Title: A Beginning, Possibly
Fandom: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation/The West Wing
Characters: Sara Sidle/Toby Zeigler
Prompt: #1; (096; Writer’s Choice – Fairy Tale)
Word Count: 2,856
Rating: Mature
Summary: Last night had been magical – and he was a man who didn’t believe in magic.
Author's Notes: The second in what will now be a 100 part series.
Disclaimer: They aren't mine and no copyright infringement is intended.

She stopped, cold, hearing the scraping at the front door. A key in the lock, the scuffle of his shoes on the floor. Turning, moving back into the foyer, she dropped a box of her clothes and glared at the disheveled form of her now-estranged husband. She’d been hoping he was just working all night, but the open collar, the tie in his hand, and the well-fucked look in his eyes told her that he’d already found someone else to keep his bed warm. “Have fun?” Andi glared at him, trying to cover up her hurt with anger. Logically, she had no right to be angry – she’d left him, but … she’d been out of the house two weeks and he was already out all night? She hoped it was CJ. She could handle it if it was CJ keeping him company; CJ was special to him. He’d almost married CJ. She supposed she could handle it if he was sleeping with her but it still was a bit of a blow and it only confirmed her suspicions of another woman. Did CJ qualify as another woman though?

Yes, actually, she did. So why did she think it was someone other than CJ?

For an instant, his mouth went dry. Still sucking on a mint from the bar, Toby stared at her, part of him completely turned on by the sight of Andi standing in the foyer to the house, in a pair of tight jeans and a tank top, sweaty due to her moving boxes around; the other part of him wishing she would just get the hell out so he could shower and fantasize and draft incredibly bad love poetry that he would never let Sara see. “Yes.” He allowed himself to revel in the flash of pain in his now ex-wife’s eyes. She’d left him, she’d broken his heart, she’d accused him of loving something else. Maybe she was right, but he was too content in the afterglow of last night to allow for more than brief annoyance cast in her general direction.

Last night had been magical – and he was a man who didn’t believe in magic.

He needed to get cleaned up. He had his meeting at the White House, a speech to finish writing, and if he hurried, he could make it to the auditorium in time to hear Sara present her paper on the Implications of Desert Heat in Evidence Gathering (he still wondered how on earth she’d made it sound interesting – but then again, she’d been naked while she was talking about it) and then take her to dinner over at The Grille. Sara was getting on a plane first thing in the morning – he only had tonight to make sure that she’d want to come back and see him again.

“I’m glad.” Andi crossed her arms in front of her, feeling both self conscious and jealous. For the first time since they’d met, he wasn’t looking at her with the angsty, lusty look she’d fallen in love with. She didn’t want to be hurt, she didn’t have any right to be hurt, but she was hurt.

“I’m running late, Andi.” Toby glared back at her. “I don’t care if you’re here or not, but I need to shower.” He turned and disappeared up the steps, leaving her completely alone.

24 Hours Earlier

The bar called to her. Dim lighting and because it was the middle of the day, it was empty enough to snag a table for herself and spread her notes for her paper out to prep for tomorrow. God, she hated presenting in public. But it had to be done so she lit a cigarette, sipped at her scotch, and stared at the lists of numbers and statistics. The data she’d put together for this case presentation was completely irrefutable (if she did say so herself), but that didn’t make her any less nervous. She was a young woman, presenting to an auditorium of mostly men, all of whom wanted to talk to her breasts more than listen to her voice. And people wondered why she didn’t want anything to do with the social structure of society.

A few of the younger guys at the conference passed by and one called her name. She looked up, returned the smile of one of them, and then went back to her notes. Okay, so maybe the social structure of society wasn’t completely bad.

The waitress brought a second scotch and a glass of water. Absently signing the check over to her room account, Sara reached for the water, still double-checking for any inconsistencies in her argument.

She was nervous. She was killing time. She was wishing that Margaret wasn’t out of the country with Leo so that she could head over to the White House and work out a way to “accidentally” run into Toby. Like he’d even remember her. She could have found a way to get in touch with him, she could have called or e-mailed; getting in touch with the White House staff wasn’t all that difficult. But he was married, and she wasn’t going to even try to go there. No, he wasn’t married. He was separated now. She’d read it in the paper. It was too much to hope that he’d come wandering into this bar. The moment they’d shared a year ago was just a moment and the dreams she’d had of seeing him again were only romantic fairy tales set against a backdrop of the grandeur of the Inaugural Ball. Cinderella she was not.

Movement against the almost empty bar caught her eye and she looked up and her heart leapt into her throat. Okay, so now she had two chance happenings that were leading down the road of proof declaring that she was indeed living in a Harlequin Romance.

His hair was a bit thinner, a bit grayer, and he’d lost just a little bit of weight. His shoulders slumped, carrying some invisible burden, and his jaw worked around one of the mints the bar had at the entrance. He had to be a regular because it wasn’t long before a glass of scotch was placed in front of him – without him needing to order. Oh, God. She swallowed, reached for her own glass, and took a healthy sip. This really couldn’t be happening. She didn’t believe in fate, she knew better than that. It was just coincidence that he was here, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, nursing a scotch and staring blankly at a copy of the Post.

Toby felt eyes on his back and turned his head, and froze. All the bad poetry in the world, all the love stories and the fairy tales didn’t even come close to creating the mood in the bar at this moment.

Her hair seemed shorter and he could see the curls that had been smoothed out the night they’d met. Unlike the night of the ball, she wore no make up, and she looked perfectly comfortable in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. In this moment, he saw Sara for how she preferred to be – and even in her comfort she was still elegant and graceful and beautiful.

For the past year, he’d tried to come up with a million different ways to find out where she was and how she was doing. But asking Margaret, he knew, would have only led to questions, and since he never saw Sara in the building at all to visit Margaret, he’d been able to assume she was from out of town. Seeing her here, like this, a glass of scotch halfway to her lips, just two weeks after Andi had moved out, one week after they’d signed the separation papers, was fate fulfilled – and he wasn’t even sure if he believed in fate. He’d been willing to accept his notions of a romance with the stranger from the ball as a flashback to childhood tales of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. But the handsome Prince Charming he was not. He’d tried, and failed, to fix his life with Andrea, and now, staring into Sara’s eyes from across the bar, he had to accept that part of the reason things had fallen apart was because he’d been touched by spending five minutes with this beautiful stranger.

And it was perfectly clear that she recognized him too.

Steeling his courage and gathering his shreds of dignity around him, Toby stood up and walked over to the table Sara shared with piles of papers and files. His heart echoed in his ears, his palms were clammy. Three steps away from her, he almost turned around and walked away, and would have except she’d watched him approach. Instead he swallowed, hard, and looked down at her. “We meet again.” His voice was low and for a second he wondered if he’d even spoken.

“We do.” The smile that came to her face was completely involuntary. “Do you, uh, want to sit down?”

“Sure.” He looked at her notes and, curious, picked up a transparency of skeletal remains found in Death Valley three years ago. Setting the transparency down carefully, he settled and tilted his head at her. “Tell me that you didn’t put that body there.”

Sara actually laughed as she gathered her notes. “I’m a criminalist with the San Francisco Police Department. There’s a national conference this weekend, I’m presenting two papers – one that I co-wrote with a colleague regarding physical decay in an accelerated climate and the other on the effect desert heat has on evidence. I wrote that one myself.” She paused for a second, realizing how incredibly boring it had to sound to him, “Sorry.”

“For what?” He hadn’t understood a word she’d said, but the way she said it made his skin tingle.

“I get a bit wrapped up in my work. I forget that not everyone is as fascinated by physical findings inside of wind eroded sand as I am.”

Toby chuckled and reached for another photograph. “That’s okay, I forget sometimes that not everyone is as enamored with the beauty of statistics in public speaking as I am.”

Stealing back the photograph, she placed it in order with the rest of the shots and closed up the file. “I’ve read some of your stuff – you must write the technical side and Sam Seaborn does the imagery?”

“Imagery is for wimps.”

Sara actually dissolved into giggles. She wasn’t one for giggling, but she was doing it like a schoolgirl, right here, in front of him. It took a minute for her to catch her breath, feeling utterly ridiculous, but Toby was also laughing. It made her feel better.

“How have you been?” He pulled out his lighter to light her cigarette for her (the strangely intimate gesture sent shivers up her spine and transported her back to that alley outside the hotel ballroom) and then lit his own cigar.

“I uh …” she smiled. “I’ve been good.” In any other situation, it would have been the most awkward moment in the world, but she smiled and felt comfortable enough to duck her head and actually speak to him about her life. “I finally have the seniority to do some of the academic work that I need to do to keep advancing.”

“Work like writing and presenting papers?”

“Yeah.” She chuckled. “Regardless of the actual hands on work I do, I’m a physicist and that means that to be respected in my field, I need to do this kind of thing.” She paused, blushing, realizing she was rambling, “sort of like writing speeches for idiots all the while having your sight set on writing for kings.”

“Be careful,” Toby smiled, “the Kings are often the idiots.”

Sara cocked her head and smirked, “True.” She took a long drag on her cigarette and looked at him through the cloud of smoke. “I’d ask how you’re doing, but I read about the separation in the paper. I’m sorry.”

With a shrug, Toby took another puff on the cigar. “I am too, but … it was coming. And it’s left me able to explore … other areas …” Mentally, he kicked himself. His job, his passion, his life was words. He’d just made himself out to be a complete buffoon. But, he looked back at her, she didn’t seem to mind.

“It’s still never easy.”

“True.”

“You want to change the subject?” She smiled gently, understanding already that he was as uncomfortable, if not more, about talking about his personal life than she was about hers.

“Please.” They both chuckled and he leaned forward a bit, still watching her eyes. He never maintained eye contact with anyone this long, but here he was, looking into her depths, wondering if she would object if he asked her to take him back to her room.

Sara’s next response startled him. “You want to get out of here?”

He jumped and when she blushed and looked down he could tell she thought she’d overstepped her bounds. So he did what he knew he could do, he picked up the files from the table and then took her hand in his free one. “Where’s your room?” They could talk later, they could get to know each other later, she could tell him about being a scientist and he could tell her about being a writer later. Right now, he wanted to ease the desire he’d had since they’d met at the ball. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to make love to her.

Gulping, but glad he’d understood her meaning, Sara took his hand (and her files from him) and stood, leading him out of the bar and upstairs. She could get this out of her system and then go back to San Francisco and say yes when Tom asked her out for dinner, like he did once a week. She just needed to get Toby out of her system. She’d be fine then.

She’d underestimated the power of unfulfilled desire.

For the first time in the years she’d been having sex, Sara Elizabeth Sidle found herself willingly giving over her control to a man she barely knew. His hands parted her legs, exploring through the (soaked) cotton, bringing her to the brink over and over again.

Toby watched the blush across her body as his fingers moved between her legs, stroking still through her underwear. He had her almost naked below him, submitting completely, and he couldn’t breach that barrier. Not without more permission. He barely knew her. It wasn’t his style to take a woman to bed like this, no matter how much he’d obsessed and fantasized over the past year. But here he was, in bed with her, watching her writhe beneath him, kissing her neck, sucking on her nipples, listening to her gasp his name.

Andi never gasped like that.

He toyed with the edges of her panties, desperately wanting to tug them down, not wanting to press forward until she said it was all right.

“God, Toby …” she moaned, softly, “do it or don’t …”

That was enough for him.

“I’m sure the DC lab is looking for someone of your skills. DC … Virginia … Baltimore ….” He watched her as she tossed files into a backpack decorated with Harvard and Berkley patches. His eyes focused on a black and white patch that gave God’s directive for light – in what he could only assume was the equation for electricity. He wasn’t sure.

“Toby …” Sara stopped in her packing, ready to grumble, but looked at his puppy-dog eyes and just moved over to join him on the bed again. “I have to get back to San Francisco.”

“So what then, hmm? You go back to San Francisco and what … we just had fun this weekend?” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Cause we did have fun …”

“Yeah …” she kissed him softly. “We did.”

“So what then?”

“What do you want?”

“What do you want?”

“Toby …” the groan that escaped her lips was one he recognized – the sound of someone with virtually no experience with relationships trying to make a decisions about them. “I don’t know. I spent the past year wondering how to contact you and now we’ve done … this … and I have to get on a plane in three hours. We can’t have this conversation now.”

“So we have to have it over the phone?”

“Yeah, we do.”

When he touched her stomach with those light, feather fingertips, she sighed softly and pulled him down so their lips were almost touching. “I’m going to need a couple of things before I leave.”

“What’s that?” He toyed with the hem of her shirt.

“Your phone number.”

He laughed. “And?”

She didn’t respond verbally, just attacked his lips with her own.

Yes, Toby thought as he tugged her t-shirt over her head, they’d be continuing this conversation when she got home to San Francisco. He wasn’t letting this go, not without a fight.