14valentines Day Two: Transgender Issues
I have to admit, internet, I know very little about trans issues.
Let me rephrase that. I know more than a lot of people. I went to a pretty gay hippie school and there were a couple of trans people on campus. I'm aware of trans issues, which I think puts me in a slightly more educated group than most of the population of the world, but I'm not entirely knowledgeable about them. I can't give witty insight or tell a personal story, and I certainly don't feel qualified to write a piece of fiction based on it.
So for more information on trans issues and to peruse what people smarter than I have to say on the issue, read today's essay over at 14valentines.
For a story about Sam and Will and coming out and the ladies in their lives, continue on.
***
Title: Not Made of Things Which Do Appear, Part 1/2
Fandom: The West Wing, Sam/Will
Rating: PG?
Summary: The people in Sam and Will's lives watch them try and put the pieces back together after Will is shot.
Notes: The sequel-ish thing to Substance of Things Hoped For, which is, in itself, an AU of "Evidence of Things Not Seen." These are all the characters I ended up cutting from the first story. This one will make more sense if you've read that one, but if you haven't, you should be able to understand it by knowing that it's basically an AU of the aforementioned episode wherein Will gets shot in the press room and the staff and Sam have to deal with the consequences. This is split into two parts. The rest will be posted tomorrow. The title, like the title of the episode and the title of the previous fic, is from Hebrews 11.
***
She wasn't sure what made her change her mind, but Zoey found herself climbing the stairs to her mother's plane on a night that she had planned on studying with her roommates. It was just a quick trip, she had reasoned, and it would be good to get her mind off of some of the fears and anxieties that had been plaguing her whenever she thought about graduation and the real world and the future that she was expected to have.
But a night in Chicago sounded good, even if she'd be there on her own, and thoughts of the Art Institute were keeping her spirits up. She weaved in and out of the seats, looking for a good place to hunker down with her books, when she heard someone swear loudly to her left.
It was Elsie Snuffin, one of her mother's speechwriters. She was fairly new and very young and Zoey was happy to count her a friend. At twenty-five, just three years older than Zoey was, Elsie was the only one on either of her parents' staffs even close to Zoey in age and she had a wicked sense of humor. It was nice, too, to have someone to talk to who understood what life was like in the public eye. Elsie's father held some sort of position in NATO. Zoey wasn't entirely sure what it was, but she knew that Elsie had spent her formative years surrounded by foreign leaders and visiting dignitaries.
She liked spending time with people who had nothing to do with her father, yeah, but sometimes it was nice to commiserate with someone who understood.
"What's wrong?" she asked Elsie, dropping into the empty chair next to her. Elsie glanced up at her in surprise, but then sighed and rolled her eyes.
"Nothing," she said. "My stupid brother borrowed my CD player and used up all the batteries. I'm going to kill him." She reached into her bag and pulled out a handheld tape recorder, then snapped the batteries out and swapped them for the ones in her CD player. When she hit play again, "LO BTTRY" flashed across the small digital screen. "Dammit! I'm going to kill my brother and his boyfriend."
"I think I have some spares," Zoey said. She opened the side flap of her messenger bag, revealing a plastic baggie of AAs. "I try to always be prepared," she said, grinning. "If I don't have headphones on, my dad tends to take it as an open invitation to start a lecture on whatever pointless trivia he's got stored up."
"Sounds like Willy," Elsie said, and Zoey smirked. Elsie's brother worked for her father, and while Zoey knew the two of them were basically best friends, she also knew Will had been wearing on Elsie's nerves. To be honest, she was a little jealous. She and her sisters got along as kids, but as they grew up and their interests diverged, she felt distant from them. Sometimes she thought she had more in common with her fifteen year old niece than either of her sisters. Elsie and Will, on the other hand, were always on the same page. Well, on most things, at least.
"Has he finally moved all his stuff out of your living room?" Zoey asked. Elsie rolled her eyes again.
"Of course not," she said. "He's been living with this guy for a couple months now but it's like he's still afraid they're going to break up any minute. It doesn't make any sense for this crap to be cluttering up my very limited space, but try telling that to him."
"Do you think they're going to break up?" Zoey asked. She was genuinely interested; it wasn't that she had never met a gay guy before as much as it was that Will was the exact opposite of the flamboyant boys in her high school drama club and the fashion obsessed leaders of the campus pride group. She thought it was kind of cool, especially since Elsie's parents seemed to have no problem with it. She tried to downplay it in front of Elsie when she could--she didn't want to see naive--but she liked hearing silly stories about Will and his boyfriend whenever Elsie felt like telling them.
"No," Elsie said. "They're disgustingly in love."
"Aw! I think that's sweet," she said.
"Don't let Will and Grace fool you," Elsie said. "Gay guys are just as afraid of commitment as straight guys are. They won't actually admit that they're disgustingly in love, but anyone who spends more than two seconds with them can tell."
"I'm jealous as anything, but that's still cute," Zoey said.
"Oh, come on," Elsie said. "You have Jean Paul, right?" Zoey just shrugged. Jean Paul was a subject that was starting to make her uncomfortable whenever it was broached. At first, she had reveled in the attention he gave her. He made her feel special, like she was the most important thing in the world, like her father didn't matter. It was sweet, but she was starting to realize that he was nothing more than a shallow figurehead. He didn't care about books or film or world politics or any of the things that Zoey was interested in.
He cared about her, though, and that was going to have to be good enough for the time being.
"Jean Paul is..." she started to say, wondering how she could explain this to Elsie. "He's--" She glanced up and stopped short when she saw her mother walking quickly towards them. "Mom?"
Zoey knew it was bad news immediately. She felt it in the weight of her mother's stare, in the way she was paler than usual. She felt something hard and heavy settle into her stomach. No. It wasn't fair. This had already happened to them once, it wasn't supposed to happen again.
"Girls, I... I don't know how to--there's been a shooting at the White House."
The weight in Zoey's stomach turned into full on nausea.
"Dad..." Zoey whispered. "Charlie, Mom, is--"
"Zoey, your father and Charlie are fine, but, Elsie..."
Zoey whirled to look at Elsie, who looked confused and shocked, feeling guilty that her immediate response was, Oh thank god, not again, thank god...
"I... I don't... what?" she asked.
"Your brother, Elsie," her mom said. "I'm sorry, but Will was shot. We need to go to the hospital right now. They have a car waiting for us."
Elsie didn't seem to be moving, so Zoey took her hand and pulled her to her feet. She fumbled for her purse, but Zoey was already on auto-pilot, pulling Elsie towards the exit of the plane. She could do this. She had done it before, and it had been about a zillion times worse. It was her dad that time, and although she loved Elsie like a sister, Will was nothing more than one of her dad's staffers. She could keep herself together enough to be a friend to Elsie, especially since it meant she didn't have to think about how close her father and Charlie had come to another bullet.
"But... but Will's not even supposed to be there!" Elsie said in a daze as Zoey and her mother pulled Elsie down the stairs. "It's his weekend--he's..."
She froze all of a sudden, going stock still so fast that Zoey nearly tripped over her.
"Oh my god," she said. "Oh my god, he changed his flight this morning and he never changed it back after... oh my god, he can't be--" Abruptly, she turned to Zoey's mom with wide eyes. "Someone needs to call Sam."
There was a limo waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs and two secret service agents were standing outside of it. Zoey tried to hustle Elsie towards it, but she was still stricken and babbling.
"What do you mean, sweetie?" her mom said, pulling Elsie towards the car. "Who's Sam?"
"Sam!" Elsie insisted, and Zoey saw tears starting to well up in her eyes. "Sam Seaborn, Willy is--Sam is his boyfriend, no one knows, no one's going to--oh my god, Will!"
She was shaking when Zoey and her mother pushed her into car, tears rolling down her cheeks. Zoey put an arm around her shoulders as the car sped away and Elsie began to cry outright. She was worried and upset, but also a little shocked. Will was dating Sam. Sam Seaborn. Josh's best friend, who all the girls had a little crush on when they weren't too busy crushing on Josh himself. Josh had always seemed like more of a big brother to Zoey than anything else, but Sam... Mallory had dated Sam. Or, well, not quite dated, but still. Sam was definitely interested and something had definitely happened between them and Sam was gay?
"This is just... this can't be real," Elsie whispered, and that was as good as anything at pulling Zoey back into the present. She had to shove the idea of Sam and Will into the back of her mind, throw it into a compartment along with the fact that she was way too concerned for Charlie's well-being and that the thought of her father being around guns still gave her a stomachache and deal with it all once she was sure Elsie was okay, that Will would be okay.
But, god, Sam? Even as she pulled Elsie into a hug, it was still something she couldn't quite wrap her mind around.
***
Elsie couldn't stop thinking about how angry she had been at Will. It was a stupid thing, using up her batteries, but she was so frustrated with him, ready to call him up and shout at him, and now he was shot and in critical condition and in the hospital.
All she had done for the last week was complain--about his things in her living room, about borrowing her things, about blowing off their weekly lunch to go out with Sam, about refusing to go up to Chris' for dinner. They hadn't had a conversation in six days that hadn't ended in blown tempers, and just thinking about it made her want to throw up.
She was actually in the bathroom, hovering over a sink with her mother at her shoulder when Donna came in with the news. She had already thrown up twice, and was relatively sure that her stomach had little left to give, but she couldn't be sure.
"I just thought--" Donna said haltingly. "Um, Will's awake. Sam and the General and the President just went in to see him, and I'm sure he'd want to see you."
"What do you say, baby?" her mother asked, and Elsie nodded fervently. Just knowing that Will was awake seemed to make the nausea pass, and if she could actually see him, maybe she'd be able to sleep sometime in the next decade without having nightmares.
"Let's go see Willy," she said.
The hallway leading up to Will's hospital room went on for ages. They passed the President, who paused to kiss her mother on the cheek and squeeze Elsie's shoulder.
"He's a little stoned from the pain medication, but he looks like he's going to be fine," he told them. Elsie nodded, but her attention was on the open door at the end of the hall.
"Thank you, sir," her mother said. "We're going to head in now."
The President nodded at them both and went back down the hall, trailed by two secret service agents. Elsie went towards the room, but stopped when her mother put a hand on her shoulder.
"Hold up, baby, let's clean your face off, okay?" Elsie turned and looked up at her, wincing when she got a tissue in the eye as her mother wiped tears and mascara from her cheeks and snot from her nose, like she was six years old getting ready to meet a foreign dignitary.
"Mom!" she said, swiping at her mother's hands and glaring when she just laughed.
"There you go," her mother said. "Go see your brother."
She walked quickly into the hospital room, only hesitating for a moment when she saw her father sitting on the foot of Will's bed and Sam in the chair next to it, clutching Will's good hand between his own. Sam looked terrible, but there was a calm about him that had been missing during the long hours they spent together in the waiting room. He didn't look like he was going to let go of Will's hand anytime soon, but he also wasn't going to keel over from the grief of it all.
Will, on the other hand, looked like hell. He was pale, with dark circles under his eyes and a bruise on his forehead. One of his arms was in a sling and held tightly against his chest. He was dazed, eyes glassy, glasses askew, and still somehow managed to spot Elsie the moment she walked into the room.
"Elsie-boo," he said, face breaking out into a goofy grin, and Sam and her father turned to look at her. She froze.
"You haven't called me that since I was eight years old," she said. She swallowed against the lump welling up in her throat. Oh, he was so stoned, but she didn't care.
"In front of the whoooole swim team," Will said proudly.
"I didn't speak to you for two weeks," she said, and she couldn't hold back a giggle. "I locked you in the pantry for eight hours that night."
"Worth it," Will said. He took his hand back from Sam, though Sam seemed reluctant to let go, and waved at her. "I miss you, Elsie."
That was it. Of all of the ridiculous, stoned things that Will could have said to her, of all of the stupid things he could have mentioned, he had to go and say he missed her. He had to--
She hadn't even realized she had run over to the bed until she was very carefully wrapping her arms around Will and sobbing into his shoulder.
"You idiot," she cried. "You should have changed your flight back! You should have--after Sam cancelled, you should have just--you could have--oh god, Will, why are you so stubborn?"
She was embarrassed to be crying so openly in front of Sam, but she knew it was long past the point where he was just a handsome stranger both she and Will wanted to impress. He was family now, and more than that, she knew that he understood, that if it was up to Sam, Will would be locked in a room away from anything that might hurt him for the rest of his life.
And if she didn't know it when she started to cry, she certainly knew it when Sam put a hand on her back, right between her shoulder blades, rubbing gently as she sobbed and Will blinked at her in confusion.
"Did I do something?" Will asked when Elsie finally pulled away. She had to laugh at that, and she wasn't the only one. Sam was laughing too, though he looked precariously close to crying as well.
"No, Will," Sam said, reaching out to brush his hair back. "You didn't do anything."
Abruptly, Will's eyes started to droop. "M'tired," he muttered, lying back against the pillows.
"That would be the morphine," Sam said. Elsie stepped back from the bed, smiling fondly.
"Get some sleep," she said. "I love you so much."
"Love you too," Will muttered. He grabbed Sam's hand again. "You too, okay?"
"I know," Sam said. There was a tenderness to his voice that made Elsie hurt inside. "Go to sleep, Will. I'll be here when you wake up, I promise."
Will's head listed to the side and he was asleep a split second later. Elsie would have marveled at it if she wasn't so busy wiping at her eyes again.
"We're going to go get some coffee," her mother said. Elsie blushed; she had completely forgotten her parents were even in the room. She turned to them, smiling sheepishly. They were holding hands and standing at the foot of Will's bed. "It's going to be a long night, sweetie. Do you want anything?" She shook her head. She couldn't even think about eating. "What about you, Sam?"
"I'm fine," Sam said quietly. "Thank you, Mrs. Bailey."
"Barbara, please," her mother said. "No one calls me Mrs. Bailey except for General Bailey when he's trying to cause trouble." Elsie laughed at that and even Sam cracked a smile."We'll be right back."
Elsie watched her parents leave and then turned back to Sam. He was still staring at Will and still looked slightly broken, as if a piece of him was missing.
"Are you okay, Sammy?" she asked quietly, settling into the chair next to his. Sam looked at her and smiled again.
"You call me that just to bother me," he said, and she tried her best to smile back as she nodded. "I... god, Elsie, this is a mess. It's all--this is my fault. I got him the job, I made him change his flight and stay late and I just--"
"It's not your fault," Elsie said quickly. "He's an idiot, it's his own fault, it's just--don't blame yourself for this."
"Can I at least blame myself for what's going to come next?" He swallowed and looked away, looked back at her sleeping brother with his disheveled hair and his mouth part way open, dead to the world.
"It depends," Elsie said quietly. Sam wouldn't break up with Will after this, she absolutely knew that. But that didn't stop her from feeling dizzy with worry. "What's coming next, Sam?"
Sam stood up and sat on the edge of Will's bed. He didn't touch Will, just stared down at him in silence for a long time.
"I did something stupid tonight, Els," he said. "I ran in here like a lunatic. I yelled at anyone who would listen that I needed to see Will. I begged and cajoled and I did it in the lobby in front of everyone. It's not going to take long for them to put the pieces together, and when they do..." He turned to her, and that broken feeling hit her again, full force. "I don't want him to go through this, Elsie. I don't care about me anymore. I mean, I do. I'm not--I'm not happy about any of this, but when it comes out, they're going to drag him through everything. He was just shot. He's... Jesus, Elsie, he's still a mess, they're not even done with him yet, and the press and my constituents and the Republican party... I don't want him to have to go through it. He deserves better."
Sam leaned over and kissed Will's forehead before standing up and returning to the seat next to Elsie. Elsie took his hand and held it tightly, but said nothing. She was tired of crying, and figured that Sam would just argue with her if she tried to tell him that, despite everything, Will was lucky enough to get exactly what he deserved.
***
Click here for Part 2.
Let me rephrase that. I know more than a lot of people. I went to a pretty gay hippie school and there were a couple of trans people on campus. I'm aware of trans issues, which I think puts me in a slightly more educated group than most of the population of the world, but I'm not entirely knowledgeable about them. I can't give witty insight or tell a personal story, and I certainly don't feel qualified to write a piece of fiction based on it.
So for more information on trans issues and to peruse what people smarter than I have to say on the issue, read today's essay over at 14valentines.
For a story about Sam and Will and coming out and the ladies in their lives, continue on.
***
Title: Not Made of Things Which Do Appear, Part 1/2
Fandom: The West Wing, Sam/Will
Rating: PG?
Summary: The people in Sam and Will's lives watch them try and put the pieces back together after Will is shot.
Notes: The sequel-ish thing to Substance of Things Hoped For, which is, in itself, an AU of "Evidence of Things Not Seen." These are all the characters I ended up cutting from the first story. This one will make more sense if you've read that one, but if you haven't, you should be able to understand it by knowing that it's basically an AU of the aforementioned episode wherein Will gets shot in the press room and the staff and Sam have to deal with the consequences. This is split into two parts. The rest will be posted tomorrow. The title, like the title of the episode and the title of the previous fic, is from Hebrews 11.
***
She wasn't sure what made her change her mind, but Zoey found herself climbing the stairs to her mother's plane on a night that she had planned on studying with her roommates. It was just a quick trip, she had reasoned, and it would be good to get her mind off of some of the fears and anxieties that had been plaguing her whenever she thought about graduation and the real world and the future that she was expected to have.
But a night in Chicago sounded good, even if she'd be there on her own, and thoughts of the Art Institute were keeping her spirits up. She weaved in and out of the seats, looking for a good place to hunker down with her books, when she heard someone swear loudly to her left.
It was Elsie Snuffin, one of her mother's speechwriters. She was fairly new and very young and Zoey was happy to count her a friend. At twenty-five, just three years older than Zoey was, Elsie was the only one on either of her parents' staffs even close to Zoey in age and she had a wicked sense of humor. It was nice, too, to have someone to talk to who understood what life was like in the public eye. Elsie's father held some sort of position in NATO. Zoey wasn't entirely sure what it was, but she knew that Elsie had spent her formative years surrounded by foreign leaders and visiting dignitaries.
She liked spending time with people who had nothing to do with her father, yeah, but sometimes it was nice to commiserate with someone who understood.
"What's wrong?" she asked Elsie, dropping into the empty chair next to her. Elsie glanced up at her in surprise, but then sighed and rolled her eyes.
"Nothing," she said. "My stupid brother borrowed my CD player and used up all the batteries. I'm going to kill him." She reached into her bag and pulled out a handheld tape recorder, then snapped the batteries out and swapped them for the ones in her CD player. When she hit play again, "LO BTTRY" flashed across the small digital screen. "Dammit! I'm going to kill my brother and his boyfriend."
"I think I have some spares," Zoey said. She opened the side flap of her messenger bag, revealing a plastic baggie of AAs. "I try to always be prepared," she said, grinning. "If I don't have headphones on, my dad tends to take it as an open invitation to start a lecture on whatever pointless trivia he's got stored up."
"Sounds like Willy," Elsie said, and Zoey smirked. Elsie's brother worked for her father, and while Zoey knew the two of them were basically best friends, she also knew Will had been wearing on Elsie's nerves. To be honest, she was a little jealous. She and her sisters got along as kids, but as they grew up and their interests diverged, she felt distant from them. Sometimes she thought she had more in common with her fifteen year old niece than either of her sisters. Elsie and Will, on the other hand, were always on the same page. Well, on most things, at least.
"Has he finally moved all his stuff out of your living room?" Zoey asked. Elsie rolled her eyes again.
"Of course not," she said. "He's been living with this guy for a couple months now but it's like he's still afraid they're going to break up any minute. It doesn't make any sense for this crap to be cluttering up my very limited space, but try telling that to him."
"Do you think they're going to break up?" Zoey asked. She was genuinely interested; it wasn't that she had never met a gay guy before as much as it was that Will was the exact opposite of the flamboyant boys in her high school drama club and the fashion obsessed leaders of the campus pride group. She thought it was kind of cool, especially since Elsie's parents seemed to have no problem with it. She tried to downplay it in front of Elsie when she could--she didn't want to see naive--but she liked hearing silly stories about Will and his boyfriend whenever Elsie felt like telling them.
"No," Elsie said. "They're disgustingly in love."
"Aw! I think that's sweet," she said.
"Don't let Will and Grace fool you," Elsie said. "Gay guys are just as afraid of commitment as straight guys are. They won't actually admit that they're disgustingly in love, but anyone who spends more than two seconds with them can tell."
"I'm jealous as anything, but that's still cute," Zoey said.
"Oh, come on," Elsie said. "You have Jean Paul, right?" Zoey just shrugged. Jean Paul was a subject that was starting to make her uncomfortable whenever it was broached. At first, she had reveled in the attention he gave her. He made her feel special, like she was the most important thing in the world, like her father didn't matter. It was sweet, but she was starting to realize that he was nothing more than a shallow figurehead. He didn't care about books or film or world politics or any of the things that Zoey was interested in.
He cared about her, though, and that was going to have to be good enough for the time being.
"Jean Paul is..." she started to say, wondering how she could explain this to Elsie. "He's--" She glanced up and stopped short when she saw her mother walking quickly towards them. "Mom?"
Zoey knew it was bad news immediately. She felt it in the weight of her mother's stare, in the way she was paler than usual. She felt something hard and heavy settle into her stomach. No. It wasn't fair. This had already happened to them once, it wasn't supposed to happen again.
"Girls, I... I don't know how to--there's been a shooting at the White House."
The weight in Zoey's stomach turned into full on nausea.
"Dad..." Zoey whispered. "Charlie, Mom, is--"
"Zoey, your father and Charlie are fine, but, Elsie..."
Zoey whirled to look at Elsie, who looked confused and shocked, feeling guilty that her immediate response was, Oh thank god, not again, thank god...
"I... I don't... what?" she asked.
"Your brother, Elsie," her mom said. "I'm sorry, but Will was shot. We need to go to the hospital right now. They have a car waiting for us."
Elsie didn't seem to be moving, so Zoey took her hand and pulled her to her feet. She fumbled for her purse, but Zoey was already on auto-pilot, pulling Elsie towards the exit of the plane. She could do this. She had done it before, and it had been about a zillion times worse. It was her dad that time, and although she loved Elsie like a sister, Will was nothing more than one of her dad's staffers. She could keep herself together enough to be a friend to Elsie, especially since it meant she didn't have to think about how close her father and Charlie had come to another bullet.
"But... but Will's not even supposed to be there!" Elsie said in a daze as Zoey and her mother pulled Elsie down the stairs. "It's his weekend--he's..."
She froze all of a sudden, going stock still so fast that Zoey nearly tripped over her.
"Oh my god," she said. "Oh my god, he changed his flight this morning and he never changed it back after... oh my god, he can't be--" Abruptly, she turned to Zoey's mom with wide eyes. "Someone needs to call Sam."
There was a limo waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs and two secret service agents were standing outside of it. Zoey tried to hustle Elsie towards it, but she was still stricken and babbling.
"What do you mean, sweetie?" her mom said, pulling Elsie towards the car. "Who's Sam?"
"Sam!" Elsie insisted, and Zoey saw tears starting to well up in her eyes. "Sam Seaborn, Willy is--Sam is his boyfriend, no one knows, no one's going to--oh my god, Will!"
She was shaking when Zoey and her mother pushed her into car, tears rolling down her cheeks. Zoey put an arm around her shoulders as the car sped away and Elsie began to cry outright. She was worried and upset, but also a little shocked. Will was dating Sam. Sam Seaborn. Josh's best friend, who all the girls had a little crush on when they weren't too busy crushing on Josh himself. Josh had always seemed like more of a big brother to Zoey than anything else, but Sam... Mallory had dated Sam. Or, well, not quite dated, but still. Sam was definitely interested and something had definitely happened between them and Sam was gay?
"This is just... this can't be real," Elsie whispered, and that was as good as anything at pulling Zoey back into the present. She had to shove the idea of Sam and Will into the back of her mind, throw it into a compartment along with the fact that she was way too concerned for Charlie's well-being and that the thought of her father being around guns still gave her a stomachache and deal with it all once she was sure Elsie was okay, that Will would be okay.
But, god, Sam? Even as she pulled Elsie into a hug, it was still something she couldn't quite wrap her mind around.
***
Elsie couldn't stop thinking about how angry she had been at Will. It was a stupid thing, using up her batteries, but she was so frustrated with him, ready to call him up and shout at him, and now he was shot and in critical condition and in the hospital.
All she had done for the last week was complain--about his things in her living room, about borrowing her things, about blowing off their weekly lunch to go out with Sam, about refusing to go up to Chris' for dinner. They hadn't had a conversation in six days that hadn't ended in blown tempers, and just thinking about it made her want to throw up.
She was actually in the bathroom, hovering over a sink with her mother at her shoulder when Donna came in with the news. She had already thrown up twice, and was relatively sure that her stomach had little left to give, but she couldn't be sure.
"I just thought--" Donna said haltingly. "Um, Will's awake. Sam and the General and the President just went in to see him, and I'm sure he'd want to see you."
"What do you say, baby?" her mother asked, and Elsie nodded fervently. Just knowing that Will was awake seemed to make the nausea pass, and if she could actually see him, maybe she'd be able to sleep sometime in the next decade without having nightmares.
"Let's go see Willy," she said.
The hallway leading up to Will's hospital room went on for ages. They passed the President, who paused to kiss her mother on the cheek and squeeze Elsie's shoulder.
"He's a little stoned from the pain medication, but he looks like he's going to be fine," he told them. Elsie nodded, but her attention was on the open door at the end of the hall.
"Thank you, sir," her mother said. "We're going to head in now."
The President nodded at them both and went back down the hall, trailed by two secret service agents. Elsie went towards the room, but stopped when her mother put a hand on her shoulder.
"Hold up, baby, let's clean your face off, okay?" Elsie turned and looked up at her, wincing when she got a tissue in the eye as her mother wiped tears and mascara from her cheeks and snot from her nose, like she was six years old getting ready to meet a foreign dignitary.
"Mom!" she said, swiping at her mother's hands and glaring when she just laughed.
"There you go," her mother said. "Go see your brother."
She walked quickly into the hospital room, only hesitating for a moment when she saw her father sitting on the foot of Will's bed and Sam in the chair next to it, clutching Will's good hand between his own. Sam looked terrible, but there was a calm about him that had been missing during the long hours they spent together in the waiting room. He didn't look like he was going to let go of Will's hand anytime soon, but he also wasn't going to keel over from the grief of it all.
Will, on the other hand, looked like hell. He was pale, with dark circles under his eyes and a bruise on his forehead. One of his arms was in a sling and held tightly against his chest. He was dazed, eyes glassy, glasses askew, and still somehow managed to spot Elsie the moment she walked into the room.
"Elsie-boo," he said, face breaking out into a goofy grin, and Sam and her father turned to look at her. She froze.
"You haven't called me that since I was eight years old," she said. She swallowed against the lump welling up in her throat. Oh, he was so stoned, but she didn't care.
"In front of the whoooole swim team," Will said proudly.
"I didn't speak to you for two weeks," she said, and she couldn't hold back a giggle. "I locked you in the pantry for eight hours that night."
"Worth it," Will said. He took his hand back from Sam, though Sam seemed reluctant to let go, and waved at her. "I miss you, Elsie."
That was it. Of all of the ridiculous, stoned things that Will could have said to her, of all of the stupid things he could have mentioned, he had to go and say he missed her. He had to--
She hadn't even realized she had run over to the bed until she was very carefully wrapping her arms around Will and sobbing into his shoulder.
"You idiot," she cried. "You should have changed your flight back! You should have--after Sam cancelled, you should have just--you could have--oh god, Will, why are you so stubborn?"
She was embarrassed to be crying so openly in front of Sam, but she knew it was long past the point where he was just a handsome stranger both she and Will wanted to impress. He was family now, and more than that, she knew that he understood, that if it was up to Sam, Will would be locked in a room away from anything that might hurt him for the rest of his life.
And if she didn't know it when she started to cry, she certainly knew it when Sam put a hand on her back, right between her shoulder blades, rubbing gently as she sobbed and Will blinked at her in confusion.
"Did I do something?" Will asked when Elsie finally pulled away. She had to laugh at that, and she wasn't the only one. Sam was laughing too, though he looked precariously close to crying as well.
"No, Will," Sam said, reaching out to brush his hair back. "You didn't do anything."
Abruptly, Will's eyes started to droop. "M'tired," he muttered, lying back against the pillows.
"That would be the morphine," Sam said. Elsie stepped back from the bed, smiling fondly.
"Get some sleep," she said. "I love you so much."
"Love you too," Will muttered. He grabbed Sam's hand again. "You too, okay?"
"I know," Sam said. There was a tenderness to his voice that made Elsie hurt inside. "Go to sleep, Will. I'll be here when you wake up, I promise."
Will's head listed to the side and he was asleep a split second later. Elsie would have marveled at it if she wasn't so busy wiping at her eyes again.
"We're going to go get some coffee," her mother said. Elsie blushed; she had completely forgotten her parents were even in the room. She turned to them, smiling sheepishly. They were holding hands and standing at the foot of Will's bed. "It's going to be a long night, sweetie. Do you want anything?" She shook her head. She couldn't even think about eating. "What about you, Sam?"
"I'm fine," Sam said quietly. "Thank you, Mrs. Bailey."
"Barbara, please," her mother said. "No one calls me Mrs. Bailey except for General Bailey when he's trying to cause trouble." Elsie laughed at that and even Sam cracked a smile."We'll be right back."
Elsie watched her parents leave and then turned back to Sam. He was still staring at Will and still looked slightly broken, as if a piece of him was missing.
"Are you okay, Sammy?" she asked quietly, settling into the chair next to his. Sam looked at her and smiled again.
"You call me that just to bother me," he said, and she tried her best to smile back as she nodded. "I... god, Elsie, this is a mess. It's all--this is my fault. I got him the job, I made him change his flight and stay late and I just--"
"It's not your fault," Elsie said quickly. "He's an idiot, it's his own fault, it's just--don't blame yourself for this."
"Can I at least blame myself for what's going to come next?" He swallowed and looked away, looked back at her sleeping brother with his disheveled hair and his mouth part way open, dead to the world.
"It depends," Elsie said quietly. Sam wouldn't break up with Will after this, she absolutely knew that. But that didn't stop her from feeling dizzy with worry. "What's coming next, Sam?"
Sam stood up and sat on the edge of Will's bed. He didn't touch Will, just stared down at him in silence for a long time.
"I did something stupid tonight, Els," he said. "I ran in here like a lunatic. I yelled at anyone who would listen that I needed to see Will. I begged and cajoled and I did it in the lobby in front of everyone. It's not going to take long for them to put the pieces together, and when they do..." He turned to her, and that broken feeling hit her again, full force. "I don't want him to go through this, Elsie. I don't care about me anymore. I mean, I do. I'm not--I'm not happy about any of this, but when it comes out, they're going to drag him through everything. He was just shot. He's... Jesus, Elsie, he's still a mess, they're not even done with him yet, and the press and my constituents and the Republican party... I don't want him to have to go through it. He deserves better."
Sam leaned over and kissed Will's forehead before standing up and returning to the seat next to Elsie. Elsie took his hand and held it tightly, but said nothing. She was tired of crying, and figured that Sam would just argue with her if she tried to tell him that, despite everything, Will was lucky enough to get exactly what he deserved.
***
Click here for Part 2.