Fandom:

The West Wing AU

Pairing:

C.J./Danny

Rating:

PG-13 for topic

Distribution:

How much do I owe you for hauling it off?

Spoilers:

Up to and including Full Disclosure, from which the series follows on

Email:

exfilia at livejournal dot com

Disclaimer:

if I owned them, they'd have a lot more fun

Warning:

mentions nonconsensual sex

Note:

Hoynes lovers should probably be hitting delete right about now.

"Bernard? I need you to do something for me."

"I don't work for you."

"The boss won't mind. It's in all our interests."

"I should think you and I have a very limited field of commonality of interest."

"I think you don't want me to tell anyone what you did to that reporter before you rolled her car into the pond."

"I didn't do anything to her."

"Yeah? So how come she woke up? She was trying to claw her way out of the car. Not very effectively, because she was groggy, but still, she was trying."

"She resisted the anesthetic."

"The dosage was precisely calculated. She should never have regained consciousness, but she did, because she lived fifteen or twenty minutes longer than she was meant to. Now what does that time interval suggest to you?"

"Heavy traffic on the Bay Bridge?"

"I think it suggests that you owe me a favor, Bernard, one very small favor."

"I did not do this," he said. "I am not... him."

"You want to try to tell that to the boss?"

"What is it that you need me to do?"

"Mal, I need you to do me a favor."

"I thought we agreed that I could stay away from the White House for a while."

"Yeah, but it's been... how long a while do you want?"

"Forever, maybe?"

"Whatever. This doesn't have to be at the White House. I need you to play hostess."

"So I don't have anything to do with the White House; I just set you up for your little political machinations? How big is this thing going to be?"

"Forty, fifty people. It's a dance, here at the Watergate."

"Excuse me?"

"A dance, Mallory. Three or four guys playing music and ladies in prom dresses spinning around a dance floor."

"You're giving a dance?"

"Well, it was that or a luau, and that always makes me think of that movie back when Travolta could dance."

"Travolta never could dance."

"Whatever you say. But you're up for this?"

"When you tell me what it's all about."

"We can't just say it's getting Percy Fitzwallis together with Senators Teague and Esperanza about the clinics in Deburras?"

"No."

"...which will in fact be happening. Think of all those little girls...."

"Daddy."

"Josh says Danny Concannon doesn't have any family."

"So you're taking him to the prom?"

"An engagement party, Mallory. The groom's family is actually supposed to...."

"Don't rub it in, Daddy. It was a long time ago. Besides, a dance? You couldn't just have cocktails in the Mural Room?"

"C.J. loves to dance. Besides, it was in this wedding shower book Margaret had. Seemed like a better idea than the Irish heritage thing. Come on, Mallory, everybody else at the White House is involved in this. Let's you and me play, too."

"We're adopting Danny Concannon?"

"You always wanted a brother."

"I didn't want one quite so much like my dad."

"Detach yourself from the keyboard, Daniel."

"I can't. I plugged the cord into my navel, and...."

"Then bring it with you. Dinner's ready."

"In a minute."

"God, you'd think we'd been married for decades!"

"How much is a knock-off Korean missile?"

"I wouldn't know. I haven't actually shopped for missiles, lately, but I do know that out-of-season asparagus such as that currently congealing on our plates...."

"The government of Deburras just bought six Korean Cormorant missiles capable of mounting nuclear warheads."

"I wish people would quit saying that."

"What?"

"'Capable of mounting.' I mean, you can mount a nuclear warhead on a golf cart nowadays. Isn't it pretty obvious that you could mount one on almost any missile?"

"You could mount one on a vacuum cleaner, but that wouldn't get it to southern Europe and the Middle East."

"You think the Deburris want to blow up the Riviera?"

"I don't care."

"I do!"

"I want to know where the Deburris got the money to buy six Cormorants."

"Do they have exports?"

"Fundamentalist mullahs."

"You know, the president was saying something similar a while ago, wondering where they're getting the money to run forty health clinics."

"And why?" said Danny. "Health care for peasants isn't a real priority in most of the developing world."

"I wonder what else is going on in those clinics?"

"You want to leak it, or you want me to?"