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

EPILOGUE

"Sagittarius."
-- '18th and Potomac'

A handshake had sealed it, over coffee and bagels the next morning. Not that the pact is really required of course -Toby finds it very hard to believe that rumours about an liaison between an ex-President, a Californian Congressman and a washed-up political advisor would be taken seriously, but stranger things may somewhere have happened, and it's better to be safe.

He forgives them both in time. He forgives Jed's mouth against Sam's stomach and the way Sam blushed when Jed stroked his hair and stole a line about better angels that Sam hadn't been around for the first time around. Time makes it a little easier to remember, with acceptance if not ease, the way Jed's hair fell around his face in sweat-made strands, how his cheeks went red and his eyes laughed, happy and light.

He sees Sam more than he does Jed, who still has half the business of the Presidency without trouble of the actual title - Toby has the invitation to the dedication of the Josiah Bartlet Library in his hand even now. Sam's coming, he's going to pick Toby up on his way up to New Hampshire.

Sam is a different memory - still starched and ridiculous even out of his clothes, taking the neatness everywhere he goes, including the bed. He had smoothed and petted, passed his fingers through Jed's hair and Toby's beard and then kissed them both, in equal measure. He hid his nervousness and bit his tongue on every 'sir' and shivered under Jed's hands as he had under Toby's the first time.

Toby makes himself drink another mug of coffee: it's a long way to New Hampshire and Sam will want to talk the route through with him while he drives. Toby will want to kill himself, but that's beside the point. He looks at his watch, smoothes down his tie.

He hadn't thought it was the easy part, even though Jed coaxed him and Sam soothed him. He ends up with both of them all over him, every sense awake to Sam's mouth and Jed's fingers, and nothing to do but figure out how to let go. He lay on in his side and felt unfair to whoever was behind him, irritation towards the guy who pulled him round, infatuation for the man who kissed him last. Jed made him come and his cry got lost between Sam's lips and Toby had kept his eyes closed - scared of what he might wake up to.

There's a knock on his door precisely when he had been told to expect it, and when he opens it Sam looks not like a man who has just driven to New York from California, but like a guy who stopped off at a Chinese laundry and didn't bother to get out of his clothes before he handed them over to be pressed. Even his hair is immaculate.

"Hey," Sam says.

"Hey."

"You ready there?"

"Sure."

"Got your stuff?"

"We're going for one night, Sam. How much stuff do I really need?"

"Pays to be thorough. Floss, for instance, is a pivotal item in my suitcase."

"How do you have time for this?"

"Organisational skills, my friend. Many years in the making."

"Yeah."

Sam nudges him, conspiratorially, "And I brought condoms too."

"I am going to absolutely pretend I did not hear that."

"Missed you," he says, closing Toby's door whilst they are still on the inside.

"I didn't hear that either."

"Give me a kiss."

"You're really never going to grow up, are you?"

Sam just smiles, easy and light. A stray beam of New York sun - and Toby doesn't know where that came from today - catches his hair as he stands in front of the glass panel in Toby's door. He reaches out for Toby's hands and pulls him into the light and embraces him, all gentle mouth and one hand up inside Toby's jacket, stroking his back.