"You lied by omission."
"I lied by omission? Are you even listening to yourself right now?"
"You should have told me."
"Why?"
"What do you mean why? After Rosslyn .."
"After Rosslyn we went to one dinner in a booth so dark I couldn't even see the cutlery and you spent the entire evening looking over your shoulder, and one movie at the second run theatre in DC where you were so sure you saw Lionel Tribbey's ex-wife, you left before the intermission .."
"You should have told me, Danny."
"Maybe if you hadn't put me back in the penalty box for asking a question about General Barrie .."
"You weren't in the penalty box," she scoffed.
"Of course not. You know what's really funny here," he said as he paced around the room. "You didn't think I had any place in -"
He trailed off, thinking better of what he was about to say.
"I didn't think you had any place in what?"
"It's not relevant to this conversation," Danny said as poured himself another drink.
But she understood immediately where his mind had gone.
"Are you talking about the time I asked what right you thought you had to make decisions about my career?"
Danny hesitated a moment before saying, "as I said, not relevant to this conversation."
"Then why did you bring it up?"
"I shouldn't have. Because we were seeing one another at that time. There was nothing between us when I was offered the editorial job, so accusing me of lying by omission is not just an insult it's a -"
"There was nothing between us?"
"Oh come on, CJ! I meant we weren't together."
"You left me standing in the middle of the oval office."
"I know about the job offer."
"I figured."
"Known about it for a couple of days."
"Yeah."
"You don't want to be an editor?"
"I'm a White House reporter."
"I know, I just thought by taking a job outside the press room .."
"CJ, I have no problem with a reporter dating the press secretary."
"Well I have a problem, so .."
"Yeah, okay. I'll see you later .."
"Okay .."
"What would have been the right thing to do? Argue with you in the middle of the room? It couldn't have been any clearer that that we'd reached an impasse and that nothing was more important than -"
"You left me standing in the middle of the oval office, Danny."
"I left you standing in the middle of the oval office?" He looked up at her with an almost startled look on his face. "Is that what this is all about?"
"I'd spent all day being outmaneuvered or disagreed with or having my opinion disregarded."
"And how do you think I spent my day?"
"What do you mean?"
"Can you, for once, try putting yourself in my shoes for five minutes?" When she didn't say anything he carried on. "You spent all day being outmaneuvered or disagreed with? Do you want to know how I spent my day? Hearing everything you said about me relayed back, piecemeal, after I leaked your damn story for you. What? You think we weren't water cooler gossip that day? You think I didn't know that you spent the afternoon asking people whether you should allow me access for the feature? How you went off on Leo outside your office? How Sam thought you should give me access? How Ainsley Hayes put in her two cents and you didn't like it? Do you know how many sets of ears there were around you every time you felt the need to express yourself out loud to someone or other? Do you know how delighted those same people were to spread it around to the press pool that you were mad at me? Someone left milk and cookies on my desk, CJ! I was the senior White House reporter, not some rookie. And if that wasn't enough -"
He took a long draw from his glass, undecided whether to carry on or not.
It came as somewhat of a shock that she had been so wrapped up in her own angry feelings that day that it had never occurred to her until this moment to wonder about his.
"I know there's more," she said, her anger superseded by something which was more akin to a dull feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"Yeah, there is."
She reached out and touched his sleeve.
"Danny .."
"Did Jed Bartlet need to know it was personal?"
She blanched.
"Did you think I couldn't hear you pleading your case? I was standing ten feet from the oval office, CJ. The door was wide open."
"You couldn't possibly have heard me."
"Want to bet?"
"First of all, it wasn't Danny."
"Danny is their representative. We have to stop being a punching bag and they need a wake up call."
"You didn't care whether I heard you or not."
"He called me petty and petulant."
"You were being petty and petulant. You started at Charlie's desk and swept it into the oval office with you."
"Don't bring Charlie into this."
"Charlie was in and out of that office twice, and every time he stepped out he was mortified and didn't even know where to look. You dragged me in there, CJ. If Mrs. Landingham had been there she'd have offered me a cookie! I walked in at the tail end of he's a great reporter, and you're a great Press Secretary and that's why it was never going to work while the two of you had those jobs."
"Danny .."
"And because that still wasn't enough, you then felt empowered to excoriate me?"
"Not only that, but I think you've been trying to bait me. Which is a waste of time, paper and ink. I'm like fifty times smarter than any of you will ever be. I have an election to win in two years, and I'm not about to alienate the Washington Post."
"Yes, sir."
"I'll tell you what I will do, though, I'm cancelling our subscription."
"Excellent, Sir. The White House buys eleven hundred copies of the Post everyday. Cancelling that subscription would send a message loud and clear."
"I could feel you smirking over my shoulder. Do you think it was easy standing there and hearing you humiliate me for something we all knew wasn't my fault? In front of the President of the United States? Did you stop to think about what it would have done to my career if he'd indulged you?"
"He didn't indulge me."
"No, he didn't. He just set you up to think you'd won and then showed you that you didn't call the shots. And that was part of the problem, wasn't it? It was one more case that day of having been outmaneuvred. Only now it wasn't by the boys' club and - "
Danny glanced up at her and recognized the look of hurt in her eyes that he'd seen several times over the course of the administration when he'd said something that hit a nerve. In times past they would have seethed in their respective corners, but he knew that he'd said more than she'd been expecting to hear this evening, and that she was still reeling from a lot of it.
"What do you think would have happened if I'd taken the editor's job?" he said quietly as he reached for her hand. For a moment he thought she'd pull away - but she didn't. "Do you think we would have been able to have a relationship? It would have been worse. Look at what happened with the Jack Reese debacle. You were so sure I'd screwed you. What my editor did that day? That's the kind of thing I would have had to do on the daily. We wouldn't have made it. We would have been at each other's throats all the time, everyone's credibility would have been shot, and I -"
CJ heard the tonal shift in his voice and adapted hers to match.
"You what?"
He looked her straight in the eye as he said, "I wanted to be where you were, even if I couldn't be with you. That's why I didn't tell you about the job offer. I would have had to tell you that, too. It would have been a lot of pressure. We had jobs to do. Important jobs which neither one of us trusted anyone else to do the way they needed to be done."
He exhaled, feeling the relief of having gotten it all off his chest, and waited for her to respond.
"I still wish you'd told me."
"Yeah," he said as he touched the hair grazing her jacket collar.
"We should have put this on the list."
"Consider it officially on the list," Danny said as he drained the last bit of scotch from his glass. "We can't go back to the oval office, but the personal study of the ex-president is as close to it as we're going to get. So .."
"So .."
"Right here, right now."
"Okay .." she said warily.
"I've gotta go tell circulation that we lost thirty-two dollars and ninety-five cents."
They stared at each other, and all of the hurt he'd walked away from that day was reflected back at him.
"CJ?"
"Mmm?"
"We can get past this."
"Okay."
"I've gotta go tell circulation that we lost thirty-two dollars and ninety-five cents."
"I know about the job offer."
"I figured."
"Known about it for a couple of days."
"Yeah."
"You don't want to be an editor?"
"I'm a White House reporter."
"I know, I just thought by taking a job outside the press room ..
"CJ, I have no problem with a reporter dating the press secretary."
"Well I have a problem, so .."
Danny stepped up and took her face between both of his hands. He waited until her eyes met his, and then ran his thumbs against her cheekbones and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"CJ?"
"Yeah?"
"I'll be waiting for you at the other end," he said tenderly.