Disco Ball Heart

Author: amerella
Feedback: without_gravity@yahoo.com

Classification: CJ/Toby
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Two Cathedrals
Summary: I got me a disco ball heart / Guess I should grow out of 
this / Before it's too late. – Edie Carey

Thanks: to Abigale, for the encouragement, the Springsteen, and a 
multitude of other reasons.

_________


The music pounds. She doesn't know this one. There's only so much 
time a girl has between stepping up to that podium in front of the 
world and letting Toby Ziegler push her up against too many walls. 
There's only so much time, and she knows it, but she can't help 
feeling severed from the one she used to be, the one who would dance 
to anything.

The music pounds, and it doesn't make her want to move her feet. 
Then he sits down, and she has to move them to give him room. "Buy 
me a drink," he says, waving the barmaid over. "Scotch. Neat." 

"If I'd wanted you to follow me," she begins, but doesn't finish the 
sentence because it's stupid; they come here all the time. They sit 
at this same table and when Sam and Josh come along sometimes they 
call her Elaine.

"If you'd wanted to hide," Toby says. He doesn't finish the sentence 
because he doesn't have to. 

In grade school she had wanted to be Barbara Steisand, because she 
looked good in that little white hat she had on in all the posters 
for the Way We Were, and because she got to kiss Robert Redford. She 
hasn't wanted to be anyone else for a long time, but now she wishes 
that she were Elaine. She'd hate her boyfriend, and he wouldn't be 
Robert Redford, but at least she wouldn't wake up in the middle of a 
Grand Jury investigation.

"I wanna go somewhere different. The next time. Neon lights, you 
know; maybe some disco."

Toby looks vaguely horrified. "Saturday Night Fever, and all that?"

"Well," CJ says, flexing her fingers. "You didn't know me in the 
seventies, Toby. You should have known me in the seventies."

"I should know you now," he says unexpectedly, "But, I don't. Do I?"

"Some. You know me some."

His hand on her knee. "Yes."

_________


Under his stare. She doesn't stumble, but she thinks she will.

"I'll, I'll walk you home?" he asks, as if there is some doubt about 
all of this. She smiles, and forgets about falling. He'd catch her, 
probably, if he weren't so drunk.

_________


"Apocalyptic times," she mutters. The earth smells like it's been 
upturned, which it has. It's like hurricane season in California, or 
what she can recall of it, the sky a rinsed blue, fading now. Trees 
with their medusa roots visible. 

"Yeah," Toby says, and kicks a wind torn branch. It skitters to the 
end of the sidewalk, and he kind of motions towards her 
building. "You want, you want some coffee or something?"

"That's supposed to be my line, I think."

"Well, are you going to say it, then?"

"The world's ending, Toby," she says, instead.

"Yeah," he agrees, not looking at her, frowning at his scuffed 
wingtips.

"Come up for a cup of coffee?"

"Yeah."

The Washington Post is still lying outside of her door from where she 
had neglected to retrieve it that morning. She snatches it from the 
floor, glimpsing Bartlet's name in the headlines, and the word fraud 
in the article, and then she tosses it onto the counter. It rests 
there, like something benign. She's setting up the coffee percolator.

He clears his throat. "You've been walking home a lot." 

"You've been following me home a lot," she says, trying for 
bluntness. 

Toby stands there, in her kitchen, like some kind of permanent 
fixture. "Well." He doesn't ask her if she minds. 

And after not enough caffeine, he kisses her for all the wrong 
reasons, but she kisses him back. 

Against the wall, again.

She probably loves him. Back when things like being in love mattered 
to her, she loved him. He probably loved her. He never said the 
words, but. He's never stayed in a single place for any length of 
time, only DC. And it's mostly because of Bartlet, it's mostly 
because of the Real Thing, and she knows that. But sometimes, the 
way he looks at her, she thinks that it's because of her, a little 
bit. 

"I love the way you dance," Toby says, sometime. "You could do the 
polka, for all I care, and it would be-- But. Disco. You know?"

She lays her head on his shoulder, like they're still kids. His hand 
gets tangled in her hair, and she doesn't care. "Where were you in 
the seventies, Toby?"

"Ah. I was a lot of places. I was a lot of places without you in 
them. It's strange, thinking about that, you know." She does 
know. "I was. Vietnam. Not for very long, and at the end. The end 
of it all." 

"There were other places," CJ says, soft.

"Probably. Probably, there were. I just, I don't remember them."

"You should have known me in the seventies, Toby." 

She wakes up, and he's mostly dressed. "I've gotta go, change my 
shirt, and, uh, yeah," he says, and it seems like they were just 
talking about things like polka and disco and the end of the world. 

"We're highly dysfunctional here. You realise that." It isn't a 
question, and Toby doesn't answer. Her head pounds, and she thinks 
of all of those songs last night that she didn't know. Sunlight 
glares. "Toby?"

He closes the curtains. "Yeah."

"Ah. I was, that's what I was going to ask. The curtains." What 
she really wants to ask him is why they only talk when it's dark, and 
when he's drunk. But then his hand is at the back of her neck.

"Walk me out," he says, the way he says, 'buy me a drink'. And he's 
the only one she allows to talk to her this way, and it's because 
he's the only man she's been on top of that has never said 'I love 
you, CJ'. It's because he knows her some. 

"Okay," she says now, because sometimes that's the only answer to 
give.

With an onyx sky as a backdrop, five little girls have chalk-marked 
the sidewalk. Are playing hopscotch, all coltish legs, and skinned 
knees, and wispy hair.

They stand on her steps and wait for the cab. CJ hops up and down a 
bit, her feet too cold in old clunky sandals. She wonders why she 
doesn't wear sensible shoes, and why she doesn't choose sensible men. 

"I don't, I don't actually know the polka," she says, abruptly. 

Toby's quiet for a long time, and then, "Disco's enough for me, 
CJ." His fingers graze her elbow. "It's enough." Fall away.

_________


End.