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the_wordbutlerThe West Wing
Jed Bartlet/Leo McGarry; 582 words
Rated G; set during "Bartlet For America"
In which there's a pause, because there's always a pause.
The day Leo testifies, there’s a pause before they end the call.
There’s always a pause. Sometimes it’s five seconds, sometimes ten, sometimes it stretches long enough that Jed thinks the line’s gone out, but there is always, invariably, the pause. He can see Leo on his television screen, and he can tell he’s nervous. That’s fine, because Jed’s nervous, too.
He’s not sure when the pause started. It was after the napkin, after all the major decisions had been made and the paperwork filed, after he’d argued with Abby for three hours about how much good he could do. It wouldn’t kill him, he’d told her. It’d make him stronger, give him something to wake up in the morning for, spur him on even if things got—
Worse isn’t a word he likes in his life. He tries to avoid using it whenever he can. But he’d told Abby, that night, that the presidency’d be exactly that: something for him to focus on if the going got tough, and if things got worse.
But it hadn’t been the first night after that argument, or second, or any number he could count. He just remembers sitting in his office in the statehouse, late one night, and finishing a conversation with Leo about his next campaign speech. He remembers being tired, war-weary, sick of staring at numbers that, no matter how he interpreted them, came out wrong. And there was Leo, lingering on the other end of the line, filling in the silence before they both went their separate ways.
“There’s a saying,” Jed’d commented, and Leo’d groaned. “What?”
“No sayings. Not tonight. It’s too late for any of your sayings, tonight.” When Jed’d laughed, Leo’s chuckle had come across the line, warm and full and—right. “You start with the sayings, I’m going to bed.”
“And if I refrain, you’ll stay on the line?”
“No, I’m still going if you refrain. I just wanted to make sure you know there’s consequences for your actions.”
Jed’d laughed again. He remembers now, all these years later, thinking how much he liked that Leo made him laugh. Politics, he’d always thought, is full of—polite chuckles after carefully-written jokes. Politics is orchestrated, rehearsed, perfected, and artificial. You don’t get to sit down with people and just—laugh, in politics.
But he got that with Leo.
Leo, who he could hear smiling on the other end of the phone, that night, when he’d said, “Goodnight, Mr. President.”
“Cart before the horse, Leo.”
“Best place for the cart.”
And that’s when it happened, in the breath between Leo’s last joke and Jed’s goodnight. In that perfect silence, that perfect pause, Jed—knew.
He knew in the way you know how to breathe, how to blink, how to swallow. He knew like a reflex.
The silence lasted, and he knew that Leo—Leo knew, too.
“Goodnight, Leo,” he’d said, after ten or fifteen seconds.
“Goodnight.”
And now, there’s another pause, a stretching, lingering, heavy pause, and Jed watches Leo on the television screen. Just long enough to see him glance at the camera, see him swallow, see every emotion that either of them is feeling flit across Leo’s face before it’s neutral again.
“I’ll be back when I’m done,” Leo says.
“Okay,” Jed replies.
And they give the silence that means ten times more than silence just one last moment, one last acknowledgement, before they both realize they can never say the words and instead, end the call.
