Sense, and the Lack of Same

by raedbard

SLASH: Sam and Toby: two strange guys. A series of ten interconnected vignettes with sap, smut and the five senses.

Title: Sense, and the Lack of Same
Author: Raedbard
Fandom: The West Wing
Rating: R
Pairing: Toby/Sam
Word Count: c. 2,150
Summary: Sam and Toby: two strange guys. A series of ten inter-connected vignettes with sap, smut and the five senses. Let it be noted that there is even less plot to be found here than usual.

SENSE, AND THE LACK OF SAME

Sam

sight

Toby seldom breaks, even in this very unusual situation, from his usual demeanour. He smiles at Sam every now and then; a change in his impassive face so quick and quiet that only an attentive eye notes its presence. Sam suspects that Toby may smile more when no-one, and Sam himself least of all, is looking, but those are tiny, secret concessions to the bearably ironic in his life.

Most of the notable smiles that Sam catches come just as he pulls his mouth away from Toby's: from the tickling of black beard which makes a grin in Sam comes an answering chuckle from Toby. A light, almost nervous sound but yet a final one, a sound that, if expressed as a tone of voice would brook no argument. After he gives that bubbling laugh, Toby always lays his hand on Sam's breastbone, which is still pink and moist from the sweat. Toby's fingers flutter for a moment, and his ring finger (it is always his left hand) taps for a moment against Sam's chest, and then, rests. He doesn't stroke but rather imposes his pressure and heat on Sam's skin and Sam always thinks there should be a mark there afterwards, but there never is.

sound

When they do...what it is they do - neither of them has yet decided on a satisfactory verb - there is never any sound but the sharp high breaths they both exhale, and Toby's bitten-off cry at the end. Sam isn't sure if the silence somehow annoys Toby (sometimes, there's a look) but he figures that if he does something Toby finds unacceptable it won't be too long before he knows it. But as yet Toby has hardly said anything and most of the communication, and certainly everything... during, but for that contracted cry, is done with flickers of his eyes, angles of his eyebrows and strong, directing fingers.

Some nights Sam wants Toby's soft, unyielding voice to say all the impossible things, or just to let out his name, with the customary high elongation of the vowel which makes a question out of the word. He wonders what it is that Toby's asking, and then shakes the question away, fairly sure that he already knows the answer.

touch

Sam likes the physical closeness which comes after intimacy but he knows that Toby isn't always so sure. Nevertheless, Sam usually puts the afterglow to good use: stroking his hand down the curve of Toby's back, feeling his partner's body stiffen as he goes further, spooning up behind and kissing the pale skin and tasting the sweat left there. Toby never stops him, but his attentions are never reciprocated. There are ways in which that's okay though and the smiles and the pressure of warm fingers under his neck while he's slick with sweat seem to make up for it.

There is one night, a good night - full of real-life successes, where Sam slips his arms beneath Toby's, his chest flush up against Toby's back, and links their hands together. He moves their fingers between Toby's legs and strokes, pulls, grips...

After, immediately after, Toby turns to look at him, with puzzled wonder in his eyes. Sam takes one of his hands back and strokes Toby's face, the black beard and the curls low on the nape of his neck and then the sweet, red lower lip which is still wet from Toby's tongue.

taste

Their nights are often begun with drink, on Toby's side anyway; Sam usually prefers to keep a clearer head and when they kiss, which they do very seldom, it's often the Jack Daniels which Sam finds on Toby's tongue. He doesn't mind that exactly; it has a pleasing maleness about it and a slick tang which lingers on his own tongue long after the kiss is gone, but sometimes Sam thinks he'd maybe like to know what Toby tastes like in the morning.

Kisses, Sam has noted, are becoming the part he likes the best, the part he fetishizes most often. He makes a good deal of the effort and, sometimes, Toby pushes him away with hands that feel hot and tight on Sam's face. Toby's eyes seem frightened to Sam on those nights, close and scared and, when he has pushed Sam's head away, Toby's hands always reach up to his own forehead, his fingers rubbing there. Sam seeks different tastes on those nights, with his head between Toby's thighs, his turned cheeks turning red.

smell

Ink is, appropriately, the smell Sam associates with Toby. There are bottles of black, blue and red ink in Toby's bedroom (which also functions as a study and kitchen and thankfully not as any other rooms) and Sam likes to unscrew the caps of the pretty glass bottles and smell the ink, noting the difference between red, blue and black. Toby never seems to use the blue ink with its sharp, medicinal scent; the bottle is full to the top and the cap unscrews easily, not encrusted with dried ink as are the bottle for red and black. Sam wonders why Toby has the bottle of blue. He figures Toby probably likes to have a complete set and he gets that, he does himself.

Ink still stains Toby's fingers, blotted over the calluses on his right hand. Three of Toby's fingers, and his thumb, are painted with spots of black and red - the creating and the correcting. Sam likes those fingers and thumb to be the parts of Toby that touch him, that run over his mouth and under his nose because, every now and then, he fancies he can smell wet ink.

sixth

There aren't any clichés between them; Toby wouldn't have it. There has never been a late afternoon or a cold winter dawn under the dim yellow glow of the West Wing lights in which Sam chanced to look up from his pad to catch Toby watching him, one of his eyebrows slightly arched even as the smile passes across his mouth (because even in fantasy Toby would never let the irony go by). There has never been a moment like that, nor a hot and rushed kiss, pushed up against the window between their two offices, Toby's beard hurting Sam's lips and his weight wonderful against Sam's hips and belly.

Toby wouldn't allow it, and, if he's honest, neither would he.

Toby

sound

There is something about Sam's voice, which is what Toby supposes is called a 'pleasant tenor', which makes the speeches sound better. His own voice is too soft, too quiet - the delivery's all off; when Sam speaks, the words sing. He makes music from the speeches with nearly as much accomplishment as the President. And when Toby feels the hum of Sam's voice as his partner murmurs phrases against his naked back, he always shivers.

In fact he's found Sam's voice to be a unique aphrodisiac, always getting him hard, even though his immediate and darker instincts say that he is sullying both Sam and the words themselves. But if ever Sam whispers "Toby" against his cheek or into the hollow of his neck and then slips a hand down between his unresisting thighs, he is never unpleasantly surprised.

sight

Sam's essential neatness bothers Toby. Sam comes to his apartment at night, his eyes glittering with want, and the things Toby recalls when he's gone are not skin, hair, eyes or cock but a starchy white shirt and a tie pulled tight in a too-small knot which Toby's fingers struggle with once the door is closed to the night. Even in his boxers (which are oftentimes a sweet baby blue that cause Toby to roll his eyes), standing beside Toby's bed full of awkward desire, Sam achieves a level of smartness that Toby could never dream of even in full dinner dress, complete with bow tie. These essential Sam-things make Toby smile when he is sitting in his bed after, listening to Sam make noise in the bathroom and feeling about as disheveled as he ever has in nothing but his skin. When Sam comes back into the bedroom, dressed again and with brushed teeth, he sometimes leans across and smoothes down the curls at the back of Toby's head.

Toby usually wants him to stay on those nights so he can have Sam's stiff shoulders across from him in bed. He wonders how the neatness manifests in Sam's sleep.

smell

On his crazier days, Toby wants to go out and buy Sam some cologne. Sam never wears any of his own and Toby's wouldn't suit him. When Sam comes into his bed, late and tired and with his mouth still full of fragments of crafted prose, all Sam smells of to him is the West Wing - paper, the hot-popcorn smell of banks of televisions over-heating next to filing cabinets, and the Rose Garden in the sun.

On the crazy days, when Toby allows the liaisons to last into the morning, or at least through a small period of sleep together, he wakes with Sam's head pushed up close against his shoulder. He can smell Sam's hair on those mornings, and the sweat and sex from the night before makes a new scent; one that Toby would quite like to have bottled.

taste

Toby finds that, with Sam, he isn't very oral during sex. It seems too close: words and breath and moans mingling in this act, unbidden but jerking out from him all the same. He can't help thinking that the words will never be right and the long kisses that Sam seems to crave make Toby a little uneasy. But there is a spot on Sam's neck, the deep hollow that shadows as he throws back his head, which Toby cannot resist. He always finds his tongue there when he's inside Sam, about to come and trying to hold back his moans. He pours the sound down into Sam's skin, opening his mouth and sucking down at that hollow, finding that favourite taste again. Because Sam comes first (something Toby makes sure of, always) Toby always feels the pulse of orgasm underneath his tongue: that changes the taste, brings it up at once sharp and sweet and it usually triggers Toby, sending him down into Sam, heavy and sated.

touch

They are both incapable of lying still in bed. Toby feels it's probably the reason why any 'sharing' that might be theoretically possible seldom comes to pass. Sam fidgets, his legs kicking out at all angles; Toby fiddles, rolling the sheets around his fingers while he waits for sleep, or whatever comes next. Most nights Sam curls up behind Toby, kicking him every now and then and exploiting his languid proximity to kiss and stroke Toby's back. Toby wishes he would whisper more often, but figures, even in his most optimistic estimates, that his refraction period is still depressingly typical of a man in his late forties. But sometimes, very rare times, they lie face to face. Minutes go by, measured out by Sam's twitches. The sheets are pulled down too far, stuck over their hips and caught between Sam's calves, leaving Toby with nothing to fiddle with. His fingers start dancing on the small space of bed between them, longing for a pen to tap on the mattress. Just as Toby's eyes close he feels Sam's fingers slip between his; compliant, cool and bringing out a smile from Toby: the hand-holding is his favourite thing.

sixth
He's never exactly found relationships an area to approach with ease, that could hardly be a surprise to anyone. A relationship with another man, even though logic suggests a greater amount of ease stemming from matches in attitude, testosterone and libido, has proved to be a remarkably similar experience to a relationship with a woman, except with a lesser potential for confusion over anatomy. Toby blames Sam for these things.

He wonders if perhaps it is the secrecy that is getting to him, another little something he's never been happy with. Sometimes he wants to stroke through Sam's hair, which he likes best short and prickly, as it is now, and mock, a very little, the blue-eyed trust in him. Toby wants to hold him, exciting Sam's breathing and letting his own chest absorb those gulps of air with his arms around his boy's waist. Although he can't do that, and particularly in his office at lunch which is when the fantasy most often comes, he does let himself think about it in those long slivers of time when all he's producing are doodles.

He knows there is very little of happiness here, but he doesn't bother wondering what the seventy-five percent satisfaction rating which he currently has with the situation, in the face of everything, no doubt says about his character.