**************

CJ watched Josh as he sat on Donna’s desk, throwing grapes into the air and not catching them in his mouth. He was the right hand to the man who was the right hand to the President of the United States, yet he had nothing better to do than sit in the bullpen and not catch grapes with his mouth. He was getting good at it.

Behind him, someone cleared their throat, and Josh scrambled to look like a professional, ignoring the grape that rolled away across the floor. “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Toby Ziegler.”

CJ smiled briefly at the look that crossed Josh’s face. Sympathy. Condolences. Curiosity. Then she noticed who was standing here in her White House looking for Toby, and her body froze.

She looked exactly the same, CJ thought, then laughed at the overwhelming irony of that assessment. Tall and scrawny — “a scrapper” was how she described herself — with light brown hair barely two inches long and tiny gold wire-rimmed glasses. Attractive, if you went for manly women.

Josh didn’t bother getting off the desk. “Toby!”

Toby didn’t bother coming out of his office. “Yeah?”

“Visitor.”

“Is it Nicki?”

Josh stopped. He hadn’t bothered to ask. “Are you Nicki?”

“I am.”

He raised his voice again. “Yeah.”

“Tell her I’ll be right out.”

Josh turned to Nicki. “He’ll be right out.” Were these really grown men who worked for the President? “I’m Josh Lyman,” he said, putting his hand out.

She shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr Lyman. I’m Nicki.”

“Yeah, I caught that. Got a last name?”

“Would you believe me if I said no?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well, then—”

“Nicki?” Toby swept her into a suffocating hug. CJ hoped he would suffocate her.

“Toby! You look fantastic!”

“Look at you,” he said, his amazement transparent. “You got all curvy.” CJ bit back a snicker as Josh surreptitiously tried to find a single curve on Nicki’s body. “You meet Josh?”

“Yeah.”

“Not properly,” Josh countered. Nicki frowned.

“Nicki, this is deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman. Josh, this is Nicki. She’s helping me out with the, you know, the thing.” He turned back to Nicki, oblivious to Josh’s protests that this was hardly an introduction. “Ready to work?”

She grinned. “Absolutely.” They went into Toby’s office and closed the door softly behind them.

CJ raced across the bullpen to Josh, who was frowning, perplexed, at the closed door. “Josh!” she hissed. “What the hell is she doing here?”

Josh turned. “Oh, hey, CJ. That’s Nicki. No last name; just...Nicki. She’s a friend of Toby’s, apparently.”

“Then Toby keeps bad company.” Josh recoiled from the vehemence in CJ’s voice. “She’s got a last name all right. It’s Rhyland.” She pointed at Toby’s office. “That’s Nicki Rhyland.” She stormed off, but she thought she heard Josh say, “Well, shit.”

CJ charged up to Margaret’s desk. “Hello, Margaret,” she said, blowing past her.

“CJ! You can’t — he’s in the middle of—”

“I don’t care!” CJ ripped the door open. “Nicki Rhyland, Leo?”

Leo was on the phone. He looked up at his tall, furious lover, looming dangerously above him, and said, quietly, “Guys? I’m gonna get off the call a minute.” He put the phone in its cradle and came around the desk. “All right, CJ; you got me off a conference call with the Joint Chiefs, and now I’m all yours. Care to tell me what this is about?”

“Nicki Rhyland came to the White House today. Seems she’s a friend of Toby’s who’s going to help him with, and I quote, ‘the, you know, the thing.’”

Leo’s eyes gleamed. “Toby brought her in? I can’t wait to see the President’s face when we tell him. He’s gonna do cartwheels. Right there in the Oval Office. Cartwheels.”

“Leo!”

“We need her, CJ. If we already have her by the time we announce re-election, that’s going to give us a huge boost in the GLBT vote.”

“We didn’t need him, Leo.”

He stiffened. “CJ—”

“Forgive me; we don’t need her. We could’ve gotten anyone. Kate, Ricki, Loren—”

“Eventually, any of them would’ve brought her. She connects, CJ. She’s the one we need.” He stared at her. “Is this personal?”

She threw her hands in the air. “Of course it’s personal, Leo. My brother was in the hospital for three weeks.”

“And Nicki was in jail for seven months. She’s paid her debt.”

“Not to me. Not to my family.”

He took her shoulders gently, but when he spoke, his tone was firm. “CJ, we need Nicki Rhyland, and you need to learn how to work with her.”

“Leo.” It was a plea.

“You work for the President, and we’re trying to get re-elected without him noticing he’s running again, and we don’t have time for your schoolgirl crushes—”

“Leo!” Now it was an admonition, a condemnation.

“Because it’s not about Scott. It’s absolutely not about Scott and you know it.”

“Of course it’s about Scott. He’s my brother, for God’s sake, and she tried to kill him.”

“She has nothing against your brother, CJ. The police attacked them without provocation. You admit that yourself.”

“One paranoid, homophobic officer — who was fired immediately afterward — attacked without provocation. Scott was just standing there. If Nicki weren’t so freakishly strong — if she hadn’t been a man less than a year before—”

It broke him to argue with her about a situation that clearly slept so close to her heart and caused her so much pain, but Nicki Rhyland was one of the keys to President Bartlet’s re-election, and he couldn’t let her personal history with CJ obstruct their plans. “He underestimated her.”

CJ’s shoulders dropped in defeat. “Didn’t we all,” she said bitterly. Suddenly, her arms snaked up his chest and wrapped around the back of his neck. Her kiss was insistent and terrified, like she wanted proof of something. And when her hand dropped to his crotch, he knew exactly what she needed proof of.

“CJ,” he gasped, pushing her away. “I still have the Joint Chiefs on the phone.”

She pulled her head back but put both of her hands on his shoulders and wouldn’t let go. “It wasn’t a schoolgirl crush, Leo.”

He blinked in surprise. “You don’t think I know that? You don’t think calling it that is the only way I can deal with it?”

Now she took a step backwards. She hadn’t considered that this might be difficult for Leo, too; that he might once again be sacrificing his feelings on the altar of the Bartlet administration. Still...”You don’t know how hard this is for me.”

“I don’t?”

She felt the anger bubble up inside her. “No, Leo, you don’t! How would you feel if Jenny joined the campaign?”

He stared at her without blinking. There weren’t enough pieces of clothing in the world to protect herself from that gaze. “How would you feel if Jenny joined the campaign?”

And CJ had to get out of his office. Now. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Leo; she backed up into the door and scrabbled frantically at the knob. “I loved him, Leo. I was in love with Nick Rhyland, and he decided he’d rather be a woman,” she whispered as she felt the knob turn.

Leo was back at his desk, his hand on the receiver. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t love you, too. He just knew he couldn’t lie anymore.”

“What about you, Leo? How long can you keep lying?”

They stared at each other. “As long as I have to,” he said quietly.

“To yourself? Or to me?”

He allowed himself a small, wry smile. “It’s got to be me. You don’t believe a word I say.”

She opened the door just wide enough to slip through, and disappeared. She collapsed against the door, her body convulsing. Margaret started toward her, eyes wide, but CJ waved her off. If she could just stagger back to her office...Nicki Rhyland was staying. Leo was jealous. And he could keep telling himself he wouldn’t give up every minute they’d had together if that was what it took to save the administration. Something inside CJ was shattering, and she didn’t dare examine it too closely, because acknowledging a million hairline fractures was easier than reassembling a million microscopic pieces.

Leo paused a moment before going back to his call. This morning, he had woken up with CJ in his arms, and this had still had the feeling of a relationship that was beginning. Now it felt like one that was ending. Every fiber in his body burned to run to her office, and promise her it could all be different; that he wanted to make it different. He picked up the phone and waited for General Tompkins to finish speaking. “Hey, guys. It’s Leo. Yeah, I’m back.”