VII

"Josh Lyman's office," Donna answered automatically. The phone had been ringing off the hook all morning, mostly with calls that she deflected with a resolute no 'comment'.

"Donnatella."

Out of the handful of people who called her by that name, this particular voice was a surprise. "Alexia," she said neutrally. Her oldest sister hardly ever spoke to her when they were in the same room, let alone in different states.

"We all saw you on the television this morning."

"Really?" Donna couldn't help smirking. Take that, check-out-my-oh-so-perfect-life girl.

"Yes. Mother's terribly upset. Why must you always make such a spectacle of yourself?"

"What?" she demanded incredulously.

"Fawning over your ridiculous boss like that! Honestly, the man's obviously got psychological problems."

"I was not fawning!" she exploded, outraged. "And there's nothing wrong with Josh!"

Her sister gave a heavy, long-suffering sigh that made her wish they were in the same room - so she could give Alexia a well-deserved slapping. "Honestly, Donna, you always make such a fool of yourself over the most unsuitable men. The man's a failure, and of course you'll go down clinging to him to the very end. Come home, Donnatella."

'Up yours!' was the reaction that first sprang to mind, but unfortunately even five years of Lymanesque diplomacy wasn't enough to counteract the role her family had trained her into. She was supposed to be ditzy Donnatella, who got herself into terrible messes and then had to bailed out by her long-suffering sensible family.

Well, screw that. "I'm not coming home. I'm not leaving my job. And if mom's got something to say to me, she can call me up it tell it to me herself! Goodbye." She slammed the phone down, and growled at it. Then she looked up, aware of a shadow over her.

Sam hurriedly threw up his hands. "Hey, don't shoot!"

Donna smiled and shook her head. "Oh, it's just... grrr. Sisters!" She was the youngest of three girls, and they all had their assigned roles. Donna was the 'flighty' one, Alexia was the sensible one, and Joletta in the middle was the mousy, quiet one who barely opened her mouth except to apologise or offer to wait on people. And to make matters worse, both of her older sisters had married young and produced lots of little neat blonde children, which was apparently the only criteria on which her mother judged success.

"Your family giving you grief?" Sam smiled sympathetically.

Donna rolled her eyes. "That was my older sister, trying to get me to leave my job and come home to Wisconsin - again. My mom and my other sister are flying in for my birthday Thursday night, and I'm going to get thirty-six hours of 'Donna, why won't you come home?' 'Donna, why must you insist on working with all those dreadful politicians?' 'Donna, why aren't you married?'" She shook her head, and looked up at the by now amused-looking Sam. "You think this is funny?"

"Maybe a little," he admitted, grinning.

She sighed, and then straightened up. "Okay, Sam, I wouldn't normally do this, but desperate times call for desperate measures. You gotta marry me."

He blinked. "Uh, Donna-"

"Seriously, Sam, my family's never gonna get off my back until I marry somebody."

He chuckled faintly to himself. "Well, Donna, you know, much as I'm flattered to be your, uh, desperate last-chance marriage option..."

"Oh, come on," she pleaded. "We can get married Thursday, meet my mom and sister and my godawful brother-in-law, and then we can get divorced Saturday afternoon. C'mon, what do you say?"

Sam smiled at her, and fiddled with his tie. "Well, you know, I'd love to, but... actually I'm kind of seeing somebody."

"Really?" she demanded delightedly. The assistant chain was so right. Bonnie had announced at their last morning coffee meeting that Sam's attitude change had to be the result of getting laid. She grinned. "So who's the lucky girl? Anyone I know?"

Sam hesitated for a fraction of an instant longer than she'd expect him to. "Well, actually-"

"Sam." Toby appeared in the doorway, tapping a sheaf of papers impatiently. "Walk with me," he commanded.

"Okay," he nodded. He turned back to Donna, shrugged and smiled apologetically. Then he followed after Toby.

Donna watched him go, smiling. At least somebody was happy. After how depressed he'd been lately, she couldn't bring herself to begrudge him finding somebody when her life was still depressingly romance-free.

What? No. That was her sisters talking. She was happy, dammit. Single and enjoying it!

Or at least she would be, as soon as her birthday was over and done with and her family safely packed off back to Wisconsin.

"Toby," Sam nodded at his boss. He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or mildly irritated that Toby had interrupted before he'd had the chance to share his... unexpected relationship circumstances... with Donna.

He'd meant what he'd said to Steve about hating secrets. Whatever happened, he wasn't prepared to be that guy. He didn't want to be his father - he wasn't like his father, never would be like his father - but he didn't want to be like the president or Josh either, caught out after too long hiding something which should never have had to be hidden.

He wasn't going to keep this a secret. If anyone flat-out asked him, he would tell the truth without hesitation.

It was figuring out how to volunteer the truth when nobody was asking him that was the difficult bit.

His depression might have started to lift, but that didn't mean he'd gone back to any childish age of innocence. He knew this was going to be a thing, and people needed to know about it. It was just that... it was going to be a thing. And he'd like, just maybe, just for a little while, a little bit of a chance to just enjoy it before it became a thing.

That wasn't too much to ask, right?

Toby beside him was oblivious to all this reflection, or at least disinterested in what it might be about. "Sam. The Sex-Ed thing."

"Leo shot you down," Sam reminded him.

"Leo's wrong."

"Did you take it to the president?"

"Yes."

"He shot you down too?"

"They're both wrong," Toby pronounced flatly. "This isn't about, it isn't about hot button issues or religious debate. It's about-"

"Education," Sam completed, and Toby gave him an appraising look.

"Yes. Education."

"We need..." Sam thought for a moment, probing around the edges of the issue. Remembering the way he'd used to be able to think about things, before the fog of despair had settled over everything. "We have a duty to educate our children as best as we are able. It's not about promoting or proscribing sex; it's about understanding it."

"Yes!" Toby agreed forcefully. Probably thinking it was about damn time somebody got around to satisfying the Ziegler definition of showing intelligence, which largely involved agreeing with Toby.

Sam hesitated. "Toby... you know there's not much chance of us winning this one."

"When did we start caring about that?"

Now there was a good question. "I don't know."

"We should stop doing that."

"We should."

They continued on to their offices. Outside, Toby stopped momentarily and threw him a look. "Sam. You're happy again, aren't you?"

Sam blinked, and then slowly smiled. "Yes. Yes I am," he admitted.

Toby nodded slowly. "Well, stop it. It's disconcerting."

He disappeared back into his office.

"Mr. President? Josh."

"Thank you." Josh took Charlie's place in the doorway, hovering uncertainly. Jed stood up. "Josh. How are you?"

"Mr. President, I feel fine," he answered without hesitation. Having given more than a few such replies in his time, Jed considered himself something of an expert on 'I feel fine'. This one, happily, seemed to be genuine enough. "You're gonna be okay?" he asked.

"Seriously, sir?" Josh smiled faintly. "I don't know. I hope so."

"Ah, well," he waved it off. "Close enough for government work." Josh grinned, and there was a moment of comfortable silence. Then the president pointed an accusing finger at him. "You'd better not be working yourself too hard." He ignored Abbey's voice in the back of his mind as it said scornful things about glass houses.

"I'm on my way out," Josh said quickly. "Donna wants me to buy her dinner as an apology for embarrassing her on national TV," he explained.

"You don't deserve that girl, you know," Jed told him mock-sternly.

"I know," agreed Josh seriously.

He smiled. "Take her somewhere nice."

"Yeah." Josh hung back. "She also wants me to close the airports to keep her family out of town."

Jed looked at him. "Yeah. Okay. I don't think we'll be doing that," he said dryly.

"Okay." Josh left.

"CJ."

CJ looked up from her notes. "Katie. If you're looking for Josh, he's already gone. And he won't be giving-"

"I don't want to talk about Josh," the reporter reassured her hurriedly.

"Okay." CJ put her papers down and leaned back expectantly.

Katie perched on the edge of her desk. "So I met this guy in a bar a couple of weeks ago. His name was Steve. He was cute, he was smart, he was funny, he was single..."

"He turned out to be gay?" CJ guessed, and Katie grinned.

"Yup."

"Typical." CJ hesitated for a moment. "Okay, so-"

"So I was in this bar again the other day," Katie quickly continued. "And I couldn't help noticing dear old Steve hanging around there. I was gonna go over, say hi, but it turned out he'd already got himself another drinking buddy. They were looking pretty cosy."

CJ could feel a headache coming on. "Who?"

"Sam Seaborn."

CJ slowly pulled her glasses off and stared at her. "Oh, come on-"

"I'm just-"

"Katie!"

"I just wanted you to-"

"Sam," she said forcefully, "is a people person. You're telling me he can't even have a friendly conversation with a gay guy? What possible-?"

"I'm just saying." Katie held up her hands defensively as she turned to go. "I'm not trolling for news here, CJ. Just thought I'd give you a heads up."

"Yeah, well, if you think this is anything, I'm not sure what your head's up."

Katie just smiled and shrugged as she left. CJ stared at the wall for a moment.

No.

No.

No?