Title: "A Volume of Springtime Haiku" (2/6) (CJ/Danny.
Author: soft lite.
Poetry written by: CJ Clanton sparesmom at yahoo dot com Characters: CJ, Danny, the senior staff, Jed, Carol, Gail, and various reporters.
Rating: G.
Disclaimer: Characters from "The West Wing" are not mine.
Spoilers: Season 5 through "The Warfare of Genghis Khan." Author's note: A big thank you to CJ Clanton for volunteering to write poetry for this story!
Sunday morning, March 21, 2004
Danny found this particular briefing difficult to sit through. On very little sleep, he needed to react appropriately surprised as he listened to the woman he had very publicly confessed his love for mostly evade questions. Still, this was the humiliation he had agreed to. And CJ's answer about dating a reporter gave him hope.
Of course the moment the briefing was over, Danny was surrounded by his peers, wanting answers to all kinds of questions. He found it rather overwhelming, standing in the middle of a crowd trying to hear and answer one question while people were loudly asking him a dozen others. The longer this continued, the more his already high respect for CJ's skill grew. At last the crowd dispersed, and eventually Danny was alone.
Before he could escape, Josh appeared in the doorway and beckoned towards Danny, "Come talk." Danny followed to Josh's office. "Have a seat," Josh offered as he closed the door. "CJ pointed out that no one's talked to you about ground rules, and she thinks someone should, so I volunteered."
"That was big of you."
"Well, you know, only after making Toby and Leo squirm."
"Ah."
"So, as you know from the briefing, you can ask CJ for a date. You know, a first date, so public –"
"It'll be VERY public what with the current press interest."
"Yeah. My point is, you can't go to her apartment or take her to yours. Maybe chaste kisses."
"Basically a 1950s, under daddy's eye, first date."
"It's just at the beginning, you know."
"It's okay. I understand. People are going to be watching, so they need to see me woo her, for what, days, weeks, months?"
"I think it'll be a gradual thing. For now, she'll keep her office shades open, but you can go in there and close the door and talk about this kind of thing or whatever. My guess is after a couple of weeks, folks'll lose interest and you can do what you want."
"Okay. Can I ask you about a different thing or are there more rules?"
"Shoot."
"I wrote some things for CJ and I'd like to hide them for her to find, but I really can't, so I've asked Carol to help, and I thought you might, too."
"You wrote what sorts of things?"
"Poems."
"Danny Concannon writes poetry?" Josh asked in a mocking voice. "Like 'I saw London –'"
"Not like that."
"Like what?" Danny pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket and pulled a piece of sea foam parchment out and handed it to Josh, who read it aloud,
Eyes like summer sky Bottomless, fathomless blue Laughing just for me
"Wow," Josh reacted with a totally straight face. "That is really sappy. And you've got, what, a dozen of them there?" Josh speculated, peering at the envelope. "Are they all like this?"
"If you don't want to help, just say so."
"No, hiding things for CJ to find sounds like fun. Hand it over." Josh took the envelope and put it in his own pocket. "Now go talk to CJ before she climbs the walls."
---
When Danny arrived at CJ's office, she was absorbed in reading a thick report. He leaned in the doorway and said, "Knock, knock."
"Who's there?" CJ asked without looking up.
"I wasn't doing a joke, CJ. May I come in?"
"Come in and have a seat." CJ wrote a note on the report, then finally looked up as she took off her glasses.
Danny had closed the door and pulled a chair near Gail's bowl. "You don't always have to do that, you know."
"Do what?"
"Take off your glasses."
"You like the glasses?"
"Oh yeah. Very sexy."
CJ raised her eyebrows in surprise. "So did you come here just to flirt or did you need something?"
"I needed to see you smile. You don't have time to flirt?"
"I do." CJ smiled but her attention seemed to be distracted by Gail. "As a matter of fact," she said as she pulled a piece of dark aqua parchment out from underneath Gail's bowl:
Smile breaks like the dawn Warm rays brighten the sky Washing over me
As she read this to Danny, he could see her blush. "I also found one early this morning," and she opened the drawer and pulled out the peach:
Hereyes can twinkle A thousand stars in the sky Bright, faraway light
"I assume you're responsible for these," CJ accused with a smile that reached her eyes and made them sparkle.
"I wrote them, yes," Danny admitted, "but I had inside help placing them."
"I'm glad. I'm enjoying them, but I'll enjoy them more knowing you're not skulking around, risking getting my colleagues upset about what you might have seen."
"Yeah, I also want to avoid that." Danny sat grinning, basking in CJ's smile, the fire in her eyes brightening his soul. "Would you like to have dinner with me?"
"I would, but it's hard for me to plan for time to go out."
"I know. We can go out when you have time, eat here or in the press room if you can, and when you have to be at meetings or need a break from me or whatever, that's fine. We could tentatively plan to go out for dinner tonight. Monday night you'll probably be watching that speech on TV. We could watch it together."
"Okay. For tonight, let's go somewhere where I won't have to change clothes first. And I do have to watch the Vice President tomorrow, and it would be more fun with you."
"Will you have dinner with me every night this week?" Danny asked with a hopeful voice and a glint in his eye.
CJ nodded. "Every weeknight this week. Friday's that thing."
"Right, the First Lady's birthday party got postponed."
"Yep. Why don't you come with me to that?"
"Why don't you first check and make sure I'd be welcome."
"You will be, but I'll check anyway." Any further conversation was curtailed by Carol knocking, entering, and handing CJ a note. "I have to take this phone call now."
"Okay. See you later."
---
Remarkably, CJ was able to meet Danny at the restaurant on time. She had had to come directly from the White House, though, so she had chosen to remove her jacket and wear just the sheath dress. As they had expected, most of the tables that had been empty before they arrived were soon occupied by groups of White House reporters.
"At least the management will be glad we helped them fill their seats on a Sunday night," Danny remarked.
CJ glared around and said, just a little too loudly, "I think you're assuming they'll order food and leave good tips."
Danny glanced around and saw several of his peers pick up menus. "Nice," he whispered, turning back to CJ. "Can we try to ignore them for the rest of the evening?"
"I'll try," CJ promised.
For almost three hours, she succeeded. They joked over appetizers, shared stories over dinner, and gazed fondly at each other over dessert. It was this last that caused the problem. In addition to the White House press corps, there were also a few local gossip columnists present, and one decided to try to take their picture. The unexpected flash in the lowly-lit room blinded CJ for a second, but apparently not many of the others present. By the time CJ could see properly, people were surging around them, Danny had thrown money on the table and was offering her his hand. "We've got to get you out of here before this becomes a riot."
CJ, however, had another idea. She took Danny's hand, stood up, then stepped out of her shoes and onto her chair, and called, "Stop!" The vast majority of those present were from her press room and were accustomed to following her instructions, and her commanding voice and posture captured the attention of the rest. She pointed to the reporters holding the gossip columnist with the camera. "You will let go of him, pay your bills, go home and write and send apologies to the manager. Everyone else will finish up, pay, and leave quietly. And nothing like this had better happen again." CJ's glare seemed to work again, and by the time she had her shoes back on, the manager was at her side to thank her, and Katie and Steve were offering to walk Danny and CJ to their cars. Considering that they had nearly been in the middle of a riot, they agreed. There were no kisses that night, CJ mused, but at least there had been no punches, either.
---
Monday morning, March 22, 2004
At the next morning's Senior Staff meeting, Josh couldn't let the evening go without comment. "A few steamy looks from you are enough to cause a riot, CJ?"
Before CJ could respond, Toby pointed out, "I think the camera was responsible for the near-riot."
"Which our CJ extinguished before it got ugly," Leo added proudly.
Changing the subject, the President dryly remarked, "I think we accidentally switched copies of the agriculture report yesterday, CJ."
"Why do you think that, Mr. President?"
"Because my wife denies leaving this petal pink poem in mine. So if this isn't yours, I've got a secret admirer, and a big problem with my wife."
Leo had taken the parchment from the President and now read it:
This is not a date We're just two people walking Going the same way
"I guess he didn't like the date last night," Leo finished.
Josh admitted, "Actually, he said he wrote some of those a long time, and I put that one in the report before dinner last night."
"Some of THOSE?" the President asked pointedly.
"Yeah," CJ admitted. "I found two yesterday and another this morning."
Toby offered, "Let's all just be grateful that it's Josh, not Danny, poking around in reports that haven't been released to the public yet."
As everyone nodded, CJ asked, "Mr. President, may I bring Danny to the party Friday night?"
"If he's off the record, sure."
"Thank you sir."
---
For CJ, the rest of the day ran smoothly, but slowly, until she finally called a full lid at 5:17. Not unexpectedly, Danny followed her back to her office and flirted with her and Gail while they discussed dinner. Then Danny went to finish and file his story and order Chinese while CJ dealt with some things her colleagues wanted response on soon.
About ten minutes before the Vice President's speech, CJ wandered into the press room. By this time, it was usually empty except for Danny. But tonight it looked like half the press corps had decided to eat in. CJ good-naturedly took the seat next to Danny and teased the others, "I'm not sure there are enough chaperones here for our second date, maybe I should go pull some of the senior staff and assistants from their desks."
Danny shot back, "I'm not sure this is the RIGHT supervision for any date – you know some of them were nearly involved in a riot last night."
At this, Mark complained, "That wasn't our fault. If the twerp with the camera hadn't gotten in your faces, we would have been fine."
"Well, here's your chance to show how mature you are," CJ offered. "Just keep in mind that at least one person in this room is required for her job to listen to this, and I'll be in a lousy mood tomorrow if I have to re-watch it in my office tonight because you folks were making too much noise."
Those were the only warnings anyone needed, and everyone ate in near silence for the 32 minutes that the Vice President spoke. As they continued listening to the analysts and spin doctors, several people offered their own opinions, but Danny and CJ were content to sit near each other and smile.
Their smiles disappeared, however, when a fairly new reporter nearby spilled his beer all over. Quickly everyone used their napkins to clean it up. But it wasn't enough. Steve headed to the restroom for some paper towels. In the meantime, CJ reached into her pocket, planning to offer her Kleenex. What came out of her pocket was a piece of buttercup parchment and a couple Kleenex. She quickly threw the Kleenex on the mess and tried to return the parchment to her pocket, but the reporters around her insisted she read it to them:
Gail circles the bowl Emissary of my love Little confidante
Afterwards, both CJ and Danny were quite red in the face as they listened to people laughing or saying, "Aw, that's sweet!" Of course the reporter's instinct kicked in for more than one of them, and they wanted to know, "Where did that come from?" "How did it get into your pocket?" "How did you know without reading it that you didn't want to share it with us?"
Before CJ could leave the room, they had had to confess that Danny had written the poems for CJ, and that Carol and Josh were delivering them. As she left, CJ hoped that they would not tease Danny about it. At least not too much.
Author: soft lite.
Poetry written by: CJ Clanton sparesmom at yahoo dot com Characters: CJ, Danny, the senior staff, Jed, Carol, Gail, and various reporters.
Rating: G.
Disclaimer: Characters from "The West Wing" are not mine.
Spoilers: Season 5 through "The Warfare of Genghis Khan." Author's note: A big thank you to CJ Clanton for volunteering to write poetry for this story!
Sunday morning, March 21, 2004
Danny found this particular briefing difficult to sit through. On very little sleep, he needed to react appropriately surprised as he listened to the woman he had very publicly confessed his love for mostly evade questions. Still, this was the humiliation he had agreed to. And CJ's answer about dating a reporter gave him hope.
Of course the moment the briefing was over, Danny was surrounded by his peers, wanting answers to all kinds of questions. He found it rather overwhelming, standing in the middle of a crowd trying to hear and answer one question while people were loudly asking him a dozen others. The longer this continued, the more his already high respect for CJ's skill grew. At last the crowd dispersed, and eventually Danny was alone.
Before he could escape, Josh appeared in the doorway and beckoned towards Danny, "Come talk." Danny followed to Josh's office. "Have a seat," Josh offered as he closed the door. "CJ pointed out that no one's talked to you about ground rules, and she thinks someone should, so I volunteered."
"That was big of you."
"Well, you know, only after making Toby and Leo squirm."
"Ah."
"So, as you know from the briefing, you can ask CJ for a date. You know, a first date, so public –"
"It'll be VERY public what with the current press interest."
"Yeah. My point is, you can't go to her apartment or take her to yours. Maybe chaste kisses."
"Basically a 1950s, under daddy's eye, first date."
"It's just at the beginning, you know."
"It's okay. I understand. People are going to be watching, so they need to see me woo her, for what, days, weeks, months?"
"I think it'll be a gradual thing. For now, she'll keep her office shades open, but you can go in there and close the door and talk about this kind of thing or whatever. My guess is after a couple of weeks, folks'll lose interest and you can do what you want."
"Okay. Can I ask you about a different thing or are there more rules?"
"Shoot."
"I wrote some things for CJ and I'd like to hide them for her to find, but I really can't, so I've asked Carol to help, and I thought you might, too."
"You wrote what sorts of things?"
"Poems."
"Danny Concannon writes poetry?" Josh asked in a mocking voice. "Like 'I saw London –'"
"Not like that."
"Like what?" Danny pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket and pulled a piece of sea foam parchment out and handed it to Josh, who read it aloud,
Eyes like summer sky Bottomless, fathomless blue Laughing just for me
"Wow," Josh reacted with a totally straight face. "That is really sappy. And you've got, what, a dozen of them there?" Josh speculated, peering at the envelope. "Are they all like this?"
"If you don't want to help, just say so."
"No, hiding things for CJ to find sounds like fun. Hand it over." Josh took the envelope and put it in his own pocket. "Now go talk to CJ before she climbs the walls."
---
When Danny arrived at CJ's office, she was absorbed in reading a thick report. He leaned in the doorway and said, "Knock, knock."
"Who's there?" CJ asked without looking up.
"I wasn't doing a joke, CJ. May I come in?"
"Come in and have a seat." CJ wrote a note on the report, then finally looked up as she took off her glasses.
Danny had closed the door and pulled a chair near Gail's bowl. "You don't always have to do that, you know."
"Do what?"
"Take off your glasses."
"You like the glasses?"
"Oh yeah. Very sexy."
CJ raised her eyebrows in surprise. "So did you come here just to flirt or did you need something?"
"I needed to see you smile. You don't have time to flirt?"
"I do." CJ smiled but her attention seemed to be distracted by Gail. "As a matter of fact," she said as she pulled a piece of dark aqua parchment out from underneath Gail's bowl:
Smile breaks like the dawn Warm rays brighten the sky Washing over me
As she read this to Danny, he could see her blush. "I also found one early this morning," and she opened the drawer and pulled out the peach:
Hereyes can twinkle A thousand stars in the sky Bright, faraway light
"I assume you're responsible for these," CJ accused with a smile that reached her eyes and made them sparkle.
"I wrote them, yes," Danny admitted, "but I had inside help placing them."
"I'm glad. I'm enjoying them, but I'll enjoy them more knowing you're not skulking around, risking getting my colleagues upset about what you might have seen."
"Yeah, I also want to avoid that." Danny sat grinning, basking in CJ's smile, the fire in her eyes brightening his soul. "Would you like to have dinner with me?"
"I would, but it's hard for me to plan for time to go out."
"I know. We can go out when you have time, eat here or in the press room if you can, and when you have to be at meetings or need a break from me or whatever, that's fine. We could tentatively plan to go out for dinner tonight. Monday night you'll probably be watching that speech on TV. We could watch it together."
"Okay. For tonight, let's go somewhere where I won't have to change clothes first. And I do have to watch the Vice President tomorrow, and it would be more fun with you."
"Will you have dinner with me every night this week?" Danny asked with a hopeful voice and a glint in his eye.
CJ nodded. "Every weeknight this week. Friday's that thing."
"Right, the First Lady's birthday party got postponed."
"Yep. Why don't you come with me to that?"
"Why don't you first check and make sure I'd be welcome."
"You will be, but I'll check anyway." Any further conversation was curtailed by Carol knocking, entering, and handing CJ a note. "I have to take this phone call now."
"Okay. See you later."
---
Remarkably, CJ was able to meet Danny at the restaurant on time. She had had to come directly from the White House, though, so she had chosen to remove her jacket and wear just the sheath dress. As they had expected, most of the tables that had been empty before they arrived were soon occupied by groups of White House reporters.
"At least the management will be glad we helped them fill their seats on a Sunday night," Danny remarked.
CJ glared around and said, just a little too loudly, "I think you're assuming they'll order food and leave good tips."
Danny glanced around and saw several of his peers pick up menus. "Nice," he whispered, turning back to CJ. "Can we try to ignore them for the rest of the evening?"
"I'll try," CJ promised.
For almost three hours, she succeeded. They joked over appetizers, shared stories over dinner, and gazed fondly at each other over dessert. It was this last that caused the problem. In addition to the White House press corps, there were also a few local gossip columnists present, and one decided to try to take their picture. The unexpected flash in the lowly-lit room blinded CJ for a second, but apparently not many of the others present. By the time CJ could see properly, people were surging around them, Danny had thrown money on the table and was offering her his hand. "We've got to get you out of here before this becomes a riot."
CJ, however, had another idea. She took Danny's hand, stood up, then stepped out of her shoes and onto her chair, and called, "Stop!" The vast majority of those present were from her press room and were accustomed to following her instructions, and her commanding voice and posture captured the attention of the rest. She pointed to the reporters holding the gossip columnist with the camera. "You will let go of him, pay your bills, go home and write and send apologies to the manager. Everyone else will finish up, pay, and leave quietly. And nothing like this had better happen again." CJ's glare seemed to work again, and by the time she had her shoes back on, the manager was at her side to thank her, and Katie and Steve were offering to walk Danny and CJ to their cars. Considering that they had nearly been in the middle of a riot, they agreed. There were no kisses that night, CJ mused, but at least there had been no punches, either.
---
Monday morning, March 22, 2004
At the next morning's Senior Staff meeting, Josh couldn't let the evening go without comment. "A few steamy looks from you are enough to cause a riot, CJ?"
Before CJ could respond, Toby pointed out, "I think the camera was responsible for the near-riot."
"Which our CJ extinguished before it got ugly," Leo added proudly.
Changing the subject, the President dryly remarked, "I think we accidentally switched copies of the agriculture report yesterday, CJ."
"Why do you think that, Mr. President?"
"Because my wife denies leaving this petal pink poem in mine. So if this isn't yours, I've got a secret admirer, and a big problem with my wife."
Leo had taken the parchment from the President and now read it:
This is not a date We're just two people walking Going the same way
"I guess he didn't like the date last night," Leo finished.
Josh admitted, "Actually, he said he wrote some of those a long time, and I put that one in the report before dinner last night."
"Some of THOSE?" the President asked pointedly.
"Yeah," CJ admitted. "I found two yesterday and another this morning."
Toby offered, "Let's all just be grateful that it's Josh, not Danny, poking around in reports that haven't been released to the public yet."
As everyone nodded, CJ asked, "Mr. President, may I bring Danny to the party Friday night?"
"If he's off the record, sure."
"Thank you sir."
---
For CJ, the rest of the day ran smoothly, but slowly, until she finally called a full lid at 5:17. Not unexpectedly, Danny followed her back to her office and flirted with her and Gail while they discussed dinner. Then Danny went to finish and file his story and order Chinese while CJ dealt with some things her colleagues wanted response on soon.
About ten minutes before the Vice President's speech, CJ wandered into the press room. By this time, it was usually empty except for Danny. But tonight it looked like half the press corps had decided to eat in. CJ good-naturedly took the seat next to Danny and teased the others, "I'm not sure there are enough chaperones here for our second date, maybe I should go pull some of the senior staff and assistants from their desks."
Danny shot back, "I'm not sure this is the RIGHT supervision for any date – you know some of them were nearly involved in a riot last night."
At this, Mark complained, "That wasn't our fault. If the twerp with the camera hadn't gotten in your faces, we would have been fine."
"Well, here's your chance to show how mature you are," CJ offered. "Just keep in mind that at least one person in this room is required for her job to listen to this, and I'll be in a lousy mood tomorrow if I have to re-watch it in my office tonight because you folks were making too much noise."
Those were the only warnings anyone needed, and everyone ate in near silence for the 32 minutes that the Vice President spoke. As they continued listening to the analysts and spin doctors, several people offered their own opinions, but Danny and CJ were content to sit near each other and smile.
Their smiles disappeared, however, when a fairly new reporter nearby spilled his beer all over. Quickly everyone used their napkins to clean it up. But it wasn't enough. Steve headed to the restroom for some paper towels. In the meantime, CJ reached into her pocket, planning to offer her Kleenex. What came out of her pocket was a piece of buttercup parchment and a couple Kleenex. She quickly threw the Kleenex on the mess and tried to return the parchment to her pocket, but the reporters around her insisted she read it to them:
Gail circles the bowl Emissary of my love Little confidante
Afterwards, both CJ and Danny were quite red in the face as they listened to people laughing or saying, "Aw, that's sweet!" Of course the reporter's instinct kicked in for more than one of them, and they wanted to know, "Where did that come from?" "How did it get into your pocket?" "How did you know without reading it that you didn't want to share it with us?"
Before CJ could leave the room, they had had to confess that Danny had written the poems for CJ, and that Carol and Josh were delivering them. As she left, CJ hoped that they would not tease Danny about it. At least not too much.