XI. To Save Us All From Satan's Power 2002 He tosses and turns, frets and burns. CJ sighs deep, more than half asleep. He tries to settle for one spot. He throws the covers back, but guilt niggles when her back is exposed. He sticks a leg over the edge of the bed, missing a breeze. A place this nice should have air conditioning. He opens his eyes and turns his face away from the pillow, damp with his sweat (maybe hers, from earlier). He rolls onto his back. The ceiling is painfully white, telling of her lack of bad habits. He shuts his eyes and sees lights behind his lids. They're lying on a good mattress - she appreciates the finer things - but it still squeaks in betrayal of his every twitch. She shifts in her sleep. In the dark he can only see shadows where her eyes belong, so he touches down from her brow to the lids to verify they're shut. They are, but she nestles against his hand. He slides it away before she can settle. He twists his torso and pushes the leg that's still in bed towards the outside where there's less body heat. "Shh, honey." Hot breath against his cheek, her voice distorted. She's talking to a dream-him. He finds the dampness of his skin distasteful against someone else's sheets, and he has to remind himself that there isn't a someone else who belongs here. Always when it's good, it feels stolen. He gropes about the bedside table, seeking something cool to touch. Clock, cell, glasses, hers. Everything mocks him. Soon both feet are on the carpet and he's inching his weight to the edge of the mattress. Still it lurches when he stands. "Toby?" His face becomes sour, an automatic response to an automatic assumption that he's done something wrong. Then he remembers that this is good, right now. Her shadow changes shape. "No - go back to sleep. I'm just getting a glass of water." A few indistinct noises, and by the crack of light when he jiggles the doorknob, she slumps back down. "Toby." She's muffled in the pillow. "If you want to go, 's okay." "Back in a minute," he whispers. His wrists under the cold tap. Splash aimed at his face, mostly landing on the floor. Avoiding the gaze of the mirror. He replaces the towel on the rail askew. He always makes a mess when he comes over, perhaps on some level to evoke images of her chaotic youth, when she refused to exclude anything from life and it couldn't help but overflow. He about turns in the doorway and runs the tap again. Behind his neck, under his arms. He'd never find his clothes in the dark, anyway. He listens for the rhythm of her breathing before sitting down on the bed. "Sorry," he mumbles, because it doesn't get any more comfortable. "Hm?" She moves her head against his thigh. "I woke you." She taps his wrist and he shifts down to her level, holding the glass between them. Her eyes are still hooded. She'll probably have forgotten this by morning. She leans in for a sip and her hair tickles his cheeks. She coughs her throat clear. "Really. You don't have to stay." "Are you sure?" Her breath has taken the edge off the water's cool, but gulps still refresh. She smiles briefly before her head falls back on the pillow. "I know how you get." He frowns. No matter how old one gets, no matter how pragmatic and no matter how well two people know each other, there always remain aspects of the relations between men and women that are no more than a game, and the stakes are high. "No. No, I'm fine." Moving the glass aside, he kisses her forehead and slides down beside her. Heads just touching. Her fingers run across the lines on his face then fall away, as if the last of her energy has drained away. He hears her expel a breath with a laugh in before the first gentle snore. * There are places he's been a thousand times and yet always smell that bit different. McGarry's office. Put McGarry any place for five minutes and it becomes McGarry's office, but this is the real thing. McGarry's face fascinates him because he has no idea how it works. Toby looks at things in terms of how he'd describe them. McGarry's face is an oxymoron, to begin with. Drained of emotion, at the same time every crack filled in with one mood. It's these things and it's unequivocal. And it doesn't make sense to a mind like Toby's. And this attitude won't get him anywhere. Right now McGarry is seething and not a muscle is twitching. Toby sits and, although it cannot be a healthy strategy, looks sullen. He looks for a metaphor in paintings of ships. The framed napkin above the mantle: Bartlet For America. The legend was told often on the road, the first time. (The real time. The run they're warming up for now isn't going to be the same. A thousand times, that little bit different.) He wonders why it's appeared here, now. The right time of year for a gift but no one was celebrating much this year. He plays chicken and egg in his head, trying to figure how much of McGarry's mood is down to him (and her), how much he (and she) are victims of whatever spirit visited McGarry this Christmas. "Is she late?" McGarry demands, rhetorically, Toby can only assume. "Is she honest to God late for this? And does she think there's a chance I'm not going to-" "I don't know, Leo! We don't communicate telepathically. There isn't some double-ended leash around our necks." "Okay, I don't need to hear what kind of toys you people use." It's just possible McGarry sees some humour in the situation. Toby blinks slowly. He doesn't yet know the name of the game, let alone what to do with his hand. He knows at least two people are going to be very pissed at him. "I don't know," he dangles a toe, "If you're under the impression- I can see why you're a little upset because you're thinking about that conversation we had before we signed her up." "A little upset? Is what I am? We're talking like you and I are having a domestic and I gotta tell you, Toby, I'm not wild about that." Arid laugh, glimpse of teeth, Toby continues. "I kept that conversation between us." McGarry sits up straighter. Toby tries to draw comparisons to that day, and the days in between he's spent not learning enough about the language of Leo. "You didn't discuss it with CJ?" Toby shakes his head. McGarry draws in air through his teeth. "Well, I guess I don't need to ask your motive." Toby eyes fix on the middle distance. There's always been something to cheapen it, he acknowledges wearily. A cuckold, an ex-wife. A boss, a subordinate. Stringy curtains, stained ceilings, broken springs. Jim Beam's from the bottle, supermarket-branded gin. McGarry. Mistiming, misspeaking. Always something to obfuscate the essence. They were never cheap in and of themselves, and that's something to tell himself when it gets too hot at night. "I was married," grumpily. His eyes strayed, and his memory. He won't allow even (especially) McGarry to insinuate anything other. "I thought I was wrong," McGarry reflects. "When she showed up and she worked up the courage to tell me how I was doing it wrong. She wasn't stupid and she didn't look like sex." The most youthful aspect remaining in Toby is his ability to blush at such anomalies as Leo McGarry using words like 'sex'. He won't comment until he can't help it. McGarry's grin isn't entirely organic. "Although she doesn't clean up too badly." Toby shifts in his seat. He can't think of a good point in this conversation for her to walk in. "You were wrong," he murmurs. "She was right." "How long has it been going on?" Now that's a question. Even a restricted answer would reveal too much. He can't tell McGarry that it depends what he means by 'this'. He can't explain that he doesn't know if it's casual nervous sex or another endless love song. That he doesn't know if there is in fact a 'this', if they're in fact back together. That McGarry himself was the catalyst (excuse?) to its reignition, and certainly to the confusion. Because back when tomorrow was Christmas Eve, something was happening and they didn't know what, except that it hurt, that not knowing hurt more and that the truth, finally revealed, would hurt most of all. He can't tell McGarry that she called it a birthday present, and that when she was done, he said it would cover Christmas and all the days of Hanukkah too. But the season ceased to be festive and yet it was neither Sam nor Carol she devoured on her couch after the State of the Union. It's St. Valentine's next week and he doesn't know if she expects a token. He can't describe the way they don't do anything differently than they did before December the twenty-third apart from what they do in bed. That this worries him because she never wanted to be friends who fuck. They could have been that for twenty years solid, but she never wanted that. Her scrutiny strained things then as it does now. He can't tell him that he doesn't know what she wants, feels. He's certainly not going to talk about what he feels. Or the way that every action and inaction now is a test. And that, that he thinks she might just be trying to ace it. He can't tell McGarry any of these ludicrously personal things. He doesn't know how, he doesn't care to, and she doesn't even know McGarry knows he woke up in her apartment this morning. He says, "Around Christmastime." A light goes out in McGarry's eyes and his face folds further in on itself. "Yeah. Okay." He sees a weakness: he takes advantage. "Everyone in this game sleeps together, Leo. Who else could possibly put up with us? Nobody is doing anything unethical or immoral." "Don't tell me how things work, Toby." McGarry looks down at the desk and his eyes are shielded behind his lashes. "What if he hadn't taken the censure? What if you'd been hauled in front of Congress and asked how the Press Secretary is in bed?" "They could have asked that anyway, if they were feeling particularly perverse I don't have the memory of a goldfish. Everybody knows we have a past!" "Toby. I'm not laughing." Toby stands up and turns in a circle before resting his hands on the back of the chair. McGarry's strategy has always been to stay still and set his prey on the run. "This is the White House. We don't host special editions of Oprah or Jerry or whatever the hell people air their laundry on these days." He won't explain that they build closets within themselves to hold their dirty laundry rather than let it see the light of day, even one to one. "You gave me your word. There were good reasons for demanding that commitment." Toby notices his fingers tapping and strives for calm. "The situation changed." And McGarry recognises that, because he's yet to say anything half as non-negotiable as last time. It keeps Toby on edge. The door swings open and CJ barrels through, her nose in a folder of notes. "She didn't promise you anything," Toby hisses. "What?" Her voice is too loud for the room. "Never mind." She looks between them and at the blank TV screen. "You weren't watching?" McGarry reaches for his glasses when she pushes something under his nose. She looks to Toby. "What are we here for anyway?" McGarry lifts his eyes from the paper. His voice is as pointed as his gaze. "Don't worry about it right now." * He worries about it later, and goes to her because it's what he does. He can't offer McGarry reassurances if he doesn't know the most basic of answers. Her coat is draped across her shoulders and she's moving around. "Hey." She has a smile for him. "Lunch?" His hand moves in ascendant across the gap between them. She watches, curious at his timidity. Her eyes don't understand. The hand hangs in the stale air for long enough to be strange (but after a certain number of years, strange is no use – a new word is needed). Then her chin is in his palm and his fingers are spread across her cheek like spiders' legs, and as light. Her eyes are cast down although she can't be able to see more than his fingertips as dark shadows. He squeezes to confirm his presence and relaxes again. He hasn't touched her so delicately in a hundred years or more. Which is why she's now too rigid to flinch. He tries to look hard in her eyes but they're not quite there. His thumb brushes her bottom lip. It falls open and she draws up from the chest, about to demand (or perhaps request politely) explanations. So he stretches the thumb across the parting of her lips, teasing the upper just long enough to intimate 'shut up'. His voice would mangle the language. Equally she keeps her tongue in check. The tip of his thumb is barely between her lips. She shudders, a weakening. A bad sign. Gone are the days when she had faith in her strength sufficient to allow for moments without barriers. He withdraws his thumb and takes to tickling behind her ear. He kisses her then, if such a scarce contact can be called that. Of course it can. A kiss, more like a man would give his children than their mother. A kiss, the first time their lips other than to bruise in... in a hundred years or more. She makes a sound somewhere. It becomes more: her back arches, he doesn't have to lean up any more and his lip in her mouth and she doesn't nip. His beard against her face is the harshest thing about this. First he feels the moan that means she knows this is different to what they've been doing. Perhaps she recognises the push towards definition. Her back is straightening and her lips seek freedom. It's mildly comforting that their thing still scares her. She pulls away. He won't let her do that man's job. His fingers tighten in her hair and his lips remember how to bruise. It becomes less like something else. She relaxes as his demands increase (difficulty is familiarity). So they do this again. He kisses her the way she'll let him and when they breathe she says, "It's okay," and he loves her for lying. Maybe she believes it, or maybe she'd like to. He touches her nose in play. It wrinkles. The phone on her desk rings. She goes to reach; he crushes her fingers. "I want to forget anything that matters outside this room." He's scared at his honesty. Confusion flickers with her lashes. His hands are too tight around her waist, which is narrow but not really so you can circle it with two hands. She squirms; his hands roam; she settles. He kisses her again. She'll question him later. Perhaps she'll have shown him, by then, an answer. * He tries to hang back after staff to offer McGarry reassurances but is met with a face of blank dismissal. He catches up with her at the doorway. McGarry ruins that too. "CJ." Her progress arrested as if McGarry's power were physical. Toby should keep walking. He shuffles his feet in place and Margaret fixes him with a hard stare. She is no more compromising than her boss, and extends her trust no further. But she likes to eavesdrop too. "If the thing with you and Toby becomes a problem. You know you'll have to fix it, right?" The moment's silence it takes for her to gather a murmured acquiescence, then McGarry's door rattles on its hinges. Toby feels her come up behind him fast. He searches over his shoulder but she brushes past, for ten seconds blocking his path. She looks and he shifts and she looks away. Staring at McGarry's closed door, she shakes her head. She walks away with her clipboard clutched to her chest, and seems surprised when he follows. *