Title: "Hold Off Choice"

Author: CretKid aka Cal

Category: CJ/Toby

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers: general 3rd season

Summary: "It's not exactly unrequited."

Disclaimer: Ain't mine. 'Nuf said.

Author's notes: Evelyn's turn! She asked for a happy ending. This scene was the original ending to "Hold Ground", but I decided to cut it before posting. I've put some more thought into it and decided it fit the bill for Evelyn's request. This is part of a somewhat new universe I've created; you can find it at www.oocities.org/rdcottrell/parachute.html

Title and summary again from Moxy Fruvous' "I Will Hold On". So from here on out, things might be changing. Thanks oh so much to the beta readers, you know who you are.

"Hold Off Choice"

=================

The din of machine gun fire and sinking ships in his dream woke him from his restless slumber, leaving Toby to wonder if he would ever learn not to fall asleep while watching television. Rolling over, he felt the cold of the room invade newly exposed areas now uncovered by the blankets that had been draped over his shoulders and legs. The small green numbers on the face of the VCR tauntingly reminded him that it was now the new year, one that was starting out with a hum-dinger of a flu bug. He hoped it wasn't an omen of things to come.

Gradually pulling himself off the couch, Toby trudged towards the back of his apartment, intent on falling into bed for a few hours of hopefully uninterrupted-by-sickness sleep. He paused at the door when he spotted a suspicious lump under the covers. Frighteningly, all he could think about was a little bear complaining about finding someone sleeping in his bed.

It took a few moments for his medicated, addled brain to catch up to reality. New Years. Soup. Movies. CJ. Falling asleep on the couch.

A kiss on his forehead.

Baby bear didn't know when he came across a good thing.

The thought of spending the rest of the night in the living room was not a pleasant one. When he told CJ that he was fine on the couch, he honestly thought he would have slept through the night. Faced with a dilemma, Toby rubbed his forehead. It wasn't as if they'd never slept in the same place together. Well, not a bed per se, but a number of chairs, couches and corners, under mostly platonic circumstances. This didn't have to be any different.

Did it?

Too tired to change clothes, he walked over to the lump under the covers and gently shook her shoulder.

"CJ, move over."

The lump scurried farther under the covers. He tried again. This time, the lump had a reply.

"Hmm? What?"

"Move over."

"Just got comfortable," whined the lump. "You said you wanted to stay on the couch."

Toby sat down on the edge of the bed. The lump rolled away from him.

Trying a different tactic, he nudged her towards the other side of the bed. "You don't have to get up, just move over."

"Why?"

"'Cause this side is closer to the bathroom." With the number of times he had had to get up the previous nights, he didn't want to wake her should he have to again.

"You just want the warm side."

The couch was looking better and better. "CJ--"

"Fine." She shifted under the covers so that she was on the other side of the bed. "You better not give me your cooties."

Toby let gravity take over. "Whatever cooties I may have are too tired to travel. Just go back to sleep."

If she had a reply, he didn't hear it. Drawing the covers over his shoulder, he turned toward the outside of the bed and tried not to think about the fact that his pillow smelled of her perfume.

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~

Toby didn't realize he had been restless until he felt her hand on his back, drawing circles over his shoulder blades and spinal chord. At some point in the night he must have removed his sweater in an effort to be get comfortable. First too cold, then too hot, with no happy medium. He sighed, comforted by the constant motion along his spine. He tried in vain to fall back to sleep as thoughts of the last time he had seen his sister invaded his brain.

He had gone to New York to visit his sister's family at Chanukah. Before he could get through the front door, she had tossed a coin at him and asked, "Have you bought that clue yet?"

He shook his head and tried to rid his mind of straying thoughts.

CJ's hand drifted higher on his back, including his neck in her ministrations. She paused, leaving her hand where his neck met his shoulders. He felt her shift higher on the bed but didn't have the strength to roll his head to see what she was doing. The back of one hand was lying against his forehead and the other near his throat. Her skin felt wonderfully warm against his own.

"Toby, you're ice cold."

He certainly didn't feel *that* cold, but he'd take her word for it.

"You don't have any new symptoms, do you?" he heard her ask. He felt the bed shift again and saw her moving across the room to the linen closet just outside the bedroom door. She came back with a set of thermal sheets and another wool blanket.

"Because if you've got pneumonia, Ziegler, so help me God I will drag you by your ears to the hospital. The doctor could be Doogie Houser for all I care. You will go and you will not complain, got it?"

Toby was too exhausted to protest the sudden removal of the comforter as she wrapped one of the thermal sheets around his torso and the second around his legs. The wool blanket followed, then the bed sheets and comforter.

"I don't have pneumonia," he mumbled into the pillow. "Go back to sleep, CJ."

"I can't, not with you shaking like a leaf."

"I was too hot," Toby tried to explain. "I must have kicked off the covers."

CJ crouched near the head of the bed and held the back of her hand against his forehead. "You were under as many covers as I was when you started shivering. How long have you had chills?"

"CJ, just go back to sleep."

"Yeah, like that's going to happen."

Toby unearthed his right hand and blindly reached for CJ's hand at his forehead. "CJ, really, I'm fine."

"Are you still cold?"

"CJ, just go back to sleep."

"Do you need another blanket?"

"CJ--"

"I'm just saying--"

Toby groaned, squeezing her hand. "I'm not going to be able to sleep with you watching over me. Please, just lie down."

"Do you need a heating bag? Water? Aspirin? Do you want some ginger ale?"

"Florence Nightingale! Perch somewhere!"

"Okay. I can take a hint," she replied, smiling. "I'm just going to go sleep on the couch so you'll be more comfortable."

CJ tried to stand, but Toby refused to let go. The role reversal was not lost on him as they both stared at their joined hands. In the past year, more often than not it was he that was the one to offer silent support through all the trials and tribulations. Now that the tables were turned, he found CJ in overdrive.

She knelt back down so that her face was at his eye level and brushed her hand over his forehead. Gone from her eyes were the endless, manic questions about his comfort. He didn't need anything else right now, and she understood that.

"You didn't have to stay," Toby said to break the silence, hearing his sister's voice chanting in the back of his mind.

"Let's just say I'm returning the favor," CJ replied, placing her hand on his cheek.

He knew she could feel the slight chatter in his jaw and he watched as she bit back yet another query as to whether or he was cold. Instead she climbed back into the bed and under the covers. He felt her hand return to his back, gently massaging his muscles through the thermal blanket she had wrapped him in. Slowly he started to relax.

"Wouldn't you be more comfortable in something other than khakis?" she asked before his brain could settle.

"Someone stole my sweatpants," he replied into the pillow.

He sensed her laughing behind him. "Yeah, sorry about that. I would have asked, you know."

"S'okay."

"You were asleep."

"Which I would like to be again," he gently chided.

Toby barely had the energy to suppress the shudder of chill that ran across his shoulders. He waited for the inevitable question but instead felt CJ snuggle closer against his back, her arm holding him tightly against her body. Her hand clutched his through the thermal sheet.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked as CJ repositioned the pillows so that her forehead was resting between his shoulder blades.

"Sharing body heat."

"Why?"

"Because you're still shaking and eventually I would like to fall back to sleep too. Shut up."

They lay quietly for a time. Toby tried to concentrate on the warmth of her hand as it held his to his chest, the touch of her breath through the material of his t-shirt. Slowly his shivering subsided and he thought that maybe he could finally fall asleep. Only, his sister's voice kept ringing in his ears. 'Bought that clue yet?'

"Tell me a story."

Toby groaned, despite the sleepy tone to her voice. He knew the silence wouldn't last long; 'CJ' and 'quiet' were not synonymous. "Why?"

"Because you woke me up and now I can't fall asleep. Tell me a story. One with a happy ending."

"I'm the one that's sick. Shouldn't I be getting the story?"

The poke to his shoulder told him otherwise. Toby sighed, closed his eyes and willed his sister's voice to get out of his head.

As if reading his mind, CJ said, "Tell me about the book your sister sent you."

"A few minutes ago you were telling me to shut up," Toby replied, trying to avoid the issue. He knew CJ had read the inscription on the card.

"And now I'm asking you to tell me a story."

"I didn't hear a request in 'tell me a story'."

She patted his hand. "Humor me."

Toby tightly held his eyes closed, seeing the words from the book swim against the back of his eyelids, intermingled with his sister's script next to the underlined passage. "'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.'"

CJ stilled. Toby wondered briefly if she had fallen asleep.

"Well, that's cheerful," she said drolly.

If he hadn't been so bone-weary tired, he would have shrugged his shoulders. "It's the first line of the book."

"I hope the last line is a little happier."

"I don't remember the last line."

"I don't want you to recite verbatim the entire book, Toby. Just hit the highlights."

He recalled a sticky note that his sister had left taped to one of the pages. It read 'August 27, 2040'. The calendar date on it had meant nothing to him until he finished reading the page.

"Fifty-one years, nine months and 4 days."

"What's that?" CJ murmured.

Hoping that perhaps she would simply fall asleep before he could answer, he took a deep breath and held it. When she poked him in the chest, he knew that wasn't going to be the case.

"How long the main character waited to tell a woman that he had known for most of his adult life that he loved her," he said quietly.

There was a silence that he wasn't completely comfortable with. There was no turning back now, he thought to himself as he awaited her response. How he carried on the rest of the conversation was dependent on how she chose to interpret his words.

"That's not exactly a happy story."

CJ sounded a hell of a lot more awake then she had when she asked for the story in the first place. Toby managed to shrug this time, freeing his hand from its bondage under the thermal sheet and clasping her fingers tightly. She seemed as reluctant to talk about whatever the hell it was between them as he was. Too afraid of change, too afraid to let things remain the same.

"It's hidden between the lines," he replied, willing her nervous hands to stop moving.

"So it's a book about unrequited love."

"It's not exactly unrequited. They loved each other in the beginning, they find each other again by the end."

He felt her nod against his back, nuzzling her face against his shirt.

"And your sister sent this book to you."

Her tone was light and joking, but the tightening of her fingers in his told him otherwise.

"Yeah."

"With a note, telling you to buy a clue."

"Yeah."

"And how long ago did she send this book to you?"

"Shortly after it was published."

"Which was when?"

Toby sighed and hoped it came across as recalling the date. "Nearly 13 years ago."

CJ seemed to mull over the information for a few minutes. Her fingers tensed again and he figured that she had done the mental math.

"After you left for New York."

"After you stayed in California," Toby countered.

It was an argument that they had never had out loud. It spoke in the silences during early morning phone calls, between the lines of long letters when they lived a continent apart. Until this moment he thought they might never have it.

CJ held him all the closer. "You didn't have to leave."

"You didn't have to stay." Toby traced patterns on the back of her hand with is ring finger

"I had to finish graduate school," she reasoned.

"And I had a job offer I couldn't refuse."

That was what they had told each other the night before he got on the plane for New York. Rationalizations, he later realized, they were good at. They had parted as friends for it. He had lived with his sister until he could find an apartment. CJ had called him once a week while he lived there. Thus began the ongoing torment only older sisters could impart on their younger brothers.

"Your sister tapes a quarter in every birthday card she sends you."

From the tone of her voice he knew she had figured it out. He decided not to tell her about the rest of his quarter collection.

"Yeah," he relented, disappointed that his tongue could not process more than monosyllables.

"Am I correct in guessing that the quarters started with this book?"

"Yeah."

"A quarter buys you a clue?"

"A quarter buys me a 3-minute phone call. Or, at least it did in 1989." He paused and decided a header over the abyss couldn't be any worse. "What I wanted-- needed to say, what I should have said then took longer than 3 minutes."

"Toby? What did you need to say?" CJ asked her tone uncertain.

Opening his mouth to respond, his courage deserted him. Too much time, too many miles and one ex-wife had complicated the answer. He had loved Andy when they were married. He still cared what Andy thought, what she needed. He kept tabs on any boyfriends she happened to mention in their not too frequent meetings. He still valued her opinion. But Andy wasn't in his thoughts any more.

He wished his sister would follow the same route.

"Toby?" CJ nudged him out of his introspection.

Biting the bullet, he replied, "I don't want to wait another 38 years to do something a should have done a long time ago."

He couldn't feel CJ breath behind him. He wanted to turn, wanted to see her face. This time the shudder was due more to fear than cold.

CJ shifted again behind him, sliding under the thermal sheets next to him. Her forehead nestled at the base of his neck once more. He could have sworn he could feel her eyelashes brush against his skin when she closed her eyes. Her hand splayed across his chest, above his heart.

"What she-- your sister-- what she's suggesting. By sending you that book--"

"Yeah?"

"It's not exactly unrequited."

END