange that she didn't say anything to me, or I to her. But I don't think that. She said all she needed to say to me with that small smile of hers.

I think I'm starting to more than like those.

I think I'm starting to more than like her.

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