Rating: PG
Pairing: Ellie/Wesley
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.
Archive: At my site, The Band Gazebo (http://helsinkibaby.ahkay.net)
Summary: They're never going to have a proper relationship.
Author's Note: The wonderful Taye Diggs introduced me to Wesley Davis, Heidi introduced me to the livejournal Writer's Choice community the same night, and the rest is history…response to the "Friday Night at the Movies" theme. I do have a way longer thing in the works for these two, muse co-operating, but this will do for now!

He knows that he's being ridiculous. He knows that he shouldn't be thinking like this. He's a Secret Service Agent and he's worked too hard and too long to get to where he is to jeopardise it all for the sake of a few stolen kisses, for a few all-night conversations, for a thousand furtive glances.

He's worked hard to get on to the Presidential detail, he's not going to screw it up. That's why he works the long hours, the night shifts, that's why he goes where he's told without a word of complaint. Even when he got taken off the Presidential detail and shipped from Washington down to Baltimore he didn't complain.

Then he got to know Ellie Bartlet and he really wished that he had.

Not because she makes life difficult, although she does, just not in the way that Zoey is famous for making life difficult.

Not because he doesn't get along with her, because he does.

In fact, that's the entire problem.

He gets along too well with her, just like she gets along too well with him.

He's not stupid, he knows the rules.

He's a Secret Service Agent, she's the President's daughter.

He's not allowed to date a protectee, he's not even allowed to call her by her first name, though he does, on those times when no-one's around to hear them.

He's not allowed to date a protectee, and he's certainly not allowed to think that he might find himself falling in love with her.

He tells himself that he shouldn't even entertain the notion, tells himself that there's no future for them, and he knows he's right.

But he still finds himself here, in a Baltimore movie theatre on a Friday night.

Ostensibly, she's here on her own, catching a movie to unwind after a long week of study.

Ostensibly, he's here to watch over her, to protect her, just like the other agents dotted among the audience.

He's here undercover, his regulation suit and tie swapped for blue jeans and a black T-shirt under a black leather jacket, and as far as anyone who's watching them is concerned, they're two people who came here separately and just ended up sitting together. Or they're two people who came here together and are enjoying the movie.

Even if he can't concentrate on the movie because he's too aware of her sitting beside him.

Even if it does feel nice under cover of darkness when she reaches out unobtrusively, taking his hand in hers.

They're a Secret Service Agent and his protectee and there's no future in anything they're feeling.

They're never going to have a proper relationship, never going to be able to walk down the street together hand in hand. She'll never meet his family and he'll never be anything more to hers than Wesley Davis, United States Secret Service.

They're never even going to have a proper date.

But they're sitting here in the darkened movie theatre hand in hand, and it's almost close enough.