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A Greater Thing Will Happen

Summary: John Egan turns in a rough draft. Which is to say, a conversation in The West Wing AU no one asked for. Not quite, but obviously going there, Jo/Bucky and Vin/Buck. (If you enjoy this at all, say thank you @shoshiwrites because somehow she doesn't get annoyed when I just throw Jo in places.)

“How the hell are you, Rosie?”

The question is loud and enthusiastic in a way that’s wholly particular to the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the United States. Though the halls of the West Wing of the White House still tend to garner a certain amount of reverence, even from the people who work there every day — even the ones who have to deal with the most absurd situations known to man — there’s a certain way that one John Egan carries himself, regardless of where he is. It’s not a lack of respect, it’s only who he is — and everyone, including the resident top legal advisor in the country, is aware of it.

“Doing just fine, Mr. Egan,” the pleasant counselor replies, shaking the proffered hand with no small amount of vigor. Though they truly haven’t seen one another in something like two weeks, though they’re what John would term pretty good friends, he doesn’t trust that that alone is the reason for the energetic reply. The meeting he’s leaving must have gone well. All the better for John. “Be a sight better once this Hughlin affair’s been handled.”

“I hear you,” John agrees, “Better for you and me both.” And the country makes three. “But, seriously — how many times have I got to tell you to call me Bucky? You never have any trouble on the diamond.”

The annual softball season was sure to start up again soon, come to think of it. He’d have to ask Red when rosters were due. (Undoubtedly, he’ll find, two weeks later, that rosters were well past due, but, happily, someone will have thought to sign him up.)

“Got to draw a line somewhere, sir, you know that,” Rosie replies. He had been like that from the moment he’d been hired by the Harding campaign — clear lines between the time on the clock and the time off. It’s not a bad thing, John supposes, given the way the House has been sniffing around finances lately. Like that wasn’t throwing a rock from a glass house.

“How’d you like it if I called you ‘Bob’?” He asks, though, because he’s a bit of a dog with a bone when he gets an idea into his head. Rosie’s eyebrows raise in reply. “I mean, I get not wanting everyone around the firm to call you ‘Twinkle Toes,’ but surely Rosie’s alright for everyone, right? Why can’t Bucky be the same?”

“To be honest —“

“John!”

The call comes from inside the office Rosie had been exiting, all gravel and assuredness. It rather contradicts his point.

“I should let you go,” Rosie says, clapping a hand on John’s shoulder. They’ve already had this conversation a dozen times and then some — though this may have been the first time he’d brought up Twinkle Toes — and he’s a busy man.

John is, too, however little he acts like it.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Think about what I said, though. And tell Phillis and the kids hi.”

“Will do, sir.”

Tatty offers the lawyer a smile from behind her desk as he turns to leave, then nods toward John, standing still outside the doorway, with a look of expectancy.

“Given the fact that you weren’t on the schedule, you might want to take advantage while you can, John,” she says and he shouldn’t be surprised that Rosie’s retreating shoulders shake a little at her tone. Or maybe they don’t. Maybe he’s just imagining it.

Admittedly, he’s very rarely trying hard, but still, private conversations tend to be quite hard to come by in this line of work.

“Thanks, Ms. Spaatz,” he mutters, just to be difficult. It doesn’t deter his line of thought, though, so the easy, familiar way in which he enters the Chief of Staff’s office doesn’t surprise her in the least as she gets up to close the door behind him. Nor does it surprise the occupant of said office. “Why don’t we get rid of all the formality in conversation around here, Buck? Rosie Rosenthal shouldn’t be going around calling me ‘Mr. Egan.’”

“Much as I might agree with that sentiment,” Gale starts, without looking up from the tablet atop a thick stack of paperwork on his desk, “I also know that it wouldn’t take more than five minutes before you’d be in an argument with a subordinate whose use of ‘Bucky’ would be more derogatory than not. You’d take offense and then come to me insisting they were being disrespectful, and we’d have to start the whole rigmarole of ‘how to address your coworkers properly’ over again. That, in addition to the negative press. Cros wouldn’t thank you for the extra fire in the press room.”

John grins, sitting down across the desk from Gale. He has a point, it’s true — generally speaking, he did prefer being on friendly terms with his own staff, but woe be the man or woman who thought that might mean he wasn’t in charge.

“That wouldn’t —“ He waits a beat, half expecting Gale might offer him a deadpanned sort of glance, then automatically corrects himself when it doesn’t come. “— shouldn’t get out. Anyway, Jo talks to me disrespectfully now,” he goads, half serious (though she doesn’t, not really), just because he can. Because he can — and because Gale still hasn’t looked up.

Sometimes, he misses being on the campaign trail — or, more likely, those years when they were just lowly aides themselves. Sure, the hours were shit (they were still shit) and the people tended to be — how might he be a little more politically correct? — not his first choice (they still weren’t worth a damn most of the time) and they didn’t get to make any decisions themselves (hallelujah that had changed. Excepting the President. Of course.), but at least they’d gotten to talk to each other. When Gale Cleven wasn’t fully engrossed in his duties (a certifiable blue moon occurrence these days), he’d look at John when they were talking. Look so directly that John felt listened to in a way he rarely did before or since (with maybe an exception or two, here and there).

And, okay, so he did still turn on that brilliant look that said he was listening to you and only you when in meetings, when he didn’t have a five hundred page document that needed to be read on his desk, when — well, when it mattered, but sometimes —

John wished he saw it more often, is all.

“Jo’s not your subordinate.” And we did that on purpose, Gale might as well add. Not that he’d ever seriously considered the idea of having his Communications Director reporting to his Deputy Chief of Staff. It might have been a load off his plate on paper, but he suspected the reality would rather be an increase. The comments that many a rank and file employee were growing more confident in offhandedly throwing out these days in reference to the so called “chaos days” (aka Gale’s temporary leave of absence two years ago) made it pretty clear he’d made the right choice. The noise of acquiescence to the fact on John’s part really only adds to that.

“About Rosie —“

Gale finally looks up.

There’s a part of John that thrills when their eyes meet.

“Is that what you wanted to talk about? Nicknames? Or is there something I could actually justify ignoring Achten for?”

“Belgium still the hold out on those resolves?”

“John.”

This is the reason Gale Cleven is Chief of Staff and not John Egan. The look he fixes on his deputy makes it clear he doesn’t have the time for this and John, unlikely to do so for anyone else — even the President himself — relents. Even if he’d rather do his best to stay the center of Gale’s attention for a little while longer. Even if he’d rather try his damndest to make him smile.

The paper he hands over is double spaced for easy editing and, he can admit, he feels a little bit like a high schooler come in for his final grading.

“The Nationals speech,” Gale says, before he even takes it from John’s hand, grabbing a pen before leaning back in his chair to give the draft the proper once over. John takes it as more a statement of fact than a question — obviously, Gale’s been waiting for it — but he’s never been one for sitting quietly, waiting. Not without very good reason — and the fact that the one usually sitting atop his thoughts of late is the way his colleague had looked when she’d finally finished dealing with the fallout of junior Senator Quinn’s decision not to run for reelection in the last midterms being broadcast ten minutes before the UK state dinner eleven months ago didn’t mean anything. Besides, more often, he could only wait quietly when it had to do with major operations or acts of God or — something like that, anyway.

Not something like the promise of a figure flattering black ball gown with a delightful view of bare, freckled shoulders.

“We had a deal,” he says, to fill in the waiting, though they both know this already. To cover up the tiny click of the pen in Gale’s hand, almost immediately in sync with the movement of his eyes across the page, too. “Although, I still don’t think you’re the right person to be editing a speech about baseball.”

Luckily, Gale’s always been good at multitasking. Or, at least, doing other things while John talks. (Or doing other things while anyone talks, but, to be fair, if John’s in the room, he’s usually doing a not insignificant share of the talking.) And he’s already crossed out at least two lines, by John’s count.

“It’s not about baseball,” he says, scribbling with what John would call reckless abandon, were it anyone else. “It’s about —“

“Child tax credits, yeah, I know, Buck.” Gale’s pen is working a massacre on his carefully crafted speech. “But it’s also about baseball.” And it’s absurd that Gale is editing it, as he’s a well known naysayer to team sports in general, in spite of essentially being the captain of arguably the biggest juggernaut of a team in the world. It takes a lot to keep the country running. And a lot of it — to the not infrequent despair of many a major player — requires teamwork.

“Which isn’t a foreign concept to Jo.” Gale doesn’t even have to lift his eyes to know that look of John’s — the one that’s practically vibrating with a retort. “Keep in mind we could scrap this entirely. Chick’s always been more of a football man.” The negative comment about the Phillies on the tip of John’s tongue wouldn’t mean much to him, anyway.

“Wrong season,” John says, in a mockingly helpful tone. It stops Gale’s pen entirely, the halt lifting his eyes again in a look that’s something the opposite of appreciation for the clarification. Something, too, that really lets the threat of scraping the whole thing hang in the air. “Jo doesn’t know about real baseball, is all I’m saying, Buck.”

“You think if they weren’t playing the Yankees I’d have been a party to this bet of yours?”

Another scribble and another page flipped in rapid succession, but the question does mollify him a bit. It’s kind of nice, really, knowing Gale knows that his favorite team’s the Yankees, that it mattered to him for Harding to accept the invite to the game, that it mattered, too, for him to have his crack at this speech. Even if it did mean he had to turn it into a bet with Jo Brandt.

“Why don’t you just ask her out?” Gale asks, after a long moment of nothing but scratches against the next to last page. It’s not hard to follow the familiar, simple drag of his handwriting, the way the letter on the end of every word carries a little longer than the rest and the way loops introduce themselves at the point where line is meant to meet line with larger frequency than the average person tends.

“Who?” To be fair, the suggestion did come from so far out of left field (see, he knows baseball) that he didn’t follow for all of about ten seconds. That it clicks so quickly is more of a tell than he’d ever be willing to admit, though. “Why the hell would I ask Jo out? Isn’t that against some kind of fraternization policy or something, anyway? We already spend too much time together, you know — well, of course, you know. I’m sure you remember that Cincinnati was a nightmare. Albuquerque? Albany? I can give them to you alphabetically, if you give me a few hours to compile a list. Hell, I think Curt might have one already. I mean, she drives me crazy, Buck. It’s a bad idea.”

The little rant makes it easy for Gale to finish his notes, John sufficiently distracted by someone else making the suggestion of precisely what it is he wants. He’s halfway inclined to snort at the idea that she drives him crazy — the perpetual bounce of his tennis ball during donor meetings that she hadn’t been privy to during the first campaign all those years ago had been such a point of contention, the first thing she’d proclaimed to be celebrating on election night was finally getting offices in completely separate areas of the building. Still, Gale knows the way they seem to find one another when tragedy strikes, the way they always sit next to one another or directly across when it’s crunch time, the way one or another of their eyes will follow the other when they leave a room, always a little longer than they track anyone else.

Knows, too, that they’ll meet blocks away from the office, though it’s not a point in the most direct route for either of them, just to grab coffee (to be fair, Jo certainly wasn’t a fan of the main option in the wing — not that shit Hambone keeps trying to pass off as coffee. I swear to God, Stover’d ban it from the premises if the President ever had so much as a whiff. There’s no possibility that it’s not bad for our collective health.) in the mornings. Or, more likely, just to walk in together.

Professional disagreements are a far cry from personal ones, however similar they might feel in the moment.

“You’re in different departments; I’m not worried about you sleeping together.” It’s just the kind of comment that tends to leave the opposition party flabbergasted in negotiations, but John knows him too well to be taken aback. Gale offers the heavily marked speech back toward him.

“If you’re suggesting I need to get laid, I promise I have no difficulties there. Outside of finding the time for it, maybe. Jesus, Gale —“ this, as he skims the first page. “It’s not that bad.”

“You haven’t written a proper speech in two years, John,” Gale offers by way of explanation. It’s not necessarily for lack of wanting to, only that his workload had doubled during Gale’s break and — damn it, he needs to start demanding more speeches back from Jo. “Too many stats and references. Everyone’ll know it’s not Harding.”

“Everyone already knows it’s not Harding,” John mutters, flipping through the pages. Politicians don’t write their own speeches, a ten year old would know that — or, John thinks a ten year old should know that. At the very least, one hopes that newly legally able to vote eighteen year olds do.

“What’s Jo always say?”

John snorts at that, however unflattering the sound is — but Gale’s right. Sure, they know there’s a speechwriter, but if you’re doing your job right, they still think it’s all coming straight from the horse’s mouth. It may just be possible that there’s a reason Jo’s the Communications Director and not him.

“You two get together, you might make a decent speech,” Gale adds. “Talk about it on a date.”

“Oh, come on,” John laughs. “That’s not — tell me you’re not ser— Gale. I know it’s been a long time since you’ve been on the market, but please tell me you know child tax credits aren’t appropriate date material.”

“‘On the market’?” Gale echoes, opening his desk drawer. “Like we’re cattle?”

If there’s one thing — one thing — that people can take as a turn off with respect to Gale Cleven, Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, it’s only this — the way he idly reaches for the pack of toothpicks he keeps in his desk (to say nothing of the one in his pocket), the way he perches it between his lips, the way it’ll stay just there for hours at a time. The way, particularly, he’ll put one in to indicate he’s done with a conversation during meetings in the Oval — there’s been more than one Representative lately who’d clearly been upset by the subtle dismissal.

Not that anyone stayed mad at Buck for long. He’d been a steal for Harding’s campaign — everyone knew it — let alone his administration. There’s a natural magnetism to his quiet, stoic demeanor; almost as though he casts his own orbit. John would be jealous of the way people were sure to do their best to introduce themselves to Gale, given half the chance, if he weren’t particularly good at getting himself into the right rooms to meet the right people in the first place. Sure, it’s nice to have folks come to you, but there’s nothing like finally cornering the person you’re after, either.

That John had managed to convince his old buddy to join up, as it were, was still his crowning achievement of the last ten years. But they know each other, and they’re each of them just as apt to agree with the other as to call them on their bullshit. And John doesn’t hesitate in pointing an accusatory finger in his superior’s direction.

“You’re seeing someone.”

“Don’t count on it,” Gale deadpans back, adjusting his toothpick and leaning back toward the tablet he’d abandoned at John’s entrance. John waves this response away, leaning forward to set both elbows on the edge of the desk, finger still waving in Gale’s direction.

“So you’re thinking about seeing someone. That’s good, Buck. It’s been two years,” he says. Like Gale doesn’t know how long it’s been. Like Gale could ever forget how long it’s been — John sure wouldn’t, and he’d only ever been standing next to him. “Who is it?”

“Lavinia Fennimore.”

Sometimes, John almost wishes Gale’d be a little less forthright. He’d have enjoyed teasing it out of him. But as it is —

“Lavinia Fennimore. Fennimore…Fennimore…I know that name. How do I know that name?”

Gale swipes at the screen in front of him while John ponders it out. There’s a certain article he half remembers, a name on a list, a caption beneath a photograph — his snap seemingly doesn't register in Gale’s ear at all.

“Lavinia Fennimore, the poet — our new Poet Laureate, right? Her and her sister are pretty big in philanthropic circles. Well, mostly Grace and her husband, I think, but damn, Buck. She’s easy on the eyes.”

Yeah, he remembers a photograph alright — one he’s pretty sure was more suited to a spread in a magazine than the Post. He can’t be far off in supposing that an agent or two offers modeling contracts every time she or her sister find their way to the spotlight.

“That grammar’s why Jo writes the speeches,” Gale says. John ignores him, though it does ruffle his feathers a bit, if he’s honest — but John Egan’s not big on being too honest with himself. That might even be why he’s less than pleased at the suggestion that he should ask out their Communications Director. And, too, why he feels the need to tease that back, in the same vein.

But really —

“Seriously, Buck, if you’re only still thinking about it, you should go for it.”

It’s been two years since the sudden passing of Marjorie Cleven, and Gale’s been off ever since. Well, not off, exactly — but different. And John should’ve seen it before now, honestly, how he seemed to be just that fraction looser in these last few weeks.

“The optics aren’t great.”

The optics are rather pleasing, on the contrary. Gale’s classically handsome — a frequent target for personal interest pieces for the fact, nonetheless, however many times he turns them down (and these only the small handful Harry and Jo agree to let through in the first place) — all blonde, blue eyed, and brilliant in a way that almost defies description, and at least a partial reason — John’s all but certain of this — for the uptick in the younger voting demographics’ interest in the country’s political landscape in the last term and a half. Marge had been a perfect compliment on his arm, blonde and beautiful, herself, and it’s not terrifically difficult to see Lavinia Fennimore holding the same office. They’d be different, sure — Marge’s edges softer than the sharp angles John now remembers from the short in person introduction he’d had to the poet some months ago — for what, he can’t remember — but John could see it. And not just from the almost certain boost in the polling perspective, either.

But John knows what Gale means.

“Laureates are the jurisdiction of the Librarian of Congress, she’s already got the job, and — don’t they talk to other big names in the field when they choose? Don’t get me wrong, everyone in Washington thinks you spin a good story, but you’re not exactly poetry consultation material.”

“Facts and optics are different things. You know that.”

He does know that. He’s said it a time or two to his staff, his deputy assistant, Harry, Jo, Gale, Neil Harding himself. And the way Gale says it — it’s like he’s been trying to convince himself of all the reasons not to, is still trying to convince himself not to.

“Sure, but sometimes we all have to say to hell with the optics, right?” He’s thinking of that conference in Bremen (among other things) and Gale knows it, too, if the look in his eyes — a fixed one from under his brow, head unmoving from his reading position — is any indication. “The Harding era will be over before you know it —“

“Rumors of nepotism aren’t ideal for career planning.”

Neither was the fact that the majority of Harding’s staff was under forty — what could they really aspire to after running the goddamn country for eight years straight? — but that hadn’t stopped them from doing the job.

“And here you are telling me to hook up with Josephine.” This, a singsong that brings Gale’s eyes back to his.

“You both already have proven track records, John.” Gale leans back in the well worn plush leather seat, engaged enough to forgo the dossier on his desk for the moment. John considers himself quite possibly the luckiest man in Washington for it. “But if you’re telling me I need to fire you to get you to —“

“Me?” John’s question is mockingly offended. “She’s the one getting offers everyday.”

She was and it was a little annoying. He had periodic ones himself, of course, only apparently people were less likely to scout the Deputy Chief of Staff outside of election years. They’d slowed down from the year prior in consequence, even if they didn’t seem to for Jo, for Harry, for Curt, for — everyone with a real title that he can think of.

That he was rather proud of them for it was neither here nor there.

“All the more reason to keep her.”

John leans back, mirroring Gale, though his seat is measurably less comfortable. Long meetings aren’t really meant for Gale’s office — or, if they were, they’d have been scheduled. And they’d have moved to the couch. Maybe even with a tumbler in hand (though, admittedly, Gale wouldn’t have whiskey in his glass).

“Ask Lavinia to Thursday’s fundraiser. Women always love you in a tux.”

As did photographers.

“She’s already invited. Her sister, too.” Gale’s fingers idly worrying the toothpick in his mouth is the only hint John really needs to know that he’s thinking about it, but, if there had been any lingering doubt, the clench of his jaw in his pause is enough to leave his deputy grinning. “Philanthropists, remember?”

“So you can arrive separate. All the better for optics, and hey,” he pauses, tilting his head in a conspiratorial fashion, grin still in place, “I know a few conspicuous exits, if you’d like some alone time with the lady.”

Gale hums in a less than impressed way with a light nod, adds, “We’ve all seen your conspicuous exits.”

“Ah, see, there are see-me-leave conspicuous exits and there are you-don’t-remember-when-you-last-saw-me conspicuous exits, Buck.”

Gale’s hand falls from his toothpick, though his tongue shifts it from one side of his mouth to the other while he considers his companion.

“And you know them both.”

“And I know them both.”

John’s widened, shit eating grin would incline a lesser man to swing a fist. Gale gets why it’s so easy for John and Jo to pretend they disagree on everything (even when, in actuality, they’re agreeing — an extra headache for long nights with nothing but Hambone’s shit coffee to see them through). He’d pick a fight with a brick wall if he thought he could win — Curt, their Deputy Communications Director, might be the only person he knows more likely, come to think of it. He doesn’t know how Jo puts up with Egan on one side and Biddick on the other at all times. Staff meetings are more than enough for him.

Still, it’s nice to have them on your team.

Tatty’s paging the phone on his desk.

“Tatty,” he acknowledges her, leaving it on speaker.

“Jefferson and DeMarco are here for your lunch meeting, sir. And…”

Tatty always seems to know when he does that.

“And?”

There’s not much she can do when he asks directly, though. Especially not when she sort of wants the other person in the room to know. It’s Gale’s fault in that scenario, isn’t it?

“There’s a message from a Miss Fennimore — I told her you’d be awhile, but she said she’d wait. At least til two.”

John’s eyes, previously mildly interested by the idea of who’s next on Gale’s schedule, positively light up at the mention of Lavinia. And Gale brought that on himself.

“Thanks, Tatty. You can send in Alex and Benny when John leaves.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do I need to sit outside your office to make sure you meet her?” John doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t give him a moment to so much as breathe once Tatty hangs up. “Play chauffeur? Seriously, I’ll do whatever it takes, Buck.”

“You’ll be busy,” Gale fires back. “Getting together with Jo to bang out a decent speech.”

“I don’t think that’s a proper way to —“

“John.”

“Fine,” John’s hands lift in surrender. “Wait. Does that mean there’s no winner? Because that’ll piss Brandt off as much as it does me.”

“Maybe you need a common enemy.” Gale leans forward, ready to shift paperwork around for his already two minutes behind the scheduled start time meeting, but pauses to fix John with a last proper look. He means it, attention solely focused on John, when he adds, “Seriously, Bucky. Ask her out.”

“Only if you do the same, Gale.” John’s voice might sound like a quip, but he’s just as serious as Gale, standing now with his ransacked speech in hand.

“Need the speech by four tomorrow for any last minute revisions,” Gale says, instead of responding. John has a suspicion that he is letting himself seriously consider it, though.

And he might just be considering it, too —

“And don’t talk about child tax credits when you’re on a date!” He calls as he leaves the office, only a distant, familiar cry of “DeMarco!” echoing after him from the other side of the door.

Lavinia Fennimore, Gale thinks briefly — a second only, really, before Alex and Benny come in — is sure to look stunning at the fundraiser. Hell, if he manages a properly collaborative speech with Jo, I just might do it.

And four days later — a day after the fundraiser — the President himself will offer a compliment on their dates to the chagrined pair of them. He has eyes, and even if they weren’t arriving and leaving together, he could tell. They’re his right hand men, after all.

He laughs.

Tells them to keep it up.

#West Wing AU?? in my MotA?? suddenly more likely than I thought #the motion and dialogue -- the blocking of it too -- is very very appropriate to WW #you've captured the vibe of it really well without sacrificing an inch of characterization #am lovingggg the Buck & Bucky exchange here #of course Buck's taking a pen to Bucky's rambles lol #the world-building here is fabbb #file this under things I did not know I needed but am happy to have read

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