I love Russell Jackson a ridiculous amount and I hope you enjoy this little fic about our favourite panda-loving chief of staff :)

Party Animal

"Are you in?" Conrad Dalton says, only thirty seconds after dropping the bombshell, as though that is more than sufficient time for Russell to have even begun to formulate a response respectful enough and sufficiently free from swear words in deference to the man's high office.

So he stalls a little. "Am I in?" he repeats, unable to keep the disbelief from his voice – not that he's trying all that hard, or even at all. "You're asking me if I'm in?"

Conrad nods, watching Russell closely. "I understand if you feel you can't stay on," he says. "If you feel you need to keep your allegiance to the party. It's OK. But I'd like it if you stayed with me on this. I'd like to have your expertise and skill on the campaign – and I'd like my friend to be standing beside me when the results come in."

It's the reference to friendship that makes Russell Jackson pause in his incredulity, rendering him momentarily mute even as some part of his brain is still running through all the ways that this is a truly terrible idea, the way the party is going to react to the announcement that Conrad Dalton may have lost the nomination for the presidency but that isn't going to stop him from running for the presidency, only this time as an independent.

Damn Elizabeth McCord and her grand idealistic visions.

Russell's silence gives Conrad the time he needs to stand and say, "Think about it, Russell. Please?"

He can't formulate a coherent response so he simply nods once in reply and then waits until Conrad is almost-but-not-quite out the door before he reaches over and pours himself a scotch. A big one.

Think about it, Russell.

Yeah, OK, he'll think about it. He feels the annoyance rising within him as he thinks about who is to blame for this little scenario they find themselves in. He thinks about the path that he had painstakingly swept clear so that Conrad would have no difficulty in securing again the party's nomination so he could run for re-election, and how that had oh-so-casually been swept aside by the well-intentioned yet frequently problematic Secretary of State.

And then, naturally, Conrad had taken the bait, seduced by Elizabeth McCord's politically naïve faith in doing what's right even if it means losing a fight, because somehow she still has to learn that sometimes in order to do what's right, you first have to do what you have to in order to win the damn fight in the first place. She has no idea about party politics. She just breezes in as Secretary of State, no political experience on the public stage but filled with innovative solutions and ideas of changing things, no allegiance to the party – any party, let alone the one Russell has worked for his entire professional life.

Feeling his stress levels building, Russell forcibly pushes thoughts of her pretty, infuriating face out of his head and turns instead to the topic at hand.

Running as an independent. Conrad is planning to run as an independent.

Scratch that. He is going to run as an independent. It's happening. Russell is clear on that much. The only question is whether he's going to do so with or without his chief of staff.

Russell slumps in his chair and takes another mouthful of scotch, emptying the glass and then almost immediately pouring himself another. He takes several deep breaths, willing his blood pressure to cool it and the adrenaline he can feel churning in his veins to dissipate. He needs to be calm to think about this, and that in itself tells him something.

If anyone else in the world had come to him with the proposition put to him by Conrad Dalton, he would've laughed them out of the room and moved on with his life.

But he has a loyalty to President Dalton just as he has a loyalty to his party, and so he's going to think about it.

He never thought he'd be in a position like this.

In the beginning, the party was everything. Brought up on a diet of politics and weekend rallies, by the time he got to college, it was only natural that he'd look to take things further. Chair of the college party branch, running student campaigns, making contacts with wider networks. He figured out pretty quickly that he was more of a behind the scenes fighter than the guy who looks good on camera, but he thinks that realisation is what helped him find his niche. Because while the photogenic kids were trying to get a soundbite on the evening news, he was plugging away in bars and committee rooms, building alliances and making enemies in equal measure.

Back then, he thinks, he had been an idealist of sorts. Not the kind of idealist like Elizabeth McCord is with her slight tendency towards holier than thou that never fails to drive him crazy, but the sort of practical idealist who believes that things can change for the better – you just have to be smart about how you do it.

He used to think that as long as you acted smart and made the right calls, change would follow.

The intervening decades have largely dissuaded him of that notion. Sure, sometimes acting smart and doing the right thing is enough to get the change you want. But often it's not. There are roadblocks to change, lots of them in many guises. Often those idealistic politicians would get nowhere without a bulldozer going ahead of them, doing the dirty work beneath the surface to prepare the ground for them to tread.

That's how Russell sees his job: being the bulldozer.

He isn't sure exactly how he fell into it, but somehow after years of working his way up through the party machinery, he found himself as the go-to guy for getting things done, the guy people asked when they wanted to do something without getting their own hands dirty.

That was how he met Conrad Dalton back when he was in charge of the CIA. Not because Dalton wanted anything to be done, but because Russell had done something, made some public statement against something that the CIA had done with the aim of baiting a Senate committee so they'd bite and then the guy Russell was working on behalf of could sweep in and save the day – and the next day the Director of the CIA, one Conrad Dalton, had shown up in Russell's office.

The man had been incensed, Russell remembers, first at Russell himself – he had been introduced to Dalton's gift for a delivering a tongue-lashing early on – and then at the Senate committee after Russell had explained the rationale behind what he had done. "Is this really the best we can do?" Dalton had spat, pacing the office, genuine anger on his face. "Is this the best way we have of doing business? Grown adults goading each other? Where's the decency?"

Russell had shrugged one shoulder. "There's decency," he had said. "But, Mr Dalton, I'm sure a man in your position hasn't got where he has without knowing there's a whole mess of ugly crap that goes into the business of government, too."

"Yes, I've had a couple of lessons in that recently." There was bitterness in his voice that suggested a level of discontent that went beyond anger at the current situation. "But it strikes me as wrong that the good in the world – the good people – get drowned out by all the mess of ugly crap, as you put it."

He had looked at Conrad Dalton standing in front of him, seething, and felt a spark of something coming off the man. It stirred something in Russell, and he found himself saying, "You know, there are ways you can make your voice heard, if you ever find yourself thinking about life after the CIA. Other… platforms you could explore to channel all that feeling you have."

Russell had thought that the man had the bones of something, the potential to become a candidate who could make a run – and, if he listened to counsel and had luck and the media on his side, win.

Dalton had fixed him with a look and said, "I have my hands full with my current job, thank you very much." But he sounded like he was not disinterested.

So as Dalton was about to leave the office, Russell had handed him a business card and said, "Call me the next time you find yourself feeling like this and decide you want to do something about it. Call me and let's do something."

His only reply was a look that said fat chance, but by that point in his career Russell had a feel for such things.

His phone rang three months later.

He knows now, too, what were the couple of lessons that Conrad had been referring to in his office that day. After Secretary Marsh's plane crash when they were talking about replacements for him as Secretary of State, Conrad had reminded Russell of how the two of them had met. He had told him that one lesson had been Russell's public comments and the debacle with the Senate committee. The other had been his old friend Elizabeth McCord resigning from the CIA for ethical reasons. "Good people get forced out by the ugly crap, Russell. I want to bring a good person back into the fray in a position to do some real and lasting good."

And so he had, and now because of Elizabeth McCord, Conrad has lost the nomination and is standing as an independent.

It makes Russell furious. It makes him even more furious that Elizabeth has a special brand of fire all her own. She's knows how to bring a decent fight. Even if it's one they're probably going to lose.

Except… Russell thinks about it as he drinks more scotch and does the mathematics in his head. Yeah. Conrad is probably going to lose. The law of statistics and simple fucking logic suggests he's going to lose. But. There's a small chance he could pull it off.

He won't win. That's pretty clear. He won't win as an independent. But as long as he doesn't lose outright, simply manages to stop anyone else from winning… he could keep the presidency.

Russell likes that prospect, especially when he considers the possibility of President Evans. Or President Reynolds from the other side. Neither of them is serious, neither of them has the experience or the authority or frankly the gumption to make the difficult decisions even in the face of rank unpopularity and vehement opposition.

Neither of them has the guts to do what's right.

Dalton does. And there's a chance it could work. A chance.

That chance would mean imploding Russell's relationship with the party, the party that has preoccupied him for so much of his life. He'd never be allowed back into the fray. Going along with this crazy plan means committing to a different path and nailing his flag to Dalton's mast. It means making a principled stand.

It means it had damn well better work because Russell isn't burning his bridges for nothing.

Oh Christ.

He realises where he's got to. Realises what he's going to do.

Damn he's tipsy, well on the way to drunk. He picks up his phone and calls for a car. He has a visit to make, to the person responsible for putting such insane and fanciful notions in Conrad Dalton's head. The person responsible for reminding both Conrad and Russell that such notions are better than the ugly mess of crap that is the alternative.

Looks like his party days are over.

Because Russell has his answer to Conrad's request.

He's in.