Title:
Shelter From the Storm 2 - Walls and Signals
Author: juxtaposed
Category: CJ/Toby, Angst
Rating: PG-13 for a little language
Disclaimer: All characters are property of Aaron Sorkin, NBC
and The West Wing. No infringement intended. The song is "Shelter From
the Storm" by Bob Dylan.
Archiving: Please, just let me know where!
Spoilers and Timeline: No Spoilers, but this takes place somewhere early in Season 3.
Notes: This is part 2 of a 3 part series. It will make NO SENSE if you don’t read Part 1 first. But, lucky for you I have it online, and you can get it at http://www.geocities.com/juxaposed666. This story will be completed in Part 3 - Flowers and Thorns.
Also, special thanks go out to Malisita (malisita.com) for betaing this, and for encouraging me, and all of you who gave me feedback to say you liked it. So far, so good.
Part 3 will go up at www.geocities.com/juxtaposed666 when finished.
Feedback: I emailed my beta and threatened her bodily harm to hurry her up, 'cause so many of you wanted Part 2 right away. See, your feedback really does work! Please keep it coming at [email protected]
Archiving: Sure, just let me know where.
Shelter From the Storm 2 – Walls and Signals
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Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed.
Just to think that it all began on an uneventful morn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
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From Part 1:
His eyes watched her approach, waited as she looked down on him, widened as she straddled his lap. Instinctively his hands came up to cup her shoulder blades as she leaned into his body and whispered his name against his neck. Swing away.
*******************************************************
He sucked in his breath at the sensation, wrapped in the scent and feeling of CJ. His mouth moved to nip at her breasts and she leaned back, her weight resting on his flattened palms, neck arched, head back, hair falling down to tickle the backs of his hands.
She was entrancing. He wanted to slip inside her skin, breathe her in. He longed to own her, bottle her up and lock her away where she would belong to only him.
But she was CJ. She belonged to no one. Her light was her own, and he had no right to ask her to give it to him. He knew he could never settle for a piece of CJ’s soul, and he knew a piece was all she would ever give up.
His lips continued a trek across her collarbone and she flexed her body, her hips bumping his lightly. Against his mouth he could feel the hum of pleasure in her throat.
He dragged his mouth from her skin, leaned back against his chair, watched as she pulled her head up, met his eyes. He said nothing, just watched her, hands at her back, index fingers massaging circles against her spine.
He knew words were necessary in the face of this unprecedented breach. “That was unexpected.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Is unexpected good or bad?”
“Unexpected.” He couldn’t give her the words she wanted. Protection in the form of flippancy. He wanted to tell her it was for her own good.
She sighed, her eyes falling closed for a moment. She opened them again, stared at him as if to see if his face had changed. With surprising grace for the position she sat in, she bent her knee, swung her leg over and moved off his lap. She left the room, and he heard her rustling around in the living room.
Since her clothes were still on his floor, he didn’t figure she was going far. He sat, eyes closed, his head back against the wall and tried to forget the feeling of CJ’s mouth against his throat. Moments later she returned, a lit cigarette between two long fingers.
She sat in the middle of his bed, leaned back against the pillows, drew in the smoke. He couldn’t see her eyes in the dark shadows of his room, but could see her outline in the dim light that slanted across the bed from the crack in the door, long limbs against his white sheets.
“You know, even I don’t smoke in my bed.” He was still in his chair in the corner, beyond the light from the door.
She flicked ash into an empty coffee cup on the night table, blew out the smoke on a sigh. “You could come over here and stop me.” She stretched her arms above her head, and he watched her muscles, the way her skin seemed to glow in the dim light, a slight haze around her from the cigarette smoke. She seemed unearthly at this moment, a naked specter he had brought to life in his bedroom because he couldn’t have the real CJ.
He closed his eyes and watched her move inside his head. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
He heard the harshness in her laugh. “Well, there are a lot of things about me you haven’t taken the time to learn.”
Sensing movement, his eyes opened, and he watched the lights of a passing car crass the ceiling, listened to CJ’s feet sliding across his sheets. He turned his head to watch her, saw that she had moved from his bed to the shadows. She was still nude, and she seemed uncomfortable but resolute, as if she was trying to convince herself or him of something with the very fact of her nakedness.
He closed his eyes. He couldn’t look at her anymore. CJ was something beyond the world he lived in. The very fact of her presence, the sound of her feet on the floor as she moved, unnerved him.
He wanted to be alone, to forget the moments inside her, to forget the feeling of her tightening around him. Sex with CJ was bad enough, something he pretended he wanted from her to give him the opportunity to see her off-balance, to see her as he remembered her from long ago. To continue to have her here like this battered at the defenses he built to protect them both.
In those moments inside her, he was most vulnerable; those few moments were when he almost slipped, almost asked her to give her soul into his keeping. It was a burden he desperately wanted, feared he couldn’t handle, knew she’d never give.
“Don’t you have a thing tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Today, actually.” She leaned back against the wall, grace embodied.
“Shouldn’t you get some sleep?”
“I can’t sleep with you sitting there in the dark, holding court like the Godfather.”
He twitched, almost smiled, wanted to. But he had rules, to guard him from trying to possess her. It was his job to protect her from him, no matter what she did.
“Then maybe you’d sleep better in your own bed.”
He heard her sigh, heard the creak of the bed as she sat. “Are you looking at me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You’re naked. I’m embarrassed.”
“Funny. You’ve seen me naked before. Look at me.” Her tone allowed no denial.
He opened his eyes, saw her curled on the bed with a pillow on her lap, managing to look about 12 years old. “I’m looking.” He wished he wasn’t, didn’t want to see her looking so fragile.
“Do I have to ask you out loud? Because I will.” She paused and he waited. He knew what was coming, knew he should stop her. He'd known for years that one day she would want to end it one way or another. He was going to hurt her because he wanted to hear the words, even if the words would hurt them both. “I want to stay. Let me stay.”
They were barely a whisper, and he felt his heart constrict, the breath drawn painfully out of his lungs as if CJ had become a vacuum that sucked in all the air around her. He knew what she was offering, but he also knew that for him, it wouldn’t be enough. If he started, he would take and take until she ceased to exist. The CJ he loved would become a memory that lived only inside him, and eventually she would resent him for destroying her.
“No.”
She jerked as though he’d slapped her, then stood, the pillow she clutched falling to the floor. “This can’t be all your way any more.” She crossed the room, started pulling on clothes.
He sat, motionless, eyes locked to following her movements, the stretch of her limbs as she dressed. He knew she was pissed, knew she was going to hate him. He knew he was a selfish bastard, but he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t help her. He kept watching her, soaking in the beauty of her body and her anger, knowing he would never see her like this again.
Finished dressing, she pulled her hair from under her collar, spun to face him, and her broken look made him want to wrap his arms around her waist and bury his face in her stomach and beg her forgiveness. She looked ready to collapse on his floor under the weight of his gaze.
“Stop fucking watching me. I’m not CNN for you to analyze and I’m not a doll for you to pull out when you need a good fuck.”
“CJ…” he started. His own voice surprised him, the ragged sound of it. Her whirl of motion stopped, her hands dropped to her side. “I…I can’t give you what you want.”
She laughed, and the bitter sound of it grated. “The thing is, you can. What are you afraid of? You might love me and I might leave you? People change. But you’ll never know, because you’re too much of a coward to try and find out what it is I want.”
She crossed the room, stood over him. “You think you know? You’ve never asked. There are a lot of things about me you don’t know.” She leaned forward and kissed him, hard, her tongue sweeping his mouth, dominating him. “I’m not Andie, and I’m not 22 anymore. Too bad you can’t see that.”
She turned and left the room. He leaned his head back against the wall, watched the movement of the smoke she’d left behind, and tasted CJ in his mouth. Moments later, he heard the door slam.
He sighed and licked his lips and felt the darkness constricting around him. Now he knew what regret tasted like.
*************************************************
She wondered just how much of her was left floating around Toby’s bedroom. She’d asked, she’d done it, swung at the final pitch, knowing what he was going to say, knowing it would be a strike. And when he said it, she’d felt herself physically come apart and recombine into a new person. A lesser person, because she was sure pieces of her still lingered in the smoky darkness of Toby’s apartment.
She found herself on the dark street at 3 AM, coat wrapped tight against the wind, her tears cold on her skin. She wondered if the trails would freeze, leave burn marks on her face, a tangible reminder that she’d cried for him.
Head down, she started walking, not caring about destination or route, just walking to be someplace other than inside his circle of interference. Being too near to Toby changed her, made her softer, younger, more idealistic. Inside his circle she ceased to be CJ and became Claudia Jean.
She still remembers the hot New York sunshine, a broken shoe, a young Toby in a polo shirt with gentle hands and a mocking smile.
‘Nothing is important enough to break your ankle over, Stretch.’ She can hear his voice in her head as, in her memory, he helps her hobble to a bench after she almost tumbled into his arms.
‘If I miss this interview, a broken ankle will be the least of my worries.’
She can feel his hands on her leg, remembers her eyes widening when this stranger leaned down and pressed a light kiss to the bend where her ankle met her foot, smiled up at her. ‘Nothing broken.’
She missed her interview, and they shared sandwiches in a tiny deli, spent the afternoon making love in his apartment.
Eight months later she went back to California, and six years later she ran into Toby at a fundraising dinner, and the easy smile, the gentle touch was gone, replaced by something darker that he never explained and she never questioned.
She left him the first time, but now she was 20 years older. Now she was CJ, and she was with a man who made her want to be Claudia again. She wanted to be allowed to make love to Toby with both of them sober, with the sunlight streaming in the window and long afternoons talking politics in the nude.
She knew the problem, knew he was mixing them up in his head, Andie and Claudia and CJ combining into one woman bent on his destruction. Claudia skipped off to California without looking back. Andie couldn’t love him as much as he wanted. CJ was all that was left for him, and she scared him to death.
CJ, who embodied the only two women he’d ever loved. CJ, who would probably leave, who was too independent, who couldn’t love him enough. Claudia had hurt him when she was too young to know better. Andie had been older, more deliberate, deadly.
He was blinded by the CJ he created, and what he couldn’t see was the CJ that lived outside his head. Old enough to know what Claudia hadn’t, loving him enough to be more careful than Andie had been.
She wanted to speak, to scream, to make him listen. Toby, with his quiet eyes and his ungodly fear of loss. Wanted to tell him she was just as afraid.
She wanted to speak, but Toby was all that was left for her, and he scared her to death. If she gave him her words, it gave him that much more power over her. She tried the only other way she knew to make him listen, and she’d nearly imploded. She only knew that she couldn’t keep having pieces of him, so she just would just live without him.
-FIN-
This story is completed in Shelter From the Storm 3 - Flowers and Thorns
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