Human Again
Archive: Yes to Persuaders, anyone else just ask
Fandom: West Wing
Feedback: gryffindor@bettelyrics.com
Spoilers: 17 People, The Fall is Gonna Kill You, The War at Home
Rating: R for consensual discipline and some language
Notes: Leo, Jed: no slash. Bible used is King James. I've had this in my head for a bit and I decided it was more important to get it out than have it blocking my other muses, so I hope it was worth it! LOL
Disclaimer: I have no connection to the genius of Aaron Sorkin or NBC or its affiliates. This is not meant to infringe on their rights. It's just for fun.
It's been building for weeks now, ever since Toby. Toby had surprised both of them. Leo had expected shock; the President, concern, but neither of them thought he would yell, or cry betrayal. True, Leo wasn't elected, and he had run the show the night the President was shot. It wasn't the first time. No one saw a conflict of interests. Not until Toby came along like he did and yelled. That was the beginning.
Then the arguments with Abby that Leo only heard about, and if asked, he would deny being relieved that he wasn't there with a roll of his eyes. The President slumped into himself when he and Leo were alone, two old friends as casual as can be when one is the President of the United States and the other can't allow himself to forget it. The President was sighing a lot now. He'd slump and sigh, and put his hands behind his head and stare at Leo as if to say, "You're my chief of staff. What the hell do we do now?"
The President said it got harder every time. "It's practice," Leo told him, "for when you tell America." It didn't help. If anything, it made him feel worse. And now Babish had come into the picture and told Abby she could be implicated for signing Zoey's college medical form claiming they were all in good health. So, the new question arose: which was worse, lying on a medical form or being a doctor and not reading a medical form? The President and the First Lady weren't speaking. Anger on Abby's part, indignation on the President's. Stubbornness all around.
Out of all of them, C.J. was the easiest. She blinked and said, "Are you alright?" Her hand twitched like she wanted to touch his arm, but you don't touch the President of the United States. He was pleased, after what happened with Toby. C.J. always did know the right thing to say. Sometimes she doesn't say it, but she did then, and Leo was relieved. He never mentioned the insane cackling coming from her office later.
And then Josh, who just mumbled "okay, okay, okay," and cocked his head like he expected the President to yell "April Fool's!" and Leo to pull a bottle of gin out of the desk. When he left, Josh was rubbing his chest, fingers brushing fading scars, unconsciously saying, "Look what I took for you. I'm the one people know. I'm recognizable because I almost died for you."
The President smoked two cigarettes in a row after Josh.
Sam was the hardest, though, and neither of them would have predicted it. It started out all right, Sam asking if he was okay, but after the reply, Sam just stared at him, like he was trying to look inside him, right to his soul. He didn't say a word about anger or betrayal, but Sam never could hide an emotion. Even when his mouth is closed, his face speaks for him. Leo knew Sam's reaction was more due to his father's betrayal, keeping a mistress for twenty-five years, than it was to anything the President had done. Except Sam had grown more vehement since then, in terms of politics, and right and wrong. He'd been glad, he'd told Leo, to have someone to believe in. When Leo softly said, "Sam," and the young man turned to him, his expression unchanged, Leo knew that he hadn't just meant the President when he'd said that and had included Leo as well. Someone to believe in. Leo cleared his throat and tried, unsuccessfully, not to feel guilty.
The President still wasn't saying anything, so Leo patted Sam's back and led him to the door. He said, "We'll talk soon. Toby's waiting for you," and propelled him out before he could protest. When he turned around, the President was sitting on his desk with his chin in his hands.
"I never asked for this, Leo," he said.
Leo wasn't sure if he meant the MS or Sam, but he nodded. 'It's getting closer,' he thought. The President saw him staring thoughtfully and nodded. He was thinking it, too.
Abby was gone over the weekend, as usual. Leo sat on the couch in the oval office and tried not to look too annoyed as the President paced around him in his jeans and Notre Dame sweatshirt. It began a few weeks ago, and had been simmering within him, and now it was coming out, with no one but Leo to see.
"I'm the President, Leo! It's not their business! If I wanted to run around and do line item vetoes dressed as a chicken, I could."
"You could sell tickets to that, sir. It might help the deficit."
The President stopped pacing. He pointed to the carpet. "Look at that, Leo! No one else has a big eagle on their carpet!"
Leo rolled his eyes. "I hear Carter has one."
The President glared. "I'm the President, Leo. Who the fuck do they think they are?" He stood over Leo, nostrils fairly flaring, and Leo looked up at him, immobile. When he raised himself from the couch, the President started pacing again, but Leo put his hand up.
"Mr. President, I think it's time."
The President crinkled his brow. He followed Leo's gaze towards his office.
"No." The President simply shook his head. He would have taken a step back, but a President doesn't retreat.
Leo nodded. "I think so, Mr. President."
The President shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed, far more forlornly than previously. "But, I haven't done anything, Leo," he said quietly.
"It's just to remind you," Leo said. "It's not punishment."
The President nodded. "Remind me of what, Leo?" He knew, but he liked to hear Leo say it.
"That you're one of us."
"I don't want to, Leo." The President was rocking on his sneakers. He looked down.
"I know, sir," Leo said. "But it makes you feel better."
"It makes me feel better," the President echoed. "Maybe it makes *you* feel better."
Leo shrugged. "Maybe." He turned away as the President glared.
"I'll be in my office. Let me know what you decide, Mr. President." He closed the door and sat at his desk. He pulled the long wooden paddle out of his bottom drawer and laid it in front of him. The waiting was the hardest part for him. Never knowing if this would be the day the Secret Service came through the door and carted him off for willfully endangering the President. He absently ran his pen over a scrap of White House stationery, except nothing he did was ever mindless, so his hand was soon chasing a pattern before his mind realized he was drawing. He didn't look up when he felt the familiar presence in the doorway.
"Tell me again why we can't do this in here," the President asked from the Oval Office.
"You know why, Mr. President," Leo said.
The President sighed. Leo heard a thud and glanced up to see that he had slumped against the doorjamb. "Because I'm President in here," he said.
Leo nodded, "That's it, sir."
"You know, Leo," he smiled, "technically, I'm President in there, too, or in the hallway, or if say, I were to go into the Rose Garden, or, for example, K-Mart, I would also be President in any of those places."
"Yes, sir."
"So what's the difference?"
Now Leo smiled. "The carpet."
"The carpet?"
"And the big desk."
The President chuckled. "I love that desk. I'm going to take it with me."
Leo smiled, his grin fading with the President's. When the President looked at him again, his face was pinched and he seemed more tired than he had in months.
"Mr. President?"
"I'll feel better, Leo?"
"You always have, sir."
The President looked at his feet. He nudged them against the threshold between the rooms. "It's amazing the difference a door makes. In here, I'm the leader of the greatest country on earth, in there I'm..." he trailed off.
"With your best friend, sir," Leo said.
The President smiled sadly. "Wonder how many best friends do this, Leo."
Leo shrugged. "I wouldn't worry about it, sir, but I can have Margaret find out, if you want," he grinned.
The President shook his head, too reflective to notice that Leo was joking. "That's alright." His hands went into his pockets. "I'm ready," he said quietly.
Leo nodded. "Do you remember the rules, Mr. President?"
"Once I enter you office you are in charge until I leave."
"And?" Leo prompted.
"And I'm not allowed to worry about anything."
"Or?"
"Or rule the world while I'm in there," the President finished with a slight smile.
Leo nodded. "Whenever you are ready, Mr. President."
The President didn't move from his position against the doorway. Leo's hand began its pattern again. He glanced up when he heard the three footsteps that put the President next to him.
"Where do you want me?"
"In the corner, same as always."
It was a routine question and it would be, they both knew, the last thing the President would independently say until they were finished. He pulled Leo's couch back and blocked the door leading to the hallway. The he stood in the vacated corner and waited.
"Isaiah, Mr. President. Start with verse 2."
The President exhaled. He rubbed his hands against his jeans, then straightened his shoulders. "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me..."
Leo folded his hands as he watched the President, who didn't shift his gaze from a secret spot on the white wall. This was how it began, always with the Bible. Sometimes Psalms, or Luke, or Exodus. Sometimes in Latin, occasionally in German. It didn't have anything to do, really, with religion. It soothed him, Leo discovered, to say the words he'd known as a child, to make them pertinent again.
"...saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow..." the President trailed off.
"Mr. President?"
"Is this about me or them, Leo?"
"Them, sir?"
"Toby, Sam, Josh...them."
"Well, Mr. President, that depends on whether you view yourself as a man of the people or as God."
"Leo? he said, but Leo interrupted.
"Please remember the rules, Mr. President. Continue."
The President gave no motion of assent. He simply resumed. "though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool..."
The recitations started as a way of centering him. Leo had never known the President to be speechless. He secretly thought the campaign slogan should have been Barlet: Why Use One Word When Ten Will Work Just As Well." Putting others' words in his mouth, forcing him to remember them after decades threw him off balance and in so doing calmed him. Leo wouldn't allow anything less. As the rules stated, worries were to be left at the door. The President would not stop again until Leo ordered it, which he did with a firm tap on his desk.
"For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts shall make a consumption, even determined, in the midst of all the land. Therefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: he shall smite thee with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt."
"Mr. President?"
The President turned and Leo thanked his stoicism that he didn't react upon seeing the forlorn countenance before him.
"It's time, Mr. President."
The President blinked as if he couldn't manage a complete nod. Leo circled the desk grasping the paddle.
"Jeans, sir."
Silently, the President removed them. Another time he would have made a crack about too much chili or steak, or other foods Abby wouldn't allow him, but not now. He stood in front of the desk in his sweatshirt and white boxers, waiting. When Leo gently touched the middle of his back, he lowered himself until his chest touched the desk and he reached out and clutched the sides. He felt Leo's hand on his shorts, and then they were around his ankles.
"Ready, Mr. President?"
Again, a blink the only motion from the lost face.
He grunted when the paddle cracked down. Leo didn't believe in warm ups or practice swings. The President didn't either. "I don't get warm-ups in managing a nation," he'd said.
Neither of them spoke as Leo delivered the blows. 'Thinking Time,' Leo called it. The President never made a sound aside from the occasional barely surpressed "ah." It was common sense (though the President liked to think of it as inhuman restraint) that silenced him, due to the humiliating prospect of an agent knocking down the door and discovering the secret, although the President sometimes mused that the agent might shoot Leo, an option that was always welcome after fifty rounds with the paddle. As if he could sense his thoughts, Leo whacked him harder. His buttocks had gone from pink to red to crimson and still he made no sound. Leo slowed, but the President gripped the desk, the signal that he wasn't ready to stop.
Leo landed ten in quick succession on his thighs. The President shuddered. "Sorry," fell from his lips. His knuckles grew white against the mahogany desk. Leo wondered if he was having an attack, but it was merely the effort of being still. Leo set the paddle next to the President's head. He eased his shorts up. The President didn't move until Leo touched his back again. Then he faced Leo with quiet tears streaming from his eyes. Leo smiled reassuringly.
"You know what to do."
Nodding, the President shuffled to the corner and waited.
"The Constitution. Start with the Preamble."
The President hesitated. This one sometimes stumped him on his best days. He sniffled.
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice..."
Leo didn't move as he continued, his voice growing stronger as he took succor from the foundations of the government that would soon try him and judge him and possibly cast him out.
Leo didn't stop him until the end when he simply said, "Thank you, sir."
The President turned. "Are we done?" he asked, dried tear trails marring his face.
Leo shrugged. "It's up to you."
"Do I have to leave if I am?"
"No, but the rules stay the same," Leo smiled.
The President flopped onto the couch on his stomach. He knocked his jeans onto the floor.
"You really did me in, Leo," he said. "It's going to look really strange if I'm not sitting in the summit meeting on Tuesday. I'll probably unintentionally insult someone's culture."
"I can have someone look into that, sir."
The President stared at the ceiling for a moment. "I think I'm Israel, Leo," he said.
"Sir?"
"For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return...I think I could be like that."
"It's possible," Leo nodded.
The President fell silent again. Leo shuffled through his papers. He edited a letter and drafted a memo. He assumed the President had fallen asleep, so the soft voice took him by surprise.
"Leo?"
"Yes, Mr. President?"
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For showing me...I mean, teaching me..." he paused, momentarily lost for words. "For making me human again," he finished.
Leo smiled to himself. "You're...welcome, sir."
The President rolled into the couch. "I'm going to stay here for awhile, Leo, and follow your rules. I'm not ready to go back in there yet and be sovereign."
"I think that's a good idea, sir."
"Human, Leo." He sighed. "I wish it lasted, though. I really do."
Leo opened his desk drawer and placed the paddle inside. "Don't worry, sir. The rules and I will still be here next time."
"What about the paddle, Leo?"
"It too, Mr. President."
"Damn."
The End