At One with the Primordial Sea

CJ/Danny

NC-17? Heck, I don't know. If your folks let you read LaVyrle Spencer's stuff, you can read this.

Spoilers: Through end of series

Not mine, never were, never will be, but they consume my soul

Feedback and criticism always welcomed

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Late August 2008

She sighed, she exhaled, she whispered, "Danny! Oh, Danny!" Over and over and over and over again. "Danny, Danny, Danny, Danny! I love you, Danny, Danny, Danny, Danny! I've missed this, Danny!"

She lay there, prone on the bed, arms extended as if in a dead man's float, a pillow under her hipbones to give him easier access to her. He covered her, his hands grasping hers, his lips kissing her neck as he moved slowly, gently, but constantly within her.

Her doctor had been very straightforward with him right after the loss of the twins. Scott Winkler was a classmate of Abbey and Millie's at Harvard Med, but he had done his undergrad work at Notre Dame. He was probably one of the few gay obstetricians in the country. "I love babies, that's all there is to it," he explained.

He went into explicit detail with Danny. "Internally, her uterus, her fallopian tubes, her ovaries, she's perfectly healthy, everything is working as it should. Vaginally, she's more beat up than we usually see." He did some rough drawing. "She was torn, bruised, here, here, here, and here. The episiotomy was not as neat as I would have liked. It may take longer than six weeks for her to recover enough for full sexual activity, but once she does, there should be no problem for her or for the baby when" the doctor looked up, smiled, and stressed the when "she gets pregnant again. Your job is to not penetrate her, with any body part" he looked directly at Danny "until I give the okay. No matter how much you want it and especially no matter how much she wants it."

Scott also told him that as far a CJ's body was concerned, she had given birth. Her body did not know that their precious children had died in a tragic act of fate. They had given her something to stop the lactation process, but she would still be subject to all the postpartum stuff, the hormones, the moods, etc. They would need to watch for that. Combined with the natural grief that came from losing children, she might need counseling. He also had to be careful; he needed someone to look out for him emotionally as well.

Talking with CJ later, Danny found out that the doctor had given the same speech to her. He found that it worked better, sunk in better, to give it separately to husband and wife.

They grieved some, but somehow they believed that Mariah was indeed what she seemed to be, and there was a kind of peace in their lives as far as the boys were concerned.

CJ started to "want" about three weeks later, and they spent the next three weeks becoming teenagers again. It was difficult, but they stayed "outside" as instructed.

He accompanied her for her six-week check. When Scott told them "two more weeks", they looked at each other and sighed. On the way home, he tried to put things in perspective. "Seven years was 364 weeks. We survived that. This is less than one percent of that."

"Actually, you survived that. I was blissfully ignorant of what I was missing," she joked.

"Were you really?" he turned to her.

"No," she replied softly, "at one level, I knew."

A week later, she walked into the den/guestroom and saw that he had been X-ing off days on a calendar. She went ballistic. "You're the one with all the Celtic genes. You don't tempt fate this way!"

A week after that, Scott told them, "Come back next week." They groaned and CJ said, "I told you so!"

The next week, in early August, the doctor turned to Danny. "You", he pointed, "make a reservation at a nice restaurant. You", he pointed at CJ, "go buy something at Victoria's Secret." He smiled at them. CJ practically pulled Danny out of the doctor's office with both hands.

That evening, Danny couldn't let himself go. "I'm so afraid of hurting you," he said. He made her keep her eyes open as he entered her, watching for any sign of pain. He brought her to climax twice, then released within her as gently as possible. He wouldn't enter her a second time that night, but used his hands and his mouth to give her satisfaction again.

The second night was a duplicate of the first. On the third night, he lost control, and pounded into her when he ejaculated. She tried to stifle her sob, but he heard it and tried to withdraw. She held him in place and they fell asleep joined together, separated sometime during the night.

He was terrified the next morning to see the slight blood stain on the sheets. He made her call Scott first thing, put the phone on speaker. The doctor asked some questions, told them it was probably nothing ("maybe like bumping a scab") and told Danny that while CJ was not made of cast iron, neither was she made of spun sugar.

But for the next week or two, that's how Danny treated her. They were used to a varied sex life, but Danny refused to take her any way except face to face, saying he needed to see her eyes when he was inside her. He wanted to be on top, to control depth. He was driving her crazy.

Until tonight. They made love once, standard missionary position. About an hour later, she turned onto her stomach, and whispered, "Danny, please!"

He looked into her face. Are you sure? Because I'm not.

Trust me. It will be fine.

He came up over her. She separated her legs, he lowered himself between them. He reached for a pillow, helped her position it properly.

She had experienced a normal, somewhat active sex life during her years at Berkeley and before she joined the Bartlet White House. She had made love on hands and knees, kneeling over edges of beds, ottomans, once over the back seat of her Mustang convertible, once over a picnic cooler, and even once over a rock in the tidal wash of the ocean. She had been bent over a table, the back of a sofa, a fence rail, a kitchen sink, and a professor's lectern. One night, in the last few days of the administration, when she knew that Kate and Will had "plans", she and Danny snuck into what was once her office with a sheet and did it on what was once her desk. Then they went into the Press Room and she knelt in front of what was once his seat. Punch drunk, they resisted the urge to have her bend over one of the love seats in the Oval Office.

When the men were good lovers and good persons, she felt a kinship with horses, she felt like a mare with a stallion. And the two times that the men were rough, called her a bitch, and the one time that someone hit her, she ruthlessly wrote the men out of her life, refusing phone calls, telling the florists to take back the roses.

But for some reason, no one before Danny had ever covered her completely with his body, sheltering her in a cocoon created out of mattress and masculinity. The feelings that overtook her in this position were varied. She felt vulnerable exposing her back to him, but she felt an abiding sense of trust that he would protect her, keep her from harm. She felt cherished.

In this position, she felt a kinship not with other animals but with sea creatures, joined together and floating together in the primordial sea from which higher forms of life evolved. After the first time, she told Danny about this feeling, and he said, "Crabs", explaining that a female crab must be in a molting stage in order to be impregnated. Without a shell, she is basically protoplasm, vulnerable to even more than the usual dangers of the sea. The male crab holds her under his body, his pincers surrounding her, needing to be careful that his body does not harm hers as they float for days, in coital embrace, until she is fertilized and ready to grow a new protective shell.

It is the sexual position from which she receives the most emotional, if not necessarily physical, satisfaction. She definitely requires the assistance of Danny's fingers, and she rarely climaxes at the same time as he does. She does not see fireworks not does she hear the 1812 Overture, but she feels satisfied, valued and secure in her husband's love. It is a position of commitment, a position of procreation, a position of sacramental matrimony.

It is something she has not experienced for over six months, when her growing belly made it impossible for her to lie flat. They went to a motel and tried using a waterbed, but found that they needed the firmness, the resistance, of a regular mattress.

And so, she grasped Danny's hands and let him know of her satisfaction as he continued his motion within her. In a few minutes, she would let go of his right hand, moving hers over to join their left hands. He would use that right hand to bring her to climax, maybe twice, and then would seek his own satisfaction, sometimes raising up on both his arms in the effort, but always returning to cover her back, to kiss the side of her neck, to grasp her hands in his. Then they would float in the primordial sea of their love, until sleep or the needs of the outside world overtook them.

This evening, as she drifted into sleep, she felt calm, secure, cherished, and loved. She also felt that Danny had turned the corner on whatever was keeping him from trusting her to know her own body.

Danny woke up from his dozing, separated himself from his sleeping wife, rolled on his side, and pulled her back against him. She wriggled her backside into his lap, pulled his arm over her stomach, and went back to sleep.

He knew that there would still be times when his need to protect her would conflict with his desire to watch her soar into life, but tonight he felt they were ready to start again, he felt ready to accept the tensile strength of her body and her mind. They had learned, tragically, that life was not always fair, but they had trust and hope that there was still much to be anticipated in their life together.

As he stroked her stomach, he felt a strange sensation, almost a jolt of electricity, almost an atomic fusion. His Celtic DNA saw egg penetrated by sperm, saw one cell become two, two become four, four become eight, and eight become sixteen. Incredible warmth came over him. He spread his hand flat on her stomach and softly whispered, "Hi there. I'm your dad."

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Some people have questioned whether or not CJ and Danny would have sex in the White House.

IMHO,
Were they embarassed and maybe slightly ashamed afterward? Youuubetcha!
Did they tell anyone else? Absolutely not (except maybe in the confessional :-) )
But, given the stress of Leo's death and a combination of "double dog dare" and "it seemed like a good idea at the time", I could see it happening. I wasn't going to write about it in detail, but I felt the need to mention it. As I said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time"