Work Text:
One: The Coat.
It was completely dark by the time they’d stepped out of the bar (in CJ’s case, stumbled), and the temperature had dropped like hell. Hell, even the mid-October air had bitten him, and he didn’t have a tendency to get cold. CJ, on the other hand, managed to look like she was seconds off freezing to death. She was laughing, surely enough, but she was out of her Washington headspace.
There were three different CJs in his head. He thought, maybe, it was the same for her.
There was Washington CJ, and that was strictly when she was working; when her heels would echo through the corridors and the lights in the press room illuminated her, and when she handled the toughest questions with no sweat. When she was set like stone, and cool like he’d never seen before. In her element. Washington CJ would be a great president, if it weren’t for the other two sides of her.
California CJ. His favourite, although he may have been biased. She was all California when she was drinking, or when she was riding a high. When she would sing all eight minutes of ‘American Pie’, and when she would dig out her denim shorts and her band shirts for rare summer weekends. When she’d show everyone the awful tattoo fading at the bottom of her back. The woman who kissed him and tasted like citrus, cigarettes and his favourite whiskey. He fell in love with California CJ, and hadn’t fallen out of it since.
There was Ohio CJ. The sad girl with the eyes that look like Blue Moon. That CJ was the CJ he wanted to protect most fiercely. She wasn’t as headstrong as she might’ve been when her mind was in Washington. When she started to slip away, her mind wandered back to Ohio. When she got stuck there, she was once again the ugly duckling, and the one who kept her head down, and the one with no date to prom, and the one who found a mother in her favourite teacher.
He pushed those thoughts aside, taking off his heavy coat and draping it around her shoulders. She turned to him with a dopey smile, and he knew that he had to see that smile more often.
Her eyes had been warm, even in the low light of a street lamp. The boys were behind them, slurring lyrics to some song he couldn’t make out, and Donna had fussed and insisted they were quiet, but that had been behind them. In that moment, it was just him, a very drunk CJ, and his coat hanging from her frame.
He thought about that smile for some time.
Two: The Hair.
She had a date. He didn’t like that fact, but he had no real right to oppose it. He was mad for her, but why would she have known that? The worst of it was the thought that maybe it would just be another man to take advantage of her heart, and leave her in the dust once he’d got into her pants. CJ had a dreadful taste in men, but he couldn’t blame her.
The poor woman had spent her teenage years trying so very hard to be desired by someone that the second a man showed his interest, she called it love. She didn’t easily admit she loved somebody — she did that in other ways. He knew that breaking up what they had meant she’d be left open to men cruel enough to use her, and it ached. He knew he couldn’t protect her. In a way, he was glad they had the jobs they did — for a generous amount of the day, he could keep her out of harms way. She was so smart, but so damn stupid with love.
She had a date. She’d be leaving the office and meeting him for drinks, and while she didn’t admit it, she was buzzing with anticipation. Dating wasn’t made easy in the White House, and CJ didn’t make dating easy for herself. There’d been many occasions in which jabs had been made at her lousy track record, but Toby knew she was just trying to heal the heart of the girl who had never been ‘pretty enough’ to be loved.
CJ was a lover by nature. She loved, and she did it unabashedly, boundlessly and recklessly. She loved Toby like it was all she’d ever known. She loved Josh to replace the love he’d missed from an older sister. She loved those men she saw like a forest fire.
(Where was the love for herself?)
She was a lover, but she sure as hell wouldn’t recognise his love for her if he slapped her in the face with it. Maybe she just thought their ship had sailed. And sank.
Still, he watched her fuss in the mirror she’d set on her desk. He watched her from the couch — the way she tussled her hair, and tried so desperately hard to feel as pretty as she looked. CJ never really felt pretty. That was one of the first things she’d told him while drunk.
“Okay?” She’d asked as she looked up at him.
Toby stood, taking a piece of hair flipped to the wrong side and tucking it in behind her ear. His fingers had brushed her gentle waves as he pulled back, and he’d cleared his throat to break up whatever tension he’d created. Or whatever impulse he’d had to kiss her and beg to take her out instead.
“You look good.”
He’d been meek about it, not wanting to overstep, or let her know he’d been burning for her since he walked away.
“Thank you,” she said, a little sing-songy.
He paused as she pulled on her coat.
“You’ll take care?”
CJ had softened at that, patting his cheek.
“You’re sweet.”
Three: The Cigarette.
Event nights were the best of times or the worst of times. That time it had been a gala in New York City. It had always been where Toby felt most at home, but CJ wasn’t built for rainy neons and chromes and silvers. She was all golden hour and warm breezes and boardwalks.
She had a natural charm. She could hold an audience, certainly, and she had stories that left people doubled over. She was a flirt, and a comedienne, and a movie star, and a friend to even strangers. Still, she was so easily overwhelmed by it all. She’d stepped out of the event, and, naturally, he’d followed. Wherever she went, he went. Whether it was then or it was later.
It was dusky, and humid, and the familiar sounds of the city filled what would’ve been silence. Toby had never liked parties, and he assumed CJ felt the same for the very same reasons.
Her hair had been pinned up that night, her décolletage painfully present above the neckline of the emerald dress she’d picked out for the night. The green had looked particularly striking against her warm, freckled skin.
“You think if I bolt they’ll notice?”
“When the President says ‘this is my Press Secretary’ and nobody says ‘nice to meet you’, I think he might start to get a little curious.”
“You’re funny, Toby Ziegler.”
“Somebody has to do it.”
She laughed at that, looking down at her feet and then back at him. That had always been so stupidly charming to him. She had this little Doris Day routine each time she was with him alone — she’d be funny, then a little sheepish, all while saving the charm for last.
He’d watched as she reached to undo her purse, and his hand was in his pocket feeling for his lighter already. He’d always been so in touch with her. He’d been there to see to her needs for so long. She was a play in two acts; Washington and California. Nobody knew Ohio the way he knew Ohio.
CJ brought a cigarette to her lips, holding it between her teeth. Before she could fish for her lighter, he sparked his up, holding it to the end of the cigarette. She took it between her slender fingers, something flashing over her eyes as she offered him a smile. He loved that smile. He loved every smile. He’d committed them all to memory.
He’d watched as she’d breathed it out — the way she’d tipped back her head, and the tendons in her neck had flexed. The way she’d closed her eyes for a minute. It was another one of the moments from the day she’d stolen just to think. To be.
“How are things with—?”
He didn’t make an effort to remember his name. Petty, but he didn’t want to know the name of the man who’d be kissing the places he’d kissed every time he’d taken her by the hips.
“We split.”
He huffed out an incredulous laugh. It wasn’t amusing, or pleasing. He hated to think another man had been holding her, but he hated knowing another man had left her feeling 17 again.
“You seemed sure about him.”
“Well, I was wrong. I can’t think of a time I’ve ever been right.”
“Us. Did you think we were right?”
“Did you?”
She tapped off the ash.
Four: The Impromptu Massage.
She’d been having trouble sleeping again. She was stretching herself too thin, and he could see it. She’d screw up on the podium and give herself grief for it for a month. CJ didn’t trip when she ran. She got up each time, but every stumble was a bullet wound to her. She could not ever let herself be bested. She knew of the integrity she needed to hold the position she did, but he knew that she had a tendency to become her job. She extinguished the parts of herself that set him alight, and she was suddenly detached. Any crying, she did alone.
Her sanctuary had always been his office.
He’d kept the door closed, and the lights down. He knew she wouldn’t sleep, but at least that way he knew she wouldn’t do anything rash. He heard her mind running from his desk, despite the fact her back was turned to him.
He had a strong stomach, but seeing her hurting in any way was enough to eat him up inside. He put down his glasses, and his pen, and he sat beside her legs.
CJ glanced over her shoulder at him, and he felt a pang of something. If he was a bold man, and a brave man, and an honourable man, he would’ve told her he loved her. Asked for permission to help her. Let her hurt ebb away while she rested in his arms.
Toby Ziegler was a world renowned fool.
“Sit up.”
She obeyed. He’d turned her shoulders, her back facing him once again. Only then had Toby let his face soften. He could’ve mouthed his confessions of love to her back, but he wasn’t a kid. He knew better than to stoop to that level of cowardice.
He pressed his thumbs into her shoulders, working out the tension she’d been holding there. She’d made an innocent sound of pleasure and melted under his fingers. Everything they did was so astonishingly natural.
They’d been tangoing around the idea of a romance for months too long. That’s what it was. A tango.
CJ leaned back against him, soft sighs escaping her every now and then. He wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted to hold her more since they’d split. She was hurting, and something was brewing, but all he could do was rub the tension from her shoulders and pray for god to go easy on her.
There came a moment in which she went completely limp against his chest, and he instinctively held her there with his arms settling around her lithe waist. He wished he couldn’t feel her ribs.
If anyone had walked in, he didn’t know how he would’ve explained himself. He had work to do, but CJ was sleeping in his embrace for the first time in too long, and he had been trying his hardest to pull away from that moment and imagine something much easier and warmer and slower. A married life. A life in which she’d fallen asleep in his embrace the same way she had every night, and she’d wake up there in the morning.
Toby Ziegler — world renowned fool, award winning hopeless dreamer.
Five: The Lipstick.
Their tango had become a waltz. She was at a high. It was dizzying, and they’d been spinning around each other to some invisible orchestra for some time.
He was watching her live again. Her lows were devastating, but her highs were like the California sun.
She’d been light on her feet, and he couldn’t help the smile that came with every entrance. Her smile had met her eyes, and he felt a suffocating weight taken from his chest. He knew another episode would pull the rug from beneath her, but he kept that knowledge under wraps. She knew it too, but she also knew that you couldn’t live that way. So she lived in the moment.
Event night. A dress in fandango pink (the warmer variant).
She’d hit the ground running. Faster than he’d seen in a long time. She’d picked herself up, and carried on to the sound of her feet hitting the floor. It was equal parts heartbreaking and admirable. She spent her life running to get ahead or picking herself up. There was no telling her to slow down. He wondered what she was running to, or running from.
He’d adjusted his tie as he stepped into a corridor, where CJ was holding brief conversation with the assistants. She’d never seen herself as one of the girls, and he supposed it might have been nice for her to take a moment to feel at ease with them.
She turned to look at him over her shoulder, and just like the first time, the wind had been knocked out of him. He wanted to keel over, and say to hell with his pride. Get on his knees and beg for her to take him back. Tell her she was beautiful, and wild, and he wanted her for the rest of his life. Instead?
“CJ. You look good.”
She smiled — another to add to his mental collection. It was toothy, and giddy, and charmingly girlish.
By now, he’d stepped into the group of girls, standing straight in front of CJ. She was otherworldly, and she really hadn’t done anything but exist. He thought that maybe her brightened mood had some effect on him, because he’d been nothing but sentimental each time he thought of her. Usually, he was able to keep it to a minimum, but his small smile gave him away.
When he looked up to meet her eye, he frowned slightly. She cocked her head in concern.
“Hold still for me.”
He carefully took her by the jaw, his thumb carefully swiping the smudged lipstick at the corner of her mouth. Instinctively, she’d brought her hand up to hold his wrist.
Toby tried not to buckle when he considered that she was looking down at him with her lips parted and her jaw in his hand. Following that, he made the conscious choice to ignore the hushed wittering coming from the group of girls. CJ laughed nervously, and he knew it was nervous. All her life she’d felt like the butt of a romance-centric joke, and so he pulled back at the sight of a flush on her cheeks and chest.
He glanced briefly at the girls, and back at CJ. They could see it, even if she couldn’t.
He swallowed.
“The necklace is a nice touch.”
It was the necklace he’d given her five months into their steady relationship. She’d cried, because she was finally the girl to receive flowers, and jewellery. She’d told him that, and it broke his heart in two. Every week for the rest of their relationship, he’d sent her flowers, because a woman like CJ should never have gone a day not knowing how electrifying she really was.
She was wearing a necklace with their initials engraved on the back of the pendant, and he knew CJ was bright enough to know she was insinuating something.
That night, they were dancing a foxtrot, and she was leading.
Six: The Return.
CJ is another year older.
He knows this, because she has been using her birthday as blackmail all day. Normally, she won’t hesitate to keep somebody quiet whenever they mention her birthday, but it’s recently occurred to her that she can ask for just about any favour under the guise of it being ‘kindness on an old woman’s birthday’. Old? He should be offended.
They’ve managed to steal the night to celebrate. To celebrate the fine, fine woman that is Claudia Jean Cregg
She is Washington rain, California sun, and Ohio wind. She is a flirt, a comedienne, and a movie star. She dances a tango, a waltz and a foxtrot. She lives through her highs and her lows. She’s a Press Secretary, she’s a natural runner, she’s the saddest girl he’s ever met, and she’s the brightest light he’s ever stood in.
He’s hopelessly, foolishly, and undoubtedly in love with her.
He takes a sip of whiskey, and he watches her move around the room. It’s late in the night. Donna is ushering Josh out of the door, and Sam is murmuring apologies for the drink he spilled on her rug, and all CJ can do is grin. The door closes, and it’s suddenly quiet.
He puts down his glass. It’s a sign to leave. He never borrows more time than he’s offered, because she’s always been the one to draw the lines.
She wanders to her record player. Josh calls her old fashioned, Toby thinks it’s her. Music starts, and she stands for a moment. He knows the song well — ‘At Last’, Etta James. CJ always had this unspoken affair with this song, which he’d always found unusual for a woman so endlessly devoted to 70s rock.
‘I hope I make you feel this way sometime. I don’t mean now. Just…one day. You know?’
He didn’t know how to tell her that it was exactly how he made her feel, and so like the foolish man he was, he let that comment slip by that muggy night back in California. She’d swayed her hips and smoked in the lamplight wearing nothing more than a pair of boxer shorts.
“Dance with me.”
She pulls him from his mistiness by the hand, and he furrows his brow nervously. It’s the two of them, Etta James, empty glasses around the room, and light from the floor lamp.
His arm is around her waist, gentle, yet secure. All he’s ever been with her is gentle and protective. He almost laughs at his own pretentious inner rambling.
She rests her head on his shoulder, her tawny hair against his cheek. He doesn’t want to let her go. If it was his choice, he’d spend his life swaying with her in the low light.
He’s falling in love with this moment, because she’s right there. She’s present, and she’s okay. She’s warm in his arms, and no man is breaking her taped-up heart, and nothing is pulling them away from one another anymore. The earth is spinning at a miraculous speed, and people are sleeping, and waking up, and laughing, and speaking, and crying, and dying, and yet somehow he feels like everything has come to a sudden stop all because Claudia Jean stopped running to stand in his arms.
They’re dancing again, but there is no spinning, and no quickstepping, and no dipping. They’re dancing in the way that’s most natural for them. A sway in a low amber light with a song he made love to her to playing quietly.
“Toby?”
“CJ?”
“You think it’s too late for us?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. He’s been waiting for her for years.
“Never.”
She takes him into a kiss, both hands on his face, and he stumbles back. It’s like dynamite, and he can’t even think about pulling away. There’s nothing in front of them or behind them — just his lips on hers. It’s all tongue and teeth and kisses to the side of her lips and his hands on her waist and—
They’re dancing, and now it’s all kicks and contact and passion.
“I love you. I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you,” he murmurs into her mouth, and she only holds him tighter.
He loves her through it all, and if it was his choice to make, he’d spend his life dancing with her. Maybe she’ll give up running and take his hand. Maybe he’ll lead the dance when Ohio storms hang heavy. Maybe he’ll dip her each time they can’t keep their lips off each other. Maybe one day he’ll sway with her and call her his wife when her cheek is pressed to his. For now, this is good.
‘And here we are in heaven
For you are mine at last’