Rating/Pairing: PG, Leo/Ainsley
Disclaimer: The West Wing is not mine, nor ever will be mine.
Spoilers: Post ep to "Bartlet's Third State of the Union" and "The War at Home"
Summary: Leo visits Ainsley's office the night after the State of the Union.
Archive:On my site, The Band Gazebo Anywhere else, ask first
Feedback: Yes please!
Author's Notes: Sixth in the Stolen Moments series; after Reports, Statistics and Divine Intervention, Of Divorces and Desserts, Cookies and Children's Choirs, Loose Lips and Of Peanuts and Lord Fauntleroy

Last night was supposed to be a big night for me.

I was on TV. On Capitol Beat. Not that that was such a big deal, I mean, I had been on that show before. And I kicked Sam Seaborn's ass on it too. Mark Gottfried likes me. He gave me pointers.

But I was representing the White House.

Not me, not my opinions.

The White House.

Me, Ainsley Hayes, working in the place I'd dreamed about working in since I was two years old, and on television doing it. Daddy had been telling the neighbours about it for the past week, and he made me promise to overnight the tape to him the minute I got home.

It was a big night for me.

Right until the time I was caught slightly tipsy and dancing around my office in a bathrobe by the President of the United States of America. Who then proceeded to call me a "blonde Republican sex kitten".

I have never been more mortified.

Except today when I ended up in Leo's closet while he was in Leo's office.

But he was so nice. The President, not Leo. I already knew that Leo was nice. I didn't know what to expect from the President.

Whatever it was, I certainly never expected him to be so nice.

When I first came to work here, I thought that Josiah Bartlet was the nearest thing to the Ant-Christ that there was, and that Leo McGarry and the rest of the Senior Staff were the minions of Satan.

Three months have shown me how wrong I was.

There are good people working here.

I'm sitting in my office now, pondering that, wondering if it's too late to call my dad and tell him about today, tell him how nice the President was to me, when there's a knock at my door. I call for whomever it is to come in, and I can't hide my surprise when I see who it is.

"Leo! What are you doing here?" With everything that's going on here tonight, I didn't expect him to be anywhere else except his office and the one next door.

He shrugs, coming in and closing the door behind him. "I was wandering around. Just thinking. Ended up down here and saw the light. What's your excuse?"

I shrug too, trying not to read too much into the fact that he ended up down here. Who the hell wanders into the Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue accidentally? Although it does show that we've got past that little -what do I call it? Episode? Incident? Fight?- that we had in the mess the night of the bipartisan breakfast. "I was supposed to be working." I wave a hand at the stack of briefs on my desk. "But I was thinking too."

"What about?" He settles himself on the chair across from me, looking for all the world as if he's not intending on moving anytime soon. That's fine by me.

Except that that requires getting my thoughts in order, which isn't something I've had too much success with today. "About the last couple of days," I tell him frankly. "About what's happened."

I wonder briefly how much he knows, before the slight smirk and raised eyebrow scream at me that he knows pretty much everything. "Blame it on the Bossa Nova?" he suggests, and I can feel a blush rising on my cheeks and I bury my face in my hands. I hear him laugh, and I'm amazed to find myself laughing right along with him. "Ainsley, don't worry about it. It was a welcome relief for him last night."

"Well, I'm glad I could be of some service to the President," I tell him, managing not to be offended at that statement, sobering up at the thoughts of what's been going on in the wider world, forgetting my own mortification. "Is there any news?"

He nods, sober now too. "We're making a deal for the hostages. They should be out soon. The bodies…" His voice trails off. "They'll be here at 4AM."

I shake my head, thinking of the families, the men who lost their lives. "Will the President…"

"Yeah." He sighs, evidently deciding to change the subject, because the next thing he asks me is, "What did you think of him?"

"The President?" I can feel another smile coming on.

"Yeah." He smiles too.

I shake my head in wonder. "He was so nice Leo. I couldn't believe how nice he was to me."

"He's a nice man Ainsley. What did you expect?"

"But I was meeting him for the second time, after making a total fool of myself the first time. You've known him for years haven't you?"

He nods. "We went to parochial school together. I was a scholarship student; he was the headmaster's son. And Old Bartlet wasn't best pleased when his pride and joy befriended someone like me, that's for sure." He chuckles softly, and I can practically see him reliving those times. "If he could see us now…"

"Well, that's my point in a nutshell," I tell him. "You two are old friends. It's a little different for me." I get a sudden flash of the President standing in the doorway, and am able to hear the music and the crash of a glass against the floor. My stomach does a slow twist and I blink to clear the image. "Especially after last night."

He waves a hand. "Forget about it Ainsley. I guarantee, he has."

I raise both eyebrows. "Leo, I was dancing around my office in a bathrobe. When I saw him, I screamed and threw my glass across the room."

He laughs again. "Sam told me." He pauses. "I'm kinda sorry I missed it."

There's something about the way he says that, the way he looks at me, that makes me blush red again. I find myself thinking about how he looked at me at Christmas, about how he looked in the church when he took his hand in mine. About how he looked last week when we were talking about Peanuts and Lord John Marbury. I think about all the conversations that we've had late at night, and how I'm not in the least bit nervous when I'm talking to him, today in his office being an exception for obvious reasons.

And I'm sitting here, and I'm looking at him and he's smiling at me and I realise something.

I’m attracted to Leo McGarry.

The knowledge all but rocks me off my seat, and I scramble for something to say, trying to remember what we were last talking about. The President. Me in my bathrobe. "Did Sam tell you what he called me?"

He tilts his head. "What did Sam call you?"

I attempt to clear up the misunderstanding. "Oh, Sam didn't call me anything. Except a blonde Republican girl that no-one likes."

"What?" A roar from the chair across from me stops me dead in my tracks, and I stare at him in shock. Where he had been leaning back on the chair, he's now leaning forward, gripping the armrests, and he looks furious. I find the time to hope that I never do anything to deserve that look levelled at me, because I'm scared now, and it's nothing to do with anything I've done.

"He didn't mean it Leo," I hasten to add. "He saw me on TV, and I was kinda giddy, and he was trying to calm me down, so he told me to remember that I was a blonde Republican girl and that no-one liked me. It's ok, really." I'm doing my best to forget that when he said that, there was a teeny bit of me, the teeny bit that was staying cool and calm and trying to remember everything so that I could tell Daddy later, that got a little bruised over that comment. And something about the look on Leo's face has me guessing that he knows about that teeny part of me. "That's not what I was talking about."

"So what were you talking about?" He's letting it go for now, but by the way he's looking, I think we'll revisit that topic later on.

"What the President said."

He frowns. "What did the President say?"

"That a lot of people presumed that I was hired because I was a blonde Republican sex kitten and that they were obviously wrong and that I should keep up the good work."

I wait for a response.

And then I wait some more.

He's staring at me, and his mouth is slightly open, before it closes and then opens again. This goes on for a couple of minutes before he finally manages, "He said that?"

I nod, finding the finish on my desk mightily interesting.

"Do you believe that?"

His voice is quiet, and I find myself sighing. "I know it's not true Leo. But it's not the first time I've heard it." I look up at him and see that the anger is coming back into his face. "Not here, not in the West Wing," I tell him quickly. "But there have been comments made during meetings, and by some other people I know." That night that I decided that I was going to take the job, I met my friends Bruce and Harriet. They didn't know that I heard what they were saying, didn't know that I heard Bruce mutter something sarcastic about how the White House had of course offered me a job because they wanted to show how bipartisan they were, not because they'd noticed that I looked like a Gap dancer. I can't believe he wondered why I didn't return his calls after that.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"What were you going to do Leo?" He opens his mouth, and it looks like he's got several suggestions ready, but he doesn't voice any of them. The thought that he was all ready to defend my honour makes me smile inwardly though. "Look, people are going to think what they think. I have a job to do, and I'm going to do it. I really don't care what they say about me."

I wonder if he can tell that I'm lying? Or has all the practising in front of my mirror finally begun to pay off?

He looks at me, just looks at me for a long time. Then he speaks. "You're not you know."

I'm not quite sure what he means. "Not what?"

"Not what they said. You weren't hired because you're a blonde Republican sex kitten. You were hired because you're a good lawyer, and a talented, intelligent woman. And you've proved that every day you worked here. And you're not a blonde Republican girl that no-one likes either. Don't ever think that."

I'm embarrassed to say that his words, and the quiet tone of conviction in which he utters them, bring a lump to my throat. "Thank you," I whisper.

"You're not going to get all weepy on me are you?" He's teasing me again now, and I shake my head, managing to keep the tears back.

"I did learn one important lesson though," I tell him when I'm sure that I can speak without crying.

"What's that?"

"That I am never going to drink in the White House again."

We share a laugh over that one. "Words to live by," he tells me, before looking at his watch. "It's late. You should head home."

I nod. "In a few minutes." He's not moving from his chair. "What about you?" I ask.

"I'm going," he says. "I just want to check in on the President before I do. He won't sleep tonight, not if he's going to Dover."

"Thank you for today."

"What about today?"

"Organising the meeting in your office," I remind him. I know that Sam probably had a lot to do with it, but it was Leo's office, Leo's meeting with the President. There was a crisis going on, yet he still made the time.

He shrugs. "Once Sam told me how upset you were…and the President knew that you were too…it was nothing."

And now he's the one lying. "Still…I appreciate it."

"I'll tell him you said hi." He gets up from the chair, and I can't tell if he's teasing or being serious. "You really should go home. You probably didn't get much sleep last night."

I do a good job of keeping the surprise off my face, surprise on two counts. Firstly, I didn't get much sleep last night, and I'm surprised that he was able to guess that. Secondly, that he cares enough to tell me to get some sleep.

"I'm going," I tell him. "See you tomorrow."

He stands at the door and stares at me for a couple of seconds longer than he has to, or that could just be my imagination. "Yeah. Tomorrow."

When he's gone, I sit and think.

About how I've changed since I started working here. How my perceptions have changed since I've been working here. I'm not the same Ainsley Hayes that sat on Capitol Beat and turned Sam Seaborn inside out. I'm not the same Ainsley Hayes who blithely dismissed the Bartlet administration as smug and patronising.

I think of the people I've met working here, these people who care so much about their country, their President and each other. And I realise that since Christmas, I've counted myself as one of them. Even though I feel like an outsider at times, those times are getting less and less frequent.

But the person I can't get out of my head is the man who just walked out that door. The man who was the first person to welcome me into this White House, even though out of all of them, he had the least reason to do so. The man who helped me find my office even though he had a dozen more important things to do. The man with whom these late night conversations have become something that I cherish, something that I look forward to.

The name that I once castigated has become a man that I respect, a man that I admire.

And as I just figured out, a man that I'm very attracted to.

I try to figure out how that makes me feel. I should feel awkward, or embarrassed, or ashamed. There are so many obstacles to anything ever happening between us, it's ridiculous to even consider it.

But consider it I do, and I can't stop smiling.

Last night was supposed to be a big night for me.

But somehow I get the feeling that tonight was even bigger.

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