title: The Doppler Affect
author: Keren
Ziv
spoilers: Angel Maintenance
rating:
M
summary: This is what he needs, he thinks as he cups
your face. He needs you to work as much as he.
He's just stepping out of the bar, politely speaking in monotone to a congressman while keeping the fellow out of the puddles and on his feet, when he sees you. His vision is clouded by the gentle cascade flowing down from the heavens, but you're an imposing figure and he spots you in the middle of the walk, staring. The water is pouring down your amazingly long hair, making it wisp at the end, in half-forgotten curls. As he gets the congressman into a cab, he keeps inspecting your thin figure. You're throwing your hands into the air and dancing, not in joy but anger.
For you it's heels, hair, and height, all adding to each other until you're a tower to be intimated by indeed. He watches you for a while, letting the rain wash over him, as you continue looking down the street and are gesticulating wildly, as if having a conversation with someone. He's about to go, bored with whatever show you're putting on, when you turn and face him.
Your eyes are so large and luminous that they seem to take up your entire face. He finds himself staring into them and wondering why this creature is standing outside in the rain, shivering. He realized with a start that you are no longer looking down the street, bewildered, but are now gazing back into his own eyes with curiosity.
He clears his throat, uncomfortable.
"Toby Ziegler?"
"Excuse me? Do I know you?"
Your laughter is nebulous, not forced but not welcomed either. It comes from deep within you and sounds as if someone had reached down and slowly slid it out, ready to catch it, cradle it if necessary. He reaches out to steady you -- and maybe your laughter -- as you teeter on your heels.
"I met your wife, Mr. Ziegler. You are married to Grace Ziegler, aren't you?" you inquire. He nods once, thinking how it is to be identified as the spouse and not for himself. Is this how women feel all the time? You continue. "I worked as a representative for several women's groups. A friend of mine asked me to scout the political parties with her while we were both in the area, and who am I to say no to a good friend?"
"Who indeed," he replies, perplexed but not quite questioning.
"I'm sorry," you offer both apologies and your hand, "I'm CJ Cregg."
"You're wet," he tells you somberly. You shake your head in agreement, scattering drops everywhere. "Come on. I've dry towels at my hotel room." He motions to his car, a few feet down at a meter. "Coming?"
Your presence really is like a siren, or even a Siren. Beautiful creatures with an enchanting call when he dare not approach. There is no feeling of romantic love there for you, but a longing for close companionship is strong.
He touches the band on his finger and thinks about Grace, her thin, lithe figure, her small stature. He knows that you are nothing like his pretty little wife, and so he feels comfortable touching your shoulder and waist, helping you into the car.
He thinks he hears a whistle in the wind.
(asterisk)
"So," you say, completely at ease, "this is your hotel room."
"You say that like you had some sort of previous expectations based on my character as to the type of room I would rent," he replies, amused.
"Well," you offer, managing to look just as amused as he, "you did invite a strange girl into your car for a lift to your room. I guess there was a little bit of assumption there."
"You met my wife at the function," he remarks. "There isn't much more to think about there."
You grin madly. He cannot help but follow the shape of the laugh-lines in your face when you do. They trace a happy life, he surmises. Or maybe a happy girl.
"Why were you in the rain?" he inquires.
"Why were you?"
His tone is mild. "I asked first," he reminds you.
"My boyfriend broke up with me," you give dryly. "I was in shock."
He blinks. This was not the answer he expected. He motions for you to go on, sensing something more in the air.
You step out of your shoes
"He took my car." You throw you arms up with clumsy grace. "He drove us over in my car and then left, alone, in my car! What sort of creep does something like that?"
You flop onto the couch that folds out into a bed and stretch your feet magnificently across the thing, draping them over the end. Your stockings drip water onto the floor. He smells cherries and comments on that.
"It's my lotion."
This seems odd to him.
"My ears are ringing. They've been ringing since I met you," he accuses.
"Are you sure you aren't trying to pick me up?"
"And I was certain you'd cry offense."
"What can I say? I'm an odd girl."
(asterisk)
"I hear you kept Toby out of trouble when I was away," Grace calls to you as you walk up the steps. He isn't paying attention to either of you but reading the paper where it is predicted that the candidate he's been supporting is going to lose the election.
An arrow through your heart. Another failed launch, he quotes to himself inanely. It is very close to the middle of the decade and he's not sure he's going to be married by the beginning of the next, so he tries to not hover over her when people visit, especially you.
"Grace," you exclaim, and there is real gladness in your voice for which he is thankful. He doesn't remember the party where you and his wife met, but he remembers that he had hoped that you two had really hit it off, that you weren't just saying so just to be polite. Not, he corrects himself, that he thinks you'd ever be polite because it was fashionable.
Now it is your fourth visit to his house in Virginia, out in the country where you've taken Grace for a year off so that she could regain her strength. The plan was that she would take it easy, but he's not too sure that she's doing that. She's raising kittens, and while she says it's no trouble at all she'll stay up all night with a mother cat in labor and be exhausted the next morning, refusing more than her usual time for a nap.
He's called you here to take her mind off of Maine Coons and his off of her leaving him. You said you'd try and he hung up before his voice thickened too much. He hoped you didn't notice.
Now he stands and opens the door to the house, calling out, "Come along," and reflects that he's always telling you where to go when he sees you, though it's never that way in your hundreds of phone conversations. The wind is chilly and nips at his nose; he rubs it.
You and she bound up the steps like young girls, and he's reminded that you truly are.
(asterisk)
You don't laugh when he tells your that his sister took a class on painting her freshman year in college and became infatuated enough with the method of pointillism to change majors, though he considers it a signal of his sister's impending visit to a mental hospital.
(asterisk)
"We have to keep in touch more," Grace tells you. You give her your biggest, most personable grin and hug her. She's much too thin and he can see where her small frame fits into your lanky one like a kitten nestled into the mummy's body.
He watches from the chair, his drink in his hand. You're a good foot taller than his little wife, her demure stature hiding the wildcat emotions that come bursting out when she's excited. He tries not to get her excited anymore, because she'll begin coughing and then they'll both be up all night, watching pieces of mucus speckled with blood, like little bird eggs, come up from deep within her, from where she was supposed to breath and get the oxygen and a million other things he never paid attention to until he fell in love with her.
You step back from the embrace and he can see in your eyes that you're afraid, too. You love Grace almost as much as he does, he thinks, and you don't care to see her die like this, much too slowly and much too soon. Four years of friendship and it's almost time for the decade to end it's dance.
He thinks it ironic that Grace's fingers fit into your hand like a child's against yours.
(asterisk)
"You're a redhead," he says. You touch the locks briefly.
"Never been a redhead before. I like it."
"Me too," decides he. He can't say anything after this, instead twists the band on his hand.
You break the silence first, angry.
"I was a phone call and a plane ride away," you tell him. He can see the hurt sprinkled across your face dash back and hide, showing up only in your eyes.
"I was grieving," he tells you, hoping you will accept it. "I couldn't believe it had happened. You always know it will and some day it does." He broke, he doesn't say but you hear, and he didn't want you to see him.
You're looking at him too hard with your dangerous eyes. He shifts, ill at ease under your scrutiny. He wonders if you've realized he lied.
"Have you cried yet, Toby?" you say in a quiet voice, touching his shoulder.
He would have been able to bear the question, would have been able to speak clearly, except for the fact that you touched his shoulder. Instead, when he lies to you, his mouth twists in an ugly manner and causes the word to tumble unnaturally from it. You touch your gentle fingers to his face and he sees wetness on the tips, glistening.
You lean forward and place your lips to his face, over and over, lightly, so lightly at first that he doesn't realize what you're doing in the beginning. Then you become more furious in your actions, moving to the other side of his face, saying his name against his skin like a prayer.
He turns his head and captures his name with his mouth. His hands he places on the curve of your hips, holding you steady next to him. He falls away back, pulling you awkwardly on top of him, and you laugh. He grins ruefully, breaking away.
"Maybe," he says to you, "you're too tall for the couch."
"You're blaming this on me?" You're smiling and he can't see Grace's face on yours and that may be a good thing so he returns the smile. You settle your body closer to his, too thin for your own good, and touch your nose to his. "Maybe I should go," you say, and your smile stays there, not painted on like a mask but friendly, sexy, comfortable.
If he had to pick words to describe you those would top the list. He doesn't answer but kisses you again.
Later in bed he feels stronger and more complex a puzzle while he watches you lift your shirt from your dusky California skin. He is amused by your tan lines and says as much. When you laugh again, like a child on a ferris wheel, happy, delighted, and a little bit scared, he thinks maybe it will be okay. Maybe with you he won't feel an overwhelming guilt that he worked too hard, because when it call comes down right to the last bit, you work as hard as he does.
This is what he needs, he thinks as he cups your face. He needs you to work as much as he.
(asterisk)
He doesn't see you for a long time after the service, but that's okay. When he does see you, there isn't much about you different, except that your suits are more expensive and your eyes have more lines around them, some of them from frowning.
He isn't certain what he's supposed to do, but you lead the way, handing him your room key, and when he's up there your bodies find each other and mold like it was yesterday.
He doesn't mention Andy, but he suspects that you know.
(asterisk)
You ask for his full name.
"Why?" he asks, placing a hand on your shoulder where the skin feels like kittens. You just smile and so he tells you, frowning at you through his beard.
"Tobias," you repeat, curving your tongue around the word gently. "Tobias." You pause, gracefully twisting your body in bed so that you are somehow facing each other. "I'm Claudia Jean."
"That's a big name."
"I'm a big girl."
"That has been established."
"Nothing like reaffirming the truth, damnit."
And though he's known you for years, maybe this is when he first loves you
(asterisk)
He invites you to the wedding, afraid not to. He's relieved when you don't show up for the ceremony, with an excuse of getting lost or some other thing which is completely untrue, because this is where you said good-bye to Grace. You tell Andy what a wonderful bride she makes and smile at him in your enigmatic way.
Later there is dancing and he holds you close to him in the middle of the floor, his best friend and sometimes lover, and touches the red cloth of your gown. It looks expensive, just as expensive as your suits, and he comments on it.
Your reply is nothing, and there is no conversation after. The only communication is in your bodies pressed together, and his hands playing with your fingers in his. You two aren't saying good-bye, but there isn't a hello yet either.
"I'll call you," he says when he's leaving. Andy looks displeased but doesn't comment. "I should have kept more in touch. I'm sorry."
"Hey, it's okay," you say. "We're all busy people. But we've got our own dates to remember, okay?"
He realizes you're talking about Grace or him, one or the other, and smiles at you with genuine emotion.
(asterisk)
He makes certain to look you up every time he's in town. There is no touching, no talking about the past. For the present, there is only conversation. He rediscovers what wit you bring with you and how much he laughs in when you are near.
Sometime you two talk briefly on Grace, and it hurts him to remember the last year. You help him get through the memories though, so that he can grasp hold of the warmer ones, the ones he'd love to tell some day to a friend.
He sees that you notice the two rings on his finger, one of them barring you from him, and it makes him a little bit sad.
(asterisk)
During the divorce he calls you a lot but stays away from California. There is too much spilling over, too many emotions, for him to trust himself away from the Atlantic Ocean. He describes the feeling to you one day, explain that he feels the Pacific will tether him to the bottom and force him to stay in LA if he goes there now.
You understand completely, and even encourage this.
(asterisk)
You come to DC to see him once, and everything is how it was before Andy, a distant memory. When you go home, you leave items behind. He isn't certain if this is deliberate or not, but he enjoys them.
(asterisk)
He brought you from California and your expensive suits to six hundred dollars to a governor whom he's assured is the real thing. When you ask him if it's true, he can only smile, grin almost, and tell you this:
"I've never felt this way about another candidate."
You give him your own version of a happy expression, with your eyes crinkles into small slits. You look tired and cold, but he knows that you're in the room adjoining his and that's all that matters.
(asterisk)
You have amazingly long legs. With legs as such, you go through a large container of lotion often. He watches you sometimes, after your bath, slathering a thick layer of cream up the miles of skin, and when he sees that your jar is low he buys you another of the same brand.
He gives them to you in brown paper bags with a smile. Nobody ever asks or cares why he does this.
"Do you know how wonderful I am?" you demand.
"It never ceases to amaze me," he replies steadily.
There are too many people in the room and his tone is too wrong, and he knows all of this, so you laugh.
(asterisk)
"You do that wrong, you know."
"I do it just right."
But you step back anyway and close your eyes. He takes the black pencil from your thin hand and carefully traces your eyes.
"Where did you learn that?"
"My mother loved Barbra Streisand. Mom said she had really amazing eyes. I had the steadiest hand out of all the children."
"You could have become a beautician."
"I tell you this in the strictest of confidence."
"Toby," you say. He makes a small noise of acknowledgement. "Will you teach me how to do my eyes like Babs?"
(asterisk)
"I had an old cousin in Canada," you say. "He used to talk about uni all the time. I thought that there were hundreds of teenagers out there, learning to ride on those bikes with the one wheel. You know, the --" you grasp for the word, cannot come up with it, and flails your arms wildly.
"The unicycle?" he offers dryly, taking a sip of his drink. It is hard, neither fruity nor named after an insect but possibly a man and with a vegetable.
You laugh.
"Yeah, that's it. The God damned unicycle."
(asterisk)
The night you all win, he just sits in a corner and broods. You prefer get drunk on grasshoppers and allow Josh, who's had far more than his two beers, to stare at his leggy young assistant.
(asterisk)
When you get time alone you rarely spend it idly. Though it isn't often, he sometimes kidnaps you and takes you to his kitchen, where he cooks for you like his mother taught him and you try to say the name of all the Jewish dishes without laughing at your own ineptitude. He always instructs you to brandish the knife, which you take with eagerness and no great skill.
You enjoy sucking the orange slices he prepares more than cutting the vegetables he's shoved at you.
In the background the same movie plays each time, an old one, and he'll talk along with the actors when your chatter slows to a drizzle or becomes too much for him to follow. You comment on this sometimes.
"I still can't believe, Toby, that you like When Harry Met Sally ..."
"You needn't say it as if it were the most ridiculous notion in the entire world. I happen to find it amusing to have on in the background when I'm doing nothing."
"And we all know how often that is."
"Shut up and cut those carrots." He decides to go on the offensive. "Why do you wear heels? You're already tall."
"I like to intimidate people."
"You don't intimidate me."
"That's because," -- and you finish sucking the juice out of the orange slice, carefully placing it with the others -- "I almost fell on my ass while wearing heels the first time you remembered meeting me. You make me a very clumsy woman, Tobias."
(asterisk)
Toby isn't sure what to make of it when you give him a note in glitter-gel pen. His name scrawled imperiously across the folded page in you distinctive hand, he discovers upon opening that you wrote only two words.
See me, it says. There is no date or time on it, so he wanders over to your office after a minute's thought. He opens the door without preamble.
"You know," you comment after he closes the door, "we're lucky we waited so long into the relationship until we had sex."
"You didn't turn around to see who it was. I could have been someone else."
"But you weren't."
"You were lucky."
"I always am with you. It's one of my life's best gifts."
This is a brooding you, a dangerous opponent.
"Don't get sappy on me. I just ate. The idea of you being overly emotional for anything other than family, women, or politics scares me."
"Sometimes I think you're two out of three."
He tries to thin the air, plucking an joke quickly. He has soft, feminine sheets which you always have commented on.
"They are comfortable sheets, damnit. I enjoy my bed when I get to use it."
Your face softens.
"Thanks for reminded me." You turn and your lips are so tired that he almost forgets to listen to your banter. "You are three out of three. You should get a prize."
He doesn't know what happened to cause this; doesn't ask. "You too."
"Life's a bitch, huh?"
"And then you die."
"See, clichés can be fun."
"Not when you're paid to write."
(asterisk)
"Have you ever had a broken heart, Toby?" Sam asks, bursting into the office. You look up from where you are lounging on Toby's couch and frown. Toby doesn't look at his wedding ring and answers gruffly.
"Yes."
"Oh." Sam appears truly shocked and Toby wonders if it was merely a chance whim of his to ask his co-workers if they had broken hearts. He looks to be struggling with himself with something of great importance. Toby can imagine two miniature versions of Sam, each sitting on his shoulder, offering conflicting pages from the book of advice. Finally, he blurts out, "Who?"
"Who else? The love of my life."
"Andy?" he asks, truly puzzled.
"No." You stand and glare and that is that for Sam, who backs out of the office confused.
(asterisk)
You come up with ridiculous questions all the time.
"Why is it recent past and near future? The past can be near, can't it?"
"I didn't invent the phrase, I just write it. And rarely, at that."
"Do you notice," you ask him, "no one in this office goes by their full name except for Leo, and even that's pretty damn short. I'm talkin' senior staff here, too. Maybe even throw in Charlie, Mrs. Bartlet, and then a couple of the assistants."
"What?" he asks you from behind the noise of his ball. He's pretending not to notice you and hopes it doesn't work. He receives his wish: you slip in the door.
"There's me, obviously. Twelve letters cut down to one sixth that many. I'm probably the most drastic case here." You sigh dramatically. "But add in people like Abbey or Jed Bartlet."
"Don't ever say that name again like that. It gives me a tingling in the spine."
A pause, then --
"Yeah, me too."
You look pensive to him.
"Then there's Josh and, was, Sam. Now, though, there's Will."
"Right."
He looks up and is surprised to see your feet on his desk. He is less surprised, however, that you're in his chair.
"Then there are Donna and you," you explain, grabbing the apple from his lunch and taking a large bite. He wasn't going to eat it anyway and you knew that.
"Why am I paired with Donna?"
"The two people who put up with the least crap from Josh? Please."
(asterisk)
"We don't do this enough," you say, your legs wrapped tightly around him. He kisses your collarbone in reply because he can't find the words.
He doesn't mention how thin you are and how he thinks that has a direct relationship to the frequency of your visits. He doesn't want to bother you, so he tries to make you come.
(asterisk)
"Remember when we first me?" you ask him while he makes certain that his doesn't look ridiculous in his suit. He's afraid that he really does, so he just straightens his collar and checks his beard. "I was wet and you took me to your apartment."
"You accused me of an indecent proposal and refused in the same breath."
"I was drunk."
"You'd met my wife."
"And extremely recently single."
"She'd offered you a job at the party."
"My car had been stolen. Dumped and robbed by the same man."
"You used her robe," he replies dryly. "She'd left a robe and you used it."
Josh has been watching you two for a matter of minutes, frozen like a caricature of himself: eyes large, darting; mouth open slightly; dimples disbelieving. You flick your eyes over to him, laughing without voice, and Toby turns back to finish his inspection.
"Well?" he hears you ask Josh. "My date took my car."
"I see," Josh remarks solemnly. He decides to take a safer route in this conversation. "You look very nice, CJ."
Toby's done and motions for you. You ignore him, turning to Josh with a large, grin of a smile.
"My favorite color is red," you tell Josh while Toby waits for you impatiently. "It makes me feel like a woman of the night when I wear it. I couldn't find a dress I liked in that color, though."
"Come on, Gypsy Rose," Toby speaks. "The President stands by the door and catches late arrivals for the first ten minutes."
"Then we'll be eleven minutes late," you decide, grinning at Josh in your crazy manner for him.
He dances you away to his car in two hours and the eleven minutes you waited for the President to leave, driving home with his hand inching up the sparkling black dress you're wearing. Your heels are low, and you don't stumble up the steps to his place so he guesses you aren't as drunk as you were acting earlier with Charlie.
Underneath your gown he sees dazzling red clinging to the area bellow your navel.
"Woman of the night, huh?" he whispers. Your laugh this time is a pearl, slowly becoming more and more until he feels that it could be sold for thousands of dollars.
(asterisk)
"Claudia," he calls to you when you pass his office. You pause long enough for him to join you, then resume your pace. He's got files and folders in his hands and ink stains -- red, like your lips today -- all over his fingers. He's been correcting the new guy's work.
"Toby," you snap, impatient. He eyes you. You must decide to soften it with a smile, because you flash one at him. He hands you the relevant papers but doesn't fall back, continuing to follow you. You halt and pivot to face him. "Toby," you warn him.
"You have paper on your shoe," he explains solemnly. He lets his amusement shine through in a chuckle, a rare occurrence for him. "You've got a briefing at two and paper on your shoe."
"Toby!" you cry, your hand on the door frame into the press room. "They would have let me walk out there with toilet tissue on my heel?" Your voice is colored with a bit of anger and a bit of laughter.
"Well," he drawls," even the press corps must suspect by now that you are merely a mortal, not a great goddess from the newspapers in the sky."
"You lie," you accuse dryly.
"Never to you," he declares.
In his mind, he traces the red of your lips.
(asterisk)
"Yes," you whisper to him when he doesn't ask you if you love him. "Yes," you reply to his unspoken question of your faith in him. And, once more, when there isn't his voice inquiring if you believe those of him for you, "Yes."
The door to his office is open, and it doesn't lock anyway, so he settles for watching you kiss your fingers.
(asterisk)
He doesn't remember how to write for himself. All he does is try to make your job easier.
Your life, however, he can't fix. You go day in and day out pretending it is okay that Simon is gone, pretending it's okay that Danny is back, when really he can see all you want for is a nice, long bubble bath.
He thinks: maybe you're broken, and he doesn't know how to fix you.
Nor can he fix his own, with twins and ex-wives and duties and memories of Grace. He thinks maybe that they're intertwined, his life and yours, and that's why they've both gone down hill.
(asterisk)
It is more like fucking than making love. Making love does not entail leaving in the late twilight of the morning, just as the first rays cast their bent light upon your face like a sort of judgement. Judging what, he never asks. He watches you as you dress, neatly pulling your stockings up the miles of leg you have, and as you prepare to walk to your car and drive home to change. You two don't do this much any more because of this ridiculous dance, and even when you do it is like something is missing, or maybe something is there that shouldn't be.
You know each other too well, that's the problem, and you both realize that you shouldn't be doing this. Nevertheless, next time he will invite you to dinner and afterward you'll go up to his apartment and ... have sex, because now that he's thought it through he has never liked the word fucking in relation to what he does with you. It is more than that but less than love, because you will not allow the latter. He wonders when that started.
Your body leaves an indent in the soft sheets -- girly sheets, you called them the first time you felt them cool against your back -- and he absentmindedly traces that smooth, wiping out the evidence of you, as you brush your damp hair. You would have taken a shower at your own apartment if you had remembered to set the alarm. Now all you have time for is one at his place and a quick change home.
He doesn't touch the pillow because it is your pillow and it smells like you. The clock says it's five thirty and he supposes he needs to begin to get dressed. He considers ambushing you while you're on your way out the door, throwing a cushion from a chair at you, but he can't find his boxers and he won't traipse around the apartment all but naked except for his robe, no matter how pitched your screams can get. Instead he waits for you to tell him good-bye.
Your path echoes throughout the apartment as your heels clank on the wood floor. It's fading, he can tell. If it keeps going, it will fade softer and softer until it disappears entirely. Twenty years of waiting for you to come to him while you leave almost as soon as you arrive.
He hears the locks on the door being undone. He doesn't call your name, doesn't ask for you. There is a creaking noise and behind his beard he frowns.
The front door slams closed with finality. His frown doesn't waver, doesn't deepen, doesn't lessen, but his eyes flicker for the briefest of moments, washing over with something he can't quite describe. He carefully reaches on the floor for his robe. He pulls up his boxers. Frustrated, he tosses them to the ground.
(asterisk)
It's the end of the world and he is along for the ride.
He helps you put lotion on your legs, the same brand you've been using for years, and he doesn't kiss the skin to see how it tastes on his tongue. You've cut yourself shaving and the blood and ointment mix in a sort of pink lather that travels up your leg and to your thigh.
The room is dark, too dark, and he can't see your face, your eyes. He wonders if you did this on purpose, to try to make him forget, but decides that you are both too weary for any games. Instead, he thinks that you were drained enough that you hadn't felt like turning the switch. Perhaps it would have been too bright and harsh anyway.
You're leaving for California, he for New York, and he can smell cherries in the air.
(asterisk)
It's raining when he tries to tell you he loves you and thinks that maybe you do too.
He's not good at spoken declarations of emotion. He's used to writing human feelings on paper, to be felt with by the pads of his fingers and to be made more real by the ink stains on his flesh. He's used to having someone else speak the words that he labored over, having someone know when to pause empathetically. He can't say it properly, but he tries.
"Grace was never my broken heart," he says. "She healed a long time before she left," and he sees how your eyes light up for a fraction of a second before darkening again. He doesn't mention Andy, tactfully phrasing his next sentence: "I've never married the woman who broke my heart."
Your eyes get large and he is reminded of the first time you met, with you shivering in the rain and he offering you a ride to his hotel room. You open your mouth and something more than rain begins to trace paths down your face.
"Oh Toby," is all you say.
He doesn't kiss you and he thinks it might be a mistake. You smile at him before turning and swaying away. He watches you through the rain until you turn the corner and sighs.
He thinks maybe the ringing in his ears is fading.
finis