Fun Loving Criminal
Category: CJ/Josh
Disclaimer/Acknowledgements: West Wing characters and back-stories do not belong to me and the ending is straight from Wendy Cope's poem "The Orange" from her collection "Serious Concerns" – also not mine, surprisingly enough.
Summary: CJ's thoughts take a happy little wander.
Dating Josh Lyman. There should be a law against it. Making it punishable by death, maybe. Hell, I'd campaign for it personally.
But if they did pass a law against it, I'd be a pretty dangerous criminal, because I'm doing it.
And him, for that matter, though that's a whole other story.
Thing is though, I could never revert to being a law-abiding citizen at this stage. I'm having way too much fun.
* * * * *
I look around at all the men I work with and wonder at what point in my life did I become the office slut. There have been moments with just about all of them – well, except for the President. That would just be too weird. And very probably actually illegal.
I can just picture myself, standing in a crowded courtroom charged with seducing the President of the United States, hyperactive reporters screaming at me as I'm dragged away in handcuffs.
Fortunately I am fairly sure seducing the President isn't a crime just yet and anyway, like I said, I haven't done that.
I shouldn't have said that, it sounds like I have seduced every other man within groping distance, but I really haven't.
It sounds like such a cliché, but it really hasn't been like that. Most of the time it hasn't even been the other way around, them seducing me.
Contrary to what you're probably thinking, a lot of the time it hasn't even been sex. Well, some of the time, at least. It's just been... moments.
* * * * *
I didn't have a lot of boyfriends when I was younger. I was never a giver in high school, mostly because few enterprising souls ever tried to take me. Probably the height thing. I still maintain I intimidate them; the difference is, now they like it.
Now I can look across a room at some of the most powerful men in the world and catch them checking me out. It's fun.
But not as much fun as getting Josh flustered. It's not that hard, when you know what you're doing. I do. He's cute when he's hot and bothered, hot being the operative word.
Back to the thrust of my thoughts.
It's funny how everything seems to ooze innuendo when you're in a really enjoyable relationship.
I don't think they think I'm easy. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I suspect there would be more semi-drunken White House staffers waking up my apartment block after particularly crisis-ridden days if they thought that.
They don't know about Josh, you see. They have an idea that he has a bit of a crush on me; some of them are even a little jealous, but I'm a better actor than he is – there aren't a lot of alternatives in my job – and they have no clue anything's actually going on between us.
God, something's "going on" between Josh Lyman and me. Who'd have thought it? This should not be legal.
Anyway, they have no real reason to think I'm easy, a slut, whatever. Just because I've formed close bonds with the people I work with – it's hardly my fault the West Wing is a man's world, is it?
If the Deputy Communications Director had been a woman, I would have tried to comfort her too after a day like we'd had.
The comforting would have taken a slightly different format is all, and most likely wouldn't have been repeated at intervals for the next few months.
I haven't behaved sluttishly with them, unless you're a Puritanical type who thinks any sex outside marriage is sluttish, in which case, guilty as charged.
I seem to be guilty of a lot of crimes these days. Ever since I started dating Josh Lyman. Lord, dating Josh Lyman. How did that happen?
With most of them, it hasn't been sordid, nothing shameful. Nothing I'm ashamed of anyway, and my morals aren't that low.
It's not like I've had a succession of drunken one-night stands.
I had a two-year relationship with Toby, one that ended when he accused me of misusing the subjunctive one time too many, before the Bartlet campaign even began.
For your information, I do not misuse the subjunctive.
Except when I really want to piss Toby off.
Then there's Danny: that one might even have worked out if he hadn't worked for the Other Side. There was never any hope that a Press Secretary could live happily ever after with a White House Correspondent. It was never going to happen.
Can't blame a girl for wanting to live the fairytale for a little while, can you?
And Leo, I swear to God with Leo it did not get that far. I mean, no disrespect to Leo, but he's my boss and he knows it.
Plus he has the disconcerting habit of calling me a good girl.
I need to know I have at least one leg in the pants in a relationship.
So I didn't put up too much of a fight when he said, "We can't, CJ."
One day some great man and I will share a fabulous first kiss and neither of us will have to say that.
Or maybe I'll end up with Josh and I'll never have another first kiss with anyone.
Maybe it shouldn't be a crime to date Josh: maybe it should just be a crime on Josh's part to date. The dated parties could get compensation.
Leo still looks disappointed sometimes, if I don't hang back after staff and see how he's doing, maybe share a little 'moment'.
He's been disappointed a lot since I started dating his deputy.
Lord, he'd sack us both if he knew. Truth be told, the danger's kind of a turn on.
The point is, out of all the men I work with, the only one I've slept with (probably) without thinking it through first is Josh. Ah, the irony.
If I'd been compos mentis at the time, I'd never ever have slept with Josh. Never.
I'd have missed out on a helluva lot of fun.
* * * * *
Let me explain. Mandy dumped him. That's what started it. She really did a number on his brain.
Drove each other crazy. Sometimes in a good way.
They were always on, off, back on, definitely off, on again.
That's why he couldn't take it when she finished with him permanently. He didn't believe it was over for good; none of us really did.
Those of us who were, for our sins, their friends were used to them both turning up drunk on our doorsteps (sometimes they arrived at the same time and got furious, accusing us of setting them up) wailing and sobbing and saying they'd never find anyone else like the other.
Hard to imagine Mandy like that, isn't it? Especially over Josh.
One day I might act like that over Josh. Eek.
Oh, for the protection of the law.
When she came to work with us again he was sure they were back on track. She told him he was wrong.
Every time they'd offer each other one absolutely final last chance.
How was Josh supposed to know she'd meant it this time?
I felt for him, I really did, for all those months he wondered why she wasn't coming back to him. He waited for the longest time.
Well, waited and stalked.
Finally, when he ran her car battery flat to stop her making a date, Mandy quit work and got a restraining order. Then he gave up.
That's when he cried for the first time since their last break-up.
I tagged along on the requisite pub-crawl because I was worried about him and because I'd just found out Paul from the Pentagon was sleeping with my PA behind my back.
You know, I'd always suspected that asshole of being Danny's source on a number of occasions.
I was hoping double vodkas would help me formulate a workable plan to get him fired. And I knew Josh had a poor head for alcohol and I didn't want to leave him alone in such a vulnerable state.
Vulnerability in powerful men is such a turn on. But I digress.
What I neglected to think about was the fact that my head for alcohol wasn't much better than Josh's.
By the time he started reeling off the details of every time she'd told him she loved him, my vision was sufficiently skewed for me to demand of a bottle of Chianti that it supply with another drink, and quickly.
I was starting to get very teary-eyed when he told me about all his attempts to win her back.
"S'not 'ike I di'n' try," he explained, reaching for my hand but spilling my drink instead.
The barmaid rolled her eyes and fetched another.
Josh continued, "E'en tried," – hiccup – "make her jeal" – coughing fit – "ous."
"S'tragic," I tried to say, though I'm not at all sure it was intelligible. "A love like that going…"
I couldn't think of anywhere it was going so I just kept waving my arm about until I fell off the stool.
Josh struggled to focus enough to see where I'd fallen, and found himself looking down my blouse.
It was the beginning of the end.
* * * * *
We probably both owe our lives to the fact that by the time they were ready to kick us out of the bar I couldn't remember where I'd left my car.
"Josh, I'm seeing six of you," I giggled a trifle hysterically as he crawled on all fours out of the men's room.
He waved to acknowledge me before vomiting into a plant pot.
I swung round a pillar to face the manager, who could have looked less happy, but only if he'd practised for an hour each day for several years.
Josh's retching was echoing in one ear, though in the other I could hear only birdsong.
"I think we're gonna need a room."
* * * * *
Sometime later, we had been 'escorted' to a hotel across the street and deposited unceremoniously on the floor of a ground-floor room. A room that contained a double bed.
The chill of the night air had started me crying and Josh was rocking back and forth, banging his head on the dresser and chanting, "Shut up, shut up, shut up…"
Suddenly and for no apparent reason I did as he told me.
Must've been a first.
He looked in my general direction and said, "CJ… you okay?"
I started sniffling again and we crawled over to each other.
* * * * *
The next morning (oh, okay, afternoon) we awoke to find ourselves on the bed, limbs strangely entangled, nursing the kind of headaches that probably made Hitler decide to invade Poland and, to this day, completely unable to recall whether or not we had succeeded in sleeping together.
At the time our conversation consisted of something like, "OH MY GOD, SHUT THE FUCKING CURTAINS!!!"; "What bastard invented sunshine?!" and "Stop. Making. Sounds. With. Your. Mouth!"
Later, over one of the most awkward meals I've ever eaten, we agreed that we'd made some attempt at sexual contact.
We remembered clumsily undressing, dragging each other onto the bed – no mean feat in our state of discoordination, let me tell you.
However, neither one of us has any clear memory of performing The Act. The evidence that we did seemed pretty compelling – but I guess we'll never be sure.
Josh decided that we definitely did it, chiefly because he doesn't want to consider the possibility that he was not equal to the task.
Me, I think it's quite possible that I still haven't had a drunken one- night stand, that I'm as good a girl as Leo likes to imagine.
I gotta say though, if we didn't do it that night, we've more than made up for it since.
I don't know anyone who'd say we'd make a good couple – me with Josh Lyman! - but we seem to be doing all right.
We break up a lot less often than Mandy and he did. Plus we're having more fun.
And as I implied at the beginning of this little tangent to my real work – I don't think this is going to go away any time soon.
See – and this is very embarrassing for me to admit – Josh Lyman and I have become more than just good fun.
It's the little things – like, this lunchtime I bought this enormous orange from the canteen. The size of it made us all laugh. It was so big, I shared it with Carol and Bonnie; they had a quarter each and I had a half.
The thing is, that orange made me so happy. Ordinary things have been doing that lately.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.
Even a day in the West Wing can't shake it. My job seems easier. I get through all the tasks on my list and the extra ones that occur throughout the day too.
Pay attention now, because this is the part that I really can't believe isn't in violation of some little state by-law somewhere.
I love him. I'm glad I exist.
THE END
Category: CJ/Josh
Disclaimer/Acknowledgements: West Wing characters and back-stories do not belong to me and the ending is straight from Wendy Cope's poem "The Orange" from her collection "Serious Concerns" – also not mine, surprisingly enough.
Summary: CJ's thoughts take a happy little wander.
Dating Josh Lyman. There should be a law against it. Making it punishable by death, maybe. Hell, I'd campaign for it personally.
But if they did pass a law against it, I'd be a pretty dangerous criminal, because I'm doing it.
And him, for that matter, though that's a whole other story.
Thing is though, I could never revert to being a law-abiding citizen at this stage. I'm having way too much fun.
* * * * *
I look around at all the men I work with and wonder at what point in my life did I become the office slut. There have been moments with just about all of them – well, except for the President. That would just be too weird. And very probably actually illegal.
I can just picture myself, standing in a crowded courtroom charged with seducing the President of the United States, hyperactive reporters screaming at me as I'm dragged away in handcuffs.
Fortunately I am fairly sure seducing the President isn't a crime just yet and anyway, like I said, I haven't done that.
I shouldn't have said that, it sounds like I have seduced every other man within groping distance, but I really haven't.
It sounds like such a cliché, but it really hasn't been like that. Most of the time it hasn't even been the other way around, them seducing me.
Contrary to what you're probably thinking, a lot of the time it hasn't even been sex. Well, some of the time, at least. It's just been... moments.
* * * * *
I didn't have a lot of boyfriends when I was younger. I was never a giver in high school, mostly because few enterprising souls ever tried to take me. Probably the height thing. I still maintain I intimidate them; the difference is, now they like it.
Now I can look across a room at some of the most powerful men in the world and catch them checking me out. It's fun.
But not as much fun as getting Josh flustered. It's not that hard, when you know what you're doing. I do. He's cute when he's hot and bothered, hot being the operative word.
Back to the thrust of my thoughts.
It's funny how everything seems to ooze innuendo when you're in a really enjoyable relationship.
I don't think they think I'm easy. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I suspect there would be more semi-drunken White House staffers waking up my apartment block after particularly crisis-ridden days if they thought that.
They don't know about Josh, you see. They have an idea that he has a bit of a crush on me; some of them are even a little jealous, but I'm a better actor than he is – there aren't a lot of alternatives in my job – and they have no clue anything's actually going on between us.
God, something's "going on" between Josh Lyman and me. Who'd have thought it? This should not be legal.
Anyway, they have no real reason to think I'm easy, a slut, whatever. Just because I've formed close bonds with the people I work with – it's hardly my fault the West Wing is a man's world, is it?
If the Deputy Communications Director had been a woman, I would have tried to comfort her too after a day like we'd had.
The comforting would have taken a slightly different format is all, and most likely wouldn't have been repeated at intervals for the next few months.
I haven't behaved sluttishly with them, unless you're a Puritanical type who thinks any sex outside marriage is sluttish, in which case, guilty as charged.
I seem to be guilty of a lot of crimes these days. Ever since I started dating Josh Lyman. Lord, dating Josh Lyman. How did that happen?
With most of them, it hasn't been sordid, nothing shameful. Nothing I'm ashamed of anyway, and my morals aren't that low.
It's not like I've had a succession of drunken one-night stands.
I had a two-year relationship with Toby, one that ended when he accused me of misusing the subjunctive one time too many, before the Bartlet campaign even began.
For your information, I do not misuse the subjunctive.
Except when I really want to piss Toby off.
Then there's Danny: that one might even have worked out if he hadn't worked for the Other Side. There was never any hope that a Press Secretary could live happily ever after with a White House Correspondent. It was never going to happen.
Can't blame a girl for wanting to live the fairytale for a little while, can you?
And Leo, I swear to God with Leo it did not get that far. I mean, no disrespect to Leo, but he's my boss and he knows it.
Plus he has the disconcerting habit of calling me a good girl.
I need to know I have at least one leg in the pants in a relationship.
So I didn't put up too much of a fight when he said, "We can't, CJ."
One day some great man and I will share a fabulous first kiss and neither of us will have to say that.
Or maybe I'll end up with Josh and I'll never have another first kiss with anyone.
Maybe it shouldn't be a crime to date Josh: maybe it should just be a crime on Josh's part to date. The dated parties could get compensation.
Leo still looks disappointed sometimes, if I don't hang back after staff and see how he's doing, maybe share a little 'moment'.
He's been disappointed a lot since I started dating his deputy.
Lord, he'd sack us both if he knew. Truth be told, the danger's kind of a turn on.
The point is, out of all the men I work with, the only one I've slept with (probably) without thinking it through first is Josh. Ah, the irony.
If I'd been compos mentis at the time, I'd never ever have slept with Josh. Never.
I'd have missed out on a helluva lot of fun.
* * * * *
Let me explain. Mandy dumped him. That's what started it. She really did a number on his brain.
Drove each other crazy. Sometimes in a good way.
They were always on, off, back on, definitely off, on again.
That's why he couldn't take it when she finished with him permanently. He didn't believe it was over for good; none of us really did.
Those of us who were, for our sins, their friends were used to them both turning up drunk on our doorsteps (sometimes they arrived at the same time and got furious, accusing us of setting them up) wailing and sobbing and saying they'd never find anyone else like the other.
Hard to imagine Mandy like that, isn't it? Especially over Josh.
One day I might act like that over Josh. Eek.
Oh, for the protection of the law.
When she came to work with us again he was sure they were back on track. She told him he was wrong.
Every time they'd offer each other one absolutely final last chance.
How was Josh supposed to know she'd meant it this time?
I felt for him, I really did, for all those months he wondered why she wasn't coming back to him. He waited for the longest time.
Well, waited and stalked.
Finally, when he ran her car battery flat to stop her making a date, Mandy quit work and got a restraining order. Then he gave up.
That's when he cried for the first time since their last break-up.
I tagged along on the requisite pub-crawl because I was worried about him and because I'd just found out Paul from the Pentagon was sleeping with my PA behind my back.
You know, I'd always suspected that asshole of being Danny's source on a number of occasions.
I was hoping double vodkas would help me formulate a workable plan to get him fired. And I knew Josh had a poor head for alcohol and I didn't want to leave him alone in such a vulnerable state.
Vulnerability in powerful men is such a turn on. But I digress.
What I neglected to think about was the fact that my head for alcohol wasn't much better than Josh's.
By the time he started reeling off the details of every time she'd told him she loved him, my vision was sufficiently skewed for me to demand of a bottle of Chianti that it supply with another drink, and quickly.
I was starting to get very teary-eyed when he told me about all his attempts to win her back.
"S'not 'ike I di'n' try," he explained, reaching for my hand but spilling my drink instead.
The barmaid rolled her eyes and fetched another.
Josh continued, "E'en tried," – hiccup – "make her jeal" – coughing fit – "ous."
"S'tragic," I tried to say, though I'm not at all sure it was intelligible. "A love like that going…"
I couldn't think of anywhere it was going so I just kept waving my arm about until I fell off the stool.
Josh struggled to focus enough to see where I'd fallen, and found himself looking down my blouse.
It was the beginning of the end.
* * * * *
We probably both owe our lives to the fact that by the time they were ready to kick us out of the bar I couldn't remember where I'd left my car.
"Josh, I'm seeing six of you," I giggled a trifle hysterically as he crawled on all fours out of the men's room.
He waved to acknowledge me before vomiting into a plant pot.
I swung round a pillar to face the manager, who could have looked less happy, but only if he'd practised for an hour each day for several years.
Josh's retching was echoing in one ear, though in the other I could hear only birdsong.
"I think we're gonna need a room."
* * * * *
Sometime later, we had been 'escorted' to a hotel across the street and deposited unceremoniously on the floor of a ground-floor room. A room that contained a double bed.
The chill of the night air had started me crying and Josh was rocking back and forth, banging his head on the dresser and chanting, "Shut up, shut up, shut up…"
Suddenly and for no apparent reason I did as he told me.
Must've been a first.
He looked in my general direction and said, "CJ… you okay?"
I started sniffling again and we crawled over to each other.
* * * * *
The next morning (oh, okay, afternoon) we awoke to find ourselves on the bed, limbs strangely entangled, nursing the kind of headaches that probably made Hitler decide to invade Poland and, to this day, completely unable to recall whether or not we had succeeded in sleeping together.
At the time our conversation consisted of something like, "OH MY GOD, SHUT THE FUCKING CURTAINS!!!"; "What bastard invented sunshine?!" and "Stop. Making. Sounds. With. Your. Mouth!"
Later, over one of the most awkward meals I've ever eaten, we agreed that we'd made some attempt at sexual contact.
We remembered clumsily undressing, dragging each other onto the bed – no mean feat in our state of discoordination, let me tell you.
However, neither one of us has any clear memory of performing The Act. The evidence that we did seemed pretty compelling – but I guess we'll never be sure.
Josh decided that we definitely did it, chiefly because he doesn't want to consider the possibility that he was not equal to the task.
Me, I think it's quite possible that I still haven't had a drunken one- night stand, that I'm as good a girl as Leo likes to imagine.
I gotta say though, if we didn't do it that night, we've more than made up for it since.
I don't know anyone who'd say we'd make a good couple – me with Josh Lyman! - but we seem to be doing all right.
We break up a lot less often than Mandy and he did. Plus we're having more fun.
And as I implied at the beginning of this little tangent to my real work – I don't think this is going to go away any time soon.
See – and this is very embarrassing for me to admit – Josh Lyman and I have become more than just good fun.
It's the little things – like, this lunchtime I bought this enormous orange from the canteen. The size of it made us all laugh. It was so big, I shared it with Carol and Bonnie; they had a quarter each and I had a half.
The thing is, that orange made me so happy. Ordinary things have been doing that lately.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.
Even a day in the West Wing can't shake it. My job seems easier. I get through all the tasks on my list and the extra ones that occur throughout the day too.
Pay attention now, because this is the part that I really can't believe isn't in violation of some little state by-law somewhere.
I love him. I'm glad I exist.
THE END