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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.

3. Abstract Threats, Too Noble to Neglect - (coming home)

*

He's fumbling for his keys when she guides him by the elbow round the side of the house. When he sees her overnight bag tucked beside the back doorstep he tells her she's very presumptuous.

She smiles enigmatically, and he uses another key.

*

They sit up all night reading. They haven't done that in twenty years. He chooses the passages that don't make him cringe to read to her; she tries out his words in her mouth, watching his face to see if she's getting the cadence right. They play out dialogues. There are sudden, surprising, sobs and shrieks of laughter.

*

Eventually he dozes. She reads every word to herself, time and again. By sunrise his words are throbbing in her veins.

*

She's sprawled, legs splayed, on his Oriental rug, out for the count. He steps between her limbs, bends to prise a half-empty mug from her outstretched hand and goes to make breakfast, consisting of instant coffee.

*

After that, he doesn't like to leave her so unceremoniously asleep on the floor, but he returns bearing doughnuts and so the offence is pardonable.

*

He gets out of the shower and she's on the phone, flopped belly-down on the bed with the cord twisted round her finger and looking more like a teenage girl than he's ever seen her.

"Sam, he's here, so I have to say nice things now."

He rolls his eyes. She kept her promise.

"Hey, you're right." She looks up and addresses him. "Sam says you don't say nice things to me, so I can say what I like."

He wonders why she bothered bringing a bag. She's wearing his shirt anyway.

"Did I give you permission to call long distance?"

"I promised I'd call when I finished the book. Also, bite me."

He nips her instead, a pinch of hip between forefinger and thumb. She is suitably surprised and indignant, and unconvincing when she swats him away.

*

A continent away, Sam wonders what the sounds she's making mean.

He can just make out Toby's gruff assertion that she's not finished with the book yet.

That's interesting. He didn't think Toby wanted her to get it.

*

It bothers Toby quite a bit that she looks so at home in a place that's never meant any more to him than a place to charge his laptop. Since Hoynes's inauguration he's lived largely in his head.

In the kitchen, close but not touching, in a scene jammed tight between intimacy and banality. It's too familiar to be natural. Maybe she's been inhabiting his rooms all these years and he hasn't even noticed.

*

He doesn't notice when she starts to speak. It's the slightly frustrated eyes that catch his attention and make him realise he hasn't been listening. He was never accustomed to listening, and has had little occasion to for several years.

There's enough of a trace of apology in his features to stop her making a fuss.

"Why a novel? I mean, I can see you being sick of writing politics, but if it was going to be all about us usual suspects anyway?"

*

She's perched on the edge of the kitchen counter but her legs stretch all the way to the floor. She isn't even on tiptoe, he notices as he drags his gaze up the length of her.

He feels curiously domesticated, pouring out their third cups of coffee each. It's worrying: he's far too old to learn new tricks.

And she'll be gone by tonight.

*

She doesn't quite understand why he touches her elbow before he hands her the mug. It doesn't take twenty years of history to tell he's distracted, but maybe it does to realise that he's more completely in the moment than is at all natural.

She blows on the coffee to cool it, and when he keeps staring at the morning lines around her eyes, she leans to blow on his too.

"Toby?"

*

He adds up a hundred thousand times she's said, whispered, screamed his name in his mind and if his mental arithmetic's up to speed, he's sure she's spoken it more times in anger than tenderness, but in the latter instances she meant it more.

He raises the mug to his lips and starts to sip before answering her question, if not the one in her eyes.

*

"I wrote a novel because that way one has freedom of expression."

He doesn't make her push, only taking a step back and half-turning away before elaborating: "If a book's meant to be factual there are too many constraints, in language, in structure, in... passion, I guess would be a word for it. What to leave in, what to take out-"

The hand that isn't holding the mug is in his pocket and she can see the thumb working nervously, a sure sign he's talking about something that matters.

"If I'd written the inside story on the Bartlet White House - something which has, by the way, been done two dozen times already by every kid who ever did a day's work in the mail room and a few who didn't - all anyone would have read would have been revelations, gossip: how traumatised we all were after Rosslyn; how I found out about the MS; personal relationships between the staff; death threats; how Sam's resignation affected the administration; every sneaky move I ever pulled. It would have been gratuitous even if it hadn't been written that way."

They both wince ever such a little bit at one or two of the items on his list.

She nods slowly, even though he isn't looking; remembers a series of articles Ainsley Hayes wrote a few years ago and how, as respectful as they were, she couldn't even read them.

"This book-", and she thinks how much his voice sounds like a first-time father's, "- covers everything I could have wanted to say. At least, if I did it right..."

He tries to think of something else, not wanting to leave it as if he's asking for her validation, but he's out of words again.

For a moment he thinks it's going to be awkward but she only asks, "Why couldn't you say something like that at the launch? Those people, your *fans*-" His blanch at her word choice is a delight. "They'd have loved to hear those things. All they wanted was to know a bit about where the book came from."

He's been twitching around like a thoroughbred in the starting gate for the duration of the conversation. Now they're close to touching. He's still not quite facing in the right direction.

When he speaks it's in the mumble he always uses when he doesn't want to say what he has to. "It's too personal. I don't want a bunch of strangers to know what's in my head."

She rests the coffee mug on the worktop. "Well, in that case my suggestion is to not publish something that covers everything you could possibly want to say."

He shakes his head and she can tell from the crinkling in the hairs around the corners of his mouth that he's smiling. "That's the beautiful thing about words. They can mean a hundred different things, and what they mean isn't down to the writer; it's down to the reader. None of those people has a clue what my words mean to me."

He's facing her at last, wanting to know if she understands.

"I'm happy to share those words with the whole damn world. But they'll never know where the words came from. I won't share that."

She'd reach for his hand, but his look is more penetrating than a touch. "What about me? Will you share it with me?"

Full circle, he steps back and turns away again. "Not if you can't figure it out for yourself."

*

She lies on her back in front of the imitation log fire clutching a highlighter, the book propped up on her raised knees, rereading.

He's at his desk with his laptop open. He's got nothing left to write at the moment but he has become accustomed to playing Solitaire while he thinks. Besides, if she stays long enough he might be inspired.

*

At around five o'clock Sam calls. He pretends to be checking up on them but it's fairly evident that he wishes he could be there. It takes Toby ten minutes to persuade him he can't afford to blow off tomorrow's vote on the phone tap bill. He wonders if this means she told Sam she'll still be here tomorrow.

She puts the book down long enough to demand he hand over the phone. He chuckles when he hears her ask Sam his opinion of the key to Cathy's relationship with Ira. He doesn't hear the response, but her ill-suppressed frustration confirms Sam's standing by his vow of silence.

*

Four hours later, he tries to force-feed her. She still hasn't mentioned a date of departure and he wonders if he should be concerned that she is apparently forgetting both to eat and to work.

She kicks up a fuss, claiming to be on the edge of an epiphany, so he promises to push her over the edge later if she'll join him for dinner now.

It's a gracious invitation and a good offer, so she giggles and kisses his earlobe, and holds onto the book with a death grip.

*

She attracts some looks in the diner, a middle-aged woman in a man's shirt with her nose in a book. He's glad he practically dragged a pair of her own pants over her hips before they left.

He has to order for her because she won't put the book down to look at the menu.

He decides he has created a monster. Now he must feed it.

He orders two steaks.

*

Over dessert, when his belly is straining at his belt, he offers up a hint. "The reason Sam wrote a good intro is that he got it right off."

"He did?" They're practically the first two words she's spoken all night.

"He knows my writing style inside out. He got it. You should read what he had to say about it."

"I did. I've read the whole thing five times already."

He shrugs and shovels more pie into his mouth, taking note when she flips back to the early pages.

*

Back home, he plays music he hates and she adores. She doesn't thank him, so he plays George Jones and she slams a well-aimed fist into his ankle as he passes her place on the rug.

It's technically morning by the time she drifts into oblivion with her face in the book. When he drops her in bed and pulls the covers up, he reads his words back in the light print scars across her forehead and cheeks.

Later, his face falls forward onto his keyboard and random letters dance across the screen while he sleeps.

*

He wakes up with his skin prickling, sunburn in a darkened room.

The laptop flickers back from standby to life as he raises his head and stares at her indentations on the rug, thinks without emotion that if she's gone he might not be able to step on it again.

The air in the room has an altered composition; he doesn't have to go into the bedroom to know it's empty.

His own fault, of course. He should have asked her outright about her plans. She knows he doesn't like surprises.

*

In the kitchen a flush of good, old-fashioned, heart-hardening anger begins to massage the melancholy away when he discovers she used the last of the coffee.

His ankle twinges. She's left him a bruise.

*

He shuffles around looking for something to do and the sun streaming through the window makes him growl, all the louder when he remembers there's no one to hear.

Stretching across the worktop in a manner that his muscles don't like at all to draw the limp curtain, he almost laughs.

Almost, then he goes back to being angry, because she's only gone and ruined his moment of self-indulgence.

And because he really does dislike direct sunlight.

*

His back garden was never much of a view before now. He has long been tempted to concrete over it.

She'd go a lot further than almost laughing if she could keep her nose out of the book long enough to notice him standing behind her.

He wonders if the neighbours are curtain-twitchers. He's never given them much to talk about before beyond the odd late night drunken spectacle, but his stomach's too strong for that to be a regular occurrence.

He thinks that if anyone happens to be looking they will find the sight of him in wraparound thick dark glasses and a wide-brimmed floppy NYCC hat rather amusing. It's faintly disturbing that the thought of brightening a stranger's day brings the shadow of a smile to his lips.

*

Though that may have rather more to do with the picture she's presenting him - and Big Brother, if he's watching - with, stretched out on the overgrown lawn, toes pointed as if reaching for something.

The denim cut-off shorts she's wearing would be far too young for a woman of her age who was any less in shape, but he can't find fault. Her back is bare save for the flesh-coloured bra straps, only her flesh is a far richer colour, and he feels like an old man for wondering if she used sunscreen.

She's allowed the elements to dry her hair so it's shaggy and her head is angled so that it falls in her face and shields her eyes from the glare so she doesn't miss a word of the book. The streaks he assumed were the latest highlights reveal themselves in the stark light to be grey. He'd forgotten what her natural hair colour looked like.

The contrast with bronzed skin makes the grass, and the moss, more lush. Perhaps Toby too.

He does think that perhaps her legs are paler than they used to be. He imagines squeezing her calf to examine the evidence and doesn't have the energy. Maybe she's been staying out of the sun. There's a metaphor in there somewhere.

*

"You know, at your funeral, when you're dead, after your ultimately vain battle against skin cancer, I'm gonna stand at the front of the church, or whatever the hell heathen place they have the service in, and I'm gonna say, I told her so."

"And my ghostly voice will whisper, I begged him not to wear that hat, I got down on my hands and knees and begged. And my many mourners are gonna talk amongst themselves and say the dead chick talks more sense than the Jewish vampire at the podium," and he realises she knew he was there all along.

*

She can't lure him onto the grass but she rustles up a deck chair he didn't know he had and he sinks awkwardly into the middle, struggling to sit upright.

She turns a page to hide the fact that she's struggling not to laugh, because that's the kind of mood she's in this morning. Something tells her he feels vulnerable, which means she has the upper hand and she's not too virtuous to enjoy the idea.

Maybe it is because the sun invariably dulls his wit.

*

"I thought you'd gone."

"I haven't."

"That's too bad, 'cause I thought this was maybe just a hologram."

She shakes her head wryly. "Succumbing to the writer's lifestyle. Too many lonely afternoons watching Star Trek reruns."

He can't think of a better comeback than to say he prefers Battlestar Galactica so he refrains, trailing one hand on the ground, pulling up stalks of grass and the occasional daisy.

*

She counts how many sentences she can read before impatience wins over dignity and he asks, "How long before you have to go back to work?"

Wonders if telling the truth will ruin her mood, does it anyway but taking her time, "No rush."

"What's that supposed to mean?", quicker than intended.

"Well, I handed in my notice, so let's just say I have plenty of time to curl up with a good book."

She peeks through the veil of her hair. He looks like he has indigestion. She isn't sure if that's good.

"That's eight employers with whom you've parted company since the administration."

"You've been paying attention." *That's* good. Probably.

"How much notice did you give them?"

"Two hours."

His eyebrows rise above even his monster sunglasses.

"They bore me, Toby."

"Your flighty girlish irresponsibility bores me."

Which is just a little implausible coming from the man who watched her from the shadows for twenty minutes before he spoke.

"Yeah, and I'm the lovechild of the Pope and the Queen."

"I can see the family resemblance."

"Hey!"

And now he is happy, because that yelp she gives when an insult takes her by surprise is one of his favourite sounds in the world.

He snickers in his deck chair that she pulled out of his garage like she pulls words out of his pen, and she goes back to her book.

*

When it is cooler and they are back inside, where the air has changed again, he notices she is beginning to read more slowly. She's nearly getting it. An aniseed taste on his tongue. He fidgets.

*

It's there in the part of her mind she can't reach. She wonders if it's the part he can reach, and would he help if she asked him.

*

Later, when he comes home laden with bags of groceries, he notices her stiffen as she stands up to welcome him. He tells her he told her so and she grimaces and rummages through the bags for a carton of ice cream to clutch to her skin. He mocks and won't tell her where the moisturiser is unless she agrees to let him rub it on her, and so they are enemies for a while.

*

He taps out the alphabet in reverse order on the keyboard and broods about what 'no rush' means. Either she is moving in with him without asking permission, or she's planning on being gone by morning. He doesn't like that she's playing with him.

*

Her eyes are tired. They might not be the only parts of her but she can't start thinking about anything else or she might lose the breakthrough that's hovering somewhere around her frontal lobe.

It's the dedication that's sticking her, she thinks.

She can see her skin red under the light blouse and hates that he knows the right answers.

He really did write a beautiful book.

*

The book's too thin for there to be a thud when it closes but certainly there are reverberations. Her hand lies flat on the cover, pressing all the words within together, and stays there until she has turned her back completely. It feels like a physical effort when she tears it away.

She doesn't realise her eyes are misty until she sees him slouched in the doorway, at which point they brim over.

*

It took him 100,000 words to get close to saying what he had to say; takes two salt water drops and contractions of a few facial muscles for her equivalent. He feels inadequate.

*

He gives a laugh, equal parts nervous and dry, and digs his hands deeper into his pockets.

"Case closed?"

She sniffles, draws her hand across her eyes, and feels like a girl.

"Your baby's quite something, Toby Z."

You're supposed to do something when people are crying, he's dimly aware, but he's too busy staring at a closed book.

"You're finished with it."

"I think I'm going to leave it a while before I reread, yeah."

But that's not the question.

*

Her mouth is dry; it's been a while since she remembered to drink. She didn't give much consideration to what would happen after she got the message.

She is looking over his right shoulder when she asks how the job market is round here.

*

He doesn't think she would tease so soon after the reading but then he didn't expect her to cry either. Getting emotional in her old age. Not true, she always was, but she's not so ashamed of it now. He feels mellowing in his veins.

*

"I dare say there a few openings."

She's looking at his face now.

Honesty compels him to add, "You could do better."

"I've done better. Now I'm doing what the hell I like." Which just about sums up her life after the White House. Sam was right, she is happier, and no wonder.

She stands, and close enough to encourage him to reach around her waist and find the groove his hand wore in the small of her back. This isn't new but it's born again, devoid of the tortured element of old.

"You don't mind if I sleep on your couch for a while? Until I find something more permanent."

To his coy mistress: "Not a chance in hell."

And if she rests her head on his shoulder she can see the open bedroom door. She makes a contented noise and looks forward to descending into her second childhood on a foundation of guiltless sin.

*

Later they make war over something he shouldn't have said twenty years ago.

The climactic battle takes place in the bedroom: his careless hands tear her more delicate garments as he grabs her things out as fast as she can throw them into the carry-all. Eventually she resorts to throwing toiletries at him. He catches her wrists in self-defence; she kisses him. It's meant to be a diversionary tactic, but she succeeds in diverting herself so well that a ceasefire is called by mutual consent and they're making something else instead.

His fingers are gentle with sunburnt skin and manipulative of flesh she hid from the sun. She knows what he wants.

*

In the morning she smacks him on the head to show she hasn't forgotten. He swats her ass in return. Even their fights are younger than they used to be.

*

They're still in bed when Sam calls.

CJ answers. Sam chuckles, knowing what that means. Toby slips two fingers inside her. She wiggles.

Sam asks how she liked the book.

Toby starts to move.

She says she's holding out high hopes for the animated version.

Sam is not offended when she hangs up.

*

End

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3

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