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Title: The Howling of Ducks
Author: Lyman's Might
Category: Josh, Josh/Sam, Josh/Donna, reference to
CJ/Toby 
Rating: PG-13/light R
Feedback: Always appreciated at lymansmight@yahoo.com
Archive: You betcha, but a heads-up is always nice
Spoilers: All minor, but just to cover my bases: The
Short List, In Excelsis Deo, Lord John Marbury,
ITSOTG, Noel, The Crackpots and These Women
Summary: "When he thinks about it, he's usually sure
that they've slipped under fate's radar."

Disclaimer: The West Wing, including characters and
plot lines, belong to Aaron Sorkin and many other
people who aren't me. Or I. I digress.

Note: So... this is still kind of loose, and I
apologize for that. But it was in my head, and now
it's not. I thought I'd let you guys put it in yours.

On with the show...

The Howling of Ducks 

He sits across from her, idly bantering as he devours
a slice of banana cream pie. She looks wonderful
tonight, casual and soft, the way people should look
at noon on a Saturday. She looks real, and he allows
himself to hope that the suits and subpoenas are only
part of a nightmare. Then he swears at himself under
his breath, and he remembers that should be thankful
just to be alive. He should have died that night in
GW, or he should have broken down countless times
since. A pilot with his birthday killed himself, and
there's no reason Josh shouldn't have done the same.
Except that Donna, who isn't afraid of Leo, pays too
much attention to Josh who is. He should be dead right
now, and no physics book can tell him why he isn't.
But, he figures, physicists never accounted for Donna
Moss.

He loves his women. CJ, Donna, and the women from bars
who take their places when he needs to express his
gratitude in the only way he remembers. The anesthesia
never wore off, not fully, and there are still so many
things that he can't feel. He can't find the words to
thank CJ and Donna for being with him, for seeing
through him. Instead, he finds women in bars, drunk,
beautiful women whom he fucks with a blend of anger
and gratitude that he's sure they don't understand. He
finds the women unsatisfying because he needs more
than to get laid. He screws them because he can't, for
so many reasons, have Donna or CJ, and he loves Donna
and CJ so desperately. He knows, as his pads toward
the door in the morning, that it is all meaningless,
that he is only doing more damage, but he tells
himself that in some karmic way, he is doing something
right.
    
So he's all dimples and charm, slinging one-liners and
smack downs. It's enough to scare Republicans, but it
also scares his friends. He's supposed to have
redeeming moments. Their Josh Lyman swaggers and
smiles, but he also has moment when he agonizes over a
life-saving card or admits his affection in the pages
of a rare book. But that side now stays behind the
doors of his office where he shakes and clenches his
hands around the arms of his chair and prays nobody
walks in. 

It's Schubert in one ear and Bach in the other, but
both soon spin into sirens and screams. His
fluorescent lights shatter into twisting rays of blue
and red, and he's sure he's about to die. But he knows
it isn't right. People die in hospitals or back
alleys, not repeatedly, in phases, not in empty
offices with oblivious friends just outside the door.

In calmer moments, when he considers his attacks, he's
sure that there were guiltless times. Times of
fingerpaint and tee ball, times before popcorn poppers
were murder weapons. And, though he's sure those
memories are somewhere in his mind, tucked between
traumas, he can't remember a time when he didn't
question his right to be alive. 

Instead, his life begins somewhere in middle school
when he met a haunted man who knew how it felt to kill
people accidentally. 

***

Josh swung his feet under the table. He dragged his
fork through his potatoes, drawing sloppy pictures as
he recited baseball statistics in his head. His mother
scowled at him. His father talked to their guest. It
wasn't uncommon for Josh to be brought to dinners to
charm clients or partners at Noah Lyman's firm, but
this was just some old friend of his father's, and
Josh didn't know what he was doing there. He did know
that the Connecticut winter had finally broken and his
friends were probably playing a pick-up game
somewhere. He didn't want to be in a dimly lit
restaurant while the sun shone outside.

"How could you fight in that war?" he said abruptly,
and he hadn't known he was going to say it. 

"Joshua!" Josh turned toward his mother slowly in
compliant protest. "Apologize to Mr. McGarry."

But Leo looked amused and mildly intrigued. "No, it's
okay," he said as he turned to the boy. "I got
drafted."

"You shoulda dodged it," Josh said through a mouthful
of food. He didn't really know what he was talking
about, but he was bored, and he didn't care.  "Mr.
Benson said the war did nothing but kill Americans. He
said we had no right to be there at all." 

"He might have been right, Josh. I don't know, yet.
But my number came up," Leo said, vaguely aware that
he would be angry if Josh weren't twelve. Josh
shrugged, and Leo ordered another drink. Josh wondered
how many that was before he returned to considering
the Mets' roster. He could hear his mother apologize
for him, but Leo said he'd done nothing wrong. And
though his parents said those words often without
persuading him, when Leo said it, it was thoughtful
and sincere. When Leo, with his guilty eyes and harsh
voice, forgave him, Josh believed him.

And later, when Leo found him on the porch, Josh felt
a little guilty, so he quietly said, "Sorry about
earlier, Mr. McGarry."

"Call me Leo, Josh. You're all right. A lot of people
agree with you. I'm not sure I don't." Josh liked the
way Leo treated it as Josh's opinion even though Josh
had been repeating his teacher. He liked that Leo
thought he could have opinions on things bigger than
baseball. 

"So, you just finished law school?" Josh asked.

"Yep."

"Are you going to be a litigator?" Josh asked with a
little pride in his vocabulary. "Like my dad?"

"Nah." Leo was thoughtful and wistful, though a sad
tone, the scars of suicide and Saigon, draped his
words. "I'm going into politics."

The boy scrunched his face and shook his head, looking
like his father. "Why?"

"Because there are things that need to change."

"But politicians don't change things. They just argue
and play games," Josh said. His voice cracked, and he
blushed. Humbled, he added, "That's what Dad says."

Leo laughed softly. "Believe me, I've heard your dad
say a lot more than that, but I think I've got it
figured out." 

"What's that?" Josh asked.

He looked at Josh for a while, gauging him, as though
preparing to take him into some sacred confidence.
Josh eyed his beer. "Want a sip?" he asked, handing
him the bottle. He laughed as Josh grimaced at the
taste but swallowed anyway, trying to rectify his
cracking voice with a pseudo-masculine display.
Twelve, he remembered, was a strange age.

"I say," Leo continued. "You find a candidate who
isn't a politician. Someone who doesn't want to play
the games, and you give him a staff who will play them
for him. It's like checks and balances, you know?
That's how you make it happen. That's how you make the
real thing."

Josh nodded.  "You have anyone in mind?"

"A couple people."  Noah Lyman appeared, and, resting
a hand on Josh's shoulder, told his son to go to bed. 

Josh gave Leo a bright-eyed smile and said, sincerely,
"Good luck changing the world." 

***
He's seen CJ on the mornings after she and Toby split
cabs. At least one of them returns wearing yesterday's
suit, and Josh knows from CJ's eyes exactly what
happens in-between. He'd deck Toby for what he's doing
to her, but he isn't sure that she isn't doing the
same to Toby, and he isn't sure it's his place to do
anything at all. It's almost comforting, in a perverse
way he tries to ignore, that he isn't suffering alone.


He won't be the one who makes Donna look like that.
He's fairly sure that he's in love with her, but it
could just be the stress. And, anyway, he's also
fairly sure that Toby's in love with CJ, but that
doesn't seem to keep CJ's haunted expression away. He
won't do that to Donna because he thinks that love
won't be enough, and he's too broken down to offer her
anything else. 

She calms him in a subliminal way. Her voice is
peaceful but tinged with energy, like the strange
subdued vibrancy of the horizon an hour before
twilight. It is something steadying in its gradual
offer of promise, hinting at the overwhelming beauty
of the day but giving him the night to heal. When she
speaks, he knows that he will recover, someday, and he
will be able to handle her intensity without feeling
overburdened. Sometime in the distant future, when
scandals and scars are distant memories, he will find
himself frozen by sheer beauty instead of by fear.

Sometimes he wishes he didn't know Leo because
sometimes he wants nothing more than enough liquor to
knock him out.  He holds back because he is the White
House Deputy Chief of Staff with the secret plan to
fight inflation, and the press likes new opportunities
to make him look foolish.  He can't get sloppy drunk
in public because he is a reflection of President
Bartlet who has a concealed, debilitating disease and
doesn't need more PR problems. Moreover, he can't get
pitifully drunk because he knows what this did to Leo,
and he feels guilty every time. But he wants to drink
himself into a stupor, pop pills, and screw strangers.
He'd end up dead and alone with cold, familiar cement
pressed against his slumped shoulders, and the world
would be balanced again.

And sometimes he's in a room with Donna, and he
doesn't need a drink. And though he's aware of this,
he's nowhere near ready to dissect it. It's too
complex, too fragile, for him to fuck up now. And he
will fuck it up, someday, because that's what he does.
***

When Josh turned twenty-one, Leo sent him cash to buy
booze. In the card, he told him about internships in
Washington and offered him a room while he settled in.


He didn't make it to Washington for another year. That
was the summer Josh met both Sam Seaborn and Jed
Bartlet, though he would try to forget how he met Sam
and he could never remember the meeting with Bartlet.

Josh shifted in the stiff wooden chair as the lecture
on the etymology of economic jargon trudged into its
twentieth minute. He glanced up at Leo who grinned and
shook his head. He could barely believe this man was
running for Congress, but Leo had insisted that Josh
meet him. He smiled politely and nodded frequently,
and he stared at a table where a dark-haired kid ate
alone.  And when dinner stumbled to an end and Leo
dragged Jed Bartlet away from a still politely nodding
Josh, Josh found himself standing at the stranger's
table. He didn't know why he'd wanted to talk to this
man, and, as time passed, he became even less sure why
he was flirting with him. 

"This seat taken?" he asked, because he wasn't good
with women, and he had no idea what to say to men. 

The man raised an eyebrow, but shook his head. 

"Josh Lyman," Josh said as he slid into a chair. 

"Sam Seaborn." 

It was clipped, but not altogether disinterested, so
Josh relaxed a little, asked, "Why ya eating alone?"
and ordered a beer. He wasn't sure how many he had, or
how they ended up tearing Reaganomics apart together
with slurred but brilliant analysis. He never
remembered who initiated the kissing, but he
remembered wanting to touch Sam's jaw as he had bashed
trickle-down economics.  

He awoke with a start the next morning as emories of
Sam, Sam's lips, hot and wet on his body, and Sam's
soft, tame hands against his skin, slammed against his
headache. He groaned. Sam stirred behind him, and
Josh, despite the headache, jumped out of the bed. 

Sam's eyes widened, and they stared at each other in
strained silence. Sam, though he'd had a beer or two
back in Josh's apartment, hadn't been nearly as drunk
as Josh. Josh figured that meant something but he
didn't know what, except that Sam was probably a
little more embarrassed and a little less hung-over. 

"I should, um, I should go," Josh stuttered as he
dressed. Sam nodded but said nothing, and Josh was too
frantic to read him. "It's not that you aren't�" he
trailed off, gesturing wildly. "It's just that I'm
not." Which, he told himself, was sort of true.

Sam looked at the floor. He kicked at his shoes
awkwardly, looking horribly young, and Josh just
wanted the silence to end. And then Sam was walking
toward him with unnerving speed. Josh thought he was
going to kiss him, to try to change his mind, like in
bad movies, and it wasn't until Sam's fist slammed
into his jaw that Josh realize just what an arrogant
bastard he was. And he defended himself with lazy
blows because he needed to take a beating. 

Eventually, they were sprawled on opposite sides of
the room, bruised and bleeding, breathing heavily, and
staring at each other. And then, Josh still isn't sure
how, they were looking for possible ways Reagan could
lose re-election, and Sam was handing Josh a bag of
ice for his eye. He never asked for an apology because
they were men, and it was sex, and it wasn't supposed
to hurt like it did.

It was only Sam and a few other men, gorgeous men,
strung out through years of women, and it was
something Josh never fully understood. But sex was
about aggression and anger, and men didn't look at him
with fallen faces when they caught him slipping out
the door. They might hit him, and they often did, and
their eyes might reflect some vague sense of rejection
and betrayal, but it was hidden and easy to ignore.
The women, though he loved them, tore him apart. The
men just beat him up.

Sam beat him up, but then he sat in a room and avoided
the issue by talking politics. He gave him a bag of
ice, let him take a shower, and took him to lunch. He
was only eighteen, but he was smarter than Josh in so
many ways. And at the end of that summer, Sam left for
Princeton to grow up, and Josh went to Yale to miss
him, because Sam was the best friend he would ever
have.

CJ told him that he and Sam reminded her of Leo and
the president, which upsets Josh because he knows that
Sam, with his freakish brilliance and undying
idealism, is Bartlet. Josh wants more than anything to
be like Jed Bartlet. And he loves Leo more than Leo
was ever meant to be loved, but he doesn't want to be
Leo. He doesn't want to be dark and so nearly
defeated; he doesn't want to be weathered and tired
and disillusioned. He doesn't want to be Leo or Toby,
but he knows that Bartlets need Leos and Tobys, people
to see the dark side, to survive, and, if it means
that in twenty-five years America will have another
Real Thing, he'll be Sam's Leo. 

***

He's slouched in CJ office, nursing a beer and
rambling as she idly skims a brief, and suddenly it's
time to fuck things up with Donna. "I think I'm in
love with her," he mumbles, the words floating into
the room and hanging awkwardly in the air. It should
be earth-shattering, but he mumbles it with a
dark-eyed intensity that makes his loving Donna
another of the White House's routine catastrophes.

"Yeah." She doesn't look at him.

"Yeah? CJ, did you hear me? I said I think I'm in love
with her. Doesn't that get more than a 'yeah' from
you?" he exclaims, his voice high-pitched and
demanding.

"Don't do anything stupid?" Her tone is almost a
laugh, but she's serious. He wants to roll his eyes.
For once, it isn't about anger. It isn't about Joanie,
or Republicans, or getting shot, or getting laid. For
once there is no scandal involved, but CJ finds one
anyway. It is, after all, her job. "Of course you're
in love with her, Josh."

"Do you think...I mean...could we spin it?"

"She's your secretary, Josh. It doesn't matter that we
call her an assistant or that she may as well have
your job. The headlines will say secretary, and it
will look bad." He looks heart-breakingly dejected, so
she throws him, "Look, the truth is that people don't
care. Six months ago, we'd have thrown it out with the
trash, and nobody would have noticed. Maybe another
time�"

He swallows and wrings his hands. "Toby's your boss,"
he says, instantly regretting it. She stares at him,
nearly embarrassed that he knows, but too angry to
care. Her face tells him that she's not going to deny
it, but that he will be castrated if he considers
using this against her.

"Even though I do answer to Toby, the power gap isn't
that large, and it certainly doesn't have the same
appearance as you banging your secretary," she says in
an angry crescendo. 

Josh winces, and, if he weren't so tired, he'd contest
the sordid picture . But he is too tired, so he says,
"What if we gave her Mrs. Landingham's job?" It's more
of a sigh than a question

"Good. We give Donna a position she's unqualified for
so you can bang your former secretary. Tell me again,
how did you get this job?"

He sighs and stands up. Her hand is on his shoulder as
he turns around. "Josh...it's just...don't we have
enough to deal with?" But he's gone, because if he'd
stayed long enough to answer, he'd have said something
Joshlike and gotten himself slapped. 

***
New Hampshire is an ungodly place in the winter. But
Josh would have gone anywhere with Leo because Leo, he
believed, could do anything. So he went to New
Hampshire where Bartlet knocked him on his ass by
being a terrible politician. He went to get Sam
because he had a promise to keep.  He told Leo that
Sam wasn't too young, even though he was, because Sam
was amazing, and Leo could do anything, and the two of
them would figure things out. And with Leo came Toby
and CJ, publicity and fraternity, and, on one random
day in New Hampshire, a flustered but persistent
Donna. 

Everything good, it seems, comes from Leo, which
doesn't seem fair because Leo has very bad luck. 
Josh never, in all the years he witnessed it, asked
about the drinking. He never saw the pills. Now he
tries not to think about Leo too much because Toby's
told him not to tempt fate. Leo shouldn't be alive
anymore, and Josh won't talk about Leo in any terms
more concrete than "we owe him" or "I won't let them
have him" because he thinks that the Fates handed Leo
a bottle of booze, a handful of pills, a devotion to
Jed Bartlet, and a love for politics, and left him to
finish himself off. And if Josh acknowledges that he
stands in awe of Leo's strength, Atropos might realize
that Leo McGarry is still clinging to his life. 

Josh threw himself into protecting Leo from
Lillienfield because President Bertlet couldn't and
nobody else would, and because he needs Leo to save
him from Joanie and Bach and his own smart-mouth. Josh
needs him to call ATVA when Donna notices something is
wrong and when Josh is afraid that therapy will drive
his friends away. Josh needs Leo just to stay alive.

**

Leo offers a half-hearted smile as Josh slips into his
office. "Morning, Josh."

"Morning, Leo," he answers with, he thinks, convincing
levity. Impromptu summons to Leo's office before
Senior Staff are rarely a good sign. He drops into a
chair and resists the urge  to rub his temples. 

"I want to talk about Donna. CJ said-" and Josh is no
longer listening. He wonders why he thought CJ could
put their friendship above her job. She couldn't, and
he can't hold that against her. Their jobs are their
lives, and she'd done exactly what he counts on her to
do. But he is a little guilty because he took his eyes
off the ball and a little angry because CJ didn't.
Mostly, he is embarrassed because he is trapped in
Leo's office talking about women, and it feels too
much like he is a kid caught with a Playboy. "When
this blows over," Leo is saying as Josh realizes he's
still supposed to be listening, "Do what you want.
Just not now, Josh. Sexual harassment would kill us
now."

"Leo, I." He stops to run a hand through his hair. He
doesn't feel like denying anything because he's known
Leo long enough to value his permission. When the
public forgives the president and Josh stops the
flashbacks and swallows the anger, he will have Leo's
permission. He doesn't have enough pride to save to
warrant jeopardizing that. "I serve the president,
Leo. I wouldn't do anything to-"

"I know, Josh. He knows. And we owe you one. But not
now." There is an awkward pause while Josh stares at a
wall and Leo stares at his desk. "Senior Staff in half
an hour," he hears Leo mumble, somewhere far away, and
he walks out thoroughly confused and distantly
excited. 

**

He's parked in a church parking lot because the rain
is picking up, and he can't drive. He turns the stereo
off although the music was quiet. He doesn't know how
to behave around churches. He just needs to see
something as beautiful as it is inexplicable. He needs
stained glass windows, and he needs people who are
comforted by something they don't fully understand.
There are so many things that he doesn't understand,
and he'd like to learn to take comfort in that. 

This, he realizes, is not a revelation he should have
in a church parking lot. But he isn't really Jewish,
not like Toby, not like his dad, and he'll take
revelations wherever he can get them.

Much of his life, he thinks, slips under the view of
fate. He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind,
that it is more than his life. It's more than Leo's
life. So many things shouldn't have happened as they
have. 

Sam should have been too uncomfortable, he should have
been too embarrassed to confront him, he should have
slipped away quietly and let Josh be an asshole. But
he'd called him on it, and he'd stayed long enough to
become Josh's best friend. 

Leo should have fired Toby and kept everyone else, and
few people, even now, see the brilliance of Leo's
decision. He should never have needed CJ or Sam who
should have been left to wither under the distraction
of high salaries. Bartlet should never have been
elected because he's good and honest and not really a
politician. Josh should have died slumped against a
concrete wall because he's a manipulative asshole
who's nothing but a politician.

When he thinks about it, he's usually sure that
they've slipped under fate's radar. But other times,
occasional times, he wonders if God himself isn't
staring right at them. It makes him feel addle and
sentimental, and it puts unbearable pressure on him.
But sometimes he believes it anyway because there's
just no other way it makes sense.

He mumbles, "God Bless America," and he can almost
understand why.  He's wanted to hate this country. He
knows that it is the right of every American to hate,
but there are lines somewhere, lines that say that he
shouldn't have been slumped against a slab of
concrete, slowly bleeding to death, because some
zealots don't like Zoey's taste in men. But, he
realizes, that's why they're in the White House--
because Leo, when Josh was twelve years old, told him
that things needed to change.  

And he has faith in Leo and Toby, in Sam and in CJ.
Leo began to build President Bartlet before Josh was
born. He groomed Josh from twelve years old. And this
will work out. Bartlet isn't a politician, but Josh,
Toby, Sam, CJ, and Leo are vicious. They love Bartlet,
and they love each other.  Bartlet still fumes and
fumbles because he's so beautifully human, but his
staffers are cunning and precise and damn good
politicians. Together they isolate and defend the
important things, the real things, at the expense of
everything else. That's Leo's trick.

Leo has it figured out. He knows how to save Josh, and
he knows how to save the world. He knew it all,
twenty-seven years ago, in vague terms Josh wanted to
understand, and Josh has been following him ever
since. He's only now beginning to understand, but
Leo's energy courses through him, a reason to keep
fighting. Leo will ensure that Josh will have Toby and
CJ, Donna and Sam, and his chance to change the world.


Because God has blessed America with Leo, and Leo's
got it all figured out.

end

Thanks for your time. Feedback to
lymansmight@yahoo.com. Also, if you liked this one,
check out my first, a CJ/Toby called "Green on Gray"