It had taken a long time for CJ Cregg to grow into some sort of acceptance of herself. She knew she had reached a level in society that few women did – she had penetrated the world of men that was politics and was playing hardball. And yet she felt a fraud. The sarcastic, witty, teasing, and confident CJ she presented to the press room and to her colleagues was a mask. Underneath, she was still the awkward, clumsy, too-tall geek that had plagued her childhood years. She had never found the self-assurance that her place in the world had earned her.
While some women made their way in a world of men through virtue of their femininity, using it as a tool, a manipulating tactic to get themselves things, it was a skill that CJ had never developed. In fact, she very often felt than femininity as a whole was something she had never managed to acquire. She was flattered by the affections Danny showed her, but she knew he was in love with the mask she had created for herself. He had never had to opportunity to learn what was underneath.
Toby was probably the only one who understood to some extent, besides Abbey. He had known her forever, watched as she had developed from the awkward CJ into the CJ she presented to the world. But he knew that CJ herself had not changed.
CJ couldn't quite remember when she had realised the feelings she felt towards women were not admiration, but attraction. She remembered a teacher, somewhere in her middle-school years, whom she had admired greatly and had come to realise she was also attracted to. If that was the first time, she couldn't be sure. But she knew it had happened many times since. It wasn't that she wasn't attracted to men, not at all. CJ had always said she was good in bed, and so she was. It was one of the few things she was confident of, her ability to pleasure. It was part of her job description. She could read people at a glance, know what turned them on, what they wanted from her, and she could give it to them. CJ had always liked men, but she understood women, and it was this which attracted her to them. It was with women she could find the deeper connection, become who she really was. They understood. Inferiority complexes were something CJ believed to be ingrained in the nature of women from their very birth. Hers certainly had been.
It was raw power which had initially drawn her to Abbey. Abbey had grabbed the men's world of politics by the balls and manipulated it so that she could play without losing any of her femininity. That type of power was something CJ craved. When she had come to discover the more vulnerable side of Abbey, she had been relieved. Abbey was two people. One was Dr. Bartlet, cardio-thoracic surgeon and First Lady of the United States. The other was simply Abbey, who craved attention from her husband but didn't receive it often enough, who had given up her place in the world of medicine for the love of a man who would never understand just how much she had lost to make him happy. This was the Abbey who was slowly crumbling, broken by the loss of her medical license, her husband's slow debilitation, and a sense of complete lack of control.
CJ had been surprised to find that Abbey had been just as confused by her feelings towards women as CJ had been. She had been brought up a rigid Catholic, believing she was sinning every time she found her thoughts straying in a direction she couldn't prevent them from going. She had prayed to God each night to make the feelings leave her, asking him why this had been brought upon her, wanting to understand where she had gone wrong. In the end she had simply accepted them as a part of herself that she could never let show or share, and she never had, until she met CJ.
They had grown close over the first four years of her husband's term, often being the only two women. They shared nights of wine and talking when they couldn't cope with the men anymore, snuck out for meals as an escape, and it was through this they had become friends. They confided in one another, though they often fought, mostly about conflicts of interest between Abbey's agenda and her husband's, or when one of them felt the other was manipulating the respective positions they each held with regard to the President. They always came back.
Neither of them knew whether the attraction developed before their mutual admission to liking women or after. It didn't matter, in the end. In the end, all it did was make them closer.
It was CJ, not the President, who had held Abbey in her arms in the Presidential bedroom as she cried herself to sleep after losing her license, pressing soft kisses to her hair.
It was Abbey who had calmed CJ when she was benched, despite the fact that she had recommended it, by pressing an invitation upon her for a drink in the residence to take away the sting. One drink turned into several, and they had stayed up all night, just talking.
They kept each other standing. They were interdependent in their relationship, which neither of them even tried to define. It was more than friendship, but not yet an affair. It was simply a knowledge of their attraction to each other.