Rating/Pairing: PG, Leo/Ainsley
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be mine.
Spoilers: Post ep to "Noel"; also refers to "Two Gunmen"
Summary: After sending Josh and Donna to the hospital, Leo has a visitor
Archive:On my site, The Band Gazebo Anywhere else, ask first
Feedback: Yes please!
Author's Notes: Third in line; after Reports, Statistics and Divine Intervention and Of Divorces and Desserts

I feel myself let out a long breath as I make my way along the halls of the White House. It's not even a breath really. It's much more of a sigh. There's no-one here to hear it of course, most normal people have gone home to their families. It's Christmas Eve for goodness sake, and yet here I am, still at my place of employ.

With a box of cookies in my hand.

God help me.

I don't have to do this. It's not too late. I don't even know why I'm doing this in the first place. It's not as if we're friends. Not really. Late night conversations and trips to coffeehouses notwithstanding. He's my boss. My boss's boss even, although I'm not sure if that's better or worse. There must be a case about that somewhere. I'll have to look that up.

But it's still not too late. Even if I am at his office. He's not here, neither is Margaret. No-one saw me go in here. I can still leave, go home, and eat the cookies with some eggnog and "It's A Wonderful Life". No-one will ever know.

"Ainsley?"

I jump about a foot in the air, whirling around as I do so. I didn't even hear him coming in, and now it's definitely too late to back out of this, seeing as he's staring at me with that smile on his face, the one that's halfway between curiosity and amusement, and he's definitely noticed the box in my hand. The box that's wrapped in brightly decorated paper with a little bow on the top, which can, of course, since it's Christmas, only be one thing.

Just great.

There's still that smile on his face, and he's talking to me. "Ainsley, what are you doing here?"

Play it cool Ainsley, you're not doing anything wrong. Just a thank-you gift, that's all. "Margaret wasn't outside…I was checking to see if you were here, but you weren't, and now you are…" I force myself to snap my mouth shut.

"I sent Margaret home. Which is where I would have thought you'd be. You and everyone else." He comes around and sits down in his chair, leaning back on it. I can't help but notice how tired he looks.

"I came to give you this." I put the box on his desk, and it makes him smile. For just an instant he looks younger, happier somehow, and I smile to myself.

"You didn't have to do that." In spite of his words he sounds pleased as he starts to unwrap it.

"It's not anything big," I tell him, leaping in to fill up the silence. "They're just some Christmas cookies that I made. I wanted to say thank you for all you've done… being so nice to me when I started here, helping me find my office and all, and smoothing the way with Lionel Tribbey…"

He's shaking his head, and I'm sure that a chuckle isn't too far away. "There's no-one smoothed the way with Lionel but you Ainsley. And you fit in here all on your own as well. Don't ever doubt that." He picks out a little Santa from the box and holds it up, turning it around, scrutinising it from every angle. "Nice. You make these yourself?"

"Every year. My grandmother showed me when I was little. We used to make them every year. I still do." My voice trails off as I remember those days, when most of the ingredients ended up all over her kitchen and not in the mixing bowl, and when most of what ended up in the mixing bowl ended up in the two of us rather than in the oven. How the smell of baking would permeate the whole house, and how I'd sit in front of the oven for what seemed like hours waiting for them to be ready. How I'd burn my fingers trying to eat them straight from the tray. How she'd sit me down by the Christmas tree with the still warm cookies and a glass of milk and read me "The Night Before Christmas". I feel a tightness in my throat. I miss my grandmother.

Leo's voice brings me back to reality and I realise that he's beheaded Santa and is chewing on him slowly. "These are really good." A pause as he chews some more. "And oddly familiar." A look of amazement spreads across his face as he looks up at me. "Does Mrs Landingham have some of these in her cookie jar?"

I feel the heat spreading across my cheeks. "I made her some too." I can see her face now when I gave her the box. She hasn't been in a good mood all week, but she beamed then. She emptied out her jar straight away, even let me have one out of it. "I like her," I admit to Leo, remembering too the welcome she had given me when I started to work in the White House, and how good her advice on handling Lionel Tribbey had been. "She reminds me of my grandmother."

Leo motions for me to sit down with one hand, offers me the box with another. I take out a Rudolph and settle back in the visitor's chair. "So, what has you here at Christmas? I thought you'd be going back to North Carolina to prove that you hadn't been infected by Democrats."

I manage a weak smile. The matter of my Christmas plans caused some serious phone calls from the Hayes Residence. "Family Christmas is at my sister's this year," I say simply. "I passed."

"You don't get along with your family?"

"I love my sister. And my dad. And I love my niece and nephews. It's my brother in law that's the problem."

"Ah."

"After a few drinks, he has this habit of forgetting which sister he's married to. It's quite distressing." I shouldn’t be talking like this, to the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, feet from the Oval Office, but I can't seem to stop the words.

"I can imagine."

"What about you?"

The change in subject catches him off guard. "What about me what?"

"What has you here on Christmas Eve?"

He sighs, and he looks old again all of a sudden. I understand when he next speaks. It's only one word, but the tone of his voice, the look on his face, speak volumes. "Josh."

"How did the meeting go?"

He looks at me as if he's surprised that I know about the meeting, and I realise belatedly that the reason he's here this late is because he stayed to see Josh when he came out of the meeting. Leo's like that, he takes care of all of his staff, even if they don't know he's doing it, even if he doesn't really show that he cares. We all know he does. "How did you-?" His voice falters as I raise an eyebrow and give him my best "are you kidding?" look. This is the White House after all, and eventually the rumour mill does get as far as the Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue. Especially when you have an inside source.

"Donna told me," I say simply, remembering what she looked like when she came down to talk to me. "And the story about the meeting in the Oval Office is already the stuff of legend."

He nods, accepting the veracity of the White House Rumour Mill. "Donna saw it sooner than all of us. Why do you think that was?"

Again, I raise my eyebrow, smiling despite the seriousness of the situation. "I don't think the White House Chief of Staff would want to hear the reason why the Deputy Chief of Staff's assistant knew that something was wrong with him." Of course, we both know that if something is wrong with one of the senior staff, the assistant is logically the first to know, because of how closely they work. We also both know that this isn't the case here.

The look on Leo's face tells me that he takes my point. "I should've seen it sooner."

"Leo, there's no way you could have known…"

I have a whole speech worked up about the reasons why he couldn't have known, but he beats me to the punch. "Couldn't I? I've known Josh since he was a kid. Did you know that?"

"No. No, I did not know that."

"His dad and I were old friends. That's how I got him to come to work on the campaign. He was working for Hoynes at the time. He wasn't happy there. Josh is like his father. He tries hard to act like he's all tough and that nothing can hurt him. But inside…" He sighs heavily. "Inside it's another story. He's a romantic at heart, although it'd kill him to hear that said out loud. He wanted the real thing."

"And you told him that that's what the President is?" The strange thing is that I believe it myself, even though I am a Republican. President Bartlet is a man who cares about this country and the people, who wants to make it better. I'd never have believed that I, of all people, could be as loyal to him as the people who worked so hard to elect him, the man who's been his best friend for so long.

"I didn't tell him anything. I asked him to come to Nashua to hear Jed speak at the VFW Hall there. Told him that that was what sons do for old friends of their father. The rest is history." He looks up at the ceiling. "I never knew it would turn out like this."

I frown at that, realising what he's thinking. "Leo, you can't blame yourself."

"Can't I? If I hadn't talked him into this…"

"You can't think like that." I lean forward in my seat, reaching out a hand and placing it on the table. "You can't think like that Leo. Josh made his own choices, and he made the right one. If you hadn't talked to him, then none of us would be where we are now." I stop talking at the look on his face. "What, you think that I don't know how valuable Josh was to your campaign? You couldn't have won without him and everyone in Washington knows it. And you can't know how things would have turned out for him if he'd stayed with Hoynes."

Leo smirked. "Maybe he'd be the White House Chief of Staff and he'd never have got shot."

The thought makes me shudder. "Leo. You think you could live in a world where John Hoynes is President?"

Leo looks almost as nauseous as I feel at that thought. "Good point."

"Thank you."

He is silent for a minute before speaking slowly. "I just kept seeing his face. When he was a kid. When he was growing up. And I kept thinking of Noah. He died the night of the Chicago Primary. It was sudden, we weren't expecting it. I'd talked to him the week before. Told him how Josh was getting on. He made me promise that if the chemo didn't work that I'd look out for him." His voice is choked and I'm trying to keep tears back. "We almost lost him in Rosslyn Ainsley. And that day in the Oval Office, I could see that we could lose him again." He takes a shuddering breath. "He put his hand through a window Ainsley. We could've lost him."

"But we didn't. We didn't Leo." The words shock me. When did I start to include myself in this "we" that I spoke about? When did it stop becoming about "them" and "me"? "He's going to be fine. He's going to get help and he's going to have his friends around him and he's going to be fine. You've got to believe that."

"I know." He sighs. "I know. It's just been one hell of a year."

My lips quirk up in a smile. "Look at it this way Leo. At least it can't get any worse." I meant that to be a joke. A light-hearted comment. Really, I did. But the minute I say it, his face goes slack, and all the colour just drains right out of it. He looks as if I've just slapped him, and I've no idea why. "Leo?"

He stares at me, glassy-eyed, before he speaks. When he does, his voice is even hoarser than it was before. "Yeah?"

I narrow my eyes, trying to figure out what the problem is. "It can get worse?"

His face tries to smile, but his eyes are haunted and the face looking at me is some kind of gross caricature of Leo McGarry. Looking at him, I feel a cold hand reach inside me and grip my insides, squeezing tightly. "It's the White House Ainsley. It can always get worse." He's trying, but I'm not buying.

"Leo? It can get worse?"

He doesn't answer, just stares at me, and that makes the cold hand twist inside, and the cold spreads through me, almost causing physical pain. I know that there's something he's not telling me, something so that's so bad that it scares even him. And I can't imagine what that might be. I don't want to imagine what that might be.

So I decide to let it go.

My voice seems to work independently of my brain, and I hear myself ask, "So what are your plans for Christmas?"

He shakes himself. "Dinner with the First Family. I'll spend the evening with Mallory. My daughter. You?"

"I'm going to a friend's house."

"Good." His gaze swings to the clock on the wall. "When did it get so late?"

I know a dismissal when I hear one. "I'm just going to.." I stand up, making a gesture with my hand in the general direction of the door. He nods, and I'm not even sure that he heard me. I get as far as the door before an idea hits me. Before I can think about it, before I can change my mind and talk myself out of it, I turn back to him. "Leo?" He looks up. "I was going to go to Midnight Mass at the church a couple blocks from my apartment. There's a Children's Choir singing Handel's 'Messiah'." He continues to stare at me. "Would you…I mean, you certainly don't have to, and I'm not even sure if you're religious, and I'm not even sure if it's appropriate that I ask of you such a question, but if you are and even if you're not, you're very welcome to come."

His head weaves slightly as he tries to work out my babbling. "Midnight Mass?" I nod. "Children's Choir?" Another nod. "With you." A pause. "Do you know how long it's been since I've been to Mass?"

"Please Leo, don't feel as if you're under any obligation towards me. I just thought that…"

I stop as he stands up. "Don't." He nods to himself as if he's trying to convince himself that he's doing the right thing. "It might be just what I need."

After I get my coat, we have a quick strategy meeting as how best to get there, and conclude that it's best if Leo follows me to my place, then we can walk the couple of blocks to get to the church. It's cold outside as we walk, and there's a slight snow falling. The pavement is slippery in places, and without asking, Leo takes my arm to steady me, and keeps hold of it even when we walk up the church steps. He doesn't look at me as he does it, doesn't make a big deal out of it. To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure he realises what he's doing. But I do. And I can't help but notice how nice it feels.

He steps aside to let me into the pew first, and I can feel the tension drain from my body as the mass begins, the responses coming automatically to me, the priest's words of peace and goodwill to men seeming more true than ever this year. Beside me, Leo listens, repeating the responses also. I sneak a peak over at him every now and again, but whatever dark shadows touched him earlier in his office are now well and truly under wraps again. When it's time for Communion, I stand, ready to step around him, not knowing whether he will go to receive. But he stands too, and steps back from the pew to let me go ahead of him. For an instant, when I step from the pew, I think that I feel his hand on my back, but the sensation is so fleeting that I'm sure I imagined it.

It's not until the Mass is ended that the choir began to sing, and the music seems to grow and fill the air all around us. There's always been something about the Hallelujah Chorus that touches me, that lifts my spirits, but never more so than when it's sung by children. The innocence, the purity in their voices never fails to move me, bringing me back to a time when I was that innocent, that hopeful. I feel tears rising up in my throat, and I try with all my power to keep them back.

And that's when I feel it.

My eyes are closed, but they fly open to look at Leo when I feel him reach out and cover my hand with his, closing his fingers over mine. He's not looking at me, he's staring straight ahead, lost in the music, lost in his thoughts. And holding my hand.

Not thinking about the reasons why, I take my hand out from under his, watching his reaction carefully. He blinks, looks down at my hand, in time to see me take his again, this time lacing our fingers together, bringing them to rest on the seat between us. There's a slight turn-up on the edges of his lips as he looks back up again, his gaze fixing on the children's artwork decorating the altar and its surroundings.

Our hands remain joined as the choir sing on, and they stay joined even after they finish, on our way out of the church, on the walk back to my apartment. We don't speak at all. Perhaps we're lost in thought still, lost in the music. Perhaps it's because the music has woven a spell around us and we don't want to speak for fear of breaking it. Perhaps it's because a line has been crossed, and we know that to speak would either acknowledge that, or send us ricocheting backwards and we're not sure which we want to do.

In either case, the walk back to my apartment ends all too soon, and we end up standing on the steps, our hands still joined between us. He finally breaks the silence. "Thank you for inviting me."

"They were incredible weren't they?" My voice is breathless, but it's not from the walk. And my cheeks are flushed, but not from the cold.

"Incredible is definitely the word." From the tone of his voice, I'm not so sure that he's talking about the choir. And I'm not so sure I care.

I speak quickly, before I lose my nerve. "Would you like to come up? For coffee?"

He shakes his head quickly. "It's late…I should get going."

I fight to keep my disappointment under wraps. "OK then."

"Another time?"

I nod, this time with a smile. He stares at me for a couple of seconds longer before saying, "OK then. Good night." He bends quickly - maybe so he can't change his mind either - and kisses my cheek. His lips are soft against my skin, in counterpoint to the slight rasp of stubble on his chin, and the twin sensations cause me to shiver involuntarily. He drops my hand and I feel very alone suddenly.

He's at the bottom of the steps, almost to his car before I call out his name. He turns, looks at me expectantly. There are so many things that I want to say to him right now, so many questions I want to ask him. But the only thing that comes out is, "Merry Christmas."

He smiles. "Merry Christmas Ainsley."

Then he gets into his car and drives away.

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