Work Text:
sunday.
“Turns out you’re still a lesbian,” Toby informs her, and offers a New York Times article he printed out. It would’ve been on page eight, if they actually got the newspaper.
They turn a corner and CJ crumples up the article and arcs it perfectly into a trash can. The paper ball falls out, but only because the can is overflowing. “Sure,” she says, and pulls a bottle of water from the package on Debbie’s desk. “Why not.” She unscrews the lid and takes a sip.
“Is he gonna make the announcement?” Andi joins them outside the Oval Office, followed by Annabeth and Leo.
“That’s what this meeting’s about,” Toby says.
“People will riot.” If she weren’t in the administration, CJ would probably riot with them.
“People are already rioting,” Leo points to the television, showing b-roll of people fighting over water at a Red Cross station in Chicago.
Andi scoffs quietly. “They should be inside.” At least the rioters are halfway following directions, and wearing masks or respirators.
“He may not have a choice.” They all stand up a little straighter with General Alexander’s sudden appearance. “Who’s he with right now?”
“The Secretary General’s on the phone, and I think a few ambassadors.” It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of the President’s schedule with Debbie working remotely, locked in her house. “Why?” CJ doesn’t like the look on the Chairman’s face.
“I think he should be the first to hear this.”
Shouting erupts from behind the closed door and CJ remembers that the French ambassador is on this call. “General, it’ll be at least fifteen minutes before he’s done. That’s fifteen minutes we can be working on a plan about whatever it is you have there,” she gestures to the manilla folder in his hands. “We may not have fifteen minutes later.” She stands up to her full height, slightly taller than the Chairman. She doesn’t like giving orders to generals who have been fighting wars since before she was born, but this is an unfortunate week. “What’s in the folder?” She misses Fitzwallace.
“The CDC finished their analysis. Based on their numbers and simulations, we will not have a cure or vaccination in time.”
“In time for what?” Toby asks.
Someone sneezes in the hallway.
tuesday.
Toby walks by the press secretary’s office, empty until they can find an official replacement for CJ (a replacement that isn’t him). They’ve left the door open since she moved to Leo’s office, because closed doors around here make people nervous even if they know no one’s behind them. He stops, backs up two steps, and pokes his head in. The light’s on.
“CJ?”
“Go away. I’m hiding.” Her voice is muffled, coming from behind the bare desk.
“From?”
A hand appears, bracing on the desk. The rest of CJ follows. “Everything. Everyone.” She runs her fingers through unkempt hair and straightens her skirt.
He nods. The need to hide is compelling in this time of chaos. He’s been doing a fair bit of it himself in the past 36 hours. “Okay. But the light,” he gestures, “gives you away.”
She exhales, puffing out her cheeks, and bends down, disappearing behind the desk again. She reappears holding a report. Charlie’s off trying to learn something about epidemiology for her so she can actually understand it.
Toby’s become very good at estimating page count, and the report’s at least a hundred pages; from the look on her face, the one that’s about to ask to borrow his cigar lighter, it’s probably double-sided and single-spaced. “I have a couch,” he says. Everything that CJ didn’t take with her has been picked over by anyone who wanted a better chair, or phone, or a TV at their desk. Even the fake plants are gone.
“Do you have food?”
He thinks on that. “We can get food.”
She nods and collects her things – the report, her glasses, a bottle of water, and her shoes – and slips past him. “It was a very good hiding spot.”
thursday.
His phone rings. He has no idea where it is. He shuffles paper around and shoves books off his desk, following the noise until he finally finds his phone in the trash can. “Yeah,” he says, fumbling to orient the handset the correct way. “Yeah,” he repeats, when he’s actually speaking into the right part of the phone.
“Call Andi. Tell her to bring the kids here.”
It takes him a moment to recognize that CJ’s on the other end of the call. “Is there a field trip?”
“They’re crashing the West Wing in forty-five minutes. Call them, get them here now before they crash it.”
The safest place on Earth is a secure lab in Atlanta, but the White House is a close second. “Thank you.”
They don’t need a pass or to be pre-screened or on a visitor list. All they need is to be in the lobby. The three of them make it with two minutes to spare. Once they’ve been cleared by Army medical staff, Toby sets up Huck and Molly in the empty office next to his; Ginger somehow manages to babyproof the place in half an hour. CJ deputizes Andi as she passes her in the hallway because she desperately needs someone to fill Josh’s spot and Andy’s the only one currently not doing two jobs.
He exhales, standing outside the Oval Office, waiting for the HHS Secretary and a CDC liasion to finish briefing the President, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t going to get better.”
Against their own personal optimism, both CJ and Andi agree with him.
wednesday.
“You’re in early.”
“I haven’t left.”
“Neither have I.”
“I haven’t left since Monday.” She isn’t trying to compete, but she’s finding herself getting crankier by the hour about the fact that she hasn’t had a breath of fresh air since 6:15 Monday morning.
Toby raises an eyebrow and peers around her office. “Sleeping on the couch?” It’s lacking in obvious pillows and blankets.
“Margaret found an air mattress.” She points to the closet where she shoved the thing to get it out of the way. “Why isn’t Leo here yet?”
On cue, Margaret knocks and tells her that Leo’s on line one. CJ puts him on speaker.
“She won’t let me leave the hotel. Says that my immune system is still too compromised for whatever insanity is floating around in the air outside. I’m being held hostage, here!” The last is directed away from the phone, presumably in the direction of his nurse.
“We’ll send an agent and a car to pick you up,” CJ says. They need him here and it’s hard to argue with the Secret Service.
“And a gas mask,” Toby promises.
“Thank you.” Leo hangs up.
“Where are you going to find a gas mask?”
Toby shrugs and pops an M&M into his mouth.
saturday.
CJ’s thinking about setting up a cot in a corner of the Situation Room. A nice cot, one with Egyptian cotton sheets and a good pillow or two and a warm blanket because it’s always cold in here. They aren’t using the back corner by the display screens for anything except a water cooler, and she can move that. It’d be easier than making the trip from her office three times a night.
“We should start talking about martial law,” Toby says, ambushing her as she suppresses a yawn on her way to another meeting.
She pulls him into the Mural Room. It’s empty, though it’s clearly being used as sleeping quarters at night. “Don’t say that out loud where other people can hear. There’s press around.”
“If we start using ‘bagel’ to replace every word we don’t want to say out loud, people are going to catch on.”
She glares. “People hear ‘martial law’ and get spooked.”
“Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start talking about it.”
CJ sighs. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s get some people together before we bring it to him.” She heads for the door, but Toby’s hand on her arm stops her.
“You’re doing great,” he assures her, because they’ve been friends forever and she’s had this job for less than six months.
She slides her arm out of his grasp, but only far enough that she can lightly clasp his hand. She squeezes his fingers and takes a deep breath. “Where did they find all these sleeping bags?”
friday.
She finds Toby in Ainsley’s old office, sitting on the floor beside the pipes. “Hiding?”
He looks up. “Yes.”
“From?”
“Everything. Everyone.” He just needed a minute, and Andi’s become very good at finding him. He doesn’t have time to be a dad right now.
She nods. “Might want to turn the light off, next time. There’s pizza upstairs.”
“How is there pizza?”
She shrugs. “The chefs were here when we went into lockdown. There is also beer. I may have had a few.”
“The White House Chief of Staff is drinking during this time of global crisis. When the press has been locked in the same building.”
“Chris found a bottle of whiskey in Danny’s desk; everyone has been drunk since four, they won’t be writing about me.” She offers him her hand and pulls him upward, off the floor.
He turns off the light and follows CJ up the stairs. “Have you heard from anyone?”
“Josh is camped out at Santos’ house in Texas. Will and Donna are in the New Hampshire state house with the Vice President.” This would be easier with the three of them helping, even remotely, but they haven’t been able to establish secure phones and internet.
“And Sam?”
“Margaret’s still trying.”
monday.
“CJ, what’s this I’m hearing about Qumar and biological weapons?”
She has that memo on her desk; Margaret shoved it in her general direction before she’d even managed to pour herself some coffee. She hasn’t had a chance to read it yet. She’s still jet-lagged from China, which was wildly successful but resulted in more work than anyone anticipated, and there’s some imminent nonsense about the budget and her sexual orientation that’s about to take over her day. NSA and DoD would’ve flagged the report if they thought there was anything to it. She’ll read it over lunch.
“We’re looking into it, sir.” She follows him into the Oval Office. “Toby’s trying to figure out what’s going on with Wilkinson. Josh took a few days to go to Texas, but we shouldn’t have any problems handling things while he’s gone. Annabeth Schott – ”
“The short one from the Taylor Reid show?”
“That one, yes, she’s working with Toby about doing better with the press briefings until we can find an official replacement for me.”
“Why can’t you do both?”
She looks at him, peering over non-existent glasses. He’s kidding, but it’s early and she only drank half of her coffee and there’s a memo about biological weapons on her desk and, the more she thinks about it, the more there might have been an NSA flag on top.
“My science advisors tell me they’re getting very good at cloning small animals.”
She’s going to regret saying this but, “I’m not a small animal.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Well analyzed there, CJ. I’m glad I appointed you Chief of Staff over every other qualified person in the White House.”
It’s going to be an unbearable day.