Title: A Consequence of Lies

Author: Brandy B.

Summary: After failing to find the leak, CJ has another conversation with her husband.

Rating: PG-13 (for language)

Archive: Iif you tell me where so I can visit.

Feedback: I've only gotten two replies per story of this entire series, and it hasn't deterred me yet, but it would be nice.

Disclaimer: I don't own them, I'm not getting paid, sue anyway, but my net worth is kind of sad

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"Why are you lying to me, Toby?"

"I'm not, CJ."

"You are a terrible liar."

"I'm not."

"You are!"

"I can lie with the best of them."

"You lie about as well as Josh drinks."

Toby sighed, "I am a politician, CJ. I can lie."

"Not to me, you can't," CJ countered.

"You don't know what you are talking about, CJ."

"I am a lot smarter than most people give me credit for."

"I never said you weren't!"

"You said I didn't know what I was talking about. I'll have you know that I went to school for 22 years. I graduated with honors, several times!"

Toby smiled slightly, "And you are great in bed. You are no Columbo but you are great in bed."

"I'm no Columbo?"

"You didn't find the leak."

"And Columbo would've?" CJ rolled her eyes.

"You are no Columbo; that is all I am saying." Toby teased.

"Well, no offence to Peter Falk, but I hope I'm better looking."

Toby laughed, "You would prefer to be Angela Lasnsbury?"

"Being an actress would help me in my attempts to solve the mystery of the vociferous voucher?"

"How is a voucher vociferous? A person could be vociferous, maybe other animals as well, but I don't think a voucher…"

"Toby!" CJ interrupted.

"It doesn't have a mouth, CJ. A voucher doesn't have a mouth."

"Toby!"

"What?"

"You still haven't told me how being Angela Lansbury would help anything."

"She was on that show… you know "The Old Lady Detective."

"The Old Lady Detective?" CJ raised an eyebrow.

"You know the one… the one with the typewriter…"

"You think I should be J. B. Fletcher from Murder She Wrote?"

"I think it is frightening you remember her name."

CJ simply glared at him.

"What'd I do?" He whimpered.

"You called me old," she shot back with an indignant voice.

"I did no such thing."

"You did! You called me Columbo and then Angela Lansbury."

Toby sighed, "CJ, I asked you if you would rather be Angela Lansbury, I never called you Angela Lansbury; besides there is absolutely nothing wrong with her. She was great on that show."

"She's 'The Old Lady Detective', Toby! You called me old!"

"You called yourself Spartacus," Toby countered.

"Spartacus wasn't old."

"Kirk Douglass is old."

"He wasn't in 1960."

"Whatever," Toby sighed.

"There is just one more thing…" CJ's voice turned serious. "Why are you lying to me?"

"CJ," Toby sighed. He didn't enjoy lying to his wife. He hated not having anyone to talk to. He abhorred that the president had kept the American public from the truth, but it was worse keeping it from his wife.

"Toby," she knew it was a lost cause; Toby wouldn't give in. He could keep a secret as well as anybody, that was a virtue in the white house, but it didn't make their marriage any easier.

"Don't worry about it, CJ." The President had told Babish that day… the rest of the staff wouldn't be far behind.

"But I do! If it bothers you this much, I worry. It is tearing you up… and I don't even know what IT is."

Toby winced. She was completely right about the secret's effect on him. However, he couldn't say that out loud, not to CJ, not to anybody. News of the President's illness was going to get out; it was inevitable. Somebody would start a leak, or maybe they wouldn't…. how would he know? Odds were that somebody would leak the news. They had to. What was it CJ had said earlier. "No organization that large in the world could keep a secret." Could seventeen people? Not a chance. Ben Franklin once said that the only way three people could keep a secret was if two of them were dead. Toby hoped that wasn't true. He, CJ… and the state of New Jersey were keeping a secret. Maybe it was only a time before that too would end.

Not for the first time that night, or that week for that matter, Toby felt like Atlas had a pretty light load, "It's late… we should…"

CJ glared at him before interrupting, "Should what?"

"Sleep," Toby grunted.

"You are keeping something from me and you think we should curl up in bed all lovey dovey? Toby! You said big potatoes. You are gearing up for 'bit potatoes". What big potatoes are you talking about? We've lived through… everything… what could possibly be coming our way?

"CJ." Toby interrupted.

"Toby!" She shouted.

"Calm down."

"Calm down? You tell me we are about to face a scandal on the level of Watergate and you want me to calm down?"

"CJ."

"Toby, what in God's name makes you think I am going to calm down?"

"I never said…" Toby sighed, "I never said anything about Watergate." Toby had spent the last week working really hard to avoid thinking about the parallels, but it was hard. Toby closed his eyes and tried to think of something else, anything else. Failing, he slammed his head against the headboard behind him.

"You're beating yourself up, literally."

"Don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it? You're trying to dent my mahogany headboard and you say "don't worry about it." Of course I am worried. A couple of more moves like that and you'll be one of those people the president is so fascinated with the acalculiasts

"CJ."

"You'll be unable to complete sentences. That'll be an attractive quality for the president's communications director."

"Acalculia means an inability to deal with numbers or perform mathematic functions, CJ. It has no bearing on my ability to complete sentences. Unless of course one of the sentences is 2 +24… However, since our president is Nobel Prize winning economist, I'm pretty sure he can make the calculation on his feet. He converts to Celsius pretty quickly, I think simple math'll be a piece of Boston cream pie…" Unless of course, he is in the middle of 'an episode'.

"Toby."

"Besides…" he continued in a more somber tone, "I don't think acalculia is caused by banging one's head. While we're at it, I don't think you can just change the form of the world that way, but I'd have to look it up…"

"Toby!" CJ threw her hands up in frustration.

"Did you know that the plural of surgeon general is surgeons general, court martial is courts martial and…

"You can't say different than, only different from…"

"Well, yeah, there is that too," Toby nodded.

"You're trying to be coy."

"I have never once, in all of my life, tried to be Japanese fish…"

"COY, Toby! Not KOI!" CJ exclaimed. "You are not being funny, or distracting, or whatever he hell it is that you are trying to be."

"CJ," Toby began apologetically but didn't get the chance to finish.

"No! No! You are hiding something from me, Toby, something big. You are hiding something from your wife and also the press secretary of the United States. You, obviously, neither trust me personally or professionally, and I don't know what's worse. On some level, I need to know what the hell is going on here, and I don't. So, until you can let me in on this cloak and dagger life you've been leading, get the hell out of my house."

"CJ."

"No, I don't want to hear it. Just go."

Toby winced, "CJ."

"Are you ready to talk?"

Beyond ready, but I can't, Toby sighed. There was a plan to bring her in, to bring everybody in. "CJ… I…"

"Get out!" She rolled away from him to hide the tears in her eyes.

"Yeah." He sighed before quietly leaving the apartment.