Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: The West Wing belongs to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells et al. CSI belongs to Jerry Bruckheimer, Alliance Atlantis, CBS et al. Only the situation and the gnocchi are mine.

Summary: Catherine leaned forward conspiratorially. "I'll pretend to be your girlfriend, if you like."

Author's Note: For Oro (bananasrock), in response to the Femslash Ficathon '04. West Wing/CSI crossover, CJ/Catherine. Beta'd at short notice by the wonderful sarapallas, coldbeer, and leksa.

Author's Note 2: In a title brainstorming session with The Flatmates (Katherine, Shiv, and Ellie), there were several honourable mentions, such as, "From Gnocchi to Nookie", "CJ Investigates Women's Naughty Bits", and "My First West Wing/CSI Crossover, by Lindsay Booth, aged 21 and 3/4". I couldn't, in all good conscience, leave them out. My apologies.

***

"Catherine!" Sara ran across the parking lot, waving a file. "Wait!"

Catherine sighed and fought the temptation to just close the door of her Tahoe and drive off. "God, Sara, shift ended over an hour ago!" She stepped out of her car.

"You need to sign this before you go. Grissom left already, and this has to have one of your signatures on it before we can take it to a judge." Sara dragged a hand through her hair and fanned herself with the file before handing it to Catherine, who opened it, scrawled her signature and returned it with barely a glance.

"I assume I didn't just sign away my job or anything…"

Sara grinned. "If you had you could stay in Washington. Get out of the heat-wave."

"And into a snow storm, probably." Catherine climbed back into her Tahoe, shut the door to keep in the air conditioning, but opened the window to speak. "You are planning on going home at some point, right?"

Sara shrugged. "There's stuff to do here, especially with you running away to DC. Anyway, what's at home?"

"There's a bed there." Catherine quirked the corners of her mouth into a smile. "You should go home and… use it."

Sara ignored the innuendo, but couldn't completely suppress a smile. "Enjoy the conference."

"I'll do my best," Catherine slid her sunglasses on, turned the key in the ignition, and drove away.

***

"Tobias." The clicking of CJ's heels preceded her as she walked straight through Toby's open office door.

He lowered his pen to the yellow legal pad, already half-filled with his loose scrawl. Raised his eyebrows. "Claudia?"

"When do I get a draft?" Arms folded, leaning on the doorframe, she looked over the rims of her glasses at him. "Josh has a draft, and we both know I'm more important than Josh."

"And a better fit for that skirt suit."

"Cute, Toby. Very cute." She tapped her foot. "Give me my Teacher's Union draft."

"I emailed it to you half an hour ago." His expression was somewhere between smug and amused.

CJ quirked an eyebrow, smiled indulgently. "You used technology? For me, Toby? I'm touched."

"You have what you came for. Go away. I'm writing." He lifted his pen again, watching her pointedly.

CJ touched her hand to her chest theatrically and mock-pouted. "You wound me, Toby."

"I'm taking you to that ridiculous cliché of an Italian restaurant you like. I didn't realise I had to be nice to you at work as well."

Two steps through the door, she turned and called back. "I do it all for the gnocchi, Toby."

"I've heard that about you." His head remained buried in the legal pad he had already returned to, and CJ walked away, smiling.

***

CJ snapped her cell phone closed and tossed it on the table, grabbed her fork and stabbed a couple of gnocchi viciously. It was an hour after the time Toby had agreed to meet her for dinner, and she had given up on him showing up. She had moved from wondering when he would call to actively hoping he wouldn't, just so she could add it to his list of misdemeanours.

She had shovelled her mouth full of gooey potato and tomato sauce mixture when she noticed the blonde that had been eyeing her from across the room approaching, carrying a glass of white wine.

"I ordered, but they didn't bring my food yet." There was no preamble. No, 'I'm a huge fan', or 'your policies are despicable'. CJ wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but whatever it had been, this wasn't it.

"Well, uh-" CJ faltered as the woman pulled out the chair opposite her and sat. "That's nice."

"I told them to bring it to this table. I'm Catherine, by the way. Catherine Willows." Catherine raised her glass to her lips and took a small sip, smiling at CJ over the rim. "Don't worry, I already know who you are."

"Wait a moment, let me get this straight." Catherine nodded for CJ to continue. "You recognise me from C-SPAN, and on that basis you've told the waiter you're eating with me?"

"That's about right, yes." Catherine interrupted herself to thank the waiter, who placed a bowl of linguine in some kind of cream sauce in front of her, along with a side salad. "I just hate eating alone, especially in strange cities. Don't you?"

Not only had Toby stood her up, her gnocchi had gotten cold while she fumed. CJ decided to play along. "Well, Washington is certainly a strange city… But no, eating alone has never bothered me." She was forceful enough that she almost believed the words herself.

Catherine was less easily fooled. "I heard you yelling at his voicemail." She twirled a forkful of linguine elegantly. "You think the gossip columns'll write about you getting stood up?"

"Sure," CJ shrugged. "'Bartlet's Press Secretary's Lack of Social Life Moves to a Whole New Level.' I can see the headlines now."

Catherine leaned forward conspiratorially. "I'll pretend to be your girlfriend, if you like."

The couple at the next table turned their heads as CJ chuckled loudly. "You think those headlines'll be better?"

"Oh, absolutely. Especially when, in addition to the lesbianism, they dig up the fact that I used to be a stripper in Vegas."

CJ drained her wine glass, refilled it from the bottle on the table, and swallowed another generous mouthful before she spoke. "Okay, here's the deal. I won't get up and leave, if you swear you won't tell the press we're sleeping together."

"Not a problem," Catherine assured her, a wicked glint in her eye. "I have nothing to hide, we're not sleeping together."

"No," CJ agreed. "Not yet."

Catherine regarded CJ for a moment, before turning to the waiter who was approaching with dessert menus. "That won't be necessary, thank you. We'll be having dessert elsewhere."

***

They carried the pretence of dessert far enough to make and pour drinks, but not far enough to drink them. Two mugs of coffee cooled as Catherine pressed CJ up against the kitchen counter, kissing her roughly as she slid her hands under CJ's shirt, nails scratching lightly along the smooth skin of her stomach.

Clothes spilled in a line between the kitchen and the bedroom, as CJ slid Catherine's pale blue shirt over her head, Catherine unfastened CJ's black pants, and CJ kicked off her black pumps. Underwear was all that remained when they hit the bed in a frantic tangle of arms and legs.

Forty-five minutes later they lay beneath CJ's rumpled bed sheets. Catherine traced the outline of CJ's collarbone and sighed contentedly. "We should get up," she ventured.

"Why?" CJ asked, simply.

Catherine sat up and cast her eyes around for her underwear. "Because I don't often go home and have wild sex with women I meet in restaurants. But when I do, I definitely don't hang around to cuddle."

CJ made no movement to get dressed. She slipped a cigarette out of the packet of Marlboros on her nightstand and crossed naked to the open window to smoke it. "You're not going to call me, are you?"

"I'm not." Catherine moved to join CJ at the window, plucked the cigarette from CJ's fingers. She took a deep drag and coughed slightly. "And you don't want me to."

"No."

Catherine gathered the rest of her things and left. CJ finished her cigarette and lit another.

***

"CJ?" Toby stuck his head around CJ's office door. She looked up from her laptop and gestured for him to come in and close the door. "Last night-"

"Was very interesting, regardless of your absence," she interrupted, before turning her attention back to her press release. "I didn't sit around crying into my gnocchi, Toby."

"Well, good then." He turned towards the door, then turned back. "It was unavoidable, CJ."

CJ nodded, without looking up. "I'm sure it was, Toby. And I'm sure there weren't two free minutes in which you could've called me."

"I called you at ten fifteen. You didn't answer." He looked at her as if expecting an explanation.

"There was forty-five minutes or so when I was pretty busy."

Toby opened his mouth to reply, closed it again, and looked at her for a moment, before saying simply, "Okay," opening the door and leaving.

CJ watched him go, then went back to work, a smile playing on her lips.

***

Catherine got out of her Tahoe outside her sister's townhouse, went around to the passenger side, and was moving her purse from the seat to make space for Lindsey to sit when she heard her.

"Mommy!" Lindsey raced across the lawn and threw herself at her mother, who swung her in a big circle and into her arms. "Aunt Nancy made me pancakes for breakfast every day, and we went to the zoo, but I still missed you!"

"Well, I missed you too, baby." Catherine gave Lindsey a squeeze and set her down in the passenger seat of the car, before turning to her sister. "Thanks for watching her, Nan. She wasn't any trouble?"

Nancy shook her head, and handed Lindsey's duffle bag to Catherine. "No trouble at all, as always." She reached out to ruffle Lindsey's hair. "See you Tuesday, squirt. See you, Cath."

Catherine got back into the car and pulled away. "Hey, guess who I met in Washington, munchkin."

"The President?" Lindsey guessed, excitedly.

"No, not the president, but almost." Catherine grinned as she imagined the look that would cross CJ's face if she heard herself referred to as 'almost the president'. "I met his press secretary."

Lindsey looked confused for a moment, then thoughtful. "That's the tall lady that talks on C-SPAN, right?"

"Right. And she's even taller in person."

"Is she nice?" Lindsey changed stations on the radio as she spoke.

"Yes," Catherine answered, stilling Lindsey's hand on the tuner when she reached the news station and heard the familiar voice crackle through the speakers. "She's very nice. We had a nice conversation."

"Cool," said Lindsey, and flicked the channel to the top forty. Christina Aguilera blared, and Catherine drove towards home.

Finis.