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TITLE: How We Doing?
AUTHOR: Kathleen (tweetybird5@prodigy.net)
CATEGORY: CJ/Josh
DISCLAIMER: Characters belong to Sorkin, et al. No copyright
infringement intended. Took a mid-term of all things today so the
professor can decide if we need to take the final in two weeks or not.
Just borrowing the characters for a little stress-relief.
SUMMARY: CJ turns to her friend. She hasn't done that in a while.
FEEDBACK: Is always greatly appreciated.

~*~
She walked into his office and plopped herself down on his sofa.
Putting her head into her hands, she spoke softly, afraid to give
the words flowing around her cranium the chance to escape. The minute
she allowed them to roam free, she would relinquish her power. And
right now, her power was in her silence. Though isn't that how she had
gotten into this mess in the first place?

"CJ?" He looked at her, concerned etched on his very tired face. His
body was folded at a rather strange angle while he sat in his chair.
She looked up momentarily, thinking that he might fall at any moment
and that would take her mind off things. But he didn't fall and her
thoughts were still fighting for their freedom. According to the First
Amendment, she had a right to express her feelings, her beliefs, but
for the past three years, she had suppressed that right. Why change
now?

"CJ?" He asked again. "How are we doing?" She had chosen not to look
at him this time because her eyes were moist and she really wasn't up
to something that made her look so guilty. The loud noise brought her
head up too quickly and the pain shooting through it reminded her that
moving slowly was how to go about things when you were unsure.

He picked himself off the floor as she began to smile a little. Her
friend would do anything for her, though she was almost certain he
hadn't deliberately fallen out of his chair with the expressed purpose
of cheering her up.

"Josh?" It was her turn to question now.

"I'm fine though I do think I'll just sit on the couch for now." He
moved over to her and gently rested his hand on her cheek. She took
it into hers and played with his fingers before finally wrapping hers
around them.

"We're not doing so good, Joshua."

"Not if you keep talking like that, Ms. Press Secretary." He tried to
ease the tension in the room with humor but saw that it just made her
eyes moister. "CJ, I'm sorry. I was just kidding."

"I know that."

"Then what's wrong?"

"I didn't want to talk to you that night, you know."

"I figured."

"You know why?"

"I don't think I want to know more then is necessary."

"Okay."

"You need to talk to somebody?"

"Just not you, huh?"

"CJ?"

"It's okay, Josh. I'm fine. We all are." She began to get up.

Grabbing her arm, he pulled her back down to him. "You think there's
something else, other then the polls, that will make us look bad?"

"Yeah."

"What?"

She looked at him closely now, her smile merely masking the look of
disbelief at his question. "The President's got Multiple Sclerosis,
Josh. You don't think that's gonna make us look bad?"

"I mean beside that."

"You said you don't want to know anything unless you have to."

"You knew?"

"No." 

He wrinkled up his face, not really accepting her words as truth.
"CJ?"

"Josh, I swear, I didn't know."

"But you suspected?"

Again she began to move away but stopped when his hand wouldn't let
her. "Josh?"

"You did suspect something."

"I don't want to get into trouble. I don't want to get anyone into
trouble. If you can't hear this..."

"What?"

"I saw her give him an injection in the hotel room in Manhattan,
Kansas. I saw it, Josh, and I never questioned a thing. We worked so
hard and it just seemed like such a waste to throw it all away."

"You didn't ask her what it was?"

"No."

"You didn't wonder?"

"Of course I wondered but I didn't question it. It was an intimate
moment between husband and wife and I was an outsider watching what I
shouldn't be seeing in the first place."

"It wasn't like they were making love with the door open, CJ. For
Christ sake, she was injecting him and you didn't bother to find out?"

"Okay, if I wanted this kind of hostile environment, I would've talked
to Toby. I've listened to him yell at me for years now."

"I'm sorry, CJ, it's just that it's probably not going to look good in
the hearings. I'm just warning you, that's all."

"I know that it's not gonna look good. I also know that I didn't tell
Oliver about it. I lied about how I asked the President for information
after his physicals. I lied about that to the White House Counsel and
you know what? I stick to my guns on that decision. It wasn't wrong.
No matter how guilty I'm gonna look, it wasn't wrong of me to do that."

"He doesn't want any of us to lie."

"He doesn't know that any of us have any reason to lie in the first
place."

"Good point."

"Josh?"

"It's okay, CJ."

"I shouldn't have told you, right?"

"It's okay."

"Let's go out for a drink tonight. We can wash away some of the
pressures of the day."

"Have you ever noticed that we suggest drinking a lot when it comes to
really rough times at work?"

"Yeah. There's probably a bunch of alcoholics running around DC at
this point. We won't be alone."

"CJ?"

"We're not alcoholics, Josh. For one thing, you can't even drink more
then one beer and for another thing, we don't go out drinking as much
as it seems like we do. An occasional drink for downtime is
acceptable. Even by society's most prudent measures we are not
alcoholics. Now, that said, do you want to go out for a drink with me?"

"One drink and then we go home."

"Oh, really?"

"Separately."

"Kidding."

"God, you are annoying sometimes."

"Intentionally."

"CJ?"

"I'm sorry I told you, Josh, but of all the people I work with, I
thought you would be the one to understand. I never thought it would
come down to this. Never or I wouldn't have let it get so out of hand."

"You know the sad part?"

"That we all believed in him? That we all thought we'd be here for two
terms?"

"That we all were willing to die for someone who didn't think it was
important enough to be honest with us. That's really sad, CJ." He said
as his hand slowly, yet instinctively, caressed where the scar would
be on his chest.

"Yes, it is. It's very sad, Mi Amor. And very unfair. If we were
really going to do this, we should've had all the details."

"Yeah."

They rose together, one holding onto the other as friends do in tough
times shared. They were equal tonight. Equal in the possibility of
losing their jobs, of losing their reputations. Equal in who was
supporting whom for they both needed a friend and he was the one she
turned to and vice versa in times like these.

These two friends were equal tonight in their support of each other.
Tomorrow might bring something different. A dawning of a new day, the
grand juries would certainly bring the clouds. But tonight, they were
equal.

As they walked to their cars, CJ wondered if they could truly be
considered equal after all. She had thought they were in his office
but now she was reconsidering. Now, she thought he had a better chance
then she did because he never saw anything that suggested compromised
ethics. She did. So maybe they weren't equal after all.

"Josh?"

"It's okay, CJ. I won't say anything."

"Because I'll have to."

"Yeah."

"And when they ask, I'll just say I kept it to myself."

"Because you did."

"That I didn't mention it to any of my friends."

"Because you didn't."

"I told you."

"Well after the fact so you just say you didn't tell anyone and
I'll just say I never knew and who's the wiser, CJ?"

"No one."

"That same answer applies to this whole mess. No one knew outside of
that family, or rather no one who would tell us. We're okay, CJ."

"We're equal for once?"

"That never happens, does it?"

"No."

"We're equal for once."

They drove to the bar in separate cars. Josh thinking about how he 
wished she hadn't shared what she knew with him. CJ thinking about
how being equal depended so much on what scale you were using. The
scale of justice might not fall on her side but regardless Josh had
said they were equal. Toby probably would've said something different.

At this point in time, she'd choose to believe Josh.

~*~
The End.