Title: Shelter From the Storm 3 � Flowers and Thorns
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 3 of a 3 part series. It will make NO SENSE if you don�t read Parts 1 and 2 first. But, lucky for you I have it online, and you can get it at http://www.geocities.com/juxaposed666.
Also, special thanks go out to Malisita (malisita.com) for betaing this, for encouraging me, and for making this make sense, big thanks to all of you who gave me feedback to say you liked it.
Feedback: At last � DONE! Please let me know what you think at [email protected]
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Shelter From the Storm 3 � Flowers and Thorns
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From Part 2:
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.
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Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
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He braced his hands on the kitchen counter, head hanging down, a shadow in the dim light trickling in from living room. It was 4 AM, he was on his third scotch, and he couldn�t lose the taste of CJ.
She permeated his apartment. Her smell in his sheets, the feel of her mouth on his neck, the stretch of her arms, the taste of her.
�I hurt her because I had no choice.�
He laughed bitterly, the sound loud in the empty kitchen, pushed himself away from the counter and moved to stand at the window, looking out at the quiet dark, and thought about what an asshole he was.
He�d lost her, driven her completely from his life. He might see her at work every day, would discuss fifty things a day with her, big and small, but she would never again put her feet up on his desk, steal half his sandwich, be his port in a storm. She would be cool and professional and she would hate him.
All because he couldn�t admit that he was afraid to love her. Even now, alone with his scotch and his dusty apartment, his instinct was to tramp the thought down. He�d given her his love once before, and it had driven her across three time zones. He�d loved her with an intensity that had consumed him, and Claudia Jean, suffocating, had fled to California just so she could breathe again.
The darkness pressed against him, the silence filled his head, and still the knock was so soft he barely heard it. He turned from the window, began to move toward the door, stopped, thinking he must have been hearing things. The rap came again, light but insistent. A second chance.
He stood in front of the door, took at deep breath, hoped he could explain or find some words, turned the knob. He stepped back to let her in, raised his eyes to meet hers, and saw emptiness.
He stepped out the door, saw CJ moving down the hall toward the stairwell door.
"Change your mind?" He leaned against the jamb, trying to be casual, heart in his throat. As he saw her start to turn at his words, he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down at his own bare feet, terrified at what he might see in her face.
"I, ah�I figured you�d gone to bed." Her voice was quiet and broken, and he looked up to meet her eyes, saw the sadness and hesitation there. She stood halfway down the hall, looking small and distant in the narrow space.
"No. Only normal people are in bed at 4 AM." He ducked his head, paused. "You, ah, want to�" He nodded his head toward the apartment and she went through the door without meeting his eyes, and he closed the door behind them.
They stood in his darkened foyer, silent, Toby in slacks and bare feet, CJ in her trench coat and windblown hair. They were two people who made their living making words do precisely what the wanted, but the words between them were heavy, too unwieldy to spin. So they stood in the dim silence.
He left her in the doorway, went back to the dark window, and the stretch was almost...almost three time zones. He wondered if she could breathe right now because he was suddenly gasping for air, suffocating with a need to explain.
In the twilight of the living room, she could just make out his outline, and his words flowed back to her across the darkness as if his voice came from a quiet place inside her head. Afterthoughts.
"Every time I kiss you, I remember you naked in my bed, telling me how I was going to change the world. I taste this blend of the CJ I remember and the CJ I know now, beautiful, all brilliance and energy." His voice became tighter, the words harsher as he gave over to memory, and CJ stood in the foyer, stunned, coat hanging off one arm. "After you left, I hated you for a while. It wasn�t until Andie and I started having problems that I realized what I'd done to you. Andie said I loved her too much. I didn't think that was possible, but she said I held her back, smothered her. And I realized I must've suffocated you, too, and so�you left." He paused, back still to her, hands shoved deep into his pockets, head bowed.
Her coat fell to the floor, forgotten, as she began to cross the living room towards him. She�d never heard words like this from him, sounding as if they were being ripped out of him. "Toby, you did-"
"Don�t. Please." His tone stopped her words and her movement. "Do you have any idea how much I loved you then? You still don�t know how amazing you were. And you�re even more amazing now. I'll suffocate you again, without even meaning to. I drove you away once, and somewhere in me I love you more than I ever did before."
Her heart did a turn. �Toby Ziegler loves me. He said it.� She couldn�t speak, just crossed the room and wrapped her arms around his waist. He tensed and she kissed his neck, laid her head down on his shoulder and felt years of regret and misunderstandings come flowing back.
"God, I wish I�d known," she whispered. "You thought I left because of you? I left because I was 22 and flighty and selfish, because I was more focused on who I wanted to become than on who I was. I had plans and dreams of what I wanted to be. Being with you, with anyone, wasn't part of that then. By the time I regretted that choice, it was too late to talk about it." She turned her head, buried her face between his shoulder blades, wishing she could take away the years of hurt she�d caused him when she was too young to know any better.
He was still, made no move to touch her or to move away. He�d said his piece, was willing to listen. Toby had trusted her with his words, and she owed him to trust him with hers. She let him go, went to sit on the edge of the couch, elbows on knees, head in hands, staring at the pattern in his area rug.
"I left here earlier tonight, and I was pissed. Really fucking pissed. And I walked and walked and I finally realized that I had no right to be. I wanted to make you be the one to speak first. I wanted to seduce you into being the one to talk. It wasn�t fair for me to be angry with you, when I was just as scared. So, I came back to say I�m sorry. I�m sorry that I hurt you 20 years ago. I�m sorry Andie hurt you. I thought you pushed me away because you were mixing me up with Andie and with the girl I was, that we had become one woman in your head and that you didn�t know me anymore."
At that he turned to look at her, and hearing his movements, she lifted her head, their eyes meeting for the first time since the moment he caught her in the hallway. What she saw made her draw in her breath.
"CJ, there�s only been you for so long. You thought I just needed someone after Andie left, you thought any woman would do, and you happened to be around, and I let you think that. But you�ve been the only one I�ve seen for a long time. I like remembering you as you were, but I also love seeing you as you are. And I took what I could get without giving you anything back, and waited for the day that I took too much and you left again.�
She froze, drawn by the look in his eyes that she�d never seen, a look she thought would never be directed at her, and started toward him. She stopped in front of him, his bare feet making her seem even taller than normal, and his eyes moved to a spot over her shoulder, her nearness unnerving him.
When she finally spoke, her voice was soft, barely a whisper. "Have you ever asked yourself why I�ve been spent the last couple years as your fuck buddy?" He flinched at the term, and she pressed on. "I�ve had other chances, other possibilities, and I never let them come to anything. Because there�s one moment, that one thing you always do, when I feel like the only woman in the world. Because I was addicted to that one moment that I could only get from you." Her voice breaks slightly, and tears shimmer in her eyes. "I don�t even think you know you do it, but your voice, God, I wish you could hear what I hear when you say my name."
His eyes darted back to meet hers, slightly wider as he realized what she meant. "What do you hear?"
"How remarkable you think I am. How you don�t see anyone but me. How much you love me. It's only a moment, two letters." A tear breaks free, and he reaches up to wipe it away, rests his palm against her cheek. "But I live for that. That's why I came back. I thought it could be all or nothing. That I could just walk out and start over. But what I hear in those two letters is more than I would ever want from anyone else."
She turned her face to kiss his palm, her tears washing over his skin as her eyes fell closed. She stood before him, more naked than she ever was in his bedroom, and he slid his hand behind her head, pulled her mouth to meet his.
"CJ," he whispered, finally against her lips, putting everything he had, everything he would always feel for her, into the word, and felt her smile against his mouth.
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And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm,
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
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-FIN-
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