Red Lights

Photograph

Title: Photograph

Characters: Josh Lyman, CJ Cregg, Toby Ziegler, Donna Moss, Sam Seaborn, Charlie Young, Jed Bartlet

Rating: General Audiences

Notes: This is more of a character study than a fic (which I'm pretty good at, if my friends are accurate about anything) (they're not, they're convinced that my writing is actually good and they are wrong) but it's kind of cute and was inspired by the quote at the beginning. 

Photograph

"If you want to know what someone fears losing, look at what they photograph." -Unknown

Josh himself is no good with taking pictures. Every picture he takes ends up blurry, or too dark, or too bright. But still, he carries a camera. Since Roslynn, he's taken to photography even more, and if he's being honest, he doesn't mind that the photos aren't top quality. He takes pictures of everything that he realizes he might have missed- the sunsets, the flowers, the bird and the buildings. But he rarely prints those. No, the ones he prints are the ones that are too blurry to fully make out, the ones where he was laughing too hard to hold the camera steady. His favorite photos are in frames on his desk- a blurry mess of blonde hair and alabaster skin on a beach in Hawaii. A photo, half blocked by a member of the press, of CJ addressing the nation. A shaky, unfocused picture of him and Sam the day he left for California. And a picture, the best one he's taken, though it's still kind of blurry, of Leo behind a podium at one of their campaign stops. He has more, of the rest of his friends, but those are his favorites.

Toby isn't a fan of pictures so much. He doesn't have many, but the ones he does have are some of the most important to him. He's only taken his own picture once, and he keeps it on his desk all the time: Huck, Molly, and Andy in the hospital. It's a little shaky, but it's better than Josh's pictures, and Toby constantly holds that over his head. Sometimes, he feels the need to put a post-it note over Andy's face, because that's not something he wants to deal with, but he keeps the photo on his desk until the day he leaves the White House. He has a few pictures at home, mostly all in boxes or tucked into binders, but the two he keeps out, he studies every day. The first is a picture of him and CJ, before the Bartlet campaign, taken at a party they were both at. CJ's face is bright, and their arms are wrapped around each other. He can't remember why. The other photo is a professional one, taken of the whole Bartlet staff when Jed was first elected. Toby takes it down for almost a month after he is fired, but it's back up as soon as he finds out about the pardon.

CJ has pictures all over her apartment, of various things. Some of them, she hardly pays attention to, but she has a photo book that she looks through almost once a month. It holds some of her favorite pictures- there's one of her behind a podium because, although she'd never go back, she wouldn't trade those years for anything; and there's one that someone from the press managed to take, of Danny giving her the goldfish earrings. One of them is of her, that Toby either took or found, and drew a mustache on her face. And there's one of Danny, the professional photo that had gone on his White House press pass. Maybe she has better ones somewhere, but that's where they met and that's what she keeps. As with everyone else, CJ has many pictures of the Bartlet staff, but her favorite is one with the girls- CJ, Donna, Margaret, Bonnie, Carol, and Ginger. She has one of Jed and Abbey from one of the inauguration balls, though she can't remember which, and one of Josh, not long after the Roslynn shooting. Her all-time favorite, though, is one Toby sent her after she moved to California, of the two of them at her house before the first Bartlet campaign. There's nothing special about the photo, but there's a note on the back that simply reads "Thank you." She pins that one to the wall.