Title: Better Angels
Author: Raedbard
Fandom:The West Wing
Pairing: Get ready for this folks: Sam/Toby, Jed/Toby, Jed/Sam/Toby. In that order
Rating: R
Word Count: c. 6,700
Disclaimer: I don't pretend to be Aaron Sorkin or John Wells. I just like to borrow their characters and make them do morally reprehensible things to each other.
Timeline/Spoilers From pre-season 1 up to season 4. I'm going AU from S4's 'Election Night'. In this 'verse, someone other than Jed won the general election and Sam became the Congressman for the California 47th. It also assumes that Toby remembers the date of Rooker's appointment as AG (cf. 'Debate Camp') for a whole other reason than "I just do."
Summary: A perfect metaphor: the legend of Tobias Ziegler, Samuel Seaborn and Josiah Bartlet, with discourse on the subject of better angels and the lies you tell to them. A less than divine comedy.

BETTER ANGELS

ACT I

"Sam, who's your favourite writer?"
-- 'The Stackhouse Filibuster'

That was the night when Toby asked.

He asks with his eyes, of course, and with a stillness that fills him, magnifies him. The shadow he makes against his office wall and the dark reflection in the window glass seem to loom too large, as though he has suddenly gained an extra three inches in height. His eyes reflect the light as though wet, and are for Sam the one point of brightness in his face. His eyes reveal him proud, but he is asking just the same.

"My place?" Sam says.

"My place."

"Okay ... Meet you there?"

"No. Come with me."

"Toby ... "

"There's no-one here, Sam. It's okay."

"Okay," Sam says, thinking that they both know it is anything but. He follows anyway, and he is ashamed at the extra thrill which passes through his skin when Toby's hand brushes against his arm as the office door closes.

They are already lovers, have been for months, but they have never once been back to Toby's place because it is Andy's place too, and Sam knows that the Congresswoman, whilst she might not care a whole lot, would be able to smell Toby on his skin and feel the shadow of Toby's fingers in his palm when they shake hands. Sam has never wanted to take that chance and so the apartment is new to him. It feels torn, unreconciled. Darkness hides what Sam knows at once are Toby's corners, cordoned off from the light by a network of lamps and a few decorative candles which have never been lit. He has buried the glow with papers; briefing notes and legals pads, scraps of a speech still in longhand. Underneath a packet with the Presidential seal, hidden low in the gloom of the coffee table, Sam thinks he can see the spine of a small book; half pink, half blue: baby names.

"Where's Andy?" Sam asks, stumbling into what he hopes are the correct pleasantries, his voice coming out flat and muffled.

"Maryland."

"Oh."

"She's ... back in Maryland."

"Long trip? Not expecting her back - "

"Sam ... it's, it's okay. Really."

"It's not, really. But we're here, so ... " He shrugs, finding he doesn't know the right words to use in this conversation.

"Yeah," Toby says, in a voice so soft Sam has to strain to hear him. "We're here."

Toby watches him, though he is unable to keep Sam's eyes for more than a few moments. He runs his hand down along his tie, his fingers brushing its end repeatedly as though removing dust or crumbs.

"Toby, I don't ... I mean, I'm not sure if this is a good idea."

Toby continues to watch him, his face covered in shade.

"I ... Toby, you know - "

"Please," he says, the one soft word reaching Sam clearly.

"I just ... " Sam shrugs, again not sure what he should say.

"Please, Sam."

Sam nods, after a moment, and crosses into the darker part of the room where Toby is still standing. Sam moves close into him and reaches for Toby's hand, which does not grip his in return but stays heavy and unresponsive in his grasp. Sam puts his other arm tight around Toby's waist, tucking his hand up behind Toby's jacket and stroking his back.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing," Toby says, his voice now muffled by Sam's shoulder.

"Toby."

"I just need ... something, okay?" he says, moving out of Sam's hands.

"You wouldn't rather, you know, talk about it?"

"Not really, no."

"Yeah, okay, stupid question."

Toby sighs. "Sam, can we just ...?" His hands gesture loosely, without a clear meaning.

Sam smiles, shrugs and catches Toby's hands on their way back to his pockets.

"Better?" Sam asks. Toby doesn't say anything, or give any other indication of his opinion, just pulls Sam through to his bed.

They don't know how to speak to each other tonight, so instead they sit on the edge of Toby and Andy's bed, kissing. Toby's body demands, his mouth full of silent insistence, but he never moves, so Sam has to start everything, carry every follow-through alone. When he pushes Toby gently down to the bed he feels no resistance and Toby's eyes have closed, his hands do not pull and press at Sam as they usually would; he is quiet.

Sam kisses him, trying to lose his misgivings in this his favourite, bar one, part of sex with Toby. Sam strokes his face with one hand, having almost to coax Toby into turning his head on the pillow. He sucks hard on Toby's lower lip, stroking his tongue there before slipping inside Toby's mouth: searching for something he can do to make him react, asking for a moan or a buck of the hips with his mouth and the hand that is parting Toby's thighs.

"Toby," he says, soft against Toby's cheek, "It's hard to do it right if you don't play along."

"I'm here."

"You're kinda just lying there."

He opens his eyes, reaches up and lays his hand to Sam's cheek, rubs his thumb across Sam's lower lip and slips it inside his mouth, pressing down on Sam's tongue. His other hand reaches between Sam's legs and squeezes.

"I'm playing along."

"Okay."

"Yeah."

"So ... ?"

"You're doing just fine."

"Toby."

He smiles, and it almost reaches his eyes. He turns towards Sam, propped on his elbow, and strokes the back of his index finger across Sam's cheek. Toby's face is impassive and his eyes seem darker as Sam follows their gaze: across his mouth, down between his opened shirt buttons, back up to Sam's eyes. Toby tries to smile again.

"Toby ... ?"

He shakes his head, tries for the smile a third time just as he reaches for Sam, bringing him close, kissing him. He keeps both palms to Sam's face and his pinky fingers stroke the sharp part of Sam's jaw, sending sensation running down his neck like a shiver of cold water, making him gasp against Toby's lips. His arms cushion the moans, the involuntary jerks that the press of his tongue elicit; Sam holds on.

Toby rolls them, slow and gentle, so that he is on top. He begins again at Sam's neck just as Sam opens his eyes. Sam feels his gut jump at this sight of Toby: head bent now and only broad shoulders in view. He reaches up and finds the curls at the back of Toby's head and can't help himself murmuring Toby's name into the air. Toby responds with another, shorter, kiss to Sam's mouth, and another tiny shake of the head.

He speeds up, stripping Sam of his shirt and undoing his own, pushing Sam back down to the bed when he raises his hands to help, raises his head to kiss Toby's chest. He slides his hand down to Sam's pants and pulls them off, swift and ungentle, grazing Sam's hips with his nails and the fabric. Sam cannot decide whether he feels loved in a narrow but obvious sense, or abused in a subtler. He decides he just wants to have Toby's skin against his own, have him slow down, have no air between them. So Sam stops, stiffens and opens his eyes, places his palm flat against Toby's chest; one stage short of pushing him away.

"What?" Toby asks, his voice low and unyielding.

"Just stop, okay? Slow down."

"Why?"

"Because I want you to?" Sam says, wondering if, with a concerted effort, he could sound more like a woman.

Toby laughs quietly. "Can't win with Princeton here," he says, under his breath and, as far as Sam can see, to no-one in particular.

"Toby ... "

"Yeah, okay." He shrugs, "We can do, you know, the thing. Whatever."

Sam raises an eyebrow at him, "You know, whatever else they might say about you Toby, let all note this: you are a true romantic."

"You want to do this or not?"

"Yeah. Just - take it easy is all."

Toby nods, smiles for all of a second, then lies back in his bed with his arms behind his head. He challenges more than he invites, but Sam goes to him anyway and puts his hands inside Toby's open shirt, beneath his undershirt. Sam rests his face to Toby's stomach and takes him in as both taste and smell. Toby's hands come up to his neck and his fingers stroke up through Sam's hair.

"Toby - "

"Don't say anything."

"You don't know what I was going to say."

"Yes, yes I do."

"I still like to say it sometimes."

"I know why you say it all the time and don't you think, if I were going to say it back, I would have done it by now?"

Sam shrugs, or tries to. "I still like to say it."

"I know you do," Toby says, quietly.

"It's nice."

"Sam ... "

"It's nice. It's important."

"Yeah, alright."

"I - "

"But ... don't say it."

"Okay."

"Get up here."

"Okay."

"This is, you know, fine. But ... we're guys here."

"Less talk, more ... of the other thing?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Sam says, grinning.

It all blurs after Toby starts kissing him again, after Toby's hands make their way back between Sam's thighs, and he does not know how it was done. He remembers Toby as a dark form below him, his eyes have hardened again, no longer bright but dull and black. Sam remembers the press of Toby's fingers into his waist as he came, a minute before Sam himself did. Toby wrapped his arms around Sam, pulled Sam's head down into his shoulder and kissed him, but he never said anything, Sam's almost sure of that.

Sam doesn't realise until the morning why he is here and Andy is not; why her ring is sitting in a bowl of change next to Toby's side of the bed and Toby's is still on his finger; why there is still so much darkness in the morning.

"Why didn't you tell me?' he asks, the tone of his voice somewhere between pity and exasperation.

"I figured you'd say no."

"Yeah, I would have."

Toby shrugs. "I know."

"Toby - "

"The best scenario I could think of was you getting me drunk in a bar someplace and tucking me in, and I can do that here just fine."

"You wanted a little more."

"Yeah."

"Well, isn't that just dandy."

"You were fine with fucking me while I still had a wife," Toby says, his voice low and flat. "But now, suddenly there's a little more of a grey area for you."

"I wouldn't call it fine, actually."

"Yeah? You're here, though."

"I can't say I'm enormously proud of that fact at the moment."

"No, of course you're not."

"I think maybe you want to have this particular fight with Andy. I'll see you at work."

Sam has already turned to go when he hears Toby say, "It's not like you to run away from a difficult debate, Sam."

"I'm not here to be your punching bag."

Toby's mouth twists into a sour smile, "That's the best you can do? I must have tired you out last night."

"I'm leaving now, Toby."

"It's a pity you never got to know Andy better, you two would've really got on."

"You know, Toby, there's a stage where this ... self pity thing, this melancholia, is rather poetic and there's a point at which it's just sad. Can you guess which stage you're at?"

"Seriously, Sam, has she been passing you notes or something?"

"I'm leaving now. I'll see you ... whenever."