(no subject)
Title: Bartlet's New Hobby
Summery: Jed is bored with being retired but then with help from Sam, his new hobby drives Josh crazy! Set during Santos admin. Please R&R
Rating: Teen
Characters: Josh, Jed, Sam, Abbey
Pairing: Josh/Donna
Spoilers: Series 7
Bartlet’s New Hobby
“Look at this!” Jed demanded as he walked into the kitchen where his wife was sat at the table.
“Hmm?” She replied, without even looking up from her magazine.
“Abigail, look.”
She sighed and lifted her head. “It’s a flower.”
“Yes, yes it is a flower…It’s a flower from my garden.” Jed informed her. “It was just lying on the grass when I went out there this morning.”
“Well, it was pretty windy last night,” Abbey stated as she stood up and carried her cup over to the counter to pour herself more tea. “It probably happened then.”
“It’s a conspiracy!”
She leaned back against the counter and sipped her tea. “Are we still talking about the same thing?”
“Someone has it in for my flower garden!” Jed insisted.
“Okay, well wait right there while I go call the FBI.” Abbey said sarcastically.
“Who are we calling the FBI on today?” Elizabeth questioned as she walked into the room.
“No one…You’re Father is bored so he’s making up dramas.” Abbey replied.
“Have you been near my flower garden today?” Jed looked at his eldest daughter suspiciously.
“No,” she replied in amusement but Jed kept staring. “What? Do I need an alibi?”
“Jed, it was the weather last night.” Abbey told, sitting back down at the table.
“I don’t get the respect nowadays that I did when I was President.” Jed complained.
Liz raised an eyebrow at him. “I don’t believe you controlled the weather during your Presidency.”
“No one would have dared go near my flower garden while I was at the White House.” Jed continued, ignoring her comment. “And I had people falling over each other to do things for me.”
“Well, you’ve been back in the real world for almost a year and a half now so start getting use to it.” Abbey told him.
Jed dropped down into the chair on the opposite of the table to her, his arm folded. He sat silently for a few seconds before getting an idea.
“I’m going to call Josh.” he announced as he got to his feet again.
“What? Why?”
“He’s the White House Chief of Staff,” he replied. “He has to show me respect…at least, he still calls me Sir and Mr President.”
“You spent the whole of Thanksgiving ordering him to call you Jed!” Liz pointed out.
“But he refused.” Jed replied. “That’s respect.”
Abbey rolled her eyes. “Leave the boy alone.”
“I just want to talk to him.”
“You want to mess with him for you own amusement.”
“You’ve never had a problem with that in the past,” he looked at her curious. “In fact, you used to be the ringleader.”
“Well, things have changed.” Abbey stated. “He’s got a two month old baby while trying to do a pretty demanding job.”
“So, that means I’m not allowed to talk to him?” Jed questioned.
“Yes, unless you plan on doing or saying something helpful.”
Jed slowly sat back down, a frown on his face.
“Is Donna feeling any better?” Liz asked, looking at her Mother.
“Donna’s sick?” Jed asked, in surprise.
“Yes, she’s had the flu,” Abbey told him. “But apparently Josh has been amazing by splitting his time between work, looking after Donna and taking care of little Noah.”
“Really? Josh Lyman?”
“Exactly, which is why we’re not giving him a hard time at the moment.”
“Alright, fine.” he sighed loudly. “Maybe I should call Sam.”
“Dad, Annie’s in the study doing some work for college, she could probably do with some help.”
“I’m on it!” he jumped up and headed out of the room.
“He really needs a hobby.” Liz commented as they watched him go.
“I thought gardening was a good idea, but look how that turned out,” Abbey answered. “Besides, was it really a good idea to pass him off to your daughter?”
Liz waved her hand dismissively. “She’s not really doing her work, she’s on the internet…He might get her to actually start her paper.”
XxXxX
“What are we working on?” Jed asked, as he walked up behind his Granddaughter.
Annie Bartlet-Westin was spending the weekend with her Grandparents and her Mother so she could work on her paper in a peaceful environment but it didn’t stop her from getting distracted.
“Um, I was just taking a break.” she replied, closing down the site she had been looking at.
“Was that a picture of you?” Jed questioned, after catching a glimpse of what was on the screen before it disappeared.
“Yeah, it was my Facebook page.”
“You’re what?”
“Facebook page.” she replied. “It’s a social networking site.”
Jed stared down at her in confusion.
She let out a small laugh. “It’s a website where I can keep in contact with all my friends and share pictures.”
Jed looked a little concerned. “Pictures? You’re posting pictures on the internet for anyone to see?”
“No, only my friends can see my page,” she explained, turning back to the computer and loaded the page back up. “Look, see…Only the people on my friends list here can see my page.”
“Oh,” Jed replied, as she showed him on the screen then he reached out to point at something else. “What this?”
“That’s my wall, people can write me messages,” Annie told him. “See, my friend Sally sent me a message a few minutes ago, asking how my paper is going.”
Jed leaned down to look closer at the monitor. “You have 228 friends? You really know all those people?”
“Yes, a lot of the people are from college and high school but I even managed to find some old friends from when I was a kid.”
“That’s outstanding!” Jed exclaimed, grabbing a chair and pulling over to sit beside her. “Show me more.”
XxXxX
Josh quietly closed the nursery door, carefully made his way down the hallway and into the room he shared with Donna. They had gotten married about six months after Santos’ took office and ten months later, Noah Leo Lyman was born. However for the past two weeks, Donna had been ill with the flu so she’s had to stay in bed. Luckily, Josh’s Mom was able to come down to look after Noah while Josh was at work but during the nights, she stayed at a hotel since they didn’t have a spare room and Josh was sleeping on the couch so he didn’t catch what Donna had or disturb her.
Tonight, he decided he was going to sleep in his own bed. Donna had been feeling better the last few days and he figured that if he was going to catch the flu, he would have done while he had been in the room taking care of her. He missed his wife. She wouldn’t let him kiss her or hold her, even when had been feeling really bad.
He climbed into bed and pulled Donna into his arms, sighing contently.
“Josh?” She mumbled sleepily.
“Shhh, go back to sleep,” he whispered.
She tightened her arms around him but didn’t say anymore.
He sighed in relief that she didn’t kick him out. It had been two long weeks. He’d get up at 5:30 when Noah woke, screaming to be changed. Then he’d feed him and get him dressed. Next, he’d quickly make some breakfast for himself and Donna. He was only allowed to place the breakfast tray on the bedside table and then he had to move back to the doorway. He’d spend 5 minutes, each morning, talking to her, assuring her that he had everything okay and that both he and Noah were fine. He’d ask her how she was feeling, then she’d send him off to work. His Mother would turn up at 7am to take care of Noah and Donna while he was at work; where they were all working incredibly hard to get a health care bill passed. He’d return home, check on Donna and spend some ‘man time’ with his son before getting him ready for bed. Their couch was a lot more comfortable than the one he had before Donna moved in but it was nothing compared to their bed plus he had to get up two or three times a night to tend to Noah.
He gently kissed Donna’s forehead, smiling a little at the fact that her temperature had gone down. He was looking forward to things going back to normal. Not that it bothered him, looking after both her and Noah. He just wasn’t used to it, she was the one that took care of them and he hated to see her suffering.
He closed his eyes and could feel himself start to drift off just as the sound of the phone startled him. He jumped up and grabbed it, hoping it wouldn’t wake Donna or Noah.
“Josh Lyman,” he answered as he left the room, hoping it wasn’t work. Luckily, since Donna’s been ill, he hadn’t needed to go in during the night and the latest he had got home was around 9pm.
“Josh, it’s Jed.”
“Mr. President?” He frowned a little. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh yes, it’s fantastic.”
“Well, that’s good,” he replied. “But it is 1am, Sir.”
“Yes, well everyone here is in bed and I had to talk to someone.”
“Are you sure everything okay?”
“Annie has introduced me to something spectacular!”
“Annie? Your Granddaughter?”
“Yes.” Jed answered. “Have you ever heard of Facebook?”
“Um, yeah I think Annabeth and Margaret were chatting about that a few weeks back,” he told him. “But I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“It’s a social networking site.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Josh sat down on the couch and ran a hand over his face.
“Well, basically it’s a website where you can keep in touch with all your friends,” Jed informed him. “I can send you message and you’d get it right away. Imagine that?”
“A bit like sending a text message from a cell phone?” Josh quipped.
“I don’t like cell phones.” Jed answered. “All that modern technology.”
“But using a website is going back to the dark ages?”
“I thought you’d be the one to talk to who shows me some of the respect I used to get while I was President.”
Josh sighed loudly. “I’m sorry, sir but it’s 1 am and you’re calling me to tell about a website which I’m too busy to look at and besides, if you’d talked to me about this while you were at the White House, I would have reacted the same way…Except maybe I’d be a little more freaked out about the President being let loose on the internet.”
“It might have helped me connect more with the younger voters.”
“It would have helped C.J have a heart attack,” Josh replied, thinking back to when she found out he had been on LemonLyman.Com .
“She was a pro, she could have spun it.”
“No doubt sir, but if that is all you called for then I should get back to bed,” Josh said. “Noah will be awake soon and I have to get to the office early tomorrow…”
“I’d love to see some more pictures of him.” Jed stated. “With facebook, you could upload them and then we can all see them without you doing anything more.”
Josh leaned back and resisted the urged to groan.
“We could get Sam, C.J and everyone else to join up so we can all keep in touch.”
“I can’t just phone you?”
“When was the last time you just phoned us?” Jed replied. “You never have time.”
“And you think I’ll have time to send you an email?”
“Write on my wall.”
“What?”
“It’s not called an email.” Jed explained. “You write on someone’s wall.”
“This site is encouraging people to do graffiti?” Josh question. “And you agree with this?”
“It’s not graffiti, it’s a space on the users profile page which allows friends to posts messages for the user to see,” Jed explained.
“Right…”
“There’s also a status bar,” Jed continued. “I’m going to update mine now.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not going to ask what I put on it?”
Josh sighed. “What did you put as your status, sir?”
“It now reads, “President Jed Bartlet is talking to Josh Lyman” See? It’s that good!”
“You’re actually using the name President Jed Bartlet?”
“Yes, otherwise how will people know how I am?”
Josh groaned, wondering whether this was going to attract the attention of the press and cause him a headache.
“I’m telling you Josh, you should sign up,” Jed said once more. “So far, I only have Annie as my friend.”
Before Josh could say anymore, he heard Noah crying.
“I’m sorry, sir but Noah is ‘requesting’ a feeding. I really should go.”
“Oh okay, well we’ll talk about this some more tomorrow.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Good night, Josh.”
“Good night, Mr. President,” he replied before hanging up. He shook his head slightly, wondering if that conversation actually happened.
XxXxX
Josh was sat at his desk, his head leaning on the back of the chair. He glanced at the clock on the wall, seeing it was almost 4pm. Since President Santos had already left to spend some time with the kids, he decided once he had finished the memo that he had been trying to read for the past hour, he’d go home. His head was pounding and he felt like he could sleep for the rest of the week.
He sat up straight and rubbed his eyes when there was a knock on the door. “Come in.”
“Hey, you got a minute?” Sam stuck his head around the door.
“Yeah, sure,” Josh replied, hoping Sam wasn’t bringing something that needed his attention straight away.
“Guess who I talked to today…” Sam grinned, walking fully into the office.
Josh stared at him, having a bad feeling. “Who?”
“President Bartlet.”
Josh groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Please tell me, he hasn’t gotten to you.”
“Have you looked on this website he found?” Sam asked, excitedly. “It’s awesome.”
“Sam…” Josh whined. “You’re the Deputy Chief of Staff.”
“C.J said you’d say that,” Sam relied. “And said to say LemonLyman.com."
“C.J’s in on this too?”
“The President called her before he spoke to me.”
“She threatened me with serious bodily harm if I went near the internet again but yet this, she’s all for.”
“It’s just a bit of fun, Josh.” Sam rolled his eyes. “Everyone is on there?”
“Everyone?”
“Well, President Bartlet, C.J, Danny, Charlie, Zoey, Bram, Otto, Ronna, Margaret, Annabeth and me.” Sam replied.
“Is anyone doing any actual work around here?”
“It doesn’t take that long to set up,” Sam assured him. “It took Margaret and me less than 5 minutes to sign you up and write you a profile.”
“Sign me up?!”
“Everyone else has joined…” Sam repeated.
“Sam?!” He exclaimed. “I don’t have time to go on some face network book.”
“Social networking site, called Facebook,” Sam corrected. “Besides, you won’t need to…any update will go straight to your blackberry like it’s a SMS message.”
Josh stared at him for a few seconds before replying. “What?”
“Well, President Bartlet said you were concerned about not having the time, so we thought you’d set it up to go to your phone when Margaret was updating your schedule earlier.”
Josh’s eyes immediately went to his blackberry which was sat on the desk where he left after he came back from lunch. He couldn’t even remembering giving Margaret his phone.
“Margaret?” Josh shouted while closing some folders on his desk.
“Yes?” She appeared in his doorway.
“I’m going home.”
She looked from Josh to Sam before back to him. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s not even four o’clock yet.”
“No but I haven’t seen my wife healthy in two weeks, I got almost no sleep last night because of President Bartlet’s phone call and looking after Noah. If I hear one more thing about Social book then I’m going to scream!”
“Facebook.” Margaret corrected.
Josh glared at her. “I feel like crap, I’m going home.”
Sam and Margaret watched as he left the office.
“I didn’t even get to tell him about Twitter,” Sam said after a few seconds.
“Maybe we should leave that until tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he shrugged. “I’m going to go and play some more games.”
“Ohh, me too.” Margaret replied as they both left the office.
XxXxX
When Josh entered the apartment, he was surprised to see Donna sitting with his Mom and Noah.
“Hey, you’re out of bed.”
“Yeah, I spoke to the doctor earlier and she said it should be okay for me to be around people again,” she grinned but then frowned a little. “Are you okay?”
He sighed. “I’m just tired.”
She walked over to him, placing her hand on his forehead. “You’re burning up.”
“What?”
“You’ve probably caught what I had,” she replied as she started to push him towards the bedroom. “You’re going straight to bed.”
“Donna,” he whined.
“Go! I’ll bring you in some juice and chicken soup.”
“Can I just say hello to Noah, first?” He protested a little.
“You can’t go near the baby,” she gave him another push.
“Fine!” He said in defeat.
He took off his tie, jacket and shoe and then fell onto the bed, so his face was buried in the pillow. Maybe Donna taking care of him will do him some good after the day he has had. Besides, he was pretty sure, that once he had gotten a few hours sleep, he’d be fine. Just as he was beginning to relax, his blackberry vibrated in his pocket. He pulled onto his back, pulling it out to read the message.
He stared down at it in confusion when all it said was;
“You have been poked by President Jed Bartlet.”
The end!!!
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