She's good in bed, and it isn't a secret. Because sometimes she finds herself beneath someone in the middle of the night after a few too many drinks. And Washington is an unexpectedly small town. Besides she screams it at one of her mistakes one night at the Kennedy Center; she announces it in the Oval Office.
She's good in bed, and it's far from a secret.
And when she wakes up to discover him lying beside her, her thoughts turn, of their own volition, to Toby. Fleeting images really, memories she thought she'd banished from her subconscious, and yet they ambush her every time this happens. Waking up with yet another in a long line of others, she remembers.
And if this isn''t really that, not just the latest in a long string of replacements, if this is different, and it is, she pushes that thought aside as well. Because she's not ready to face the fact that she's blatantly disobeyed a presidential order. The leader of the free world, a man who could have her banished to Siberia with a flick of his wrist, forbade her to see this man, this conflict of interest. And she was full of good intentions, willing to sacrifice the personal for the professional. She was full of good intentions, mostly because this isn't what she wants, not really, because her mind will always return to Toby in the morning. But one night, and one too many martinis, and she's waking up in Danny's apartment.
So, careful not to wake him, and a little more than terrified about what he'll imagine this to mean, she dresses and leaves. It's still dark out, and she's missing one of her contacts, and she waits outside his building for the cab she's just called.
"You're leaving."
"Danny." She glances over her shoulder to see him, clad only in a pair of X-Mas novelty boxers, hovering in the doorway. Or at least she thinks they're X-Mas boxers; it's hard to tell, with just one contact in. "I called a cab."
"Oh." And he suddenly seems to realize its March, and cold outside, and he wraps his arms around himself. "You could stay. A few more hours, I mean, till sunrise anyway. If you want."
But she doesn't want to, which is why she snuck out in the first place. Besides, she's already begun to see photographers lurking behind every parked car on the block. And she's beginning to remember possibly calling him 'Toby' last night, which embarrasses her because it's something she's never done before, not with any of the others in this long string of men not Toby she's been with. Luckily the cab pulls up before she can respond, and she mumbles a quick goodbye as she climbs in.
* * *
She's great in bed, and it's not a secret.
So, once upon a time (& isn't that how these things are supposed to start, properly?) there was the past, and she was a different person. Before him, she was another person. And sometimes, when she's had just the right amount to drink, her former life flashes before her eyes like a B-Movie, in furious Technicolor.
In high school, she was too tall too soon, and she learned to spin the truth.
* * *
"CJ- these just arrived for you."
Carol enters her office with a huge bouquet of red roses, a rather gaudy floral arrangement, or so CJ thinks as she buries her head on her desk. Toby would never send her roses; she knows this instinctively because Toby is anything but banal. Besides she has a daisy pressed in a college Statistics textbook as a sort of tentative proof.
"Great. Just put them by the fish." She tries to smile. "And tell Danny to come to my office after the morning briefing. I need to talk to him." Which, of course, makes Carol smirk, dedicated personal assistant that she is, and CJ amends her statement. "For an exclusive. Get your mind out of the gutter."
She's hung over again, and after staff meeting Leo asks her to stay behind. To talk, of course, about the possibility she's become an alcoholic. Because she hasn't spent a sober night in weeks, and its beginning to show. He orders her to attend an AA meeting with him, to try to stay sober for the remainder of the week. Which scares her, even though she knows it shouldn't.
She begins to think maybe she is a drunk.
"Hoynes'll be there, too, just so you know. And Toby-"
Which snaps her out of her reverie. "Toby? But he's not an alcoholic."
And Leo looks at her like she's grown an extra head. "Have you seen him at all in the past few weeks, CJ? Because he's seriously the only member of this staff who's consistently looked worse than you every morning."
She thinks he may have insulted her, but she really doesn't care.
* * *
In high school, she always stood alone at parties, holding her friends' purses as they made out with the basketball team behind the bleachers.
In college, she screwed around. She became a sort of female gigolo, a term she prefers infinitely to slut, whore, tramp, and any other of the slurs thrown her way by the other girls after they discovered she'd gone down on the brothers of Delta Upsilon at a party one night.
* * *
And this cannot end any way but painfully, and the realization winds her as she watches Danny saunter into her office.
"Whatcha doin' tonight?" He's flirting with her again, behaviour she thought she'd ended after Portland, but obviously her actions last night have convinced him to resume. And she gives him that look, the one that says they've made a horrendous mistake, before commencing on a speech she's long since perfected but rarely has to give. Because usually she doesn't know the guy, these days, and they don't exchange names.
"Danny," And this is harder than she remembers it, somehow. "Last night, well, it was nice, Danny, but it was just, you know, a one time deal."
"You know it was more than a one-night stand, CJ."
"No. It wasn't."
And he looks contemplative, and he looks upset. "Last night, you said- I thought I was hearing things, I was drunk, but you called me--"
"So I--"
"--Toby."
"--did. That wasn't just my imagination. I did."
"So that's that?"
"I'm afraid so." And she can see his heart breaking as he tries to smile. She can see the damage she's wrought, and she tries, halfheartedly, to make it up to him as he leaves. "Thanks for the flowers, Danny. They're beautiful." Even though they're not.
* * *
In college, she screwed around. In college, CJ was still Claudia and Toby was a stranger, and she went down on him one night at a party. She went down on him in a fraternity bathroom, and he was the only one she ever took home. And when they woke up together, in her dorm room, she made him a bowl of cereal, and he kissed her in the doorway as he left a week later. He sent her a bouquet of daisies and Queen Anne's Lace when he went home to New York, and she pressed the petals in her Statistics textbook.
* * *
"So I hear you're being punished too."
She looks up to see Toby looming in the doorway of her office, a dour expression on his face. An even more dour expression than usual, she decides.
"AA?"
He shrugs.
"So are you? An alcoholic, I mean? Do you think you might be?"
He shrugs again, his all-purpose response to questions he really can't answer, which is really starting to bother her.
"Toby." It's a warning, really, the way she says his name, a threat she's perfected during the decades of their friendship. "Have you been struck mute?"
"No."
"No to what? The alcoholism or the mute?"
"Either. Both." He toes the carpet and plays with his tie. "I'm not an alcoholic, CJ. It's just lately, you know, things have been tough. What with reelection and Hoynes and the shooting still everywhere, it's just been--"
"Yeah."
She can tell when he's noticed the flowers because his head dips a little closer to the ground. "Nice flowers."
"Not really. I mean, they're nice, just not very me. I prefer wildflowers, daisies, stuff like that."
Which, of course, he already knows, being the one who started her affinity for them, and he smiles abruptly at the memory. "Cheerios."
She laughs, "What?"
"My favorite cereal. Always will be, thanks to you."
And she blushes at that, but mostly because she's always been more of a cornflakes girl. "They were my roommate's; she was home with her parents that week, and I didn't have anything of my own to eat."
"I'll have to thank her, someday. For going home that week, for leaving us some form of sustenance."
And she hits him, playfully, on the head with a file from her desk because he's making her nervous. Because they don't talk about this, as a rule, and suddenly he's bringing things up, things she thought he'd forgotten even if she never could. Which makes her nervous, but also foolhardy.
"So, tonight, after AA, do you want to go out? Maybe get something to eat and talk?"
Shrugging, "OK."
* * *
In college, they talked about everything & nothing, and started over infinite times. She went down on him in a fraternity bathroom, and they spent a week in her room, eating Cheerios at every meal.
And if sometimes they forgot to say the words, if they skipped that part from time to time, it was OK. Because he would send her flowers when he left at the end of the week, and she'd make him a bowl of cereal come morning.
* * *
"My name is Leo, and I'm an alcoholic and an addict."
"My name is John, and I'm an alcoholic."
"Bill, and I'm an addict."
And Toby's playing with his tie when the circle comes to him, so CJ elbows him. "Huh?" Looking around, "Oh. Toby. Hi."
"And I'm CJ, and Leo thinks we're alcoholics, when we're really just overworked." She glares pointedly at Leo and continues, "Which sounds like a lame excuse of some sort, I know, but really isn't. Which is why we're not going to have anything to drink, not even a lite beer, until Easter. As a sort of Lent exercise thing, even though Toby's Jewish and about to bite my head off."
"What she said. Except the Lent stuff, and the biting off of heads. I'm just doing this to prove a point."
Leo's mad, but mostly at himself, because they're obviously not taking this seriously. Or at least as seriously as he thinks they should. "Go. You two are treating this as some sort of perverse joke, so just leave. But if either of you shows up to work hungover again, I will be sending you to rehab."
Admonished, they leave.
And break out into laughter as soon as they reach her office.
* * *
And the next time she saw him, he was married and she was living with some guy she didn't really like.
The next time they met, she laughed at his wedding band, he joked about her house, and they agreed to ignore their past. To spin the truth, just a little, just enough to get by.
* * *
"So how dead do you think we are, exactly?"
He's flirting with her, she thinks, as he bounces another one of those rubber pink balls against her desk. They're eating cold Chinese food in her office, leftovers from that afternoon's lunch, and he's slouched on her couch, tossing those annoying little balls in her general direction. Which makes her giggle, when she realizes how sexual it all sounds.
"The fact that we may both be out of work in a few hours is somehow amusing to you? I've never figured you for a masochist, CJ."
"Not that, Toby. Your balls." Which only makes her laugh harder. "The bouncy ones you seem to have this crazy addiction to. To which you have this crazy addiction. Whatever."
"I thought we already covered the addiction angle for the evening."
"Morning. Early morning, but still..."
"Whatever."
"It's just that you're usually so precise with your words. I figured you'd call it like it is, my friend."
"Morning it is, then. Pre-dawn early morning, the time of day you only experience after pulling an all-nighter of some sort." Which reminds her of Danny, and she winces. "What?" And he rubs his hand over his head, a subconscious gesture, really, one he resorts to only in times of stress. "Danny."
And suddenly she's shy; her head tucks down without her wanting it to. "Yeah."
He gets up with every intention of storming out, full of righteous indignation, when he turns to see her cradling her head on her desk. And righteous indignation be damned, he thinks, because he can't just leave her like that, looking all sad and lost and lonely. Because he's been feeling it too, the lonely and the sad and the lost, which is why he's here, tonight, eating cold sesame chicken on her couch.
His hand is in her hair when he speaks, whispers really, next. "Ann Stark, even after the breakfast and the maple syrup and the press conference, she and I, we--" And he finishes the thought with his spare hand, waving it towards the ceiling. "We were drunk, and we, and I don't really like her, anymore. Maybe once upon a time, but after everything, I don't even like her, and we're sleeping together. Or were, anyway, I'm not sure. So I won't judge you too harshly."
"Sleeping together? That connotes that it's happened, you know, more than once. Danny and I- it was just the one time, after too much to drink." She blushes because she's fishing, but she can't seem to stop. "So how many-- I ended it with Danny after he sent me the flowers, told him it couldn't go any further. So how long, you and Ann, since when?"
"Only when I'm drunk. Her too, I think, though I'm usually too far gone to really tell. Recently, the last few weeks."
He's sitting on her desk, looking down at her for once, and they stare at one another in silence. And they're laughing, suddenly and hysterically, at the preposterousness of their situation when he leans down and kisses her. Hard. So she kisses him back, and the papers on her desk scatter every which way and he's on top of her. Her laptop digs into her back as he pulls at her suit jacket, and somehow they manage to move it to her chair as she pulls at the buttons on his shirt.
And later, when she goes down on him, his hands feel the same in her hair. His beard tickles a little between her legs, which is new, but doesn't last very long before she gasps at the feel of his tongue. They're older than they used to be, and they fall asleep on her couch.
***
When he and Andy started fighting, irreparably and constantly, he called CJ in Los Angeles and she talked him down.
She broke up with Jon and Chris and Mark, all of whom she never loved, and Toby was the one she phoned from a bar after too many grasshoppers. He would call her a cab, long distance from New York, and in the morning there'd be flowers.
So maybe this was inevitable, given their history, but maybe it wasn't.
***
"So."
"Yeah." He smirks. "So."
"Good morning, I think." She stretches, yawning, along the length of the couch. "What time is it, anyway?"
He's sitting now, with her head on his shoulder, and he squints at his watch. "Late. Seven thirty."
"Damn. Thank god I let Sam talk me into leaving a change of clothes in my office." A kiss. "Something about the restorative powers of a clean shirt, I think; though I wasn't paying too much attention." Another kiss, this one deeper. "Just agreed to bring a change so he'd shut up about it already." And they're tangled, yet again, on the couch, all legs and arms and lips everywhere. But it's morning, and a work day, and she finds the strength to pull away before someone can walk in on them.
"This *was* my spare shirt." He rubs his forehead, "And now half the buttons are missing. Vixen."
She swats his arm, then points to her top desk drawer. "There's a sewing kit in there, with spare buttons and everything. I'm going to grab a quick shower in the women's locker room."
A quick kiss and she's gone. He mutters to himself as he starts sewing new buttons on his shirt, but mostly to disguise these sparks of joy he's suddenly experiencing. Because last night was amazing, and this morning he doesn't know what to say, can't find the words. Love just doesn't seem adequate, somehow; he might as well say 'blueberry pancakes' or 'ubiquitous.' And he laughs, sadly, because he feels a childish need to tell her anyway, to say the words out loud. Even though he knows, deep inside, that he won't. Not yet, anyway, not so soon. He doesn't even notice Josh standing in the doorway.
"Ahem. Am I interrupting something in here? And where's CJ?"
"Go away."
"Nope, can't do that; need to talk to CJ." Josh saunters over to the desk and sits, eyeing the papers strewn on the floor. He whispers, "It's important, Press Secretary first call type stuff. Sex."
Toby sputters in response. "Sex?"
Josh smirks.
In the shower, CJ's humming as she washes her hair. Smiling at the thought of his hands where hers are now.
***
Then he showed up at her house in LA, full of promises about this guy who was changing the face of American politics. And she fell in the pool.
She saw him, standing there all natural and oh so Toby, and she walked straight into the water. She makes a point of blaming her contact lenses even today, but it was him in her yard and sudden visions of ravaging him on a lounge chair that really made her do it.
So she took the job.
***
And when the flowers arrive, as she knew they would, Carol makes a crack about CJ opening a floral shop before replacing yesterday's bouquet with today's new, improved version.
Ginger isn't quite so smooth; she's clearly flustered by the sudden appearance of a bowl of cheerios with a note reading 'For Sustenance' addressed to her boss. She delivers it with nary a wisecrack and a look of absolute confusion.
CJ's smiling, and, alone in his office, Toby is too.
***
fin.
[once more into the fray]