Please see Chapter 1 for general info and disclaimers.

*~*

"President Bartlet, do you have anything to say to those who claim you should resign since you are clearly lacking the morals to carry out the duties associated with your job as President of the United States?"

"People are really saying all that? 'Cause I know of a few organizations who'll tell you that I'm much too moral for their comfort," Jed quipped as he stood behind a wooden lectern. Polite laughter rippled through the press seated before him, but he knew they were all dying to hear what his answer would be. "But seriously, Paul, I have no intention of resigning. As I have made plainly clear tonight, I am a man who has made several mistakes in the past for which I deeply regret. However, I do not believe that these particular mistakes or regrets impinge on my ability to be President. I love my children. I love my wife. And I love my country. I have no doubt that the American people understand that the relationship I am forging with Jennifer Erickson is a private matter and one that is completely separate from my presidential duties."

As Josh watched Jed's response on one of the TVs in his bullpen, he groaned and mumbled, "You've got to be kidding me."

"It wasn't that bad, Josh," Donna informed him as she walked towards him with an arm full of files. "I thought he handled himself pretty well. It was a tough question."

"It was a question we knew he'd be asked! It was one of the few questions we actually prepared an answer for him to say! But did he give the prepared answer? No!"

"Well, I still don't think it was that bad," Donna stated stubbornly. "And stop yelling. People are tired and you yelling doesn't help."

Josh glared at his assistant in annoyance before shifting his gaze to the nearest wall clock. "What are you still doing here? It's past midnight."

Donna shrugged and began distributing the files into various office mailboxes. "You needed my help, so I stuck around."

"But it's after midnight."

"I know." Donna turned and smiled warmly at her weary boss. "Don't worry about it. I don't mind sticking around."

Josh sighed and roughly rubbed his eyes. "It's late, Donna. You should go home."

"It's okay. I don't mind—"

"Go home, Donna," Josh snapped. When he saw how his brusque tone had wounded her, he winced and gave her a lopsided grin. "Look, if how I'm feeling right now is any indication of how I'll be feeling tomorrow, then I need you to go home and get some rest so that at least one of us is lucid tomorrow. Okay?"

Josh's exhausted voice worried Donna, but she acquiesced to his request without putting up any more of a fight. "You sure you'll be okay if I leave?"

"Donna, believe it or not, I am actually able to fend for myself when you're not around."

Donna laughed as she began gathering her things. "You'll try and get some sleep tonight if you can, right?"

"Yes, Mom."

"I'm serious, Josh. You need to get some sleep – some real sleep that involves more than just one hour of resting your eyes."

"I'll try," he replied obediently.

"Okay." She reached out and lightly touched his forearm as she brushed past him.
"I'll see you tomorrow then."

"Night."

Josh watched Donna walk away from him until she was no longer in sight. Feeling as if he had fifty pound weights strapped around his waist, he turned his attention back to the TV sets and observed Jed contend with another sticky question. Even though the press conference had ended over an hour ago and he had repeatedly watched different news stations air various snippets of the conference as well as the President's Dateline appearance (which had, to the senior staff's surprise, included the First Lady), Josh still couldn't keep himself from grimacing. At least the worst was almost over; now all they needed was for Jenn to make it through her TV interview with a minimal amount of damage. He poured himself the last cup of coffee remaining at the West Wing coffee station and began making his way towards the Oval Office, where Jenn was going through a 'dress rehearsal' of her television debut.

He hadn't walked very far when he heard, "'I love my children. I love my wife. And I love my country.' What the hell was that?"

Josh turned around to see Sam covering the distance between them in long strides. "It was Bartlet being Bartlet."

"It was Bartlet being a self-righteous bastard, which is a luxury we don't have anymore," Sam retorted icily.

"Donna doesn't think the answer was that bad."

"Donna's too nice to know whether or not it was bad."

"Or maybe we're the ones who are too angry to know the difference." He paused long enough for Sam to stare at him incredulously before adding, "I'm just saying."

"You going to the Oval Office?"

"Of course. It's like my second home these days."

"Yeah."

They continued on for a short distance in silence before Josh asked, "Do you know what the press has dubbed tonight's disclosure? Sexgate. They're actually calling it Sexgate, which, I guess, is better than, you know, calling it Affairgate or Adulterergate because the latter names immediately bring to mind an image of a lecherous President. With Sexgate, some of the less informed public might just think they have an extremely virile President who doesn't need Viagra, which might not be such a bad thing."

Sam furrowed his eyebrows and looked as if someone had just asked him to roll around in elephant dung. "Are we really discussing the President's sex life? Because on my list of things I really don't want to talk about, that's right up there with discussing how my parents conceived me."

Josh chuckled but then fell silent. "Hey, where did you disappear to this afternoon?" he eventually asked. "I went looking for you but couldn't find you."

"Oh, uh, C.J. let me crash on her couch for a couple hours."

"Wow, that was nice of her. There must have been something in the water today because Donna cleared an hour in my schedule for me to lock myself away in my office and rest undisturbed."

"Donna's great. You're lucky to have her."

"Yeah, I am."

There was something wistful in Josh's voice that forced Sam to shoot him a sideways glance of alarm. "Josh, what are you thinking?"

"What?"

"I know you, Josh. I know what it means when you get that particular cadence in your voice. She's your assistant."

"I know."

"And as her boss, there are certain boundaries that you're not supposed to cross."

"I know. God, can't I be thankful for Donna without it turning into a sexual overture?"

"Yes, you can, but be careful. You're skating on thin ice, my friend."

"You can be really infuriating, Sam, you know that?"

"Yeah, but that's what makes me so lovable."

Josh scoffed loudly as he and Sam entered the outer office to the Oval Office. Charlie looked up from the textbook he was reading and silently motioned for the two deputies to go on in. They entered the Oval Office just in time to hear Jenn drone, "…and the President welcomed me to his family with open arms."

C.J. and Toby exchanged pointed looks with one another before she stammered, "Uh, that was…that was good, Jenn. You nailed the answer that's written down on this sheet, but, um, you're sounding a little…rehearsed, and rehearsed isn't what we're aiming for."

"Really?" Jenn asked in mock surprise. "Well, then, do you think that maybe we should stop, oh, I don't know…rehearsing?" She proceeded to roll her eyes in a dramatic fashion.

"How's it going?" Sam murmured to Toby as he took a seat next to him.

"Oh, she's being her usual pain-in-the-ass self," Toby grumbled back.

Sensing that Jenn was about to go off into another tirade, Leo took control of the situation and stated, "This seems like a good time to take a break. Let's go over Jenn's schedule for tomorrow. C.J.?"

C.J. rifled through some papers in her lap before finding the memo Carol had written up earlier in the day. "Okay, Jenn's set to appear on Full Circle with Matthew Durkin. The live shoot begins at three, so she should probably get there no later than 2:15."

"And Toby's going to accompany her there, right?" Jed asked. He was so secure with his assumption that his mind wandered to thoughts of his wife before waiting for the answer. At Leo's suggestion, Jed had attempted to open a line of communication with Abbey both before and after his press conference. While she had been warm and agreeable during their Dateline appearance, she'd immediately turned frigid after the cameras had stopped rolling. Every time he'd approach her, she'd inform him that the only reason she had decided to appear beside him on TV was for the sake of their children and not him. So, convinced that his marriage was in shambles, Jed had returned to his office with a renewed determination to be a good father to Jenn. He found, however, that this didn't prevent him from thinking about Abbey every chance he got.

C.J. squinted and frowned at the piece of paper in her hand. "Um, actually, according to this schedule, Sam's going to be the one who'll accompany Jenn to the show."

At the mention of his name, Sam looked up in surprise but remained silent.

"What?" Jed forced his mind to return to the topic at hand. "That's got to be a typo."

"It's not a typo, sir," Leo replied. "Toby and I decided that Sam should be the one to go because Toby's needed here."

"Oh, really?" Jed asked, his voice brimming with sarcasm. "You and Toby came up with that brilliant idea all by yourselves?"

"Mr. President," Leo said with a sigh, "Sam is more than capable to—"

"I'm well aware of his capabilities, Leo, and, no offense to you, Sam, but I think we can all agree that Toby is the one who should—"

"But Toby can't go tomorrow because we need—"

"Dammit, Leo, show me where it says that my Director of Communications cannot accompany my daughter to—"

"I know why they don't want him to come with me," Jenn remarked as she stared at the Presidential Seal on the carpeting. While Jed and Leo had been interrupting each other's sentences, she had been listening to them with keen ears and had been able to decipher what Leo wasn't saying. "If I totally screw up on the show tomorrow, it'll look better for this administration if Sam was the one who accompanied me because it'll imply that you guys never really took me that seriously and that's why I was sent down there with a deputy rather than a director." She raised her eyes from the floor and stoically stared at the senior staff. "Thanks for the support, guys," she said flatly. "It's really overwhelming." And with that, she rose from her seat and walked out of the office into the hallway, slamming the door behind her.

They watched her leave and Josh couldn't help pointing at the door and asking, "Has anyone else noticed she has a really bad habit of doing that?"

Jed covered his face with his hands and groaned. "I guess someone should go after her and make sure she's all right," he mumbled through the cracks between his fingers.

"Oh, we have bigger fish to fry," C.J. mumbled under her breath as she pushed her glasses on to the top of her head.

"And what's that supposed to mean, C.J.?" Jed asked in annoyance.

"It means, sir," she began, mimicking his annoyed tone, "that we quizzed her on these questions for almost 45 minutes, and she never once referred to you as 'dad,' 'father,' 'pop,' or any of those other fatherly euphemisms people like to use. It was always 'him,' 'he', or 'the President.' If we can't get her to appear as if she likes you a little bit, then it really doesn't matter who the hell accompanies her to the show tomorrow 'cause we'll be dead in the water. Viewers and the press will immediately latch on to her coldness towards you and they'll start thinking that you strong-armed her into going on TV in a pathetic attempt to save your job."

"What do you suggest I should do then?"

"I don't know, sir, but we're running out of time."

The group fell silent as they mulled over C.J.'s last words. "Maybe we should call it a night," Leo proposed quietly. "I'll go find Jenn and make sure she's okay, but the rest of you should just call it a night. Especially you, C.J. You're going to have a tough day tomorrow and you need your rest."

"I think I'll stick around for a bit," Sam announced. "I've fallen behind in my workload and wanna do a little catching up."

"Sam, don't push yourself," Leo cautioned.

"It's okay. All I need is a cup of coffee and then I'll be as good as new."

Josh's eyes grew large as he looked down at the cup in his hand. "I, uh, I might have just taken the last of the coffee," he admitted meekly.

"Well, didn't you make a new pot? 'Cause you know you're supposed to make a new pot when you're the one who finishes one up," Sam griped.

"Yeah, I usually make Donna do that, but I sent her home."

Sam threw his head back in an exaggerated expression of pain while C.J. patted him sympathetically on the back and Toby tried to suppress his grin.

"Go to the mess," the President ordered, ignoring his staff's antics because he wasn't in the mood to enjoy or encourage them. "You can probably find some there."

Sam straightened up and gave a short nod. "Thank you, sir."

"So, we'll adjourn until tomorrow morning, Mr. President?" Leo asked.

"Yeah, fine."

"Good night, sir," they said in unison as they departed from the Oval Office with Sam calling Josh an ignoramic caffeine moocher.