Title: Surviving
Author: DianeB
Rating: R, for sexual situations between a man and a woman.
Summary: Am episode addition to Season Five's "Full Disclosure," primarily to fill in some noticeable blanks in the C.J. Cregg plotline.
Author's Notes: I realized the other night, after Bravo re-ran the episode, that I wanted to know at least some of what happened between C.J. and John Hoynes after C.J. "got on that elevator," and I also wanted to write out Ben's side of the phone conversation that occurred at the very end of the episode. In short, I wanted resolution, without straying into AU. Moose Jaw information came straight from the Moose Jaw Home Page (really!). This is the first time I used periods in C.J.'s name, and I will probably continue to use them from now on. Thanks to Mighty Editor Goddess, Brenda, and to Amanda, my West Wing Queen. Written May, 2005.
"Toby?"
Toby, painfully uncomfortable with C.J.'s current vulnerability, was trying to escape, but his name on her lips, sounding so hollow, overrode his discomfort, and he turned back to her. "Yeah?" One glance into her face, and he knew he could not leave until he gave her the time she needed to get it said. It wasn't as if he was a total stranger to the information. He walked further into the room and sat down on the wing chair, prepared to wait her out. At this moment, the damn press release could wait until the cows came home to get written.
It turned out he did not have to sit there very long.
"There is," C.J. began, her voice thready with emotion and unshed tears, "no night in my life I regret more than that one."
After all he thought he was ready to hear more details, he suddenly didn't want to. "You don't have to explain it."
"I wish I could, but I can't explain it." The look she gave him nearly broke his heart. "I knew he was married. I knew it. I always thought women who do that. . ." Her voice, already thick with anguish, failed her completely, and she could not finish the thought. After a moment, she went on to express further regret, her eyes losing focus. "If I could take back," and here she raised a hand in a gesture of emphasis, "one moment of my life, it would be getting on that elevator." She paused, sighed, and dropped her eyes and her hand to her lap. "I'm sorry."
Frustration filled him. Here he was, White House Communications Director, and he couldn't think of a single thing to say that would make her feel better. So he went with inane, and hoped to God she would understand he was on her side. "You don't have to apologize to me."
She cast him another tortured look and said with a remorseful snicker, "I don't have anyone else I can apologize to."
Toby acknowledged her bleak humor with a weak smile, but kept silent, still unable to put the right words together to satisfy himself that he was being supportive.
After another pause, C.J. sighed again and went abruptly back to business. "I'll come by your office in a few minutes, and we can work on the release." She gave him a curt nod.
This was clearly a dismissal, and Toby knew there was nothing more he could do for her right now. "Sure." He got up to leave, glancing at her face in the shadows, the misery so thick around her, he imagined he could see it.
As she heard Toby's footsteps receding down the hallway, C.J. leaned forward to pick through the pile of phone messages on the edge of her desk, until she found the one she was looking for. She pulled her cell phone from her coat pocket and dialed.
"Ben, hi, it's C.J."
Ben Dryer tried to keep the surprise of hearing from her – at long last, so late like this – out of his voice. He'd never know if he'd been successful, but he gave it his best shot. "Claudia Jean, how ya doing?"
"Oh. . .I guess I've had better days at the office."
That didn't sound so good. "Bad day, huh? Something particular happen?"
"Oh, you know, the usual and then some."
The desolation in her voice had him concerned, but he wasn't an idiot. C.J. Cregg's "usual day at the office" would be like no one else's, and he knew whatever it was that had her admitting right off that she'd had better ones must have been something pretty awful, indeed. Rather than pressing her for specifics, which she may not have been able to share anyway, he opted for going back to his reason for calling in the first place, not sure if her assistant had passed on the word. "I've got tickets to the Kennedy Center for this Saturday. The NSO performance of Brahms First Symphony. Would you like to join me?"
"Yeah, I'd love to. Let me just check the schedule tomorrow when Carol's here, you know, make sure I'm clear that night."
He was surprised a second time, to hear her accept so readily, after all the phone calls she had neatly avoided. He decided not to push this, either. Certainly, if there were any way he could help, she would let him know. If there was one thing he knew about C.J. Cregg, it was that she did not mince words. "I'll pick you up at seven-thirty. We'll have a late dinner afterwards. How's that?"
"That sounds great."
He was about to end the call, telling her to keep her chin up and that he'd see her on Saturday, when she interrupted with an unusual request.
"Ben, couldja do me a favor? Would you mind talking to me for a while and letting me just listen?"
So. This would be the way he could help. Well, he could certainly talk to her, no problem. "Why sure. Anything special you'd like to hear?"
"I don't know. Whatever you want. Just as long as it has nothing to do with my job."
"Wanna hear about Moose Jaw?"She chuckled outright. "Yeah."
"The name Moose Jaw, translated from the Cree, means 'Warm Breezes.'"
"Really?"
"Really." He was gratified to hear her voice lift in amusement. Well, if this was what she needed, he could go on forever and a day about Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, a town he loved, and a subject that had decidedly zip to do with C.J.'s job. "Not only that, but the soils in the Moose Jaw area represent a mixture of clay loams, silty clays and clays. These soils are naturally very fertile. Combined with sufficient moisture, long warm summer days, and a frost-free season longer than 100 days, the soil can grow a wide variety of vegetables, berries, and small fruits, as well as cereal crops, oil seeds, and hay. The largest lake in the area is Lake—"
She interrupted again. "Ben?"
Apparently, he had talked long enough. "Yeah, C.J.?"
"I had a one-night stand with John Hoynes ten years ago that I will regret until the day I die, and now because of a recent affair he had that's about to go public, he's going to resign the Vice-Presidency and write a so-called 'tell-all' book to improve his moral image so he can run for the Presidency."
Speech fled him. So this had been the "and then some" part of her "usual day at the office," and this time he was not surprised by her frank admission. Did not mince words. Christ, he thought venomously, he didn't really know anything about John Hoynes, but judging by C.J.'s tragically straightforward comment, the man was obviously a complete shit when it came to women, and it had finally come back to bite him. But at who else's expense? He wrestled with something more to say, something that would ease her mind and assure her he was on her side. But before he could get anything out, she spoke again.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have. . ."
He heard her voice crack and knew she was going to cry if he didn't hurry up and say something. Not that it would have mattered to him if she wept, but he figured she probably didn't care to lose face on the phone to him in the middle of the night. "C.J., yes, you should have, and you don't need to apologize to me. It's obviously tearing you apart, and if you ask me, John Hoynes can go straight to hell and take his precious book with him. If this comes out, what are you going to do?"
Clearly, this was a good question, one she had an answer for. "I've already spoken to Hoynes. Well, actually, I threatened him a little. See, I knew by the way he came on to me that night, that he was practiced at that sort of thing. You know, seducing a woman who'd had too much to drink at a fund-raiser?" Her voice dropped. "Teasing and touching her all evening, until alcohol consumption prevailed over good judgment and the woman followed his come-hither smile into the elevator?" She stopped talking and sighed heavily. He could tell she was losing herself in the memory and was struggling valiantly to bring herself out of it.
When she spoke again, her voice had regained some of its recognizable force. "I told him there must have been other women besides me, and that if any of them came forward and he tried to besmirch their names, I'd be standing right there with them."
He waited a beat, for comic timing, hoping against hope that he had hit upon the right thing. "Besmirch, you say?"
There was a weighted pause, and then, at last, thankfully, he heard genuine laughter from her, breaking through her tears and her anger, providing a step toward relief and recovery. Then she uttered two words that gave him sufficient faith to cut the connection and let her go.
"Thank you."
"Aw, shucks, ma'am, t'weren't nothing. I'll see you at seven-thirty on Saturday. You'll be all right, there, tonight, eh?""Yeah, I'll be all right. Go back to sleep. I'll see you Saturday."
C.J. returned her cell phone to her coat pocket, leaned back and closed her burning eyes, intent on resting just a second before going to Toby's office. Instead, she found herself snared by the memory she had been trying all day to suppress. She entertained a vague notion that maybe she was suffering from some sort of perverted PTSD and wondered if she should contact Doc Keyworth at ATVA and schedule an appointment.
The memory, insistent and unrelenting, was determined to have its way with her. This time, instead of fighting it, she opened herself to it.
Her skin sizzled at every place he had touched, and he had touched quite a number of places throughout the course of the evening, so that by the time she passed the elevator door, she was not only burning with unfocused longing, the by-product of his hands and too much merlot, but she had to pee like a racehorse.
She would never know for certain if he had planned it, or if it was merely chance, but the elevator doors opened just as she was walking by, and there he was, alone, his tie loosened and top button undone, his smile bright, and his eyes brighter. She glanced around. It was getting late. The party had been over for almost an hour, and there was no one else anywhere, not along the corridor, not out in the hotel foyer, not anywhere.
"Good evening, Miss Cregg. Was your event successful?"
Unable to stop herself, she turned toward the open elevator, her bladder drying up at the sound of his voice, other parts of her becoming less dry. She tried without much success to keep the tremor from her voice. "Senator Hoynes. Yes, thank you, we did very well tonight. You know, 'Early money is like—'
"'Yeast. It helps raise the dough.' Yes." She noticed his arm was raised, and figured he had a finger on the "door open" button. "Please call me John, won't you? I'm happy to hear the fund-raising went so well. You deserve it, for all your hard work." He paused and gave her a smoldering once-over, and she hated how her body reacted, all without her permission. "Have I told you how gorgeous you look tonight? Come here, why don't you?" He actually crooked his finger at her and winked, waiting, as she stood frozen in the empty hallway. He beckoned again, this time silently sweeping out his arm, in a broad gesture of invitation, his brilliant smile never wavering.
And so, in a moment of pure physical response, entirely free of anything as crucial as better judgment, C.J. stepped into the elevator. Hoynes lowered his arm, and the door closed with the quiet efficiency afforded only the most top-of-the-line equipment.
She was in his arms before she knew she had moved to him, her mouth open on his in a wet, bruising kiss. She felt the elevator begin its smooth ascent toward whatever floor he was staying on, but his arms tightening around her quickly eclipsed the feeling. He returned her kiss with equal passion, moaning down her throat, his hands roaming up and down her bare back, squeezing her backside, raising her temperature and her libido.
Somewhere in a small, sober niche of her brain, she knew this was very wrong, that he was a married man and she was much too drunk, but she could not stop, could not control the mounting heat and thundering desire, suddenly perilously close to climax. Grinding herself against his thigh, she broke the kiss to attempt a breath and to rasp, "Oh my God, John," before shuddering into orgasm.
Her lungs, now straining to inflate, sent an urgent message to her brain, warning it to get a grip, but soon, or they would shut her down. Her brain was not listening, and before she could find John's mouth again, her knees buckled, and the next thing she knew, time had skipped forward a few minutes, and she realized she must have lost consciousness. But at least the sharp pain in her lungs was gone.
John Hoynes, for all his arrogance, had been quick with the chivalry and caught her before she could collapse to the floor. "Whoa there, C.J.!" The elevator by this time had reached his floor and he suggested the obvious. "How about we go somewhere more private?" His arms never left her, but she was in no shape to refuse him, and didn't want to, anyway.
In his room, she went straight to the bathroom, her bladder finally receiving the attention it required. Touching herself with the toilet paper, she was not surprised at the level of her arousal, noting, too, how very drunk she still was.
Finished with her toilette and standing unsteadily at the sink, she took a hard look at herself in the mirror. Disheveled, one spaghetti strap of her gown hanging slightly torn off her shoulder, lips already showing signs of hard use, an angry red mark on her neck that would surely require a scarf the next day, and a damp spot on her dress right at crotch level. She wondered why the hell she was still here.
A light rap at the door brought her out of her reverie. "C.J.? You okay in there?"
She put her hand on the doorknob, her spinning mind made up to leave. "Fine. I'm fine. Listen, John—" But she opened the door to a completely erect naked man, leaning casually against the wall, smelling faintly of aftershave and sweat and other things too primal for words. All thoughts of leaving vanished.
C.J., coming slowly to her senses, did not know how long she had been sitting in her office, coat still on, her neck bent at an awkward angle against the chair, but she knew it had been a lot longer than a few minutes. She was wondering what had awakened her, when she heard the light knocking at her open door.
"C.J.? You okay?"
It was Toby, and if he had effectively hidden his concern earlier, he was not bothering to hide it now.
"Fine. I'm fine." She struggled to sit up, and was only marginally successful.
He entered the room and squatted down beside the chair. "Yeah. Like hell you are. How 'bout I take you home now? The press release can wait until hell freezes over, or at least until tomorrow morning, whichever comes first." He cocked his head and smiled, revealing dimples that made him look adorable (though C.J. knew he'd kill the first person to tell him that). "I'm pretty sure Hoynes won't be publishing much of a book after the list you gave him, anyway. C'mon." He patted the arm of the chair and straightened, stepping back to give her room to maneuver.
C.J. unfolded her tall frame from the chair, wrapped her coat more securely around her, slung her purse over her shoulder, and took Toby's extended arm. As they walked down the darkened hallway, she searched her mind for the hateful recollection, and realized with great satisfaction (and not a little relief) that the memory, while still fully intact, was no longer filling her with ancient regret.
She leaned a little closer to Toby, grateful for his sturdy presence and his unconditional support. She was not fool enough to think this business with Hoynes was over, or that she might even come away unscathed, but for now, she had triumphed, and in the grand scheme of things, "for now" was really all that mattered.
End.