Hi, so here is the FINAL CHAPTER of the season 3 arc. Season 4 is going to be quick and fast and mostly deals with the stuff that has been set up in this chapter. Then this story will end at 28 chapters and a sequel will start that will cover Seasons 5, 6, and 7.

I must warn you there are significant triggers for sucidie in this chapter. If that triggers you then please don't read.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review.


Perhaps Love

Chapter 22-The Long And Winding Road

Final one of the Season 3 arc. Jake has decided something, he has a plan to do something, Anna and he have prepared...and then he gets a phone call that changes everything. And that's nothing to what awaits him upstairs. PLEASE BARE IN MIND SIGNIFICANT TRIGGER WARNIGNS FOR SUICIDE FOR THIS CHAPTER.


"I've decided something"

"Well that's worrying"

"Fuck off Harry"

"Well what?"

"I want to have sex"

Harrison looked deeply unimpressed. "Congratulations you've gotten there about three years after the rest of the male population"

"Do one Harry"

"Don't call me Harry" Harrison said taking the cookie and chewing the edge of it. "I was just saying if you and Anna want to have sex then your late to the party."

They were both sat in the kitchen of Harrison's house. His mother was working late and both of Jake's parents were in New York. There was some kind of play at the Kennedy Centre that went on for hours and hours and hours and the President had been desperate to go and see it. From what Jake could gather this seemed to be the hope of the White House Senior Staff that if the play was a success then the bad mood the President had been in since the start of…well…ever…would slowly come to an end.

Right now the two boys were making what could only be described as a mess of chocolate ice cream, cream, cookies, chocolate chips and the sauce. It was a veritable sugar mess born out of Harrison's need to watch Top Gun for the eighteenth hundredth time and Jake's need to eat something that had no chance in hell of filling him up.

"I was thinking of asking her if she felt the time was right too you know. I mean we went to Prom and everything and next year is gonna be too manic to breathe never mind have sex"

"Please" Harrison said watching Tom Cruise play volleyball with the expression of a man who needed such a sight to breathe. "That has nothing to do with it. You just don't want anything complicated when you go through college. Your living your live vicariously through eight different West Wing staff and it's fucking your brain up little man"

"Fuck you"

Harrison grinned at him and then his frown was back on his face. Jake stuck his spoon back in the bowl and stared at him for a second. Something was off.

Something was definitely off.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing"

"Liar"

Harrison sighed. "I don't know if I'm going to go to the Navy Academy next year"

"Your Mom still off about it"

"No. I just…I don't know how much I want to live a lie"

"What does that mean?"

Just as he thought his friend was about to answer there was a knock at the door.

"Anna?"

"Anna" Jake said getting up. He opened the door and Anna came in her hair tied back off her face and dripping wet on the carpet and her expression one like the thunder that was booming outside at a terrific rate.

"It's raining" she said as if it wasn't obvious.

"You wanna come in and dry off or do you want to have sex"

Harrison spat out a mouthful of ice cream. Anna stared at him and Jake…well…Jake just wanted to die.

Eventually Anna came in shutting the door behind her.

"Dry off" she said still looking at him as if he had grown two heads. "You mind if I use your shower Harry?"

"Sure condoms are in the top draw"

Anna shot Harrison a look that had him immediately turning back to the video.

"See you boys in a bit"

"Anna if you use any of my mother's elemis cleansing balm she will have you shot!"

"Got you"

Jake shut the door and came and sat down on the couch again. Harrison instead of teasing him passed him the bowl and opened up another bag of chocolate chips sprinkling them all over the ice cream bowl.

"You know your using me as a cover to have sex right?"

"Yeah"

And then.

"Wait you knew that was what I was doing?"

"Oh yeah. But I gotta tell you Jake you fuck on my couch you buy it"

Jake rolled his eyes.

It wasn't like there hadn't been a plan for tonight. There had. There had been a deep plan for tonight that had involved him and Anna checking into the Adult Hideaway Motel over the road. They'd managed to get a room and Harrison had offered to cover for them and let them in the morning. Both of them had condoms and they were meeting at Harrison's so that had been the cover but now looking at his friend Jake wasn't so sure if leaving him on his own was a good thing.

He opened his mouth as Anna came stomping back out the shower in a clean pair of clothes.

"I come prepared" she said her hair wet. "You ready to go"

"Eh yeah I just…"

"Did you check we had the booking"

"Yeah"

"Did you use your own name?"

"Yeah"

"Idiot" Harrison said from the couch. "You do realise that is such an amateur move"

"And what would you have done checked yourself in as Mr and Mrs John Smith?"

"Oh no. I would have checked myself in as Mrs and Mrs Don Shumaker"

There was a small pause and then Anna spoke up.

"Stop watching the Golden Girls Harrison"

"What's the Golden Girls?"

There was a pause as Jake looked at Anna and Harrison both of whom looked at each other and then looked at him.

"Okay" Anna said taking his hand. "Come on let's go"

And with that she turned and Jake waved at Harrison who smiled back and then they were gone.

He got to the foot of the apartment building when he stopped.

"Something's wrong"

Anna turned to look at him.

"This was your idea"

"I know…it's…it's not that Anna something's wrong. I can feel it…it…something is wrong" and with that he turned and smashed his hand into the elevator button, Anna slipped in next to him and watched him.

"What?"

"He's not right…he…he's not…Anna I don't know call this an instinct thing but I don't think this is right, I don't think Harrison is right I think he is going to do something really stupid."

Anna watched him her eyes wide in her face. Jake didn't know how he knew, he just knew, years later looking back he didn't know how he knew but he found Harry's spare key and they went through the door. The film was still on the ice cream on the table but the photograph of his father and the flag was gone and Anna grabbed a towel and a phone as Jake pushed open the door to his best friends bedroom.

What he saw was going to haunt him for the rest of his life.


It was Toby that found her crying on a park bench in a ballgown.

He ran up to her and CJ was about to tell him to stop. Simon was dead, she was fine, her attacker had been arrested, she was fine. In the grand scheme of thing she was fine and yet she was sobbing into her hands like a child who had suffered a major blow.

"He's dead" she said as Toby came to a stop.

"I heard."

"I didn't…it was a shootout Toby I shootout in a store! He went in to buy a chocolate bar and I—"

"I know I spoke to Ron, he's…not good too. They were friends. Very close friends but CJ that's not the issue—"

"I can't do the press right now I can't—"

"It's Jake"

She paused looking up at him her eyes wet and she took in the bow tie that was missing, took in the tremble in his hands and the wild eyed look and she knew that she wasn't going to be able to stand while he gave her this knees.

"What…what happened?"

"I don't know I got phone call from Anna's Dad that said Jake, Anna and Harrison had all arrived in the ER. Looks like Harrison might have slit his wrists"

CJ shoved her knuckles in her mouth before she started groaning.

It was either that or vomit on the street.

"I spoke to Leo were gonna fly right back and then the car is gonna take us to the hospital I just…I don't know what's going on and that damned boy isn't picking up his phone and then I come out here and they tell me that Simon Donavon has been shot and I—" he trailed off turning and wiping his face with the back of his hand and then he grabbed her by the waist and he kissed her.

She let him kiss her and had this been any other night she might have kissed back enthusiastically but she gripped his shoulders and moved her lips against his and then he pulled back as if seeing the tears down her face again.

Right now she didn't know what the hell she was going to do other than cling to him and God knows CJ was not a woman who was able to cling easily to a man and beg him to save him from the big bad world.

"Get me to our son" was all she said and considering his career had been in communications Toby took her hand and didn't say a word.


Jake had been sat picking the dried blood from his fingers when Anna came and sat next to him.

"Not the best night we had planned huh?"

"No"

"I just…Jake how the hell did you know?"

"I don't know. I just knew he wasn't right and when I got outside…It's like when the Secret Service tell you to never ignore a sense. I just…I just knew he was going to do something"

Anna had blood on her chin. She had been great Jake thought morosely. She had been the one who had wrapped up Harrison's arms who had talked to the paramedics who had rang her father and had her father meet them at the door and who had sat Jake down and got him coffee. Jake had been in a state of stunned disbelief the entire time.

"Sorry for ruining our night"

"Shut up. We can have sex any other night"

Jake would have laughed at that. Now all he could do was rest his head on her shoulder.

"How are you so strong?"

"This isn't strength Jake, this is keeping it together so that I don't fall apart. Believe you me when I get home—" her voice wobbled a second and then she shook back her dry hair and wiped her eyes. "When I get back home I will break all over my bathroom floor."

"I love how you can say that"

"Jake I want to get into pre-med I want to be prepared"

She wiped her eyes for a second and then.

"What happened?"

He followed her gaze to see she was looking at the TV. It was reporting a plane crash in the ocean.

"Some guy from Qumar is dead"

"Wasn't that the guy who was visiting the President today?"

Jake shrugged.

"Planes" was all he said and she nodded.

Just then the doors slammed open and his Dad came running in which was very strange because his Dad…didn't run.

He caught sight of Jake who got to his feet and then Jake was running to meet him. He slammed into his Dad's warm embrace and he let him hold him tight letting his Dad's smell and his warmth and his arms wrap around him as if he was a little kid again.

"It's gonna be okay Jake" his Dad said softly as his Mom still in her evening dress joined them. He knew Anna's Dad had been waiting for his parents to arrive and he also knew that even though it made him a coward, he wanted to get out of here before Harrison's mother arrived. He was going to be fine he had been told…but all the same he'd rather not face her when the shit hit the fan.

It wasn't going to be okay but he let his Dad rock him back and forth as if he was a child.

"What do you want to do?" his Dad asked and Jake barely mumbled out a "Home" before he was being pushed towards the car. He didn't care. He was so tired he wanted to sleep and yet he knew he was never going to be able to sleep again. Certainly not for a while.

He got into the car and he realised that it wasn't Simon driving. It was someone else from the detail but he didn't care. He clung to his Dad who got in the back with him and asked quietly.

"Where is Simon Mom?"

He missed the look from both of his parents as the car sped out of the hospital parkway. But it didn't matter. The multitude of what had happened had suddenly hit him and Jake surrendered to the storm of sobbing that had just descended on him.


And there you go.

Next Chapter-The first of Season 4-In which their is a campaign that will determine who is the next President of the United States. Jake meanwhile doesn't care about the campaign. He cares about his friend. And therefore he ducks Bruno's calls.