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Title: Or Maybe a Goose...
Author: Lyman's Might
Rating: R (language)
Category: Umm...all kinds of people having all kinds
of non-graphic sex? How about Toby/Ann, CJ/Ann,
CJ/Toby? That's slash, boys'n'girls, consider
yourselves warned.
Spoilers: Really minor...they're more references than
spoilers, but I'm nothing if not paranoid... the end
of season two, The Leadership Breakfast, ITSOTG, The
Drop-In
Archive: www.geocities.com/lymansmight/goose.txt
You want it, it's yours, but tell me.

Summary: Sometimes, it's just bigger...

Feedback: The mother's milk of, ya know, writing
stories and hearing back from readers...right...always
appreciated at lymansmight@yahoo.com

Disclaimers: Aaron's.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to ellen m. for being patient
with my bouts of incompetence, for revising many a
time, and for making the God-forsaken thing end.
Thanks to Rose for tossing in another two cents.

**
Or Maybe a Goose...
**

"CJ, shouldn't you be preparing for a briefing, or
annoying Toby, or, I don't know, whatever your job
here is?" Sam asks. "I'm trying to write a speech
here."

"It wouldn't be as fun as pestering you, there,
Sammy," CJ answers as Sam thumbs through a pile of
notes, futilely attempting to look busy. "And Toby's
meeting with Ann Stark."

Sam spins his pen and glances up at her. "Do you," he
asks, sinking into the leather of his chair, "ever get
the feeling we're being infiltrated by blonde
republicans?"

"Yes, Sam." She leans forward, elbows on her knees,
and slips into a conspiratorial whisper, "In fact,
Danny's telling me that it's their secret plan for the
aught-two election."

"You know, CJ," he answers, his voice echoing her
tone. "You say that like it's unheard of, but I always
thought Josh had something devious in mind when he
hired Donna."

"Donna did Josh's filing...we didn't send her on
secret reconnaissance missions on the side." He's
mischievously dubious. CJ looks at him, quirking an
eyebrow. "We really didn't infiltrate the incumbent
administration with blonde democrats, Sam."

"But it wouldn't have been a bad idea." Sam has
stopped making sense, so he looks back down at his
work and begins scribbling notes. But CJ is still
there a couple minutes later, and she doesn't seem to
be leaving. He sets down his pen. "You know Josh slept
with Ann Stark?"

She shrugs. " Josh sleeps with everyone." A wave
passes over Sam's face, laughter fading into disgust,
and he nods. "But the Blonde Republican Plan might
work a little better now that everyone's sleeping with
them."

"I'm not sleeping with Ainsley," he offers eagerly.

"Good, Sam." She laughs, but only briefly, before she
remembers that he was supposed to say, "Toby isn't
sleeping with Ann Stark."

"I just want to," he concludes with an exaggerated
smile. CJ is wondering about Toby, Josh, and Ann
Stark, though, and it isn't Sam's joke, but the
contrast of his mood with her own that wraps around
her chest, shaking her into a chuckle.

"Good, Sam." She stands up, still laughing lightly,
and walks to the door. For some reason, though, she
can't stop speculating about Josh and Ann, so she
turns around, the laughter gone, and asks, "Josh slept
with Ann Stark?"

"See, you mock me, and then you expect-"

"Sam?"

"Yeah. It was a long time ago, I think. Before the
White House. He didn't know who she was. I didn't
really ask because he was sort of, well, you know how
Josh gets," he says.

She leans awkwardly on his doorframe, her fingers
curled around the molding, as she finally lets herself
consider that.  Josh isn't Toby, and it was a long
time ago, but something in that revelation, in Ann
Stark's slow invasion of her life, leaves her dazed.
She collects herself, nods, and says, "Tell Toby I
need to talk to him before the briefing."

**
She had been in college when it had happened, the
thing with the women. She'd been eighteen, tired of
her parents, tired of being Catholic, and tired of
guys who didn't call. So, she rationalizes, it was
almost inevitable.

She'd left that behind, though, in dorm hallways in
California, as something she'd done but didn't do.
Because it'd had been Toby after that, off and on, for
something like a decade. She forgot college because
she hadn't been real in college, and the men, the
women, weren't real either, not like Toby. His jokes
came in growls, his anger in wry indignation, and his
laughter sometimes settled like resignation, and that,
he had taught her, was really what life was like. Not
happy or sad, not flat, not concrete, but everything
at once. With Toby, she was always laughing or crying,
and she rarely knew which.

But around the time she realized that her life was
beginning to hinge on those occasional visits, there
was Andi. Toby's voice had been on CJ's machine in
California, his tone a troubling, transparent
happiness. CJ resented Andi because Andi knew when she
was laughing. Andi was empty, easy, devoid of the
complexity CJ offered Toby. The way Andi yelled at
Toby wasn't the way CJ yelled. When Andi yelled, she
was simply angry, but when CJ yelled at Toby, she was
not only angry but amused, upset, defensive, even
playful. It was a laugh she couldn't voice, the way CJ
yelled at Toby.

CJ had waited for him to notice, to search Andi's
shouts for layers that weren't there. She'd waited for
him to grow restless. But when it became unclear
whether he would ever come back, she'd tried to forget
him. She'd turned to Triton Day, which, she now knows,
was her own Andi. It, too, had been real, as real as
the money in her pockets or the three bedrooms in her
house, but it had been too simple, too empty.

She wonders when Toby knew that Andi wasn't enough.
Whether he'd come to California hoping CJ would be.

When Toby finally came back for her, CJ wondered if it
was only because his marriage had fallen apart, if he
had needed her to fall in love with him again. She
worried that she would end up here, thinking about him
a little too often. Then she'd met Sam and Josh, and
she'd thought the campaign might bring enough
distraction to keep her mind away from Toby. Because
he'd lost hair and gained weight, and Sam and Josh
were beautiful. But Sam's too cute, and Josh is too
Josh, and she's in her office, staring out the open
door, unable to work because there's a good chance
that Toby is fucking Ann Stark right now.

She knows, now, that she always loved Toby, that
though she would never admit it, she had always been
waiting for his return. So if she'd been told, even in
those earliest days of the campaign, that within three
years she'd have slept with Ann Stark because she knew
Toby had, she probably would have admitted that the
idea was within the realm of possibility. Because
there are these things that mean everything, like that
Toby was sitting by her pool the day she was fired
from Triton Day. And there are these things that mean
nothing, like that Ann Stark has birthmark just above
her hip. And then there are these things that she's
done or said, things that mean more than she realizes
until she looks back, years later.

She's nearly quit drinking. Drinking was high school
and college, something weak and childish that she's
tried to give up. Usually, she only drinks with the
boys, in a night of triumph or trauma, and Josh is the
only one hung-over in the morning. Sometimes, though,
when they think she's leaking stories to Danny, or
when she wins the Matrix Award, it's just CJ. And then
she's in a bar, alone, acutely aware that she loathes
this as her finger circles the rim of a glass.

Ann slid onto a stool in one of CJ's nondescript bars
some night between the midterms and Thanksgiving.
Wearing a thin, powder blue shirt, the ends of her
collarbones staring out at CJ, she slid onto a stool,
saying, "Wow, you guys fucked up on AIDS."

The strap of CJ's bra kept falling down her shoulder,
and her hair kept falling into her eyes. For that
night, in the haze of bad lighting and abundant
alcohol, CJ almost felt eighteen again. Ann watched
her with an odd expression, like maybe she wasn't
afraid of her. That meant a lot, right then, because
CJ is too tall, too smart, too often right, and
because even Toby, who can yell at the president and
who, over the years, has seen her every kind of naked,
is somewhat afraid of her.

Toby's fingers had left trails on Ann's skin that only
CJ could see, and CJ wanted to touch her. She wanted
to know that her hands were where Toby's had been,
that she was almost touching Toby. She'd felt that she
could touch Ann because this was back before the
breakfast, when Ann Stark was a nuisance and a
Republican, but not really an enemy. Just someone who
wasn't in the White House, wasn't sober, wasn't quite
Toby.

Ann's shirt was short, and when she reached across the
counter, it pulled up above her navel. She drummed her
nails at the base of her bourbon glass until she was
too drunk to manage that. Her defense of
pharmaceutical companies, whatever it had been,
slurred beyond coherence. She'd flattened her hand,
which was pale, almost ivory, on the counter, and CJ,
trying to remember how this worked, had covered it
with her own.

There'd been blue sheets, and red nails, and expanses
of white skin. It had been sloppy, awkward, and
unbelievably stupid. Then, in the space of a few
hours, it had been over.

There are these things that should change everything,
but, instead, have no consequences at all. CJ had been
in her office the next morning, washing down Advil
with a bottomless white mug of coffee, and nobody had
said anything. Because there are questions nobody
asks. Things that nobody needs to know, questions that
are answered only accidentally, when Sam mentions that
Ann Stark has a nice ass, and Josh feels the need to
swagger.

***

The thing about Toby, she thinks as his face appears
in her doorway, is that he's stopped noticing her.
She's looking at him over her glasses, and there was a
time when he would have teased her. When he would have
looked at her tangled hair and tired eyes and said,"
Jesus, CJ, you look like hell."

CJ recalls the way Ann looked at her, the way it felt
to be discovered, explored. She isolates that
expression from her regret as she turns to meet Toby's
empty stare.  He's looking at her now, and she knows
he doesn't even see her. She's become just another of
these women on the other side of the doors he shows up
at.

There had been times in her life when she'd guarded
herself so heavily that someone could come to her, say
"I'm not, in any way, interested in you," and she
would have blinked and slept with him anyway. Times
before and between Toby, when she'd decided that sex
shouldn't be about certain things, like need or love,
things that didn't exist without Toby.

She needs his duality, needs to feel his devotion
embedded in his betrayal. Somewhere, he's ashamed of
the other women, ashamed of Ann Stark. CJ needs to
know that, even when he's touching other women, he
thinks she deserves better. Because it's too easy to
feel drunk, and sad, and alone, but there's something
to those rare moments when he can make her feel
intoxicated, contented, and adored at the same time.

Ann destroys those moments because Ann isn't Toby's
one-night stand. She's continual, like CJ, and that
forces CJ to wonder if Toby really does value her more
than Ann, if the things Toby makes CJ feel aren't
coincidental. But maybe, she hopes, Ann is just a
strange presence in his life, as she is in CJ's,
someone who appears frequently but randomly, arguing,
or drinking, or sleeping with Josh.

CJ wishes, somewhere in the back of her mind, that Ann
Stark would stop sleeping with the Bartlet
Administration. But, also, she remembers cool sheets
with the faint smell of perfume, and she smiles a
soft, wry smile, and she stifles a bitter laugh
because Toby might be remembering that smell right
now. The mix of emotions, the faint thrill of Ann's
tongue in her ear, and the disgust of picturing the
same tongue in Toby's, blur together. She almost needs
to write this all down, in neat columns, in separate
colors, to convince herself that these things she's
feeling contradict at all.

"Sam told me you wanted to see me," Toby growls from
the doorway.

"How was Ann?" A question that's a little too
well-phrased, she scolds herself. Still, it's only
because he's looking at her that he knows what she's
asking.

He touches his face, his beard. He does that often,
even before he had a beard, he did that. "Fine," he
says through his hand. He shoves the edges of his coat
away, pressing his hands to his hips, sort of
indignant, sort of contrite. He sighs, almost a laugh,
and repeats, "Ann Stark was fine."

He clears his throat. " Sam said you wanted to see
me."

"Yeah, Danny said something about Nick Campbell
jumping ship on the Scholl bill." She stops, and for a
long moment, she's just staring at him. "Do, um," she
stumbles again. He purses his lips. "Do you know
anything about that?"

Toby runs his hand through the hair he doesn't have.
She knows that she could have asked Josh, or Sam, or
nobody at all because the bill isn't close to hitting
the Senate floor. She just wanted him here, where he
wasn't fucking blonde republicans. She wonders how
much of this Toby has realized as he swallows, looks
past her, and says," I'll talk to Josh. See what I can
turn up."

He can't wait for an answer, another layered question,
or whatever it is she'll say to him. He pats his hand
twice against her door frame, nods, and walks away.

**

Toby's back in her office as the sun is setting. He
stands just inside the doorway, and she hadn't thought
much about Ann Stark until Toby was there again,
looking afraid of her. "The lid's on?" he says by way
of greeting. She nods. "Josh says it's nothing to
worry about. What Campbell said was conditional, he
has a problem with an amendment that's not going to
make it anyway."

She can't remember why she'd asked him instead of
asking Josh or telling Danny that no number of inane
tips would make her sleep with him. She can't remember
how she thought this would help.

"Okay, well, thanks." She's writing with a John
Kennedy pen that he bought for her in the Arlington
gift shop in the days after Rosslyn. He stares at it,
at her hand, taking a hesitant step toward her desk.

"CJ, I...You, um, you knew this wasn't important," he
grumbles.

She stops writing, the drop of the pen punctuating the
silence. She looks up at him, trying to lock onto his
eyes as they dart around her. "Yeah."

"And you knew that Josh could have told you that. Or
even Sam, but you told him to get me."

"Yeah," she repeats.

"So it really wasn't about Danny or fuel standards,
then...it was about..." He stops. His gaze flies
around the room; he's looking at the ceiling when he
finishes, "It was about Ann Stark, CJ."

"Your skills of deduction never fail to amaze,
Tobias," she says, more to her Bartlet Inauguration
mug than to him.

"Look, CJ, about that. I," Toby falters as he looks at
her. He scratches the back of his neck, freeing his
breath through a small hole in his lips. "You look
tired, CJ."

"Well, I've only been doing about a million briefings
a day, lately, Toby. So I'd, ya know, I'd say I'm
holding up pretty well."

"God, CJ, that's not what I meant." He stops
apologizing though, because it's CJ, and she's angry,
she's disgusted with him, but in her distant banter he
hears that she's too tired to handle this now. "Let me
take you to dinner."

Her eyes run over him for a minute. Toby squirms and
smiles weakly. "Toby, I-"

"Just dinner, CJ, you don't even have to go with me. I
can go, I can go find Josh. You just need to get out
of this office."

"You're right," she says after a minute. "But I think
I'm just going to go home, Toby."

He nods, wanting to ask if he can go with her. The
answer should be "no," but he's not sure it will be.
He's not ready to know what that means. "I...look,
CJ...it wo-" he tries before giving up. His shoulders
roll into a slump. "Okay. Good night, CJ."

**

She can't stand this, the memory of Toby slinking back
to his office, so she knocks on his door at ten
o'clock.

"Look, Toby, you didn't do anything...I mean, I don't
really have a right to be angry at you, and I know
that. So..."

His face is blank; he looks through her. "It's just
that sometimes with you, Toby, everything is just
bigger. It isn't that she's blonde or a Republican. It
isn't even that you're screwing her. It's that she's
the Senate majority leader's chief of staff, you know.
Her boss...her boss is viciously attacking the
president to anyone who will listen. Our president,
Toby, President Bartlet. And we might not survive
anyway, even if we all stick together. But we're
certainly not going to survive if we don't."

Toby throws his hands into his pockets, gathering
handfuls of fabric in his fists. "I'm not going
anywhere!" he shouts. "Enough with Leo and his life
boat, enough with the president and his questions,
enough with you and that God-damned look you keep
giving me. I'm here, CJ. I'm pissed as hell, but I'm
here, and I'm not leaving."

She sits on his couch, letting him yell, knowing that
he's not really yelling at her. "I'm sorry that you
don't like Ann Stark, but did you ever think that
maybe this isn't some sweeping sign of betrayal? That
maybe this isn't some little tryst calculated to screw
the president? Do you hear how bizarre that sounds,
CJ?  Did it ever cross your mind that maybe it isn't
so fucking easy for middle-aged, divorced political
God-damned operatives to find beautiful women to go
home with, and it's not something that's easy to pass
up?" He's shaking a little, and he looks tired. CJ
remembers when he could rant like this for hours. He
drops into a chair and rubs little circles on his
temples.

He leans forward after a minute. He looks too small,
halfway balled up, and he's stopped yelling. He speaks
to the ground in a methodical whisper, "CJ, you are a
beautiful woman, and you are brilliant, and it's about
God-damned time I didn't have to tell you that
anymore. I haven't stopped thinking about you since I
met you. Not for Andi, not for Ann fucking Stark. You
know, I never even cared so much when I lost
elections, because I knew you were watching somewhere,
and I knew you'd call to tell me that I'd get a
landslide the next time. I knew you'd come back for
me, and if you didn't, I'd come back for you. Because
I feel you, across state lines, across time, and you
pull on me, and you... You know this, CJ, so stop
making me tell you. Because I'm not good at saying it.

"It's too much, CJ," he sighs. Then, he whispers over
fingers steepled to his lower lip, "because there's a
presidency now, and you aren't a girl I met at a frat
party anymore. There's MS, and nuclear threats, and
all of these things that are so much bigger than I am.
So much more important, to you and to the world...I
can't handle that I have to wade in pretense every
time I talk to you...I can't handle that I have to get
you drunk before I can touch you. That I fucked this
up, with my job, and with Andi, and without the right
words. And sometimes I'm just sitting across the table
from a beautiful blonde, and she's talking politics
with me like I'm not nearly pushing fifty, and I know
that if I act like she's not a raving bitch, she'll
let me touch her without getting her drunk first. She
is a raving bitch. God damn it, you know I know that.
But she's there, CJ, and sometimes that's what
matters."

Somehow, she's now lying down, her arm resting over
her eyes. "You're a jack-ass and a moron, you know
that, Toby?"

He laughs, and the room quivers. She's still angry at
him, still has a lump in her throat ready to explode
into tears or laughter. But then he sits on the coffee
table, touches her hand; he smells of cigars and
cologne. Considerations, reservations, pull her in all
directions until he rests his hand on her stomach. His
touch burns through her thin blouse, and she places
her own hand on top of his.

She remembers how this works.

"You never," she starts. "You never had to get me
drunk. You just always did."

His fingers, in her hair and on her skin, are real,
more real than Ann, more real than anything. So when
he reaches for her, expecting her to reach back, she
just smiles wearily.

"You just always did."

**
end
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