Work Text:
resplendent: adjective; shining brilliantly, gleaming, splendid
He has never been unfaithful. He is not that kind of man. And despite what he knows about CJ and John Hoynes–something he should never have known, something that came out during excessive drinking and too little conversation–she is not that kind of woman. Not really.
Everyone makes mistakes. It is easier for him to forgive her, immediately, without needing to think about it, than for her to forgive herself. He knows that; he still offers her a hug that she doesn’t accept. He offers her another drink, which she does.
But they have known each other for such a long time that it feels endless some days, like there has never been a moment when he didn’t have this exquisite, frustrating woman in his universe. They met before he met his wife, before he worked on losing campaigns…before he worked on a winning one, and so did she.
So even when he is engaged to Andy, even when he is trying to revive his marriage the second time…even when he is flirting with a poet or a Republican, their connection never wavers. The feelings can’t be buried, they don’t go away. She is his constant, a bright light in a world that grows increasingly cynical and unwilling to change.
Sometimes just meeting her eyes across a crowded room felt like cheating. Some months they went without speaking at all because there really wasn’t anything to say. She tells him that Andy is cruel to him, that he deserves better. He accuses her of being jealous, ignores the way that her face crumples not out of hurt but out of pity. Some nights he called her from a motel room on his latest campaign, ignoring the sounds that filtered through the thin walls, just to hear her breathing over the line.
They always returned to being themselves eventually. She brought him whisky when the divorce was final, flying in from California just to sit too close while he didn’t rant or cry or talk much at all. He was numb, and she knew it, but she cracked jokes and sung songs and joined him in getting even more numb, because that is what they do.
He surprised her with wine when one of her longest relationships went sour, refusing to fly to L.A. and instead showing up at her hotel room in Chelsea when she visited a college friend after the breakup. She knew it was him before she opened the door; somehow she knew it was him before she heard the knock. The wine was terrible and so was the smoke from his cigars, but his presence was a comfort.
fortuitous: adjective; happening or produced by chance, accidental, lucky
Meeting Toby changed her life. Not just once, but many, many times. No matter how CJ searches for a happy ending with other men, she has a feeling that one moment of fate will never stop changing her life. He is always pushing her to be a better person–a stronger one, one more capable of fighting back or articulating complex ideas.
He tends to do it in ways that make her want to chuck heavy things at his head, but she’s still grateful in the long run. Mostly. Fighting with Toby never fails to prepare her for battling those she is less fond of and even more outmatched by.
The nights they spend together aren’t so different from the days, actually. He is very tactile, very oral…funny as it is to think about while he chews on pens at work or gestures wildly to illustrate a point. He says little, chooses his words carefully while his fingers roam over her skin. She talks too much when he’s looking at her with his silent and focused attention, can’t seem to stop –as if she needs to balance him out.
Their first night was messy; awkward with their youth and the intensity of the feelings they couldn’t sort out. He cared more about her than he was comfortable with, she could see it, and she didn’t want to feel anything at all–she just wanted his hands on her, as soon as he quirked his mouth into that reluctant smile and flicked his gaze down the length of her too-skinny body.
She grew into her height, and he learned to pretend nothing mattered to him, to cover up how deeply everything mattered. She watched him hurt. She kissed it away. She learned not to use to kisses to fix everything.
They learned to live without each other.
Some nights, even now, she wants him so badly it keeps her awake. Maybe he can’t be the one for her, the man she takes the leap for…but he filled holes she didn’t know she had, and there are no words she can ever find to thank him.
He’s the one with the words when it counts, anyhow. Hers just fill space.
pertinacious: adjective; resolute, stubborn, obstinate
She is the one who lays down the rules, every time. You wouldn’t necessarily know it from looking at her, leggy and soft under her professional clothes, but she is made of steel. He has always known it; it’s part of why they could never work. Why their nights together held just as many arguments as they did happy endings–if not more. Neither of them can bend without breaking.
Passion was never their problem. It was their fatal flaw. But being friends was essential, after that first tumultuous attempt at coupling. He couldn’t imagine his life without her putting on terrible accents or dancing just to make him smile. He doesn’t know what she sees in him that keeps her around–they are the one subject they never speak about–but he is grateful.
And when she isn’t dating some easygoing lumberjack, or some reporter…when he isn’t with Andy, or wishing that he was…they gravitate back. It’s one of the few foundations in his life that hasn’t crumbled over the years: they always find each other.
He has never worried about the possible consequences of their nights together, not even when he probably should have. Even though technically he was her supervisor, he also wasn’t. She ran the press room, she was an advisor to the President…she became the Chief of Staff and then technically she was his boss. But none of that really mattered.
They flirted openly after she joined the fledgling campaign and it didn’t faze any of their coworkers. Unlike Josh and Donna, whose behavior raised eyebrows because they were so quickly and quietly devoted, he and CJ had a history and everyone knew it before she arrived. He was also married and she had a reputation as a bit of a heartbreaker, so even those who might have cared recognized their banter for what it was: the teasing of friends.
Therefore, when they were more than friends, he never worried, but she did. She tried to lay out her reasoning for him once–misogyny in the media, gender politics in the West Wing, her relative inexperience in the field–but he stopped her from finishing her diatribe because the specifics were irrelevant. He knew her reasons were valid simply because she was CJ, and even if she hadn’t had any reasons to name, he would have respected her wishes…because she was CJ.
So they are careful, always.
Except when they’re not.
Because above all they can trust each other, in a world–and a White House–where one by one, they eventually lose everyone else. Simon getting a candy bar. Josh getting a new candidate. The wounds heal but the scars never stop aching. And what they have soothes even the worst of days.
curmudgeon: noun; a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person
He has always been prickly, despite his dislike of the word. A lifetime of struggle could do that to anyone, she thinks. He’s easily offended, easily frustrated–quick to anger but just as quick to comfort.
The reality is that she has loved him most of her life, and she loves all of him…the man who doesn’t give her enough credit and the one who stays up drinking with her when she can’t bear to face her nightmares. He is all this and more.
If she were to attempt an explanation of what love is, for someone who had no experience with the concept, she knows that it would begin with the way he looks at her while she stands on the podium smiling as she bleeds. It would end with the way he pushes everyone in his life away, especially when things are hard…but not her. Never her.
CJ, he wants to keep. Always.
She wants to keep him too, but in a very different way, and that’s why sometimes they don’t talk for months. That’s why sometimes they don’t talk at all, even when they crash together in the heavy shadows in an attempt to forget. We had it good there for a while.
That’s why it’s not wrong, no matter who they’re considering or recently with or thinking of–that’s why their rules are more like suggestions.
Because she sparkles and he has the saddest eyes, and they will always be the girl with the appetite and the boy with buried hopes.
They are feather touches and kisses on cheeks; a secret hidden in plain sight. Love in code.
A thing can’t be forbidden if it can’t be named.