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.

"This place is informal this early in the morning."

Leo looked up and found Danny Concannon standing in his doorway.

"You're in early."

"Josh said you wanted to talk to me. He made it sound urgent."

"How much do you know about C.J.?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Sit down."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea."

"Don't be an idiot, Danny. If I didn't care about her, she'd have been fired years ago and you two would have a couple or three kids by now. Sit down."

"Trying not to be an idiot, here, but I don't see how C.J. single with no kids is such a good thing."

"You're right."

"Huh?"

"She, and all of us, would have been better off if that had happened. I was wrong. I should have let you take her away from us."

"What makes you think you stopped us?"

"It wasn't you that I stopped. This isn't what we're gonna talk about, though."

"I'm listening."

"C.J. believes in the existence of Mr. Right. She's put a lot of effort into finding him."

"You think she hasn't yet?"

"What I'm trying to tell you is that she's auditioned quite a few candidates."

"I think I'm following you, here. I didn't think she'd been living in a nunnery before she moved to Washington. That's not who she is."

"This is about to become public knowledge."

"Why? What's C.J. to anybody?"

"A threat worth discrediting."

"She's single. Who cares... I mean, I care, but I've got no say in it. How would she be discredited? This isn't the nineteenth century."

"It matters if she compromised her professional principals in any way. It matters if it even looks like she was indifferent to a conflict of interest."

"Shit."

"Watch your... sorry. Yeah, they're going to hang you on her like a dead bird around a cat's neck."

"What do I do?"

"At this point, I don't know. I didn't want you to hear this in the press room, though."

"Thank you. Can I talk to her?"

"Yeah, she's in the residence. Margaret'll walk you up. I've got to start senior staff before the president figures out something's wrong."

Danny blinked.

"Can I get a followup on that? Okay, I didn't think so."

"Get out of here. And Danny? Take care of her, okay?"

Margaret led him into the First Family's sanctuary, right through the living area to the door of a darkened bedroom. C.J. was lying on the bed in the same suit she'd worn the day before. Abbey Bartlet sat beside her, a syringe in her hands.

"Come in," said the First Lady. "You've probably got about three minutes before this kicks in. I'll be outside, okay?"

"Thank you." Danny sat in a chair beside C.J.'s bed and brushed her hair away from her face.

"What do you want?" C.J. murmured.

"To tell you I love you."

"You're crazy, Danny."

"I love you."

"We can't."

"I do." He knelt beside the bed and leaned over her. "I love you," he said.

"I'm glad. Did they tell you?"

"Part of it."

"I was so stupid."

"I love you."

"You keep saying that."

"I always will."

"You gonna be here when I wake up?"

"Sure, and I'll still be saying it."

"Say it again?"

"I love you." He kissed her, and when he straightened again, she was asleep. He settled back into the chair and held her hand. He must have dozed off, because he jumped when someone touched his shoulder.

"Danny?" Abbey Bartlet smiled down at him. He started to stand, but she pressed him back down in the chair and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Sorry," he said. "I guess I nodded off. What's wrong with C.J.?"

"You know, Danny, I've recently come to a new appreciation for the canon of medical ethics."

"Yeah, sorry. Is she gonna be okay? I mean, can you tell me that much?"

"I can tell you she was up all night last night, and that she's upset. Are you going to stay with her?"

"For as long as she lets me. When she wakes up...."

"What?"

"She'll kick me out. This is, like, holy ground, and I'm a reporter."

"You know, it freaks people out when you use that particular phrase."

"'Holy ground?'"

"'I'm a reporter.'"

"Why's that?"

"Because a while back I went around proclaiming 'I am a doctor' until I drove people to distraction."

"Yeah, but it's not the same thing."

"Isn't it? You love her, right? And you have this ethical thing?"

Danny blinked, and thought about it.

"Of course I love her, but, I mean, we're careful. We don't... we just don't."

"You'd never bend your principles for her, not even a little?"

Danny thought about close calls, struggles of conscience, tears of regret.

"No," he said. "That's not a problem we have. I'm sorry, but it really is not the same thing." It wasn't. It really wasn't.

"You're telling me that if you could make C.J. perfectly happy by printing one little lie, one tiny inconsequential falsehood that no one would ever know from the gospel truth...."

He bowed his head and closed his eyes, and felt tears spill across his cheeks.

"Okay," he whispered, nodding. "Okay, so it is the same thing."

A small hand settled over his. The thumb traced its way across the back of his hand until he looked up and met her gaze.

"Danny," she said, "you don't want to be on the train for the end of this ride. You don't want to do this to her."

"To her?"

Her eyes dropped away from his, and she clasped her hands in her lap, twisting them slightly as she spoke.

"You don't want to look in her eyes every day of your life and see the twinges of guilt and have her turn away from you again and again because she can't stand watching your pain."

He went down on one knee so that he could reach her and lay a hand on each of her shoulders. She flinched, but she didn't look up.

"He loves you," Danny told her. "He does." She shook him off.

"We're talking about you," she said.

"Which is not the same thing?"

That brought almost half a smile.

"Daniel Concannon, are you being impertinent?"

"Yes, I am," he said, settling on the floor at her feet, "and if I thought C.J. loved me half as much as your husband loves you I'd sell nine of my ten fingers to save her from whatever this is coming on that nobody will tell me about."

"Only nine?" She touched his hair as if she were petting a favorite hound.

"I'm a reporter," he said. "I've got to be able to type. No, what the hell, throw the tenth one in, too."

"Yeah, well, if you'll let me, maybe I can get you out of this with your appendages intact."

"I'm listening," he said.

Josh walked into the briefing room, ignoring the glee of the press corps, and laid the briefing book open on the podium. He held up his hands for silence, and read the fourteen items aloud.

"And one last minute addition:" he said, squinting at Carol's handwritten scrawl, "the First Lady has appointed herself yet another Chief of Staff, and this time the brass ring goes to Mr. Daniel Concannon."

Josh blinked at the book, feeling a grin spread itself across his face, and then realized that he was still talking.

"That's one down, fifty-four to go; please leave your resumes with my assistant. There'll be a further briefing later in the day at which time someone other than me will take questions. Have a nice morning, ladies and gentlemen." Josh slapped the book closed, stepped down from the podium and strode out of the room, his smile still firmly in place.