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By: VegaWriters
Title: Chapter 4: It
Fandom: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation/The West Wing
Characters: Sara Sidle/Toby Zeigler
Prompt: #1; (#20; Love)
Word Count: 710
Rating: Teen/Older Teen
Summary: They spoke with their eyes, somehow promising each other that this would not be the last time they saw each other.
Author's Notes: Sara Sidle and Toby Zeigler are not my characters. They belong to CBS and NBC and all parties involved with the making of CSI and The West Wing. I make no money from this. Please don’t sue. Hire me instead.
Summary: He was, after all, a lucky man. He’d loved three amazing women in his life.
Those three words
Are said too much
They’re not enough
~Snow Patrol/Chasing Cars
Verbal expression of emotion had never been one of his strong points. He was a writer; he was meant to put his thoughts onto paper. It made sense, then, that telling her he loved her had been a mistake. If he’d written it, maybe it would have meant more. The last letter he’d sent her, hand written, late night ramblings about how he could see the moon in her eyes had been the perfect place to bury those three little words. But instead he’d had to wait until they were on the phone to say it. He’d said it. That was always a mistake with him.
He’d said it. She hadn’t.
Standing at the gate while he waited for Sara to appear in the throngs of passengers, all Toby could do was shift nervously from foot-to-foot and wonder what had possessed him to tell her the truth.
He’d never pretended to be a man in control. He was moody, cranky, and had been told that even on his sunniest days, he wasn’t all that fun to be around. The majority of his emotion was spent pacing anxiously while words rattled around in his head and refused to reach down through his fingers to manifest themselves physically on paper.
I love you.
Of course he loved her. He’d loved her since he’d laid eyes on her.
She hadn’t said it back. She’d paused, and he had felt her blushing on the other end of the line, and the e-mail she’d sent later that night had told him that she felt the same way but wanted to see him before she said anything.
Her e-mail hadn’t softened the blow. It didn’t matter that she was coming to visit and they had a week together to work themselves out; she hadn’t said it.
So, instead of waiting happily to take her into his arms in a moment of movie magic, he shifted from foot-to-foot and wondered if it was possible to talk his way out of this one. It was too late, though, to take the words back.
His rational mind told him to shut up.
But she hadn’t said it back.
His rational mind reminded him that her actions before and since that night proved more than anything she could have said. There had been long nights where she just sat on the line with him while he pondered over the loss of his marriage; she’d critiqued and corrected speeches; told him over and over again that the President trusted him; and of course, she was coming to see him. But his heart needed to hear her say the words in return.
The trickle of passengers had slowed to the occasional slow poke and he started to panic.
What if she hadn’t come?
It would have been better if she’d decided not to come; they could break up and be done with it. He could carry on if she just quietly slipped away and remained in the back of his mind; a dream to be brought out on the nights when he was missing her arms around him. He could pull out the memory of her smiling face and her low laughter and he could remember loving someone amazing.
He was, after all, a lucky man. He’d loved three amazing women in his life. Maybe he wasn’t meant to have the luck of being happy with them. Maybe all he was supposed to have was the memory of loving them. It did lead to a better chapter in the biography of his life – the conflicted speechwriter who could only love from afar.
She still hadn’t emerged and he started to actually pace. This was insane. She could have at least called to say she wasn’t coming, that they were over. She could have told him that she wasn’t ready to admit that she was in love, or that she wasn’t in love yet. He could handle that.
“Toby …”
He turned and stopped. She stood there, her arms crossed in front of her, her curly brown hair up in a ponytail, her bright brown eyes shining, even though it was obvious that she hadn’t slept since her last shift.
“Hey …” he swallowed.
She smiled, nervously. “I love you too.”
To Be Continued ...