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by: Delightfully Eccentric

Pairing(s): CJ/Toby
Category(s): Post-Administration
Rating: MATURE
Disclaimer: The West Wing characters and histories aren't mine, and are used here for love, not money.
Summary: "Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now."
Author's Note:Summary & chapter titles are from the eponymous song by Bob Dylan.

1. Ideas As My Maps - (the book launch)

*

It's Toby's book launch, and CJ learns of it through a note from his publisher. It comes in the form of small neat font on a piece of cardboard, devoid of personal touches, an invitation to buy the book rather than to attend the launch. She goes anyway.

*

It's his book launch, and Sam is there because he wrote Sam an old-fashioned snail mail handwritten note, on paper stained with cigarette ash, and told Sam that he is in the book.

So Sam swallowed the hook and demanded an advance copy, fell in love with Toby's words all over again, promptly dashed off a sycophantic foreword upon which the publisher pounced with delight, as the name of the posterchild of the post-Hoynes Democratic party will look good under Toby's on the dust jacket.

Toby has always rather liked the idea of the names Ziegler and Seaborn together on a dust jacket - and after all Sam is in the book. As is she. But he's never written her a love letter yet and he isn't going to start now.

*

And so it is the day of his book launch, and she is wearing dark glasses and a headscarf and marvelling at the fact that this doesn't make her look particularly conspicuous among the literary set.

*

He sits for an hour and makes sloppy flourishes of the pen that pass for signatures, and stews the minutes away. She's fashionably late and hovers to the side of the doorway on the outside and laughs each time he growls instead of smiling at a fan. She notes with amusement how his manner is distinctly more mellow when nubile college girls simper their admiration.

This is closer to him than she's been since the end of the Bartlet era, and when she watches him sell his words she misses him, which is a luxury it does her good to allow herself once in a while.

It has to be kept on a tight rein, however, else it might prove as potentially destructive as her penchant for doughnuts with pink fondant icing.

*

He sits with throbbing veins and a sizzling fuse and thinks that he'd never have written the damned book if he'd known he would have to sell it. He doesn't write 'best wishes' or 'thanks for reading' on his back pages, simply signs Toby Z. Ziegler and scratches the date into the paper because maybe someday someone will want to look back and remember the day his book was launched.

As he sits and signs his words away, his hatred of the pastel-suited schoolgirl rep from the publisher increases exponentially. Every time she flashes a $10,000 'encouraging' smile his way or snaps her fingers for some even lowlier lackey to fill his water glass, he thinks it might be an entertaining pastime to disembowel her in some way.

*

She watches and feels vicarious pride in the lines of people queuing for his name. It's been more than a decade since she last waited in a line, so it's fortunate that she already has his name, in a far steadier than the hand than the one he's using now. She has it in a dozen books she pilfered from his collection when they were young, in a handful he chose as gifts and even on a wedding invitation right next to his bride's.

She has his name in his own hand, but she doesn't have his latest words. She would like to read his book. Especially since some of the early reviews indicated that she, with Sam and Leo and the others, is in it.

She's appeared in a number of books since Bartlet left office and thereby opened the floodgates for political memoirs by people who hadn't been close enough to have anything to remember, commentaries by people who hadn't been privy to enough to comment on, and satires by people who knew nothing of the absurdities of the people they were trying to satirise. Never has she been shaped into paper and ink by someone who knows her, though there have been several who think they do. She would dearly like to know which category Toby falls into.

*

Sam Seaborn is guest of honour at the Q&A session after the signing, and picks her out immediately. He waves, and the millionaire couple in front of her wave back, so he settles for a wink and a nod. She slides her sunglasses down her nose and winks back.

She hasn't missed Sam particularly, but on seeing him again she can't think why. He still has the charm of a boy, but she can see the budding of the demeanour of a statesman. The story of how this man once saved her life is still good for a whole evening's drinks.

*

Toby is in no better mood by the time he is ushered into the seat beside Sam's. He does not bother to look at the audience. He has had enough of people buying the words he doesn't feel are his to sell.

He speaks about the book for a few ragged minutes and trips over his words until he's facedown in a gutter full of them. He's never been a great orator; few know it better than the woman he doesn't know is there.

The audience looks at each other knowingly: they are in the presence of a creative genius, evidently. His inability to communicate is the clincher.

*

She thinks it ironic that his triumph is based on saying all the wrong things. She clearly made a mistake all those years ago when she tried to break him of that habit.

*

Sam longs to step in and speak Toby's words for him, for if he'd been good at crafting speeches, his greatness lay in the delivery. It's easy to make people believe what one says, he explains whenever asked, when one believes it oneself. A simple formula, but he is the only one in the arena today who can convince the public that he sticks to it.

Sam wonders if Toby has noticed CJ's presence yet.

*

The publisher's rep gets him back into his seat and announces that the debutante author will take a few questions now. It reminds CJ of a briefing. She misses the hurly-burly of the White House press corps, but not their brutality.

*

A young woman is on her feet, rather redundantly raising her hand at the same time: "Mr. Ziegler, it's an honour."

He blatantly rolls his eyes.

"I think I can speak for quite a few of your followers when I say that we probably expected your first book to be a history of your years in professional politics. May I ask, what made you choose to exert your literary muscles in this genre?"

"I have followers now?"

In her seat near the back, CJ snickers.

He looks to the publisher's rep. "Take a note. Apparently I am now the Pied Piper of Brooklyn."

His young questioner by this time carries a somewhat less overconfident manner.

"This is the problem with people who revere words," he continues, but CJ can tell he's being serious now. "The syllable-worshippers. They think the more words they can fit into a sentence, the better. We're not supposed to court words. We're supposed to take them and prostitute them to say what we want to say."

The girl sits down slowly and people exchange meaningful looks.

A man, who is being cultivated by Sam's staff as a prospective donor, speaks up.

"On a similar theme, your book was widely expected to be a memoir of some kind. Is it fair to say that it is to an extent autobiographical?"

Toby shakes his head. "No. Next question." He waves a literary critic to his feet but the donor isn't finished.

"I'm sorry, but isn't it true that several of your characters are in this room right now? Not to mention your own avatar?"

*

CJ thinks ruefully that her disguise needs work.

*

Toby wonders for a minute what the man means by 'several', and then she is in his line of vision. Glasses on top of her head, crooked smile and legs crossed at the knee, he sees her in terms of the words he pressed between his pages.

He notices one hand balance a copy of his book on her lap. She can't have had the chance to read it yet; she's probably the only person in the room apart from the students who hasn't seen an advance copy. He wonders if she will like it.

"No," he says.

*

It is now the champagne reception after Toby's book launch and her legs are still firm enough to get her in when she lets the security catch a glimpse.

She flashes a flirty smile at the young waiter from whose tray she takes a glass and stands with her back to the entrance studiously examining the paintings on the wall.

It's not long before there's a momentary flurry alerting her to Sam's arrival even before she hears her name called in what could best be described as a squeal. It's nice that getting elected still hasn't changed him enough that he'd get embarrassed at sounding so excited about someone he hasn't seen in years.

*

"CJ!"

Sam is impressed by her all over again. He didn't expect her to come, even after he made sure she received a copy of the publisher's announcement. He would have invited her himself, except that he wouldn't have been able to explain why Toby didn't.

She is aging gracefully, not pretending to be anything she isn't, but somehow she manages the next-to-impossible task of looking better than ever.

He knows there is something different when he puts his arms around her. Although she seems a little taken aback, he feels her lips on his cheek and his ear tickles when she laughs in it, and asks him, "Did you get a head start on the champagne?"

*

He hasn't been drinking, but he joins her in one, which turns into three by the time they're through with, it's great to see you, you look fabulous, what's new, his campaign, her hefty pay cheque.

It gives her a kick when anonymous Armani-attired Important People approach him and he ever-so politely blows them off to stick with her. This has happened a few times and now people are chattering discreetly and reminding each other who she is.

She tosses her hair while Sam tells her how much he liked her piece on tax incentives and environmentalism.

He twigs that the difference is that all the tension has melted from her body now that there's no one left to impress. He wonders if maybe the fact that she was so damn good at it blinded them all to the fact that the job didn't suit her at all.

*

No one pays much attention when the writer shuffles into the room with a chip on his shoulder and a glass in his hand.

A lowly executive from a rival publisher makes a move like he's about to intercept, but Toby turns his shoulder into the young man's face in as firm a gesture as a punch on the nose.

At the far end of the room her eyes are fixed in his direction. He hovers, momentarily lost, as she lowers her glass from her lips and indulges in a smile. Once she's sure he can't pretend not to have noticed, she blinks and turns her head back to answer a query from Sam and he has to walk all the way across the floor staring at the back of her head.

*

"Hey, the man himself!"

She laughs, and maybe it's at Sam's enthusiasm or maybe it's because she can tell Toby feels like a schoolboy.

His head tilts to one side as he regards her suspiciously. Her flushed cheeks aren't giving anything away. He remembers first why he didn't invite her and then that he's supposed to speak now.

"Yeah."

He's used up all his words in the book.

She's still smiling.

*

It doesn't take much to convince Toby to blow off the party marking his book launch.

He grouses at the photographer hovering in the doorway, not looking while Sam collects CJ's coat and holds it open, or when she kisses his cheek in thanks.

As soon as they're outside he realises that he forgot to steal some of the cigars he'd insisted on being made available. He curses, and the photographer thinks it's directed at him.

*

She's enjoying herself, even if she hasn't quite stopped being hurt that she had to sneak in. The thing she found hardest, in the past days, was always hesitating before she did something just in case someone somewhere thought it might be inappropriate.

It took her months, years even, afterwards, to get used to suiting herself again. It has taken years off her.

She's rediscovered posing for the camera - apparently it doesn't always involve adopting a poker face.

So it no longer jeopardises their careers when she throws an arm around Toby's shoulders for the benefit of the photographer, or when she presses her other hand to his chest and smiles a smile that someone would certainly have considered inappropriate if she'd done it back in their glory days.

He thinks she's taking her arm away when they walk on by, but she only moves it lower so it's tucked around his. The hand recently found on his chest is now similarly linked up with Sam.

Toby likes it when she teases him.

*

Sam finds it curiously touching that they're walking down a sidewalk arm in arm, three people who barely see each other and who would never have dreamed of walking anywhere arm in arm in the time when they saw each other daily.

He doesn't even feel like the odd man out, for which he is grateful to the woman in the middle. If it were left to Toby, he would be feeling most unwelcome by now.

It's during these times, when he sees these people, or Josh, or, more rarely, Leo that he thinks maybe he left too soon.

"You shouldn't have done that," Toby's snapping. He hasn't changed in the slightest.

"I was worried about Sam's reputation. If he's the only one of your old friends you deign to hang out with, people are going to say you guys are gay."

CJ has changed, he already noticed that, but only inasmuch that she's more relaxed. Sam thinks that translates as happier, but his certainty isn't one hundred percent.

"Well, now people are going to think that you're going to hit them if they sleep with me and it's going to constrict my opportunities to pick up barely legal girls for one night stands."

Listening to them quarrel was one of the things he missed most when he left.

There's an inexplicable lump in his throat when they turn a corner and CJ squeezes his arm closer to her side.

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3

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