Dreaming of Q - Chapter Four

[themistoklis]

Title: Dreaming of Q
Fandom: Fake News, U.S. politics
Summary: The West Wing crew is starting to worry, really worry, about Rahm. Wyatt doesn't entirely understand what's going on with Jon and Stephen, but he's a little too tired to care. And the interns at The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are finding their jobs harder than ever.
Character/Pairing: "Stephen"/Jon, Peter Orszag, Zeke Emanuel, Wyatt Cenac, assorted interns
Rating: PG-13, language
Length: ~3200 words
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Notes: Co-written with the ever excellent doctorv. Thanks endlessly much to the lovely sirdrakesheir for intense betaing, and sailorptah for proofreading. Star Trek crossover of a sort.

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three


Chapter 4

Hunched down on a bench behind the Old Executive Office Building, Peter had finally managed to grab fifteen minutes for lunch. All he had was a paper bag with a (squished) peanut-butter and jelly sandwich inside, a (slightly less squished) orange underneath it, and (remarkably untouched) Saltine crackers. But it was his, along with a whole quarter of the clock, and even if it was starting to drizzle he was going to enjoy his lunch in the D.C. weather like a regular person.

The door creaked open behind him and he dropped a slice of his orange in the dirt at his feet.

"Peter."

Blinking, Peter smiled and scooted over. "Dr. Emanuel," he said. Zeke sat down next to him and Peter looked down at his food, hesitantly ripping his sandwich in half. "Ah…"

Raising an eyebrow behind his glasses, Zeke held his hand up. "No thanks. … What is that?"

"Peanut butter and jelly."

The corner of Zeke's mouth twitched and he ducked his head, making Peter blush. He rubbed jelly off his lips with his knuckle and shifted uncomfortably, picking at his Saltines. The two of them may have worked together, but Zeke was supposed to be on the Hill that day. Yet here he was, sitting on a bench in the mildly damp air and staring at the grass like Peter wouldn't remember that.

Peter remembered everything.

"So, uh…" He swallowed around his sandwich and decided, for future reference, that peanut butter was a bad idea when there were no water bottles involved. "I guess you heard what happened this morning."

"Axe called me," Zeke said, folding his hands in his lap. "And I may have watched the show this morning."

"You don't have a TV."

"One of my assistants made me watch it on her phone," he said, frowning. He held up his hands in the vague approximation of a rectangle and wiggled his fingers like he was typing on a keyboard. "We got some odd looks but Axe's call wasn't that big of a surprise. Plus, the interns think I'm cool now."

Peter pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "The interns always thought you were cool," he drawled.

Though he definitely did not mention that most of that was due to the interns being impressed with anyone who could make Rahm blush and stammer like that (such is the power of an older brother). Peter half-wished that he could think of an excuse to get Ari to show up at the White House, if only to see people's reactions.

"So are you going to go talk to him?" he asked, eating the crust off the other half of his sandwich.

He was still a bit deaf in one ear from Rahm's … episode that morning. The poor intern who'd been showing the clip to Rahm's secretary had left the room in tears, which had gotten Rahm in bad with the entire secretarial pool for the day. No laughing matter in the White House, and the last time Peter had been braced enough to duck his head into the West Wing it had been a bit of a mess. Poor Mona and Jim were running around trying to get him back into everyone's good graces, and he was still stomping around muttering about media conspiracies and exceptions to the first amendment.

"Bestow a little elder brother wisdom?" Zeke asked, tilting his head to one side. "Swoop in and shake some sense into him? Make him see how ridiculous and fucking stupid this feud with a television show host is, when most people in the audience like him more whenever he-who-shall-not-be-named brings him up?"

Swallowing, Peter gave him a thumbs-up. "That'd be good."

Zeke smiled in that slow, disconcerting way that made Rahm giggle. He leaned forward and ruffled Peter's hair, ignoring it when the other man ducked and stammered slightly. "Mostly what I'm going to do is mock him until Barack breaks us up. He doesn't like to see his Chief of Staff cry."

"Oh, God, don't do that."

Shoving himself to his feet, Zeke stuck his hands on his hips and grinned. "The word you're missing there is again."

The doctor got a few feet away before Peter put his food down and inched to the edge of the bench. The drizzle was getting a bit harder now, the rain tracing the pinstripes in his jacket. "Colbert is really getting to him. He's not … I'm worried, Zeke," he murmured.

For a minute Zeke just stared at him, rain drops plopping onto his shoulders and turning spots of his shirt translucent. He wiped some mist off his glasses with the cuff of his sleeve and inhaled. "I'm going to talk to him, Peter." He paused and raised an eyebrow. "Did he really make an intern cry?"

"It was physically painful."

The wind was getting a bit loud, and Zeke's back was to him, but Peter could've sworn he heard him say Might need to get Mom involved.

---

Wyatt ducked his head into the break room before sliding sideways through the door. Whoever had been in there last had left the light on, but the place was empty now -- which meant he had the couch to himself for his mid-afternoon, post-writing and pre-donut-delivery nap. The rest of the studio was so noisy: John chasing Rob around and Aasif groaning about something to Jason and Sam … well he wasn't sure what Sam was doing, but whenever she walked around in high heels laughing maniacally things were not good.

He hadn't seen Jon since that morning. The man's phone had gone off in the middle of a script about the fallout from the food fight in the House of Representatives cafeteria and he'd sauntered out the door with it cupped to his ear, one hand stuck in the pocket of his sweatpants. It was getting to where Wyatt could tell Jon's sweatpants apart, which was probably cause for concern.

But for now, a nap. If Jon was busy on the phone with Stephen (it wouldn't be anyone else, not at this time of day), then he had at least half an hour.

When he laid down, something crinkled underneath his head. Reaching behind him without sitting up produced a -- slightly ripped against the pillow -- newspaper. He blinked at it for a moment and dropped it on his chest. The pen Jon had been using to fill it out was still clipped to the edge. It had to have been Jon: nobody else around here did The New York Times in blue ink or tiny capital letters.

Ten down was scribbled in green ink, though, and different handwriting. Wormhole.

Wyatt carefully folded it up, glad that he hadn't ripped through any of the crossword's columns or rows, and let the paper tent over his head. With Sam in whatever mood she was in, he wasn't prepared to slink back into his office and find his sleep mask. Even if Aasif claimed Sam liked him and would never actually do anything.

Poised on the brink of sleep and already sensing weird dreams prickling at the edges of his brain, Wyatt nearly fell off the couch when the door suddenly swung open and the lights flicked on.

"Oh, Jesus, I'm sorry," Jon said, wincing. "You really ought to put something on the doorknob when you take your naps, Wyatt."

"Or I could just get a couch in my office."

A slow smile lit up Jon's eyes and he stepped into the room, lowering himself onto the arm of the couch. "I don't think a couch would fit in your office," he drawled.

Wyatt reluctantly sat up, tossing the paper onto the coffee table. Apparently Stephen had cut their conversation short, which he guessed meant that they were having another one of their fights. Most of those seemed to consist entirely of Stephen yelling a lot and Jon alternating between offended and confused. He didn't look like either of those at the moment, though, so maybe something shiny had caught Stephen's attention.

"So… was that Colbert on the phone?" Wyatt asked, after Jon's smile had faded and his eyes had glazed over for a moment.

He shook himself. "Yeah," he murmured, raking a hand through his hair. Without the gel smeared in it by the makeup department, it tended to flop into his eyes. "I think he's calming down. We talked about making up an Alive to Me board to make it up to the White House."

"…He's going to do that?"

"Probably not," he said, waving his hand vaguely. "But we have to keep trying. Eventually, something's going to reach him, and all this madness is going to stop."

Wyatt most definitely did not say anything in response. He pressed his lips together and nodded, elbow digging into his pillow. The nap might've been a lost cause, but maybe he could finish the crossword whenever Jon left. If he let go of the paper, it was free game for the rest of them. He hardly ever got hold of it before Aasif or John had done all the interesting ones.

"You and Stephen aren't close, are you?" Jon suddenly asked.

The break room was always comfortably warm, but now it felt a bit muggy. Wyatt tugged at his tie. "Uh. No. Before my time, you know," he said. Although there had been that one interlude, on election night, when he'd snuck over to the Report studio and lived out a moment of The Cenac Agenda. Stephen had been less than amused, but Jon had talked him down from that brink.

He was sure it wasn't just in his head: Jon's eyes were sparkling. "So you're a pretty much as outside an observer of his behavior as I'm going to find around here, aren't you?"

"Uh…"

"What do you think about him. Recently?"

For a brief moment he considered lying, but his deadpan wasn't that good yet, and besides, Jon's eyes were focused right on his. He swallowed and dug his fingers into his pillow a little. "I think he's gone off the deep end, sir."

Jon ducked his head. "Mmm."

"Uh… Jon?"

Patting his shoulder, Jon stood up. He turned around and left the room without saying anything else. Wyatt looked down at the crossword, spun the pen in his hand and tried to think of a four-letter word for the 'drive' of common faster than light travel.

---

There was a long-standing tradition among the interns of The Daily Show, of getting together at a nearby bar and bitching about their bosses and the on-air talent. When The Colbert Report had spun off from its parent show, the tradition had been carried over. The only difference was that the Report interns tended to drink more, remind people of recently released cult members, and win every unofficial game of "My Boss Is Worse." (The versions played between Report interns themselves were "My Boss Is A Cruel, Inhuman Monster" and "My Boss Is Insane But I Stick Around Because...")

That night, the Report interns were looking more shell-shocked than usual, forming protective clumps and clutching their alcohol like liquid security blankets.

Stephen Colbert was on a rampage and anyone who got in his way found themself the target of his unrelenting ire. The only one who had successfully escaped without a soul-stripping dressing-down had a background in improv. He had glanced over the man's shoulder, said "Mr. Stewart! What a pleasant surprise," and then fled when Stephen turned away to greet an empty hallway. The intern, Mark, was certain that Mr. Colbert was that very moment plotting his revenge and had spent the rest of the day hiding from him and shaking uncontrollably. Occasionally a sobbed "What was I thinking?" would escape him from the corner he had hidden away in. His fellow interns kept his glass full to go along with his new hero status, and hopefully pave the way towards a soothing blackout in the hours to come.

The Daily Show interns, feeling a kinship with their Report counterparts, decided it was only fair to warn them ahead of time that Mr. Colbert's wrath was likely to increase in the next few days. The seniormost intern, Molly, was elected their group's spokesperson and sighed and finished her drink before heading toward the nearest cluster of Report interns.

After swearing them to secrecy, she lowered her voice and hesitantly broke the news to them.

There were tears. There was cursing. There were denials. Then, once all the stages of grief but one had been exercised, finally came acceptance.

"None of us will make it out of this alive."

Molly patted the nearest shoulder and supportively said, "At least it'll be quick. He doesn't seem like the patient sort."

---

Warp fit snugly along with ergonomic and wormhole, but earned him a dirty look from his brother when Rahm finally walked through the door. Zeke carefully creased the paper and set it back down exactly where it had been -- though Rahm walked over and shifted the corner to line up with some imaginary point in his head. Zeke didn't even bother sighing as his little brother moved around behind his desk.

"What are you even doing over here?" he asked, dropping into his (undoubtedly ergonomic, Zeke thought) chair. He set his elbows on the table and let his tie hang forward. "Aren't you supposed to be over with Orszag typing funny words into your calculators?"

"That was one time."

It was amazing how much a smirk could change the man's face. You might even forget the bags under his eyes or the glitter of fury in his irises. "Uh-huh."

If he'd had more time, he might have delved into the joys of opening a brand new calculator, but he wasn't even sure how long Rahm was going to be here. Axe was looking for him, for one, late to his own office after a rough morning on the Hill and apparently upset that no one had called him about the intern incident. Zeke was probably lucky that Biden wasn't around that day, or he'd never have gotten hold of his brother.

"I heard you made someone cry this morning."

"God, tell me it was Limbaugh."

Zeke glared. He'd put Rahm in headlocks before -- the most recent one had been last week before breakfast -- he wasn't above doing it right then. "You know who I mean," he said, flatly.

Rahm wet his lips and looked down at the paperwork currently stacked on his desk. If you didn't know him, you might say with military precision. "So the asshole's not off weeping in a corner somewhere? Damn," he muttered, thumbing through a blue report that'd come out of Peter's office.

"Your secretary told me to knock you into shape, and Jim and Mona looked like they were glad nobody could find you when I got here," Zeke said. He let the subsequent pause lapse for a full thirty seconds before leaning forward and shifting Rahm's nameplate ever so slightly. Rahm froze, wrist-deep in paperwork, and Zeke resisted the urge to do the same to his tie. "What the hell's going on, Rahmi?"

"Don't call me that," Rahm snapped. His hand shot forward and readjusted his nameplate. "Nothing's going on besides arrogant knucklefucks deciding they know how to spend my time better than I do."

"Your secretary said you were behind by an hour."

"We're always behind by an hour. Stop touching my stuff!"

"I'm not touching your stuff," Zeke insisted, picking his fingertips up off the pen he'd been about to roll onto the floor. He leaned back in his chair and gripped the arms. If Peter was worried enough to raise the subject with him, and Rahm's eye was really twitching like it was, that morning's outburst must have been worse than he'd thought. "Do you still have that bag of M&Ms in your desk?"

"Not for you."

He sighed. "You realize it's just a comedy show, right?"

"Comedy shows are supposed to be funny," Rahm muttered.

"So he insulted you, so what?"

"I don't care about being insulted. I'm on the fucking front lines, I'm the one he's supposed to be chewing on," he said. He yanked a desk drawer open and came back out with a stack of Post-its and a Blackberry, which he typed a few messages on before meeting Zeke's eyes across the desk. "Is that all?"

Zeke folded his arms on the desk.

"Excuse you--" Rahm started.

"Barack's going to get hit once in a while, Rahm. You can't keep all the criticism away from him, you know that -- look at what the Right's been doing to him. None of that's got you nearly as … vitriolic as this one late night TV show host. One. The rest still seem to like him enough, Stewart seems to like him enough," Zeke murmured, cutting him off.

Rahm scowled. "Stewart's got half my staff fucking infatuated with him. I swear I'm going to find hearts scribbled on the next report Peter sends me."

"I've been erasing them," Zeke said. The look that skittered over Rahm's face was nearly too good to pass up. Nearly. "Besides, it's good for us and you know it. Stewart's audience is smart -- and so is Colbert's, they're going to like us no matter what the man says. You screamed at an intern over him. You don't think that you're taking this a little bit too far?"

The Blackberry screen went dark and Rahm set it down on his desk at about an eighty-nine degree angle, if Zeke was any judge. He leaned back and stared at it, hand coming down to settle on his chair. "Half the audience probably tunes out at the bottom of the hour," he said.

Zeke wasn't sure he was being talked to anymore. "In fact, Peter told me yesterday he was going back to New York to have dinner with Stewart," he deadpanned.

"The kind of people who watch Stewart's show, they're our fucking people. They voted for us."

"They like us," Zeke agreed. "I'm thinking about going with Peter. Maybe I'll even go on the show."

Rahm jumped up and slapped his palms on the table. "No!"

Zeke blinked. "I wasn't serious--"

"I'm going to go on Stewart's show."

"--I was just screwing with you. Took you long enough to notice, fuckwit," he finished, faltering. His glasses shifted slightly and the last couple of words out of his brother's mouth slid into place. "Oh."

Rahm smirked and grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair. He swept up the paper and tucked it under his arm with his water bottle, stomping over to the doorway loudly enough that his secretary was there to open it. Good thing, too, since he'd been barreling towards the door like it was just going to slide open for him.

Spinning to catch him earned Zeke a bruised knee and the desk a bruised ego. "Rahm, wait--"

"They're our motherfucking people, Zeke!" Rahm called, waving his water bottle in the air over his head. "It's time we take them fucking back!"

His brother had finally snapped.


Chapter Five

Comments

[erinptah]

"Swoop in and shake some sense into him? Make him see how ridiculous and fucking stupid this feud with a television show host is, when most people in the audience like him more whenever he-who-shall-not-be-named brings him up?"

Aw, but what would be the fun if Rahm didn't rise to the bait?

Might need to get Mom involved.

Now there is a truly horrifying prospect.

which meant he had the couch to himself for his mid-afternoon, post-writing and pre-donut-delivery nap.

I love that Wyatt has this so planned out :D

Most of those seemed to consist entirely of Stephen yelling a lot and Jon alternating between offended and confused. He didn't look like either of those at the moment, though, so maybe something shiny had caught Stephen's attention.

And such astute observational skills he has!

The only difference was that the Report interns tended to drink more, remind people of recently released cult members, and win every unofficial game of "My Boss Is Worse." (The versions played between Report interns themselves were "My Boss Is A Cruel, Inhuman Monster" and "My Boss Is Insane But I Stick Around Because...")

I'm kind of in awe of these interns. Heroes, indeed.

"Aren't you supposed to be over with Orszag typing funny words into your calculators?"

XD

"Stewart's got half my staff fucking infatuated with him. I swear I'm going to find hearts scribbled on the next report Peter sends me."

"I've been erasing them," Zeke said.

*hee*

"I'm going to go on Stewart's show."

And again: Dun dun dunnnn--