Characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback. Around a Sense of Self Luna
I.
Friday night: the White House is transformed, somehow, by the fragrances of pastrami sandwiches, beer and playing-card plastic. Changed into a place where Will can let his shoulders slouch inside his uniform. He snaps the six of hearts in his fingers, judging the distance to the fifth row. "On three," he says. Toby nods. They lift their hands.
Pop. Pop. Like a cap gun, Will thinks. And then he remembers his training, just as the glass explodes inches above C.J.'s head. She says, almost in wonder, "Somebody's shooting."
There is no thought at all, he just dives at her, get down, get down, and Toby's doing exactly the same thing. The three of them thud down together in a heap, and Will inhales the chemical floor polish like an overwhelming perfume. And Toby's cigar, and something citrine that must be C.J.'s shampoo.
It's quiet for several long seconds before C.J. squirms under their hands. "Toby?" A long shaky breath. "Guys?"
They let her up, but only partway, kneeling there on the hard floor. No more Friday night atmosphere. The Briefing Room reeks of gunfire and sudden sweat; all three of them must be sweating. Will himself is drenched beneath his starchy shirt. He can smell it. Sweat and something else--adrenaline?--that isn't quite a smell but a metallic tinge deep in the back of his throat. He wipes his hand over the dampness on his chest. In the dark, the broken glass glitters like spilled salt. C.J. shakes some of it out of her hair.
"I should unlock the--" C.J. begins, but the door is forced inward before she makes it to her feet.
Light filters in around four Secret Service guys, with their guns drawn, nostrils flaring at the air peppered by cordite. They move into the room like hunting dogs on the animal's scent. One of them asks, no, demands, "Is everyone here all right?"
Toby looks hard at C.J. She nods. "Yeah."
"Three shots, one hit," Will says. He points at the window, trying to recall the trajectory, trying to catch his breath. "Straight from the sidewalk, straight hit."
"Is the President in the Oval Office?" Toby asks, and Will realizes with a pang that he hasn't thought of the President at all.
The agent ignores the question. "You'll have to wait outside."
As Toby lends C.J. his arm, Will starts to push himself off the floor. He must have fallen funny on the left side; there's an ache there that makes him sit back down, hard. Everyone looks at him, most of all the agents with their bloodhound eyes.
A minute ago his hands were faster than Toby's and his reflexes were better than C.J.'s. But now he's in slow motion, dragging his hand across his shirt front, raising it into a patch of light. Before he identifies the dark glisten on his fingertips, he recognizes that smell, the liquid metal smell of his blood.
He knows this, and then the shock takes him.
II.
In November, the air off the Pacific is salty, sharp-edged and cold, but Will isn't cold when Sam's hand brushes his. "Your tie doesn't go," Sam says, placing his own necktie in Will's palm. He walks away.
Will folds his fingers over the smooth strip of fabric. "Wait." Sam hesitates a little. "One thing," he calls, getting out of his chair. His feet slip a little in the sand.
Sam comes back, hands hiding deep in his pockets. It's game day for the President, and although Sam's eyes are as clear as the sky, something radiates from him. Not nervousness, exactly, just intensity, an aura that makes the air vibrate and stands the hair on Will's arms on end.
"What?" Sam says. Without the necktie, his collar is a little loose.
Will jumps a little. He's been staring; ever since Sam Seaborn walked into his office this morning he's been staring. "What?"
"What's the one thing?"
It's game day. Will rocks onto his toes, slides his hand under Sam's collar, presses his mouth softly to Sam's.
Reflexively, Sam grabs his shoulder to push him away. His mouth opens a little in surprise, and Will touches the tip of his tongue to the even edge of Sam's front teeth. Sam's hand stays where it is, neither shoving nor holding on.
Will's a politician now and he knows how to press an advantage: he moves his hand up Sam's sun-warmed neck, into the surprising softness of his hair. He cups the back of Sam's head, licks at the line of Sam's teeth. Warm, warm, warm. His lungs are burning, but he knows what's coming when he lets go. He'll never see Sam again, so he doesn't stop until he's dizzy from lack of oxygen, from the wind that makes little specks of sand fly like stars in his eyes. Will leans back, takes a deep breath. Breathing has never felt so good.
Sam's stare settles on Will's face. All that free-floating intensity concentrated on him, and Will's stiffening like a schoolboy. He's still got Sam's tie crushed in his fingers.
With a fleck of wet glittering on his lip, his hair tangled, Sam says, "Oh." Then, in a different voice, "Well, okay."
They kiss again, hands on each other's arms. Will feels the strain in Sam's biceps, he's holding on now, holding on tight. Will's lips are bruised and the pain only stirs him. He seizes the front of Sam's sweat-dampened shirt, fumbling the buttons with slippery fingers. It's not just heat charging through him, it's Sam's electricity, turning the air sticky and sweet as summer. He tussles Sam's shirt open, tries to pull him closer.
And loses his footing, and falls on his ass in the sand by his chair. The wind's knocked out of him and it takes a second to realize he's pulled Sam down, too. Sam is laughing.
"Let's hope this isn't a metaphor for anything," Sam says, and this time he's the one who initiates the kiss.
III.
Everything's white. White fluorescent lights, white tile, white sheets; even the flowers from well-wishers seem leached of their color. Tucked neatly in the bed, Horton Wilde looks like a papier-mâché model of a man, eyes and cheeks hollow beneath the spiderweb of tubes keeping him alive. This is all that's left of Will's candidate. His friend. Will looks into Kay Wilde's eyes, and they're like black holes.
"He's not going to make it," she says, in a voice of absolute calm.
Her hand lies in his, limp except for a twitch every time the EKG beeps. Will looks at his shoes, trying to think of something to say. "Is that what the doctors say?"
"The doctors won't even say 'heart attack.' They say 'cardiac episode'." Kay's mouth curves into a brittle smile. "I don't find it comforting. This is his third heart attack, Will, and I've seen what--what recovery looks like. Look at him."
Reluctantly, he does. Under the paper skin, the bones of Wilde's bloodless face are rising to the surface. His head is tipped back on the pillow, leaving his throat exposed. Most of his body is, thankfully, hidden under sheets and machinery. Will thinks of his own father, only five years younger than the ghost in the bed. He shuts his eyes. Too late; this image has entered him now, it will float on his retinas when he tries to sleep tonight.
Will looks at Kay and tries to find his voice. "I'm so..." he begins. "God, I'm sorry,"
She pulls her hand away, pressing her knuckles against her chin. "He was never one to give up on a lost cause," she says, and Will understands that she's talking to herself. "Everyone told him it was crazy, jumping into Democratic politics in Orange County. It just rolled off his back. I would be the last person on earth to give up on him, but..." She shakes her head. A silvery wisp of hair tumbles free of a tortoiseshell clip. "He's really not going to make it."
Hard to breathe, harder to stand still in the white room. It occurs to him that maybe widows are veiled to protect the world from the pain seared onto their faces. He swallows. "Kay...can I do anything for you?"
Her bruise-colored eyes focus slowly on him.
"You can do something for him," she says.
Give blood? Pray? "I don't--"
"The campaign." Her mouth has lost its brittle look. "He'd want someone to take over, Will. And he'd want it to be you."
He blinks twice, three times, but she seems serious. "I haven't got the experience. I--I haven't got--"
"You've got his vision. I can't give this away to someone on the outside, someone who didn't know him. I want..." Kay holds out her hands. "You'll do it, Will, won't you?"
Will hears himself say, "Yeah."
It's crazy, it's fresh grief, it's the desperate gravity of her eyes. It's hardly even a decision. But it's a promise.
IV.
Dirt on his tongue, strange but not altogether unpleasant, spat out bitter as Will raises his head from the ground. The other boys have vanished as his spit vanishes in the scuffed earth. He feels okay, but there's a spreading red stain on his T-shirt; his nose is bleeding. He tips his head back, eyes to the flawless sky.
When the nosebleed stops he walks downhill to the shoreline, washes his face in clear Mediterranean water, even letting some into his mouth. For the first time, Will doesn't see the beauty here.
He's spent five summers on this island, each year having to relearn enough Greek to get around. Last year was daily breakfast with his father and brothers, bread and sharp cheese and olives the size of eggs, and in the afternoons baseball with his friend Stavros and some other island kids. Swimming after sundown, the sea so warm they didn't need swimsuits. Stavros would catch him around the waist and dunk him under. Gulping saltwater. That was last year. Will climbs the hill again.
He's a little nauseated by the time he reaches town, sourness rising from his stomach as if he's swallowed something spoiled. Some grownups sit front of the café, at a table loaded with wine bottles. They look at him--they all recognize the Bailey sons--and at his shirt, but nobody raises a fuss. Five summers aren't enough to make him belong. Will slips past into the café and orders a chocolate ice.
This afternoon, he waited in the same spot, watching the same view of the beach. He wasn't prepared to find Stavros six inches taller, his swimmer's arms thickened like sausages, three of the other guys behind him. Will felt scrawny, younger than his fourteen years. He showed them his new baseball and said, "Want to play?" He stood there, holding out the baseball, for what seemed like an entire season.
He gets outside and goes behind the building, flat against the stone wall in its shadow, palm slippery and wet around the paper cup. He mashes the ice with a spoon until it's half-liquefied, and pours it over his shirt. The chocolate masks the bloodstain.
It was Stavros who knocked him down today, lunging at him like play-wrestling but soon it was clear it was serious. Stavros planted a knee in his ribs, kept it there while the other guys hit him. There was some talking, too fast for Will to understand, and he was too confused even to remember the word for "why?" Though, before they took off, Stavros threw in a little English for free. "Cocksucker," and then the boys were running, laughing. One of them took the baseball.
Will licks up the leftover chocolate, sweet and cold. He hopes his nose isn't swelling. He doesn't want his brothers to guess what happened, or his father. He doesn't want anyone, ever, to know why.
He'll learn the language of secrets, and he'll never like the taste of saltwater again.
V.
Rain falls in sheets, crashing against the restaurant's windows, rattling the frames in their panes. Inside, near the fire, Jocelyn and her husband sit on opposite sides of a small round table. Their waiter speaks in low, pleasant French.
"Scotch and soda, no ice," Tom says. "And..."
She holds up two fingers. The waiter leaves them in the crackling circle of firelight.
Tom clears his throat. "You probably shouldn't be drinking that."
"I'm sorry. Only, I didn't think you'd decided yet."
"I haven't," she says, honestly.
"All right." He sits needle-straight, best military bearing, but his fingertips drum on the table. "I don't want to pressure you either way, Jocelyn. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes. I know."
The waiter puts down little linen napkins to protect the marble tabletop, places the drinks with a muted thud. Tom swirls his glass so that the Scotch can breathe before he nips at it. She pulls hard on hers, looking anywhere but at him. "Hear the rain out there?" she says. "It sounds like the world's ending."
"You've been an awfully good mother." But his smile doesn't ring quite right. "You still are."
"Tommy's on the Dean's List again this semester." She taps her glass with long fingernails, wondering why she speaks so distantly of her own children. "George will graduate second in his class. Eddie...he's the youngest, and he's learning to drive."
His hand quirks; she hopes he won't touch her. And he doesn't. He just sloshes his whiskey around. "It would be easier. With the, the wisdom of our years. The boys could help out, especially in the summers. We have more money, more experience."
Though her drink's half-gone, her laughter and her throat are dry as dust. "I thought you didn't want to pressure me either way."
"I'm not."
"Right."
"It's just that I want you--us--to think about it. It would be easier. And you wouldn't be alone."
"I wouldn't? And what happens next year, when somebody invades Serbia or Serbia invades somebody?" Now, she's snapping: a bone beneath a jackboot. "You won't be doing three a.m. feedings; you won't be home at three a.m. The boys should be studying and dating, not babysitting. They'll resent it. They'll resent us. They'll resent me."
"I want us to think about it," he repeats, low in his scratchy throat. Then--and she recognizes this as his last line of defense, his shot in the dark--he says, "It might be a girl this time."
She drains her glass and brings it down, missing the linen square, chinking the tabletop. "I'm forty-four years old," she says. Her muscles are so drawn they could twang like tripwires, or the strings of a violin. She will not lie to him. "Tom. I don't want this."
Unasked, the waiter freshens their Scotch. Tom gulps his all at once. The fire hisses. The rain falls.
"You're right," he says. "It sounds like the end of everything."