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Jul. 18th, 2004 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helsinkibabyHappy birthday ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maggis! I did promise you fic for your birthday, so here's a bit of Greg/Ellie fluff for you.
The day that her family has been waiting for for so long, the day that Ellie has in turns been anticipating and dreading, has finally arrived. It is Election Day 1998, and her father is hours away from potentially becoming President of the United States of America. The polls over the last few days have had the race too close to call, hence the first exit polls were eagerly awaited at the Bartlet farm, and when they came, showing that her father was in the lead, the excitement among the upper echelons of the campaign staff, all of whom were gathered downstairs in the main farmhouse, the excitement was palpable. That same excitement has been running high ever since, to the point where Ellie feels are if the walls are closing in on her, so, unnoticed by anyone, she grabbed her coat and slipped out the back door, made her way across the grass towards the main pasture.
She doesn’t look around her as she walks, sure that no-one is going to follow her, knowing that she is completely and utterly safe. Not only is this her family home, the place she grew up in, but the Secret Service have the place secured to within an inch of its life – it would hardly do to have the Democratic nominee for President assassinated in his own back yard now, would it? She also knows that no-one is going to follow her, because the people in the room who know her, who are old friends of the family, are too caught up in the whole election hoopla, and the rest of the people are the campaign staff. They don’t know her at all, because she was the daughter who was never there during the campaign, not like Zoey and her high school activities and her perfect GPA, not like Liz, with her perfect husband and her perfect kids. Ellie’s not perfect, and Ellie was in the middle of her senior year of pre-med at Stanford while the guts of the campaign was going on, and there was no way that she was taking time off from her studies to smile sweetly for the cameras and pretend that she was ok with this. Even during the summer, she got away with doing the minimum of publicity, but she’d known, even without her mother’s veiled pleas and her father’s veiled orders, that non-appearance on Election Day wasn’t even an option.
So she did what was expected of her, came to New Hampshire two weeks ago and set to joining her father on the campaign for a couple of days, joining Zoey in the campaign office for the rest of the time. Unlike her sister though, she didn’t fit into the bustling madhouse like a duck to water, didn’t feel comfortable with the people who had known one another for so long, who, in her opinion, had a trench warfare battle field mentality, us against them and no outsiders allowed. She had never felt so out of her element and she was counting the days until she could get back to her normal life.
Except of course, that she has a feeling her father is going to win the election; and then her normal life will never be the same again.
She reaches the pasture fence and goes no further, leaning against it, her arms resting on top of it, her chin on top of her arms. From here, she can’t hear any noise from the house, any noise at all, and compared to the mayhem of the last couple of weeks, she is grateful for the oasis of calm. She even goes so far as to close her eyes, breathe in a few deep breaths, and she’s just beginning to relax when she hears footsteps behind her.
“I thought I saw you sneaking out.”
She hadn’t wanted company when she came but here, but if she must have company, then this is one of the few people that she can tolerate, her best friend, what seems like the only remaining piece of sanity in her life. She’d told him that a couple of days after he’d flown out to join her for the last week of her father’s campaign, and he’d hooted with laughter, telling her that if he was what passed for sanity in her life, then she’s worse off than he thought.
“I needed some fresh air,” she tells him, looking back over her shoulder at him, biting back a grin at the sight before her. His coat is the big bulky black thing that he bought when he lived through last winter in New York, probably the only winter coat that a good California boy like him actually owns, and there is an equally bulky scarf wrapped around his neck. Still though, his hands are in his pockets, and he is shifting slightly on his feet, as if to keep warm, and she knows the lines his answer is going to take before he even speaks.
“Well, you certainly have that,” he observes, and she doesn’t even try to stop her laughter.
“Are you complaining about the cold?” she teases, and he mock-glares at her in response, especially when she continues with, “This is pretty mild you know.”
It happens to be true, but that’s evidently no consolation to Greg. “I’m glad to see that my discomfort amuses you so,” he says, his face pressed into a scowl, even though his eyes are dancing. He moves closer to her as he talks, and she turns fully to face him, her back pressed up against the wooden pilings of the fence.
“Greg, you’ve been here in January. I had to physically drag you up to stop you making snow angels.” And she’d laughed and laughed, because once upon a long ago, when she’d known him only a few months, she’d teased him about how she’d have to do that if he ever visited her in New Hampshire, and she’s never asked him, but she’s sure that he only did it because he remembered that conversation too. “And you lived in New York all last winter. How did you survive there?”
“Central heating,” he answers promptly. “And lots of coffee.”
She shrugs easily, points over his shoulder to the house. “Plenty of that inside,” she reminds him, and then it’s his turn to shrug.
“Yeah,” he allows. “But you’re here.”
She smiles, because it’s the kind of thing that he used to say specifically to make her smile, the kind of thing he used to say to her all the time when they were still dating. But then she remembers that they’re not together anymore, that they are just friends, and all of a sudden, the words are more bitter than sweet. “Flatterer,” she accuses, turning away from him and looking back out towards the pasture, and she hears him chuckle, hears him walking right up to her.
She doesn’t turn around, not even when she feels his body flush against hers, not even when he opens his coat, and, with his hands still in his pocket, wraps it around them both. She takes the hint, what he wants her to do, pulling the edges together as close as it’s possible for them to go, cocooning them both together, and his head nestles comfortably against hers. “Never denied flattery,” he murmurs, his voice low against her ear, and a shiver that has absolutely nothing to do with cold races up her spine. “And I don’t hear you complaining.”
She smiles, but she doesn’t respond, because that way lies danger, and they both know it. So she parries, changing the subject slightly, but nowhere near to taking it out of those dangerous waters. “So what else brings you out here?” she asks, still not turning her head to look at him. “It wasn’t Annie bending your ear, was it?” Because she’d looked for him before she came out, and had seen her ten-year-old niece chattering away a mile a minute to him, and knew from experience that woe betide the person who got between Annie and her favourite not-uncle.
Greg chuckles, but when he speaks, she’s pretty sure that he’s trying not to roll his eyes. “She was asking me if I was here because we were back together,” he says, and she smiles sadly, having thought that it was something like that.
“What did you tell her?”
“That I’d heard so much about this campaign that I had to see it for myself,” he tells her. “That I wanted to help out her grandpa. And that if she wanted to know anything else, she should ask her aunt.”
Now it’s Ellie’s turn to chuckle, but more than a little ruefully, because she knows how tenacious Annie can be when she gets her teeth into something. “Thanks,” she says, then follows up with, “You know she just wants me out of the way so that she can have you for herself.” Because Annie’s been mad about Greg since the first day she met him, alternates between wanting him for her uncle and wanting him for her own husband.
If she thinks that’s going to upset Greg though, she’s got another think coming. “What can I say, the girl’s got taste,” he says airily, and she laughs aloud at that, slapping at his hand.
“That’s what I love about you Greg, your sense of modesty,” she tells him, and she feels him shrug, then feels him tugging at her hips, gently turning her to face him. She resists at first, but he doesn’t give up, and when she won’t look up at him, he cups her chin in his hand, tilts her head up so that she’s looking into his eyes.
“Are you really ok?” he demands, and there’s nothing gentle about his voice. He’s not going to take no for an answer, she knows that, and today, she doesn’t have the energy to put up a fight, not with him. She’s putting a brave face on for everyone else, but she doesn’t have to do that, not with Greg.
“I have no idea,” she tells him frankly, with a slightly hysterical giggle. “I’ve seen the exits, and I’ve seen what people think of him, and I’m so proud of him I just want to scream…” Her voice trails off and she shakes her head. “Then I keep thinking, what the hell have we got into? What happens tomorrow and the next day and the one after that? And the next four years, and then maybe the next four, and there’s so much that could-”
She knows she’s babbling, but she can’t stop herself. Luckily, Greg has a tactic guaranteed to do that; he grabs her firmly by the shoulders and kisses her. At first, she’s surprised, moves to push him away, but he’s holding her tightly, and then her body supersedes her mind and she’s gripping him tighter and kissing him back just as hard.
She knows this is insane, knows they shouldn’t be doing this. Knows that it will only lead to more pain, more confusion.
But as he kisses her, she decides she doesn’t care.
She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but then he pulls back from her, gives her that cheeky smile of his. “What were you saying there?” he asks, and she tilts her head back as she laughs.
“That’s hardly playing fair,” she tells him, gets a shrug in response.
“Well, it worked.” He smiles, and so does she, but then he must see something in her eyes, because his smile falters and he sighs. “But this isn’t going to change anything between us, is it?”
“You’re moving to Vegas,” she reminds him. “I’m moving to Baltimore. And my father is going to be President.” She sighs, her fingers moving inside his coat, playing with the fabric of his sweatshirt. “I don’t see how…”
“Yeah.” His voice is quiet, accepting of her words, but nonetheless, he leans forward, kisses her again, and when he pulls away, his smile is brilliant. “But we’ve got tonight, right?”
She’s so relieved that he’s not about to break into song that she laughs, matching his smile with one of her own. “Yeah,” she says. “We’ve got tonight.”
>*<*>*<
They certainly do have tonight, and Greg is pretty sure that it is going to be a night to remember. At the moment, he is standing in the middle of a heaving throng of people in the ballroom of the main hotel in Manchester, and the President-elect of the United States is giving his victory speech. All around Greg are people who have worked hard for the man, the supporters that he’s spent the last few days working with at campaign headquarters, marvelling at their energy, their enthusiasm, all the while not letting on that he was a friend of the candidate’s daughter, that he was actually staying at the Bartlet farm. Those people are cheering and laughing, whooping and hollering, some are even crying, and Greg can’t stop himself from getting caught up in the moment, allows a big smile to spread across his face.
It was a close race, too close for comfort according to some people, but being in the inner sanctum all day, Greg knew the results before the people that he’s standing with now. He saw the exit polls before they were announced on the television, had known from early in the afternoon that Governor Bartlet was going to win, but when CNN called the election in his favour, the farm still erupted in wild cheers and celebrations, the newly-crowned First Couple in the middle of it all, their three daughters around them. The cameras flashed and clicked, recording the moment for posterity, and Greg stayed purposely in the background, until, that is, Ellie came over to him. She was smiling, her eyes suspiciously damp, and only he knew that those tears might not be only tears of joy, but also tears of trepidation. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and his hands rested on her back, properly, oh so properly, just in case the photographers picked them up, and no-one came near them as they held one another for a long moment as the party picked up into high gear around them.
Someone somewhere put on some music, and before long, everyone was dancing as the Governor and Leo moved off to one side, no doubt discussing the nuances of the spectacle of the acceptance speech. Toby Ziegler, a man who had scared the living daylights out of Greg with his surly countenance in the campaign headquarters, was actually smiling, smoking a huge cigar, ribbing CJ Cregg, the tall, elegant Press Secretary about doing “The Jackal”, whatever that was. She, meanwhile, was refusing with all her might as Sam Seaborn, the younger of the campaign strategy team, looked back and forth between them, his head swivelling like a spectator at a tennis match. His attention was soon diverted though, as was everyone’s, when Kool and the Gang was stopped mid-Celebration, and the Doobie Brother’s Long Train Running began echoing through the room. By the time the first verse was halfway over, the staff were already dancing, in particular Josh Lyman, who was tango-ing his assistant, a tall blonde called Donna, all around the room as everyone else laughed happily.
And throughout it all, his arm was around Ellie’s waist, her head resting on his shoulder, as close as they’d been in a long time. He asked her if she wanted to dance, but she shook her head. “No,” she said simply. “I just want to enjoy this.”
All too soon though, she was snatched away from him, moving with the rest of her family to the hotel where her father would give his speech, and Greg had hitched a lift with some of the staff, but had declined to watch the speech with them at the side of the stage, had decided to stand in amongst the campaign volunteers, as close to the stage as possible, to get the best possible view.
This is a man he’s known for years, a family he’s known for years, and now they are the First Family, and there’s a part of him that can hardly believe it. There’s a larger part of him though, that knows that this was inevitable, knew, just like Ellie knew, that from the first time Governor Bartlet brought up this idea, that this was where they would end up. Everyone on the stage is smiling, proud, ecstatic, but most of the time, Greg’s attention is riveted on just one person, and unlike everyone in the room, it’s not the President-elect.
Instead, Greg’s attention is on Ellie, the woman he’s known for years, the woman he’s been in love with for years, and he’s looking at the smile on her face as she stares at her father. As far as he can see, she’s happy for him, proud of him, and there are no signs of worry on her face, in her eyes, something that relieves Greg greatly, because he’s been all too aware of her conflicting emotions over the last few months. For the moment, she seems to have decided to just let go and enjoy the moment, something he’s long tried to convince her she should do, because Ellie was always the serious one, the one who brought him down to earth, while he was the one who tried to get her to lighten up. It’s part of what made them such a perfect match, and while, contrary to popular belief, he doesn’t entertain the thought that often, there are times when he wonders why they ever broke up.
And as she looks down from the stage, finds him in the crowd and smiles a smile that he knows is just for him, it is just such a time.
All too soon, the speech is over, and the streets of Manchester are crowded with Bartlet supporters, and Greg knows that the town is in for an all-nighter, that no-one is going to bed any time soon. Usually, he would be in the midst of the revellers, but tonight, he slips away to the side of the stage, nods at the Secret Service agents who, by now, know him, and he gets into one of the cars that go back to the farm. There, he joins the family and friends in celebrating the President’s victory, a party that, like the one in town, will go on into the wee small hours.
He spends most of the night with Ellie, tries not to notice the second glances and curious looks that they are attracting, knowing that they’re one of the night’s talking points, people wondering what the story with them is. Not that there’s anything untoward for people to see; on the contrary, he and Ellie are, most unlike them in their dating days, the very models of propriety. Ellie’s not much of a drinker, so she sticks to soft drinks, and when he’s around her, Greg tends not to drink much either, so he’s surprisingly sober, and thus, there is no temptation towards drunken stumbles, not that they even needed to be drunk for that. The most that he does is slip is arm around her shoulders when they are sitting side by side, or his arm around her waist when they are standing close together. They circulate among the people who are there, moving both together and separately, always returning to one another, and her sister Liz takes great pains in asking him what he’s doing with himself now, what his plans for the future are, and Zoey comes out point blank and asks him what the hell is going on with him and Ellie. He’s not sure how to answer, knocks back a swig of his beer and replies simply, “Well I find out, I’ll let you know.”
It is late in the party when he misses her, looks around and realises that she is nowhere to be found. He wonders where she might be, then an idea takes him, and he goes investigating, grabbing his coat on the way. Sure enough, he finds her on the back porch, staring up at the stars, and he chuckles as he stands beside her, resting both his palms beside hers on the railings.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he deadpans, and she looks at him out of the corner of her eye.
“I’m surprised you didn’t ask me if I came here often,” she replies, and he shrugs.
“I considered it,” he admits. “Seemed a little on the predictable side.” It’s a lame comeback, he knows, but it makes her laugh, and he’s glad of that. “You doing ok?”
“I’m fine,” she tells him, and this time, she looks him right in the eye, and that’s how he knows that she’s telling him the truth. “Just wanted to look at the stars a little… get some quiet time.”
“Plus you knew I’d find you here.”
Only when he says it does it register with him how arrogant that sounds, but again, she laughs. “Plus that,” she admits, adding with a devilish grin, “I figured you’d guess that it was either here or the hayloft.”
The comment calls to mind a memory, as she knew it would, and it makes him throw his head back and laugh, remembering a summer’s day years ago when they’d been looking to spend some time alone together, and only narrowly escaped being caught in flagrante by her father. Zoey had been with him at the time, and it had only been her quick thinking that had got him out of the hayloft and away, and she’d lost no time in blackmailing him and Ellie for the duration of his stay there, and Ellie for a lot longer after that.
“Well, Miss Bartlet, if that’s an offer…” he teases, his hand closing over hers on the porch railing, and while his voice is light, when he feels her hand under his, her skin warm and soft and just like he remembers, suddenly he’s not so sure if he’s joking or not.
Neither, from the look in her eyes, is she.
Her shoulders rise and fall in a sigh, and she lifts their joined hands from the railing, twisting their fingers together, running her other index finger over their knuckles. “We shouldn’t be doing this Greg,” she says quietly. “We said… at New Year’s… we agreed.”
“I know,” he says quietly, stepping towards her, resting his hand on her hip lightly. “We said that we’d stop… that it’s too hard…” He breaks off, shaking his head. “And when we’re away from one another, that’s fine. But when we’re together… Ellie, I can’t not be with you. And if that’s wrong, I’m sorry, but it’s how I feel and I can’t change-”
Earlier today, she was babbling and he stopped her by kissing her. Now, she does the exact same thing, rises up on her toes and kisses him. It’s nothing like the kiss they shared earlier on, fast and frantic and passionate; this is more fleeting, more chaste, because they know that there is a party of people inside who could find them at any moment. But he feels it down to the marrow of his bones all the same, and when they break apart, her eyes are shining brighter than any stars in the sky. “Thank God you said that,” she laughs breathlessly, slipping her arms around his waist.
“This still doesn’t change anything,” he says, checking just to make sure. “We’re still going our separate ways after…” He stops talking as she nods.
“No. But for now…”
He nods, not needing her to finish the sentence. “For now,” he says simply, kissing the top of her head, and, his arm around her, he leads her back into the party.
>*<*>*<
Also, point of order question - I wrote a fic formedie for her birthday - is it ok if I post it here as well? Not too sure of the ettiquette for these things!
I have a dentist's appointment tomorrow at eleven... thoughts and prayers that the postman will be nice to me and bring me my Press Gang DVDs so that I can be all drooling for nice reasons would be muchly appreciated!
maggis! I did promise you fic for your birthday, so here's a bit of Greg/Ellie fluff for you. The day that her family has been waiting for for so long, the day that Ellie has in turns been anticipating and dreading, has finally arrived. It is Election Day 1998, and her father is hours away from potentially becoming President of the United States of America. The polls over the last few days have had the race too close to call, hence the first exit polls were eagerly awaited at the Bartlet farm, and when they came, showing that her father was in the lead, the excitement among the upper echelons of the campaign staff, all of whom were gathered downstairs in the main farmhouse, the excitement was palpable. That same excitement has been running high ever since, to the point where Ellie feels are if the walls are closing in on her, so, unnoticed by anyone, she grabbed her coat and slipped out the back door, made her way across the grass towards the main pasture.
She doesn’t look around her as she walks, sure that no-one is going to follow her, knowing that she is completely and utterly safe. Not only is this her family home, the place she grew up in, but the Secret Service have the place secured to within an inch of its life – it would hardly do to have the Democratic nominee for President assassinated in his own back yard now, would it? She also knows that no-one is going to follow her, because the people in the room who know her, who are old friends of the family, are too caught up in the whole election hoopla, and the rest of the people are the campaign staff. They don’t know her at all, because she was the daughter who was never there during the campaign, not like Zoey and her high school activities and her perfect GPA, not like Liz, with her perfect husband and her perfect kids. Ellie’s not perfect, and Ellie was in the middle of her senior year of pre-med at Stanford while the guts of the campaign was going on, and there was no way that she was taking time off from her studies to smile sweetly for the cameras and pretend that she was ok with this. Even during the summer, she got away with doing the minimum of publicity, but she’d known, even without her mother’s veiled pleas and her father’s veiled orders, that non-appearance on Election Day wasn’t even an option.
So she did what was expected of her, came to New Hampshire two weeks ago and set to joining her father on the campaign for a couple of days, joining Zoey in the campaign office for the rest of the time. Unlike her sister though, she didn’t fit into the bustling madhouse like a duck to water, didn’t feel comfortable with the people who had known one another for so long, who, in her opinion, had a trench warfare battle field mentality, us against them and no outsiders allowed. She had never felt so out of her element and she was counting the days until she could get back to her normal life.
Except of course, that she has a feeling her father is going to win the election; and then her normal life will never be the same again.
She reaches the pasture fence and goes no further, leaning against it, her arms resting on top of it, her chin on top of her arms. From here, she can’t hear any noise from the house, any noise at all, and compared to the mayhem of the last couple of weeks, she is grateful for the oasis of calm. She even goes so far as to close her eyes, breathe in a few deep breaths, and she’s just beginning to relax when she hears footsteps behind her.
“I thought I saw you sneaking out.”
She hadn’t wanted company when she came but here, but if she must have company, then this is one of the few people that she can tolerate, her best friend, what seems like the only remaining piece of sanity in her life. She’d told him that a couple of days after he’d flown out to join her for the last week of her father’s campaign, and he’d hooted with laughter, telling her that if he was what passed for sanity in her life, then she’s worse off than he thought.
“I needed some fresh air,” she tells him, looking back over her shoulder at him, biting back a grin at the sight before her. His coat is the big bulky black thing that he bought when he lived through last winter in New York, probably the only winter coat that a good California boy like him actually owns, and there is an equally bulky scarf wrapped around his neck. Still though, his hands are in his pockets, and he is shifting slightly on his feet, as if to keep warm, and she knows the lines his answer is going to take before he even speaks.
“Well, you certainly have that,” he observes, and she doesn’t even try to stop her laughter.
“Are you complaining about the cold?” she teases, and he mock-glares at her in response, especially when she continues with, “This is pretty mild you know.”
It happens to be true, but that’s evidently no consolation to Greg. “I’m glad to see that my discomfort amuses you so,” he says, his face pressed into a scowl, even though his eyes are dancing. He moves closer to her as he talks, and she turns fully to face him, her back pressed up against the wooden pilings of the fence.
“Greg, you’ve been here in January. I had to physically drag you up to stop you making snow angels.” And she’d laughed and laughed, because once upon a long ago, when she’d known him only a few months, she’d teased him about how she’d have to do that if he ever visited her in New Hampshire, and she’s never asked him, but she’s sure that he only did it because he remembered that conversation too. “And you lived in New York all last winter. How did you survive there?”
“Central heating,” he answers promptly. “And lots of coffee.”
She shrugs easily, points over his shoulder to the house. “Plenty of that inside,” she reminds him, and then it’s his turn to shrug.
“Yeah,” he allows. “But you’re here.”
She smiles, because it’s the kind of thing that he used to say specifically to make her smile, the kind of thing he used to say to her all the time when they were still dating. But then she remembers that they’re not together anymore, that they are just friends, and all of a sudden, the words are more bitter than sweet. “Flatterer,” she accuses, turning away from him and looking back out towards the pasture, and she hears him chuckle, hears him walking right up to her.
She doesn’t turn around, not even when she feels his body flush against hers, not even when he opens his coat, and, with his hands still in his pocket, wraps it around them both. She takes the hint, what he wants her to do, pulling the edges together as close as it’s possible for them to go, cocooning them both together, and his head nestles comfortably against hers. “Never denied flattery,” he murmurs, his voice low against her ear, and a shiver that has absolutely nothing to do with cold races up her spine. “And I don’t hear you complaining.”
She smiles, but she doesn’t respond, because that way lies danger, and they both know it. So she parries, changing the subject slightly, but nowhere near to taking it out of those dangerous waters. “So what else brings you out here?” she asks, still not turning her head to look at him. “It wasn’t Annie bending your ear, was it?” Because she’d looked for him before she came out, and had seen her ten-year-old niece chattering away a mile a minute to him, and knew from experience that woe betide the person who got between Annie and her favourite not-uncle.
Greg chuckles, but when he speaks, she’s pretty sure that he’s trying not to roll his eyes. “She was asking me if I was here because we were back together,” he says, and she smiles sadly, having thought that it was something like that.
“What did you tell her?”
“That I’d heard so much about this campaign that I had to see it for myself,” he tells her. “That I wanted to help out her grandpa. And that if she wanted to know anything else, she should ask her aunt.”
Now it’s Ellie’s turn to chuckle, but more than a little ruefully, because she knows how tenacious Annie can be when she gets her teeth into something. “Thanks,” she says, then follows up with, “You know she just wants me out of the way so that she can have you for herself.” Because Annie’s been mad about Greg since the first day she met him, alternates between wanting him for her uncle and wanting him for her own husband.
If she thinks that’s going to upset Greg though, she’s got another think coming. “What can I say, the girl’s got taste,” he says airily, and she laughs aloud at that, slapping at his hand.
“That’s what I love about you Greg, your sense of modesty,” she tells him, and she feels him shrug, then feels him tugging at her hips, gently turning her to face him. She resists at first, but he doesn’t give up, and when she won’t look up at him, he cups her chin in his hand, tilts her head up so that she’s looking into his eyes.
“Are you really ok?” he demands, and there’s nothing gentle about his voice. He’s not going to take no for an answer, she knows that, and today, she doesn’t have the energy to put up a fight, not with him. She’s putting a brave face on for everyone else, but she doesn’t have to do that, not with Greg.
“I have no idea,” she tells him frankly, with a slightly hysterical giggle. “I’ve seen the exits, and I’ve seen what people think of him, and I’m so proud of him I just want to scream…” Her voice trails off and she shakes her head. “Then I keep thinking, what the hell have we got into? What happens tomorrow and the next day and the one after that? And the next four years, and then maybe the next four, and there’s so much that could-”
She knows she’s babbling, but she can’t stop herself. Luckily, Greg has a tactic guaranteed to do that; he grabs her firmly by the shoulders and kisses her. At first, she’s surprised, moves to push him away, but he’s holding her tightly, and then her body supersedes her mind and she’s gripping him tighter and kissing him back just as hard.
She knows this is insane, knows they shouldn’t be doing this. Knows that it will only lead to more pain, more confusion.
But as he kisses her, she decides she doesn’t care.
She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but then he pulls back from her, gives her that cheeky smile of his. “What were you saying there?” he asks, and she tilts her head back as she laughs.
“That’s hardly playing fair,” she tells him, gets a shrug in response.
“Well, it worked.” He smiles, and so does she, but then he must see something in her eyes, because his smile falters and he sighs. “But this isn’t going to change anything between us, is it?”
“You’re moving to Vegas,” she reminds him. “I’m moving to Baltimore. And my father is going to be President.” She sighs, her fingers moving inside his coat, playing with the fabric of his sweatshirt. “I don’t see how…”
“Yeah.” His voice is quiet, accepting of her words, but nonetheless, he leans forward, kisses her again, and when he pulls away, his smile is brilliant. “But we’ve got tonight, right?”
She’s so relieved that he’s not about to break into song that she laughs, matching his smile with one of her own. “Yeah,” she says. “We’ve got tonight.”
>*<*>*<
They certainly do have tonight, and Greg is pretty sure that it is going to be a night to remember. At the moment, he is standing in the middle of a heaving throng of people in the ballroom of the main hotel in Manchester, and the President-elect of the United States is giving his victory speech. All around Greg are people who have worked hard for the man, the supporters that he’s spent the last few days working with at campaign headquarters, marvelling at their energy, their enthusiasm, all the while not letting on that he was a friend of the candidate’s daughter, that he was actually staying at the Bartlet farm. Those people are cheering and laughing, whooping and hollering, some are even crying, and Greg can’t stop himself from getting caught up in the moment, allows a big smile to spread across his face.
It was a close race, too close for comfort according to some people, but being in the inner sanctum all day, Greg knew the results before the people that he’s standing with now. He saw the exit polls before they were announced on the television, had known from early in the afternoon that Governor Bartlet was going to win, but when CNN called the election in his favour, the farm still erupted in wild cheers and celebrations, the newly-crowned First Couple in the middle of it all, their three daughters around them. The cameras flashed and clicked, recording the moment for posterity, and Greg stayed purposely in the background, until, that is, Ellie came over to him. She was smiling, her eyes suspiciously damp, and only he knew that those tears might not be only tears of joy, but also tears of trepidation. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and his hands rested on her back, properly, oh so properly, just in case the photographers picked them up, and no-one came near them as they held one another for a long moment as the party picked up into high gear around them.
Someone somewhere put on some music, and before long, everyone was dancing as the Governor and Leo moved off to one side, no doubt discussing the nuances of the spectacle of the acceptance speech. Toby Ziegler, a man who had scared the living daylights out of Greg with his surly countenance in the campaign headquarters, was actually smiling, smoking a huge cigar, ribbing CJ Cregg, the tall, elegant Press Secretary about doing “The Jackal”, whatever that was. She, meanwhile, was refusing with all her might as Sam Seaborn, the younger of the campaign strategy team, looked back and forth between them, his head swivelling like a spectator at a tennis match. His attention was soon diverted though, as was everyone’s, when Kool and the Gang was stopped mid-Celebration, and the Doobie Brother’s Long Train Running began echoing through the room. By the time the first verse was halfway over, the staff were already dancing, in particular Josh Lyman, who was tango-ing his assistant, a tall blonde called Donna, all around the room as everyone else laughed happily.
And throughout it all, his arm was around Ellie’s waist, her head resting on his shoulder, as close as they’d been in a long time. He asked her if she wanted to dance, but she shook her head. “No,” she said simply. “I just want to enjoy this.”
All too soon though, she was snatched away from him, moving with the rest of her family to the hotel where her father would give his speech, and Greg had hitched a lift with some of the staff, but had declined to watch the speech with them at the side of the stage, had decided to stand in amongst the campaign volunteers, as close to the stage as possible, to get the best possible view.
This is a man he’s known for years, a family he’s known for years, and now they are the First Family, and there’s a part of him that can hardly believe it. There’s a larger part of him though, that knows that this was inevitable, knew, just like Ellie knew, that from the first time Governor Bartlet brought up this idea, that this was where they would end up. Everyone on the stage is smiling, proud, ecstatic, but most of the time, Greg’s attention is riveted on just one person, and unlike everyone in the room, it’s not the President-elect.
Instead, Greg’s attention is on Ellie, the woman he’s known for years, the woman he’s been in love with for years, and he’s looking at the smile on her face as she stares at her father. As far as he can see, she’s happy for him, proud of him, and there are no signs of worry on her face, in her eyes, something that relieves Greg greatly, because he’s been all too aware of her conflicting emotions over the last few months. For the moment, she seems to have decided to just let go and enjoy the moment, something he’s long tried to convince her she should do, because Ellie was always the serious one, the one who brought him down to earth, while he was the one who tried to get her to lighten up. It’s part of what made them such a perfect match, and while, contrary to popular belief, he doesn’t entertain the thought that often, there are times when he wonders why they ever broke up.
And as she looks down from the stage, finds him in the crowd and smiles a smile that he knows is just for him, it is just such a time.
All too soon, the speech is over, and the streets of Manchester are crowded with Bartlet supporters, and Greg knows that the town is in for an all-nighter, that no-one is going to bed any time soon. Usually, he would be in the midst of the revellers, but tonight, he slips away to the side of the stage, nods at the Secret Service agents who, by now, know him, and he gets into one of the cars that go back to the farm. There, he joins the family and friends in celebrating the President’s victory, a party that, like the one in town, will go on into the wee small hours.
He spends most of the night with Ellie, tries not to notice the second glances and curious looks that they are attracting, knowing that they’re one of the night’s talking points, people wondering what the story with them is. Not that there’s anything untoward for people to see; on the contrary, he and Ellie are, most unlike them in their dating days, the very models of propriety. Ellie’s not much of a drinker, so she sticks to soft drinks, and when he’s around her, Greg tends not to drink much either, so he’s surprisingly sober, and thus, there is no temptation towards drunken stumbles, not that they even needed to be drunk for that. The most that he does is slip is arm around her shoulders when they are sitting side by side, or his arm around her waist when they are standing close together. They circulate among the people who are there, moving both together and separately, always returning to one another, and her sister Liz takes great pains in asking him what he’s doing with himself now, what his plans for the future are, and Zoey comes out point blank and asks him what the hell is going on with him and Ellie. He’s not sure how to answer, knocks back a swig of his beer and replies simply, “Well I find out, I’ll let you know.”
It is late in the party when he misses her, looks around and realises that she is nowhere to be found. He wonders where she might be, then an idea takes him, and he goes investigating, grabbing his coat on the way. Sure enough, he finds her on the back porch, staring up at the stars, and he chuckles as he stands beside her, resting both his palms beside hers on the railings.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he deadpans, and she looks at him out of the corner of her eye.
“I’m surprised you didn’t ask me if I came here often,” she replies, and he shrugs.
“I considered it,” he admits. “Seemed a little on the predictable side.” It’s a lame comeback, he knows, but it makes her laugh, and he’s glad of that. “You doing ok?”
“I’m fine,” she tells him, and this time, she looks him right in the eye, and that’s how he knows that she’s telling him the truth. “Just wanted to look at the stars a little… get some quiet time.”
“Plus you knew I’d find you here.”
Only when he says it does it register with him how arrogant that sounds, but again, she laughs. “Plus that,” she admits, adding with a devilish grin, “I figured you’d guess that it was either here or the hayloft.”
The comment calls to mind a memory, as she knew it would, and it makes him throw his head back and laugh, remembering a summer’s day years ago when they’d been looking to spend some time alone together, and only narrowly escaped being caught in flagrante by her father. Zoey had been with him at the time, and it had only been her quick thinking that had got him out of the hayloft and away, and she’d lost no time in blackmailing him and Ellie for the duration of his stay there, and Ellie for a lot longer after that.
“Well, Miss Bartlet, if that’s an offer…” he teases, his hand closing over hers on the porch railing, and while his voice is light, when he feels her hand under his, her skin warm and soft and just like he remembers, suddenly he’s not so sure if he’s joking or not.
Neither, from the look in her eyes, is she.
Her shoulders rise and fall in a sigh, and she lifts their joined hands from the railing, twisting their fingers together, running her other index finger over their knuckles. “We shouldn’t be doing this Greg,” she says quietly. “We said… at New Year’s… we agreed.”
“I know,” he says quietly, stepping towards her, resting his hand on her hip lightly. “We said that we’d stop… that it’s too hard…” He breaks off, shaking his head. “And when we’re away from one another, that’s fine. But when we’re together… Ellie, I can’t not be with you. And if that’s wrong, I’m sorry, but it’s how I feel and I can’t change-”
Earlier today, she was babbling and he stopped her by kissing her. Now, she does the exact same thing, rises up on her toes and kisses him. It’s nothing like the kiss they shared earlier on, fast and frantic and passionate; this is more fleeting, more chaste, because they know that there is a party of people inside who could find them at any moment. But he feels it down to the marrow of his bones all the same, and when they break apart, her eyes are shining brighter than any stars in the sky. “Thank God you said that,” she laughs breathlessly, slipping her arms around his waist.
“This still doesn’t change anything,” he says, checking just to make sure. “We’re still going our separate ways after…” He stops talking as she nods.
“No. But for now…”
He nods, not needing her to finish the sentence. “For now,” he says simply, kissing the top of her head, and, his arm around her, he leads her back into the party.
>*<*>*<
Also, point of order question - I wrote a fic for
medie for her birthday - is it ok if I post it here as well? Not too sure of the ettiquette for these things!I have a dentist's appointment tomorrow at eleven... thoughts and prayers that the postman will be nice to me and bring me my Press Gang DVDs so that I can be all drooling for nice reasons would be muchly appreciated!
