"Latitudes" A The West Wing story by CretKid aka Cal

Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Nuff said.

Spoilers: "SGTE, SGTJ"

Summary: You give the people you love some latitude.

Archive: Sure, just let me know.

"Latitudes" by CretKid

========================================

"So, did you find Brigadoon?"

CJ glowered as she shrugged out of her coat. For good measure, she threw it over Josh's head before she slid into the opposite side of the booth. Noticing Toby at the bar, she moved around the curved bench so that she was near the head of the table. "I hate Big Block of Cheese Day."

Josh pulled the offending garment off and placed it over the back of the booth along with his own overcoat. "C'mon, your cheese task was so much more entertaining than anyone else's. Though, when the crowd started throwing food at Toby, things did get a little interesting."

"If I ever have to look at another map ever again, I am going to scream." CJ planted an elbow on the table top and propped her head up under her chin.

"It was entertaining."

"It was freaking me out. I don't deal with change well."

"That's an understatement."

"Hey!" She swiped at his shoulder blade with her free hand.

"You said it, not me."

"That doesn't mean you have to agree with me, you nitwit."

Josh slid a little farther along the bench to get beyond her reach, landing in a small puddle where their jackets were draped. "Augh, why is your coat wet?"

"It's raining."

"You walked?"

"Didn't you?"

"Well, yeah, 'cause my car is at home. But you drove this morning. And it wasn't raining when I got here. So why didn’t you drive here?"

"I got lost on Dupont Circle this morning. Again. I hate detours. I vowed never to drive in this town again."

"That's why you need a map."

"If I had the energy right now, you would not be sitting so cheery over there, my friend."

"The question is, which projection would be best suited to your particular needs?"

"Do you have a death wish?"

"Apparently so. But I've decided that I will no longer be Toby's wing man. He can go tilting at his own windmills from now on."

"Okay. That made no sense."

"Guess you had to be there. Speaking of windmills--"

Toby stood at the end of the table, a pitcher of beer in one hand and a handful of glasses in the other. He passed all the glassware to CJ and proceeded to slide in next to her. "For that remark, you can get your own."

"I was kidding."

"I'm not."

"I took a banana for you."

"Take it and split."

"Funny. Not as funny as CJ getting lost while driving to work this morning, but it ranks right up there."

Toby turned in his seat to find CJ pounding her head on the table. "You got lost on Dupont again?"

"Is there an echo? Yes, I got lost on Dupont Circle. I always make the wrong turn on Dupont when forced to go that route. Can you get it through your thick skulls that the architects of this fair city had it in for me when they designed the roads and leave it at that?"

"Well, seeing that you do matriculate from a school system that is seriously considering dropping the SAT requirement for college entrance, I suppose we can let that slide."

CJ sat up and hoarded all the glasses with one arm.

"I brought all of those over here," Toby admonished. "Do you mean to tell me that you will drink from five separate glasses this evening?"

"I'm holding them hostage. When Europe moves back to its rightful place in the world, you can have them back."

Toby turned to Josh. "What the hell is she talking about?"

A goofy smile was plastered on Josh's face. "Manic map-makers merrily mess with Mercator's view of the world."

CJ's voice was muffled by the proximity of her face to the table top. "You've been waiting all day to say that, haven't you?"

"This stuff just comes to me. It's a gift."

Toby lifted CJ's arm and stole two of the glasses she had absconded. "There is a reason why you don't write speeches." He poured himself and Josh a beer.

"Who else is coming?" CJ asked, still not lifting her head.

"Why? Aren't we stimulating enough company?" Toby replied.

"Not by a long shot."

"Sam will probably walk over too," Josh said, looking over his shoulder. "Maybe we should get out a map-- Ow!" He leaned over the table in momentary pain, grabbing his knee in the process.

Toby grabbed the back of CJ's collar and gently pulled her to a sitting position. "CJ, hands on the table where I can see them." He snagged a fork from her hand. "To bed with you without supper."

"Promises, promises. Where's Donna?"

"She didn't come with you?" Josh looked over his shoulder again, making sure to snag the silverware within his reach.

"No. She dropped by my office after you did to make sure I was coming here. She wasn't in the bull pen by the time I had finished checking the wires."

"How about Sam?" Toby handed CJ a beer.

"He was still on the phone."

"'Kay, I'm going to call him." Josh started to push himself out of the booth.

Toby planted one foot against Josh's bench to prevent him from escaping. "No, you won’t. Leave him be. He'll get here when he's ready."

"'Kay. But he's wasting valuable drinking time." Josh picked up his beer.

==========================================

Donna stood outside the West Wing entrance, waiting under the eaves to avoid as much of the steady drizzle as possible. Tomorrow it would probably snow. She'd take rain over snow any day. Rain meant it was warm. Warm and wet she could handle. Cold and wet were another story. Wisconsin provided more than its fair share of that sort of thing.

She had decided to wait for Sam, walk with him over to the bar to meet the others. Her mother always said that she had a penchant for lost causes. Not that she saw Sam as a lost cause or anything, but there was something to be said for the look in his eyes when she saw him in his office after Stephanie left. She had always been a sucker for liquid blue eyes, the defeated shoulder slump compounded by hands stuffed and trapped in trouser pockets. It was enough to make even the surest, most put-together man seem like the smallest little boy in all the world.

Before leaving, she had passed by his office one last time. He had the phone clenched to one ear, his head held in his other hand. His longish hair was poking out at strange angles, and there was such anguish on his face at that moment that she was sure he would just as soon throw the phone than listen to whomever was on the other end of the line.

She knew a little of the situation. Josh couldn't keep a state secret if he had been paid to do so. The only reason why Sam's predicament had not been made public to the rest of the West Wing was because of her diligence to keep it under wraps. Of course Leo knew. However, she did manage to strap Josh into his chair and implore upon him the need to cease and desist any more talk of Sam's father, no matter how innocently the topic may have come up in conversation. She had the power to make his life a living hell, and he knew it. The threat would only last for so long, but it would be long enough for Sam to get things straight in his own mind. Sam's family problems were his own affair and no one else's.

Though, since she did have proprietary information, she still felt the need to play Florence Nightengale to Sam's wounded soul, despite her advice to her own boss.

In the time she had known Sam Seaborn, it took a lot to light the fuse to his anger. Self-righteous and naïve to a fault, it was a blow to his ego when things happened that went against his thought grain. And when that happened, when he felt there was something that he could have done to prevent it from happening in the first place, it wasn't a pretty picture. The self-assured confident man they had all come to know and admire turned into a brooding, unhappy shell until he had a chance to get it all off his chest.

But he bounced back. He always bounced back. He might be licking his wounds for a bit, but he always came back, raring to go with a new found glint in his eye.

She'd seen him mad. She'd seen him furious. She'd never seen him that profoundly sad before though. Not even when his fiance left him shortly after the Illinois primary.

She sensed rather than saw the entrance to the West Wing swing open. It was late on a Friday night; there weren't many people left in that part of the building. Sam was tucked securely inside his overcoat, collar drawn up to cover his ears and hands shoved deeply into his pockets. He seemed surprised to find her waiting for him.

"Donna."

"Hey, Sam."

"I thought you had left with the others."

"I decided to wait for you."

"You didn’t need to do that."

"It was either wait, or listen to Josh's glean off Toby's glory at the WTO thing. You'd think that Josh handled the whole thing to listen to him talk."

Sam seemed to appreciate her attempt at humor. His shoulders seemed less tense, even through his heavy coat. "Hannigan's?"

They started to walk towards Constitution Avenue and the little corner bar the staff frequented. "I believe that's the general idea."

"It's raining." Sam was looking up into the sky, letting the drizzle wet his face without blinking or flinching.

"Yes, it is."

"And you've been waiting out here in the rain? For me? Why didn't you wait inside?"

"It was fine. I'd been inside all day. I wanted the fresh air."

"It's like 20 degrees out here."

"It's 38 degrees, and this is practically balmy."

"It's still cold."

"You Southern California boys are wusses. It's not cold until your breath freezes on your face."

They walked in silence until they reached an intersection. Sam stopped under the street lamp, waiting for light to change. There was no traffic, yet he waited for the go ahead signal. Donna stood patiently waiting for him. The light changed. The short bursts of sound that indicated to blind people it was safe to cross the street were blaring loud and clear in the quiet night. Sam stood, not moving, not blinking, just staring at the halo of light descending from above.

"Sam?"

His voice was pensive, quiet. She was afraid to move closer for fear that she might scare him into silence. He had already made a connection with her once today; she did not want to lose that tenuous bond so soon.

"How many people know?"

"Know about what?"

"My father."

"I don’t know," Donna lied. When he looked at her askance, she relented and said, "Probably everyone. I did try to keep Josh's mouth shut. I really did. I even tied him to his chair for about three hours until he promised not to tell anyone else."

"I'm not angry with Josh." Sam continued to look up at the darkened sky. Even the moon was hidden from view. Donna turned her face to the sky too, sending passive glances his way just to make sure he was still with her.

"I would be." She sensed that his shoulders were shaking, whether from anger, sadness or laughter she wasn't quite sure. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know either. "I would be mad. He means well, but Josh has about as much tact as a gerbil."

"Yeah."

"It’s no one else's affair. Sorry, bad choice of words. It’s your private family business."

"Are you trying to make me mad at Josh?"

"No, I'm just saying, I would be a little more than peeved if my best friend blabbed that my father had an affair, no matter what his or her intentions were. Stephanie, from today, I once stopped talking to her for a solid two weeks because she repeated something I told her in confidence to a mutual friend."

"That's a mighty long time not to talk to your best friend."

"And we were rooming together at the time. It's my opinion if you can't scream at your best friend, they're not really your best friend in the first place."

"I'm still not mad at Josh. Josh is Josh."

"But it still peeves you."

Sam seemed to ponder her words, still gazing up at the night time sky. His face shone with the fine mist that had been falling. Some had collected on his lips and he blew it away. "Yeah."

He wiped his face with his hand, running his fingers through his hair to keep the bangs out of his eyes. The light had changed several times while they stood on the corner. He stepped off the curb to cross the street, but not in the direction of the bar.

"Mind if we walk a bit?" he asked. She sensed he wasn't really looking for permission, so she shrugged her shoulders and followed obligingly.

He was in the middle of the street when he stopped suddenly and turned towards her. "You know, it's not so much Josh said anything to anyone. It's that now everyone has their story to share with me."

A car horn blared behind her, and Sam took her elbow to guide her to the sidewalk. He was moving like an animal caged against its will. His paces made short work of the distance between intersections. They'd walked five blocks before he stopped again.

"Six separate people came up to me today to offer condolences and share their own stories of parental or spousal infidelity. I only know three of them."

Donna watched as he paced in front of an appliance store. A cleaning crew was out and about on the floor, turning off televisions and radios and whatnot, not the least bit paying attention to the little drama outside their own windows. There was a fever pitch to his motion, much like what she had witnessed in the stairwell.

She wondered how much she was to blame for his anguish. If she hadn't brought Stephanie to see him this morning, if she hadn't told her to stroke his ego a bit to get an audience for the executive pardon, maybe he wouldn't have been in such a foul mood earlier this evening. Rumor around the bull pen was that Sam had spent a considerable amount of time with Nancy McNally, the National Security Advisor, that afternoon. It was her fault that at least a third of his senior thesis was for naught, at least in his mind, now that he had the truth about Daniel Gault, a man that until today he had thought had been unjustly accused.

She wanted to apologize. But she had a feeling that her words would fall on deaf ears. He didn't want to hear sympathy; he'd just said as much. He wanted to-- needed to vent his frustrations. Now wasn't about her and her insecurities about what had happened during the day.

There was a certain sense of decorum and expectation that needed to be maintained, an unwritten rulebook of conduct. CJ was the calm and centered persona of the administration. Toby was the grounding line, the one to make sure no one kept their heads in the clouds for too long. Josh was the bull dog, the expected loose cannon. And Sam was the poetic prince, the one that kept the awe in their minds with wide eyed innocence.

It wouldn't do for him to lose it in front of the others. But he so desperately needed to let loose some of that emotion. Before Josh and Toby let him get drunk. Before he saw them at all. He needed that sense of decorum.

"Do I look like I need to hear about everyone else's dirty laundry? Does it look like I want to acknowledge that I am now part of a national statistic? Do I look like I want to share my woes with others by hearing their sob story?

"I mean, there are certain things that you don't share with anyone. There are certain things that should be kept private. Why the hell did he decided to tell my mom after 28 years? He keeps his secret for so long and then up and decides, 'I think I'm going start with a clean slate'.

"You give the people you love some latitude. There's always room for mistakes. Everyone is entitled to their fallacies, their idiosyncrasies, the things that make us human. That doesn't give anyone the right to betray a trust. It's not like I could have forgiven him if this was a one time fling or anything, but this went on for 28 years!

"There are things you're supposed to be able to depend on. The fact that your father will always read you to sleep. That your mom will always have cookies or celery sticks waiting for you when you get home from school. That there will always be someone to chase the monsters away from under your bed. And that your dad is YOUR dad and is married to YOUR mom and no one else's mom and isn't DAD to anyone else that you don't know about the minute they are born!"

He was still pacing, taking a moment of time to read the closed captioning on one of the larger television sets. CNN was airing coverage of the WTO protests. Most of them were exterior shots of the protestors and the traffic entanglements the protests caused in general. "Weren't there any cameras in Toby's meeting?"

Donna wasn't sure how to take his sudden change of subject. All the anger that had been oozing from his motions and his voice seemed to ebb away in an instant. She smiled, remembering CJ and Toby's exchange in the Roosevelt Room that morning. "Ah, no. But that's a story I'll save for Josh to tell. He's been dying to tell it to someone all day that wasn't in the room."

Sam was laughing. She took that to be a good sign. He was looking around the block, trying to get his bearings. "Where the hell are we?"

"Don't ask CJ. Maps and cartographers are not her friends right now." She took his arm and turned back in the direction from which they came. She still held onto him as they made their way towards the bar.

Their pace was leisurely, despite the inclement weather. The bar was really not that far away. As they drew closer, Sam slowed their walk.

"I called him. He wanted to apologize. I wouldn't let him. Was that wrong of me?"

"I don't think I have an answer for that, Sam."

"I wanted to know why. Why exactly for what, I'm not sure."

"Are you sure you haven't had anything to drink yet?"

Sam smiled. "Yeah, I guess I should get that out of my system before I see Toby, huh?"

"That would probably be a smart idea. Shall we find out how everyone else's Cheese Day went?"

"It was Big Block of Cheese Day?"

"Oh, you missed quite a lot the last few days." Donna dragged him towards the door, confident his spirits were a little better than before.

"Ready?"

Sam took a deep breath and opened the door for her. "Let the games begin."

END