Three Lovers that Toby Ziegler Never Had

by raedbard

SLASHHET Jed,CJ,Sam: The language of sex, and love, as it pertains to Toby Ziegler.

Title: Three Lovers Toby Ziegler Never Had
Author: Raedbard
Fandom: The West Wing
Rating: R to NC-17
Pairing: Toby with Jed, CJ and Sam. Not all at once.
Disclaimer: I make no claim to be Aaron Sorkin or John Wells, I just like to borrow their characters and make them do morally reprehensible things to each other.
Word Count: c. 2,800
Timeline/Spoilers: No explicit spoilers, but timelines for Jed and Sam do stretch into issues explored in seasons 3 and 4 and there's a one word end of S3 reference in CJ's section too.
Summary: The language of sex as it pertains to Toby Ziegler.

THREE LOVERS TOBY ZIEGLER NEVER HAD

Jed

It's cold in Manchester, and the landscape reminds Toby of being drunk, since that was how he spent a good deal of his time when he was last here - he can spend a whole afternoon half wondering why the ground is suddenly level and no longer spinning. He suspects, even hopes, that today might be a return to those good old times.

It is a fact, he supposes, that the trick to fucking Josiah Bartlet with any success must be to under no circumstances recall that he is, currently, the President of the United States. This is not the Oval Office or even the West Wing but a farm in darkest New Hampshire and so Toby is distracted enough by the smell of cow manure, which seems to him to envelop the whole state, and the flavour of the 'fresh' air that he can begin to think of this man as Jed.

The President leads him out behind his barn as though Toby is an animal about to be shot. He follows, silent, eyeing the bottle of bourbon, half full, which the President is carrying under his arm - a very dependable painkiller. Bartlet opens the door to the smaller barn which hides behind the farm buildings proper, indicating with a tilt of his head that Toby should enter first. He can't stop himself giving the President a look which would charitably be called resentful, then goes in. It's musty inside, and dark. There may be any number of rabid animals within, but Toby bows his head and crosses the threshold, feeling Jed's hand brush the small of his back as the gloom takes him.

There is no preamble - no sooner has night been imposed in the barn than Jed takes his hand and spins him round in a poor attempt at balletic seduction. They collide inelegantly, his shoulder in Jed's chest. Jed smiles a little but Toby cannot; his lack of grace is too awful to him in that moment.

"Toby... Live a little."

"Yes. Okay."

"Oh, Toby - for the love of heaven and the good of my sex life, have something to drink."

"Thank you," he says, groping for the bottle, stopping the wince as his fingers touch Jed's. He drinks the whiskey like water, making himself concentrate on the burn of its passage within his chest.

When Jed speaks it is in a low whisper, "Now, come here to me."

Being slightly drunk always has its advantages. Toby is now just drunk enough that the stroke of Jed's fingertips in his beard does not cause nausea but a pleasant blush across his neck, very similar to that which he would have if he'd downed just a little more bourbon.

He doesn't want to kiss his Commander in Chief, he doesn't - there isn't enough alcohol in the world - but he already understands the shape of Jed's mouth and the heat of his palms and he is not drunk enough to have forgotten last time, or the time before. Nor has the memory of his want of that mouth left him. Jed knows it, and uses his knowledge carefully, wisely: he kisses Toby with gentleness, pressing his lips up and under Toby's chin and into the softest parts of his neck. He lays the palms of his hot, broad hands against Toby's chest as a woman would, stroking across Toby's shirt with his nails, unbuttoning him.

But Toby struggles to ignore the impulse to vomit when Jed slips to his knees and nuzzles Toby's ready erection with his mouth, first through the denim and then skin to skin. He grips Jed's shoulders, getting him to look up. Toby shakes his head, trying for his customary gruffness but knowing that he must just look frightened, pale. He can feel the sweat running, cold, down the back of his neck.

Jed rises, nods back. Toby dimly registers that he seems disappointed, but that he smiles. Toby is on the floor now, his arms clutching at the hay bales near him, trying to control his breathing, trying to see the bourbon bottle in the dark. Jed kneels beside him, places a hand on his thigh and strokes him. Toby supposes this is meant to comfort and when, about a quarter of an hour later, Jed begins to kiss his cheek and neck again, he realises that it has worked.

It is quick, not painless. They do it face to face because Jed likes them to be kissing when Toby comes: he has said that he loves the way Toby gasps into his mouth. Toby aches from the weight of Jed's body, from the demands of his mouth and hands and cock. His pleasure fades as quickly as it arose; Jed holds him as the orgasm leaves him, and he is almost brotherly - not quite the man who has just pushed Toby back over a hay bale in a barn in Manchester, New Hampshire. Jed strokes his hair, still pressing occasional kisses to his neck. Toby wants to disappear into his embrace.

"Okay?" Jed asks him, his voice sounding quiet and flat, thanks to the lacklustre acoustics of the barn.

Suddenly, Toby hates the whole damn farm, and everyone on it.

"As can be expected, I suppose."

"You know, Toby, you really must stop giving me these glowing reviews. They only go to my head."

Toby pulls out of Jed's embrace, unable to stop the predictable rise of two nervous fingers to his forehead, ceaselessly rubbing. He pulls on his clothes in the darkness, trying his damndest not to notice the sickly heat spreading across his face and neck. He is all but out of the door, already reaching to close it on the barn-darkness, when Jed says,

"Toby ..."

Toby remembers to say, as the door shuts, "Thank you, Mr President."

CJ
Communications Bullpen, the West Wing

Toby knows that the common conception around the West Wing is that he has a thing for tall women. He isn't about to disabuse anyone of this notion and he knows where they all got it from. Nevertheless, he thinks it is hard to make a genuine pattern from a single instance, particularly not when the single one is CJ.

He likes to watch her, and he thinks she enjoys performing for him. Tiny points of contact seem to link them, but without permanence, without substance. She slips from his mind like a fragrance leaving a room and if he tries too hard to remember her, she disappears altogether. He has never lain awake at night picturing her, or them, but if she comes to him he knows he is powerless to say no.

It has only happened once. Not after the MS disclosure, or Rosslyn, or Simon. Their third day at the White House, after her third briefing of the day, in a week in which none of them had slept more than three hours a night - CJ comes to him.

"Hey, Toby. What'cha doing?"

He looks up and stares at her a moment before he says, "Hi...CJ."

"What ya doin' there?"

"Writing. You know - plotting."

"So nothing really important then?"

"Er, well - "

"Nothing important?"

"Nothing so important that you shouldn't feel, of course, free to interrupt me at any time."

"Toby."

"What do you need, CJ?"
"Nothing. You know, just wanted to hang. Tough week."

"Yeah."

"Inauguration, settling in. Figuring out the phones. Which, by the way, I think you should put some effort into. Et cetera, et cetera."

"CJ - "

"Toby, I - . You know... Okay, you know that I - . What I mean to say is, and this is just by the way, you know - apropos of nothing - that I care about you. I mean, as a friend, you know?"

"CJ, what...? What do you need?"

"You?"

He stares for a long moment. Then stands and goes across to her, his hands suddenly giving in to their previously restrained restlessness. His fingers reach for hers.

"Are you okay?" he asks, holding both her hands in his.

"Yeah," she says, her voice low and liquid. "Sure, Toby. I'm fine."

She leans into him, suddenly all grace and perfume against his shoulder. She lifts a hand and holds it, still, her palm towards his chest. Her fingers stroke his tie with a thin veneer of custom and propriety - as though he is about to step out onto an important podium. Then she turns into him and bows her head down on his shoulder.

"I missed you. Sort of," she says, her voice full of embarrassed laughter.

"Only sort of?"

"Yeah. You're not so much the stud. I mean New York is fine for you - for this...look. But out in LA the stakes are raised, you know. And I had a lot of boyfriends."

"Right."

"We're talking fake tan, muscles. Also Rogaine, or at least toupees."

"Thanks."

She raises her head, chuckling. She kisses his cheek and strokes against his skin with the tip of her nose, then brings her index finger up and touches his lower lip.

"Sorry," she says, not meaning it in the least.

"Yeah."

"Toby, will you...?"

"Yeah," he says, quiet but distinct.

"I mean, I want to..."

"Yes, CJ. Of course."

"You know what I'm asking, right?"

"CJ?"

"Right, yeah."

He smiles up at her, staring again. Toby is still and waiting: for her to move, to kiss him, or tell him what she wants. He likes to wait for her.

She's tentative, gentle. The finger which stroked his lower lip taps against her own mouth a few times before she leans closer. She doesn't kiss him but substitutes, again, her hands for her mouth - losing the tips of her fingers in his hair, in the too-long threads of his beard. Her other hand strokes along his chest, follows the curve of his stomach, insinuates between his shirt buttons. Her hands have reached his belt buckle before her mouth even begins, and as she kisses along his neck and under his jaw, she undoes him.

Toby is panting quietly and tasting the lipstick traces across his mouth when CJ withdraws. She takes his hands, smiling - indulgent. Her face lets him know again the secret that never was, her head tilted to the side, her lips parted, with the pink burn of his beard already showing around them. She pulls at him, beckoning towards the couch. Toby nods, taking away his hand long enough to draw the blinds.

"Can I..kiss you?" he finds himself asking, in a voice he faintly remembers.

"Yes... God, Toby - whatever, whatever you'd like."

He nods, accepting her need and trying not to think too much about it. He's surprised when the kisses he touches against her neck make her moan, hard and long and satisfied, like he's already made her come. He hardly dares lay his palm over her breast when her body cues that this should be his action but when he does so, CJ only smiles - eyes closed, her lips still parted. He kisses her then, fitting his mouth to hers and stilling the rest of his body so that he can remember, when this is over, each action as a whole. Her tongue is milk-sweet in his mouth, her left hand squeezing his, her thighs hot and open beneath him.

He hates, on later reflection, that the only time he has made love to her was on the couch in his office with his pants open around his thighs, her face flushed and messy and a come stain on the inside hem of her skirt. He remembers the unlovely with as much clarity as he does the wet slip of him into her and the warmth of her naked belly, rounded by her heavy exhalations, pressing into his shirt. The shape and heat of her clit under his thumb, or the press of her tongue his lip, of which she seemed so fond. He likes to remember the sound of his name in her mouth and the taste of the word as it passes into his, but he cannot remember these moments often.

She'll come to him if she wants to.

Sam
Horizon Bar, California 47th

He is keeping notes in his head, not trusting paper - not needing paper. Facts make a situation straighter, significant, and he holds them up in the dark as a beacon. Toby hopes that some normalcy might follow, but finds the possibility a distant one.

He reels off his figures: he has had Sam in his bed seven times, given him fifteen orgasms. They have had twenty-three distinguishable kisses, seventeen of which were at Sam's instigation. They have been on exactly one 'date', an experience unlike any date Toby has had in a life short on dates, so he feels like maybe the number is a little soft. Sam has used the word 'love' twice; Toby remains a silent minority, but he has thought in those terms on three separate, lonely, occasions. He suspects Sam has thought on the matter rather more.

Figures take the poetry out, and he doesn't mean for dinner and dancing. He prefers it that way. His gift is for pragmatic lyricism, Sam is the poet. Sam is the one who would look good thin and hungry in his hypothetical garret in southern California, writing tortured - in more than one sense - verses about the lover he left behind him in cold, cold D.C. It is just a pity that his subject is Toby.

Poetry makes it dangerous.

In the beginning, forty-one days ago, Toby had tried to keep it simple. This was not a need thing, or anything to do with love. They're both men, with difficult stressful lives and they need to get off somehow. And, since they already spend practically every day and night with each other, why not act like the married couple they might as well be. He seduced Sam, it's fair to say, and he's putting Sam's eagerness down to the force of his own personality. But Toby doesn't know what to do with this dark and fluid desire which opened up in him the night he first slept with Sam, doesn't know where it came from or where he should send it. He knows he doesn't want to let go when Sam is done, sweating and pink on top of the sheets but that he finds his hands, nervous and self-serving, pushing Sam's kisses away. Toby doesn't want the mess, the fuss - little notes from Sam on his refrigerator about how there's no milk left and can he go down the 7-Eleven and pick some up.

Mess kills the poetry.

So, once upon a time, about a month ago, Toby decided that anything oral in their encounters should be kept to an absolute minimum, on his side at least. He had hardly dared to bring their mouths into this thing in case they should begin to speak too much, and if words and thoughts started forming around them, neither Toby nor Sam would be able to get away from each other, from this thing that they had created. But it becomes clear to Toby that it was incredibly, tragically pointless to have made such a decision once he realised that Sam's voice, his throat, his mouth, the touch of his tongue, turns him on with clockwork dependability.

And it's not just Toby either, he wishes it was. Sam sucks on Toby's mouth, hard and long - pulling Toby's lower lip, his tongue, into his own mouth. He's rigorous and methodical, exploring Toby with precision, as though Toby is a tourist destination some guidebook told him his vacation wouldn't be complete without. Toby can't move under these assaults, he can only lie and accept Sam's silent questions and allow himself to be a subject of study. He can only hope that Sam doesn't decide to write a paper on what he finds. Sam's concentration has got to be all for shit though because Toby never fails to note the intimidating erection that Sam always has when he withdraws, flushed and smiling, from these forays. And if he's not all gone then, he is once Toby has bent his head down between Sam's thighs and gotten rid of that intense hard-on, which he first did twelve days ago.

He mutters and Sam sings: where Toby speaks in terse moans (yes, God ... oh, there, yes), Sam sighs Toby's name every few minutes, making Toby harder, he's sure, than he's ever been.

Poetry has it's own rules, it's own symmetry. Toby is just enough of a poet to recognise it.

Toby knows that presses and pulls of his mouth have made a tiny clamshell script on Sam's skin: marking at the neck, at the hip, at the inside thigh. He can cover each word of this secret speech with his thumb and muffle the rhetorical climax with his hand. Sam sighs and shifts under Toby's body, restless and demanding. He is Toby's blank sheet of paper, and just as tormenting. Today, the forty-second day, Toby commits something to paper for real.

I miss love you. Come home.