Author: Angie
Email: AngieSuth@aol.com
Title: Pressure Builds
Characters: CJ/Toby
Rating: R
Summary: They've got her at last. They've found her out at last
Disclaimer: Not mine at all. Apart from the slimy Mike Phillips.
Spoilers: Post Ep to 25.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
A/N: Maeve – you get your fight! Thanks for caring enough to want to inspire me. And all my other friends for being so encouraging. And Rhonda – always.
*
Pressure Builds
*
CJ closed her office door and leaned heavily against it. The meeting with Walken's press representative had been worse than dreadful. She knew that he was under pressure, no one expected him to be at the top of his game with such an abrupt entry into the Major Leagues, but he could have at least been pleasant about it - polite, civil, even.
She could feel the pressure behind her eyes building, not sure if it was a headache looming or tears threatening, but knowing that she needed to get home before she could find out safely.
*
One click of the light switch in her living room and she is temporarily blinded by the brightness. She thinks maybe it is the headache after all.
CJ slings her jacket over the nearby easy chair and sinks down, fingers rubbing at her temples in some sort of distracting irregular motion. Exhaustion threatens to overwhelm her and she registers the need for food and drink, or at least the knowledge that if she skips one more meal the headache will turn into a migraine. She sighs and levers herself to standing. Then she sees him.
He is leaning against her picture window, head bowed, but eyes locked onto her.
She doesn't scream; only because the sound would pierce her fragile shell and shatter her. She forgets to breathe. And then a thousand thoughts jostle for expression.
"The babies? Is . . . are?"
He shakes his head once and she exhales.
"Zoey?"
A shrug.
She smothers all other external concerns and focuses on him. She can't remember the last time he let himself into her apartment without prior warning. And then she can, and she blinks it away and smoothes the fear from the pit of her stomach with her hand.
Toby sees the gesture and an unaccustomed softness steals across his face.
CJ notices and this worries her more than she can explain. She takes hurried steps towards him and stops with her hand on his shoulder. His eyes burn into hers and all she can think of doing is this, this soft pout that just happens to land on his lips, brushing the hairs on his top lip and tasting oh, oh so sweet. Better than she ever thought it would, had she ever allowed herself to think about it in the last six years or so.
Toby pulls away first, his lips sticking slightly to hers.
CJ's eyes are closed, her cheeks flushed and she whimpers at the loss of contact; immediately misses the softness of his lips and the dark flavor of him. She has an unbearable urge to cover his mouth again, to chew on his bottom lip, to taste the blood her teeth draws to the surface. She moves to kiss him again, pressing her body hard against his and taking his face in both of her hands.
He doesn't resist, doesn't reciprocate. Lets her wash him with her desire, bathes himself in her passion. He swallows her pain mixed saliva as though it were sweet nectar. He hardens in spite of himself and it is enough to make him step back – withdraw - retire.
Toby pulls at her hands and then pushes her shoulders.
CJ spins and topples, falling sideways into the desk chair and then crashing to the floor. Tears spring unbidden to her eyes and she isn't sure whether her hip or her heart hurts more. She turns away from him and, like Bambi, finds her feet. And then she cries. "Turn off the light on your way out."
He does. He leaves – never having spoken a word.
*
New York 1983
*
"Hey, CJ you have a visitor." Ellen bit into her apple and waved it vaguely in the direction of CJ's bedroom. CJ grinned and threw her bags onto the floor of the living room.
"Anyone exciting?" She glanced over her shoulder as she hung up her coat.
"Just Toby. He was here when I got home." CJ's roommate kept her eyes glued on the television, failing to observe the small, pleased smile that played on CJ's lips.
"So, no one exciting then . . ." CJ half ran down the hallway and opened her bedroom door.
*
Toby is standing at the foot of her bed, hands stuffed in pockets and the newly acquired beard almost hiding the tense line of his mouth.
"Hey!" CJ can't hide her pleasure at seeing her friend. " I thought you were hitting the campaign trail, I wasn't expecting to see you for another month." She bends to slip her shoes under the bed and sprawls across the comforter on her stomach, gesturing for Toby to sit next to her. "I hope you didn't give Ellen a heart attack – I forgot to tell her you had a key." Head propped on her hand, she rolls to her side to observe the man still silently standing.
"What is it?" Something in his eyes makes her heart flutter.
"He's come home."
One sentence and CJ can see that Toby's life has come apart.
"For how long?"
"He says for good. Mother says for now." Toby walks to the window and draws back the blind a fraction. "I say that he tends to mean what he says." He turns back to CJ.
"What are you going to do?" CJ understands the enormity of his distress.
"Can I live with you?" The question is hardly a question. He will not take no for an answer and she knows it. And it scares her. Terrifies her.
"Toby . . ."
Toby stares at her, sees her confusion, sees her fear; doesn't care. Something has to give and it can't be him. It can't be him anymore because he has come adrift; he's floating rudderless and she is the nearest thing to an anchor he has. She has to save him.
"CJ, please . . ."
This ends her. Please, never please.
"No, Toby. You have to face him. I am not your girlfriend, you have one of those – go and live with her; dump the troubles of the world on her shoulders. Shout about your father to her and drink her whisky and sleep in her bed. Don't put pressure on me with your fucking 'please'." Desperation makes her cruel and she knows it. Her floodgates are open and she can't force the words back against the deluge, even as she sees him go under.
He disappears from her life for three years. She has never been good around water since.
*
Senior staff as usual, except that it isn't as usual, because the President's name isn't Bartlet.
CJ is the first to arrive and sits gingerly on one of the couches. She knows the President is in the Situation Room and that Leo hasn't slept in two nights; she knows that Josh is running himself into the ground and that Will is the glue keeping him together, the calm in the middle of the localized storm.
She no longer knows Toby.
She feels as if she is floating, dangerously for the first time in her life, without direction and purpose – she has lost her paddle and her life jacket, having thrown them overboard in that kiss.
Leo notes her pallor and is about to question her when the others arrive.
Toby disconcerts her by sitting down next to her, his hand brushing hers as he reaches for his notepad.
CJ startles at the contact and jerks her head back, her eyes catching his for a fraction of a second before Leo's voice pulls her in.
"We have no news." Leo opens the file on his desk, then takes in the exhausted scene before him. "You will be the first to hear, but at the moment there is nothing to add. Go home, all of you. Sleep." He pauses and then adds, "CJ, I need you to take a meeting with Mike Phillips here, straight after staff."
CJ nods and tightens the grip on her folder.
A warm hand pulls her to standing, and although she still cannot look him in the eye, she hears Toby's voice murmur in her ear. "I'll wait in my office."
The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach intensifies with the memory of the last time she heard something like those words and what they signified.
*
Phillips sidles into the room before CJ has a chance to ask Leo what he needs. The look on his face is enough to set her alarm bells ringing, before a word is even spoken.
"Mike, nice to see you again." CJ attempts a genuine smile but can only manage a poor imitation of one. Were she not so preoccupied with Toby, she would have allowed herself the luxury of a little righteous anger, a tingle of superiority. But she is preoccupied, so she misses a subdued Leo, a Leo almost ashamed.
Phillips is smug.
He kicks off, "CJ, Leo has no doubt told you of the difficult decision the President feels obliged to make." He cannot hide his satisfaction at her shock and how Leo seems to have shrunk a further inch since the last time he saw him.
"I, er," CJ looks to her friend, her boss, for support and is stunned by just how old and ill he appears. "Leo?" Her hand reaches out involuntarily and Leo sees it. He straightens and looks her in the eye.
"I haven't yet had the chance, Mike. If you had arrived on schedule, maybe I could have prepared CJ for your news."
She notes the emphasis on 'your', but she has never mastered the signals. Not like the boys. She is all at sea.
Phillips lowers himself onto a chair and crosses his legs. CJ really believes that he is the most unattractive man she has ever met, but is then sidetracked yet again by the thought that Toby is, and always has been, her measuring stick in this matter. Not Sam. Always Toby. Strange, she thinks.
She is pulled out of her reverie by the man's voice. 'Ugly man, ugly voice', she chants in her head and starts to wonder if she ought to be in this conversation, this meeting. There is something not quite right.
". . .believes that you are too involved. . ."
"Wait!" CJ holds up her hand. "Who believes that I am too involved in what?"
Phillips smiles, his point about her readiness for the job given emphasis by her apparent failure to keep up with the most simple of his arguments. He condescends to start again. "The President feels that you are too closely associated with the Bartlet administration . . ." He hears Leo growl and nods to cede the point. "Excuse me - too emotionally involved with this tragic situation to be able to face the world's press."
He glances at her face, encouraged by the blank canvas, emboldened by her passivity. "The circumstances require a certain amount of objectivity; we need to be able to manipulate the media, control the information leaked to the kidnappers. . ."
At last she surfaces. Her face contorts in fury and she rises to her full height, plus an inch. "What the hell do you think I do everyday, several times a day? What the hell do you think I have been doing for the last five years . ."
Leo thinks she might physically attack the man cowering in the chair opposite.
"CJ!" His tone is sharp and she, from years of respect and love, stops. Breathes. Starts again.
"Look, Mike. I know my job. I have worked through crises as big as this, more dangerous even. Many lives have hinged on my words, my ability to spin the truth, to obfuscate. I have worked through the shooting of my President, the disclosure of his illness. Why should I lose this ability now? What is different now?"
Phillips tries a different tack. "The Press Room is your home, CJ. The Bartlets are your family. An obscene attack has been made on that and you need to let someone else take the strain, use their professional distance for the benefit of all of us."
CJ closes her eyes and imagines herself blown away from the shore. No matter how hard she tries, she makes no impact on getting back to it and she is consumed by such a bone-aching weariness that she is overwhelmingly tempted to let the tide wash her away.
Her Josh, her Will, her Carol. Leo. Her Toby. Oh, Toby. Do they know? Have they knowingly cast her adrift?
His voice finally penetrates the flood of betrayal. She can't quite understand his meaning, her mind is filled with the faces of her colleagues; the whispering mouths, the looks of conspiracy. They've got her at last. They've found her out at last.
"The President needs a Social Secretary, someone who knows who is who, someone who looks good and sounds good . ." There is a jubilation in Phillips' tone that makes her head spin.
Leo cuts in, "Mike, I think you'll find that CJ is more . ." He stops, unable to form the words, then braces himself against his desk and starts again. "Nancy says there is a vacancy in the NSC Press Office . . ."
CJ makes a sound that resembles nothing either man has heard before. They stop and wait in silence.
When she raises her eyes the first thing she notices is that Leo can't look at her.
Somehow she finds the words.
"You want me to go where . . .?" CJ cannot express her heartache. She never, in all honesty, saw herself being pushed aside. Resigning, yes. On more than one occasion, but . . they don't want her any more . . .
"I think that we all know I am unable to take that position - either position" She cannot bring herself to address them by name. Common courtesy is too bitter on her tongue. " I am not to be pitied, and although I understand that you want people to know that I'm not needed here, you could at least have had the decency not to make me the object of Nancy McNally's charity. And whomever else you touted my services to." CJ digs her nails into her palms to try and dissipate the red mist that hangs above her eyes.
"I have a fair amount of annual leave owing to me from the last five years. I shall take it immediately and wait for you to decide if this is a permanent change you're instituting." The last word comes out as a hiss and CJ realizes that she needs to get out of the room before she breaks into pieces.
"CJ . ." Leo's voice echoes in her head but it is too late. She is gone. She thinks how fortunate it is that she knows the West Wing so well, how many times she has walked and run and stumbled through it, because that is what she is doing now. Only now she cannot see through her tears and her shame and the fog of not knowing herself; who she is and what she can do. She is five years old again, and suddenly the smallest in the class.
She has been caught in a rip tide. She can't remember how to survive it.
*
Toby paces his office, pounds the floor, rubs his head, but still she doesn't come. The others leave without saying goodbye, there is a sense of wrongness without the comprehension of what exactly has gone wrong. 'No CJ. Where is CJ? It's not the same without CJ.' Toby can't hear them say it, but he knows it's being thought and that refrain continues to run through his mind.
'No CJ. Where is CJ? It's not the same without CJ.' This has been the song of his blood as long as he can remember. Before New York, before his life fell apart and he realized that he loved his friend more than his father. Loved his friend more than his family. More than his future wife.
When he chooses to wait for her rather than go back to the hospital, he understands that she has taken root in him, they have grown together, and, much as he loves his children, he cannot abandon her without abandoning part of himself too. The clock moves on and so does he.
*
Several hours later, as the morning light stains his skin, Toby turns the key in his front door. He has lost hope and the edge of reason. She didn't come back, she wasn't at home; she has been swept away, he's certain. Except he's not, because she is there, in his apartment, framed against the early sun.
"CJ!" His voice breaks and he lunges for her, ignoring her silence, her rigidity.
The blow takes him by surprise. The sound of the crack of skin meeting skin fills his ears and there is a second before he feels the pain and the warm drip of blood.
"You bastard." Her voice is low and rasping and he senses rather than sees her hand raised to slap him again.
"You knew, you knew! Bastard, bastard!" Fists flailing now, and he is only conscious of not wanting to hurt her more than she is hurting already. It occurs to him that he will have some explaining to do tomorrow; but then again not, and he knows that Leo will add this to the burden he already carries.
Toby thinks she must tire soon, else she will knock him unconscious, and then how will he hold onto her, pick up her pieces. How will he retrieve her spirit amongst the jetsam, the wreckage?
She subsides at last, worn out more than anything, and sinks to the floor on her haunches like the little girl she has become. Toby struggles to crawl to her, his head and body aching from the blows she has rained on him, blood from his mouth and nose smearing his hands and staining the light-colored carpet.
He says nothing, but lifts a shaking hand to her face and watches her tears turn red to pink as they cleanse his scratches. She appears unmarked on the outside and how he wishes he could turn her inside out and treat the internal injury, the wounds that run invisibly deep.
Toby holds her now, sitting awkwardly on the floor and pulling her into his lap, trying not to flinch at the contact with bruised skin - and she lets him. She lets him rock her and chant to her and warm her; though she still shivers. She can't seem to stop shivering.
He lays back and pulls her with him, keeping her body close to his as he stretches out on the floor. He really is too old for this, but this is CJ, so he has no choice. He no longer has the power to choose where she is concerned.
"You lied to me." Her voice in his ear is raw and indistinct. Her face is pressed into his neck and he has to really focus to hear her.
"You lied to me," she repeats, "you told me I could do this, you told me I was good enough."
Toby closes his eyes. This is not what he was expecting. This is worse. He can handle her anger – even hopes for it – anger shows fight, shows spirit. But how can he tell her that she is so much better than the rest of them, when she has just been shown the opposite.
He chooses not to answer her, but drags her to sitting and somehow uses his screaming muscles to get them to his bedroom and onto the bed. All he can think is that if he lets her sleep, keeps her with him, she'll be safe. If she is safe, then so is he.
*
CJ opens her eyes. She tastes bitter adrenaline and dried blood. Her eyes are almost puffed shut, but she can still see the man laying next to her, feel his arms around her; strong even in sleep. She can see the discoloration around his mouth and eyes, the lump on his cheekbone, the blood around his nose, leaked and dried in his beard.
"I'm sorry, so sorry," she whispers over and over again, her fingers with their nails still cracked with Toby's blood, feathering apology over his battered skin. He shifts and she freezes, unwilling to confront her horror. She desperately needs answers to her questions, to her accusations, but she fears she may have damaged herself irreparably not only in her own eyes; but in Toby's. And Toby and her sense of self are tied up together more than she has ever understood before.
She is drowning in fear.
As he wakes, Toby feels CJ's breath on his cheek, her fingers on his face and the terror in her mind. Instinctively he pulls her closer and his body groans in remembered pain.
"It's okay, I love you, it's okay." His muttered reassurance is heartfelt and he can only hope that she hears him, feels his sincerity, trusts him not to let her slip away.
"You need to go to the hospital, Toby." Her voice is cracked and dry. She looks at the clock on his bedside table. They have slept for two hours and the morning has well and truly arrived.
"It looks worse than it is." He mumbles, his lip cracking once more and beginning to ooze blood.
This, amazingly, makes her smile. "I mean Andi – Molly and Huck. You can't not go and see them."
He turns to look at her but does not loosen his hold. "I can't leave you, CJ. If I let you go you'll run and I can't handle that again."
TBC