Archive of Our Own ^beta

Leo had opted to retire from the gathering in the hotel bar relatively early, under the guise of wanting to get a good night’s sleep, even though he knew that sleep was nowhere on the agenda. He’d left while there was still a decent crowd, before it had dwindled down to just the long-suffering campaign manager and his most senior personnel, before Lou purchased a bottle of whisky so expensive that even Leo would have had a hard time turning it down. When he turned around in the elevator, he watched, between the rapidly closing doors, as his former deputy tuned out the animated laughter of his colleagues to stare, somewhat obviously, at his former assistant, who, for at least the moment before the elevator doors closed entirely, returned his gaze with a smile and a blush.

Leo was a confident man who rarely doubted his professional decisions, but he wavered in his personal choices more often than he’d ever admit. He’d replayed the choices he made during his marriage to Jenny countless times, and often wished he’d done things differently with Mallory, in a number of ways. His decision to stay out of the personal lives of his staff was yet another choice that was met with a cycle of regret, usually beginning with the feeling that he could have helped someone if he had tried, followed by an immediate decision to the contrary when he inevitably heard more than he wanted to know from Margaret through the door. Interestingly, when he did decide to interfere with his staff members’ personal lives, he never regretted it once. He did not regret, for example, waiting in the lobby for eight hours on Christmas Eve for his deputy to admit that he was struggling, and then telling him when a guy falls in a hole, you see.

So it was moments like these when Leo did regret the decision he made sometime in 1998 to vigorously ignore what was obviously happening between Josh and the fresh-faced, quick-witted blonde who had appeared in their headquarters as if out of thin air and wrapped Josh around her finger before Leo had even known her name. Early on, he’d had a terse, awkward conversation with CJ about it, which ended as soon as he’d confirmed that she had a contingency plan in place for when (not if) the spark between the two of them caught fire. Leo had considered, briefly, telling Josh that Donna needed to be transferred out from under his supervision, as it was only a matter of time before their long looks and lingering touches crossed the line into a sex scandal that the administration certainly did not need. But he put it off, and off, until suddenly it had been years, and Leo realized that Josh, unlike one former Vice President Josh once believed in, respected the women he worked with too much to ever put them in that position. Especially the woman he was in love with.

Leo had always been proud of Josh, but this realization made him even more proud, even when he wanted to smack Josh over the head for the bumbling idiocy that often resulted when he was forced to try to hide his feelings. (“Oh pull yourself together, would you?”) But now, on the cusp of what they all hoped was another four, if not eight, years in the White House, Leo was starting to regret his unspoken approval of Josh and Donna’s willingness to keep each other at arm’s length. He thought back to Jenny, and one too many late nights and forgotten anniversaries, and briefly reminded himself that he could have had it all, if he’d been willing to try. And here he was, watching two people who he knew had been very much in love for the better part of eight years continue to put their jobs first, knowing very well it may be another eight years until they could love each other as openly as they deserved. And quite frankly, Leo didn’t want to spend any more time pretending that he was okay with that.

Laying awake in his hotel bed, Leo knew he should have been thinking about the election, and the absolute chaos tomorrow was guaranteed to bring. But that gaze he’d caught in the seconds before the elevator closed played on loop in his head. He thought about how things could have been different for him. He could have had a wife to share this bed with, or maybe someone else, if he and Jenny had always been doomed to fail. He could have had all these things if he had just once given his personal life the attention it deserved. But he didn’t, and now he went to sleep every night in another sterile hotel bed, alone.

Leo got up and started getting dressed. He didn’t even know what he planned to do, really, until he walked out of his room in the direction of Josh’s. He didn’t want to think about the conversation they were going to have, because it would be awkward, and it would remind Leo of all the reasons he’d avoided these topics for years. But something in Leo’s mind had clicked, and for once, he was just as confident that this needed to be said as he was when he called the shots in the sit room.

But just before he rounded a corner, he heard the elevator ding from out of sight, and it gave him pause. He slowed, stepped around the corner, and came to a stop when he saw Josh and Donna step out of the elevator together.

They walked silently, and Leo could tell that they were making a point not to look at each other. They also did not not look up, or else they may have seen Leo at the far end of the hall, paused behind a housekeeping cart. Instead, they kept their eyes on the floor in front of their feet, maintaining a careful few inches between them, and when Josh slowed in front of his door, Leo expected Donna to murmur good night and continue on. But then Josh put two fingers in the crook of her elbow, breaking their invisible barrier, gently pulling her to a stop.

Donna stood between Josh and his door and finally looked up at him. Leo had not intended to spy, and half wanted to turn away at the hint of vulnerability he saw in Donna’s gaze, but he held his breath and stayed where he was. Perhaps Josh didn’t need to hear what Leo had been coming to tell him after all.

Josh pulled the key card from his pocket and held it between them. He said something that Leo couldn’t hear, but whatever it was, it elicited a laugh from Donna, who took the key card from his hand and turned around to unlock the door. When the light turned green and the door clicked open, she turned around again, facing Josh, leaning back against the door to keep it ajar.

Leo knew that Josh and Donna had spent many a late night together in their hotel rooms, which only sounds scandalous until you remember that campaign hotels are as much an office as a place to sleep. At this point, there was still a chance that the two of them would maintain the careful distance between them, retire to the room, and start looking at polling numbers.

For a moment, they looked at each other, Josh frozen with one hand on the doorframe, Donna with her back against the door, looking up at Josh with a question in her eyes. Then, with only the slightest flinch of hesitation, Josh reached up, took Donna’s face in both hands, and kissed her.

Leo’s eyes widened, but he stayed frozen in place, terrified that the slightest movement would alert them to his presence.

The invisible wall that they’d spent eight years building between them evaporated. Donna froze briefly in surprise before she melted into his embrace, circling her arms around his middle and pulling them flush. Josh cradled her head for a moment before snaking one hand to the back of her neck and into her hair, and dropping the other to wrap around her waist. Donna reached up, draping her arms around his neck, and Josh clutched her against him with so much force that he lifted her to her tiptoes. Without breaking the kiss, he walked her backwards, pushing the door open behind her, and then they were gone.

The thwack of the closing door echoed through the hall, then silence.

Leo only took a moment to process what he’d just seen, and then, with the pride of a father, he broke into a grin.

Leo would never know that they won the presidency. He’d never learn that he was elected vice president, never hear the hearty congratulations from his best friend, the current president, over the phone. He’d never clasp hands with the president-elect on stage to an eruption of cheers, arms held high in victory. He’d never feel the congratulatory embrace of his daughter, or hug the man who had made their victory possible, the man he’d come to see as a son, of whom he was so, incredibly, unbelievably proud.

But he would know, in his final moments, that the man he saw as a son, his former deputy, the brilliant yet bumbling Josh Lyman, had chosen, despite following closely in Leo’s footsteps, not to repeat his mistakes.

fin.