Characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. Written for the Bordello's Secret Santa challenge. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback. The Little Girls' Room Violet
"I'm trying to figure out how I got here."
*
His fingers in her hair, elbow digging into the bedspread, tensed weight-bearing arm framing her head. Shoulders you could shatter a plank on. He's trying so hard.
Amy closes her eyes and leaves him, even as she arches her spine to grind her hipbones against his. Leaves his room for one in another quarter of the city, imagining 300 thread-count sheets the same maple sugar color as C.J.'s skin. C.J.'s muscles tensing into hers, leaner, softer, but no less strong. Long legs, long arms. Fingers in her mouth, sweet, sticky--Amy tastes her own--with eggnog and nicotine.
Just inside her ear, exhaled laughter and the voice: This should be you.
It's C.J. whose hands she's rocking into, mouth wide open for a kiss that isn't there. When her body gathers and then breaks into a thousand bright, sharp pieces.
Josh falls on her and she lets him. Lets his head lie against her neck, takes his weight, instead of apologizing out loud.
*
C.J. is turned toward the open window and the flat blue snow outside. Holding nicotine in her lungs and, seeming sad, letting it go.
"I didn't know you smoked," Amy says, rinsing her hands in rusty tap water. The bathroom is very bright, glaring pink counters and checkerboard tile. Maybe Amy's had more to drink than she thought.
"I don't, in front of people." A little smile shaped like a hook.
Even past forty, C.J. has that thing, that smoky thing in her eyes and her walk. Tonight her black dress has turned it up to a sizzle. Amy has noticed it, noticed men admiring it, admired it herself. She tries to see if she can make out the sleeplessness, hidden as deep as bone beneath flesh.
C.J. gives her an amused look. She's been caught staring. "Sorry," she lies, "I didn't mean to. I'm just... thinking."
"About what?"
"Stuff you think about in the bathroom." Amy shrugs. "Did I get eggnog on my sweater, is my hair all right, what was I thinking with these boots?"
"I like the boots," C.J. says, eyeing them. Three inch heels, fuck-me boots that have not escaped Josh's attention. Or the attention of some of the pretty blond choirboys who are, inexplicably, all over the bar, lightly toasted and singing Rudolph with strange ad-libs. Amy doesn't ask about the choirboys; these stories usually take her somewhere she doesn't want to go.
She looks at C.J.'s profile and its ghost in the glass. "So what are you thinking about?" she asks. Wincing. Sounds like a little girl.
A laugh dry as powder. "I'm trying to figure out how I got here." C.J. exhales and inhales either smoke or frost.
*
Her bones are a ladder; he climbs up her body. Kisses here and there. She feels his teeth.
"Amy," he growls, "Amy." The hunger in his voice is even more than what comes naturally, as if he has to remind himself that she's real and really in his bed. He can say her name as many times as he likes; she'll never be convinced, completely, that his mind's on her. Some nights she doesn't mind; tonight he's welcome to whomever he wants.
She throws a leg over his waist, calf curving against the small of his back. Torquing her lower body against his. He's wet, hard, heavy, but not so much stronger than she is. She's tempted to lunge and twist and wind up on top. Hold him down and use him.
Instead she keeps him over her. Overwhelming. She sinks her shoulder blades into the mattress like a little girl on her back in the snow. She smells lipstick, smells honey shampoo, and hears her name, but not Josh's voice.
*
"You worked." Amy takes two steps across the checkerboard. "You worked for years. You went to school."
"Not for this," C.J. says. "Not exactly."
Amy leans her hip against the edge of the counter and crosses her arms. Goosebumps under her soft red sweater. C.J.'s closer to the open window, but she doesn't seem to feel the cold. When she exhales her breasts hitch slightly, visible ribs above them. Fluorescent light and the moon. The smoke drifts out the window like a thread drawn into the fabric of night sky.
"That's how you did it." C.J. shakes her head. "You and Josh, you were politicians from kindergarten on up. Not me. I volunteered for a couple things, but I was studying media. PR, for the money."
"Okay, you volunteered for a couple things like Imelda Marcos owned a couple pair of shoes." A delicate snort. Amy goes on, "I'm not kidding. The California fourteenth and twenty-third? Anne Daugherty running for governor of Vermont? Three years in a half-dozen districts with EMILY's list?"
She barely hears C.J. murmur, "Wyatt in the Maryland fifth," as she extends her arm out the window and taps ash, one two three, into the snow that is still gently falling.
Amy moves closer, so they're facing each other in front of the window. The noise of wind whisking by, faint singing from the bar. She looks at C.J.'s eyelids. "Anyway," she says, "in my experience, taking a job that's beneath you just for the money isn't a hell of a good idea."
C.J.'s lips curve, part, and unbelievably, shape a phrase of song. "Just show me the diamonds and I'll let you wear my ring."
Electricity snakes up Amy's spine, starts a warmth spreading through her belly. She's always seen C.J. as beautiful, never seen C.J. as sad. It occurs to her that she hasn't looked at a woman like this in a long time, hasn't looked up into a woman's eyes since she was a schoolgirl. But Washington is a lot like school. Cliques and rumors, passing and failing, popularity contests. Smoking in the little girls' room.
"Let you wear my ring," C.J.'s humming. Her breath tipsy and a little restless, turning into a laugh. Head tipped back against the pink wall. "Hey, Amy. You know something? Something I always think?"
Amy opens her mouth to say something shameless and then closes it again. Puts her chin up. They're standing toe to toe. "What's that?"
Lashes blinking against honey-colored, honey-scented hair. "This should be you."
*
Don't turn on the light, she prays, don't turn on the light.
He doesn't. Undresses in the dark, careless; hell, he'll probably wear the suit again tomorrow. His breathing is loud but she's listening to the last of the snowstorm licking at the windows. She stands at the foot of the bed, already naked. Looking straight past him. Her body like a sheet of plate glass in a too-tight frame, trapped and ready to be smashed by a stone.
Josh comes to her, kisses her hard on the mouth. He holds her waist and lowers her gently to the bed. His copy of Newsweek is splayed on the bedspread, it sticks to the backs of her thighs. His mouth on her breasts; she looks up at the ceiling instead of down at the top of his head. The ends of C.J.'s hair would tickle her, a softer touch, a slower tongue. She can picture this, as if from above. Out of body.
Still, when his fingers open her legs she is ready for it. Leans back, lies back on top of the magazine and everything. His breath on the inner curve of her thigh. A nibble. A taste. Another taste.
He's not trying to impress her, exactly; he's trying to apologize. She doesn't have the heart to tell him it doesn't matter.
*
"No, I'm serious," C.J. insists through their shared laugh, and throws the stub of her cigarette out, still burning, into the snow.
"Yeah." Amy rubs her eyes, flicks a lock of hair into place. Smiles her warm smile. Her mouth is wet. "Sure, let's switch places and see if anybody notices. Like with Folgers coffee crystals."
"I would be damn good at your job." C.J. strokes the underside of her chin. "You write letters."
"Well," Amy says, "there's a little more involved in it than that."
"No, I mean that's a thing that you do. You write letters to the First Lady, and the minority whip, and they take it seriously. And your first concern is..." She breathes in, breathes out. "What's right, what's best, that's your first concern."
"I try."
"I know you do. The thing is, so do I." Her eyes search for something over Amy's head, come back to Amy's face, gray looking out of a purple shadow. That's where the sleeplessness shows. "I talk to Abbey Bartlet, I talk to Nancy McNally, I talk, and I try, and then I go into the Press Room and say what I have to say." C.J. presses dry lips together, shakes her head. "You'd be able to do that, I think. You're harder than I am."
There's nothing to say and Amy says something anyway, because she isn't sure C.J. wants to be kissed right now. Kissed in a bathroom by a friend's sort-of-former girlfriend. Amy wishes she'd had a little more to drink. "The hard part, as I see it, would be putting up with Josh all day."
"Well, you haven't had the pleasure of working under Toby--" She hears herself and gives another dry chuckle. Sounds like it hurts. "I liked EMILY's list and I was good there. I would've been good at your job at the WLC."
"So would I."
They stand close, quieter than the wind sighing at the cracked window. C.J. picks her purse up from the sill, moves the pack of cigarettes to rummage inside. She ignores the mirrors on the wall and uses the windowpane to touch up her mouth. Lips limned in a dark red. Even this gesture looks graceful. Amy wants to stand here longer, drink it in. Wants to go up on tiptoe. She knows, she knows she's the wrong person, but C.J. does need kissing.
"You'd make one kick-ass-and-take-names White House Press Secretary," C.J. says, smiling. "It would take about ten seconds before everyone learned not to leave you out of the loop. And, Amy."
Eyes locked. C.J.'s hand lifts and she plucks a fuzzy pill off Amy's upper arm. Keeps her long, slender fingers there longer than she needs to.
"You look better on C-Span than I do. You're so pretty."
And then C.J. slings her purse onto her shoulder, like a hunter's pack of arrows, and moves away. Ducks back into the bar, and Amy hears a snatch of song before the door swings closed.
She goes back to the sink, runs water into her cupped hands, presses the cold wet to the back of her neck. A muscle jumps in her thigh. She shuts her eyes and can still smell C.J., still feel her shape inches away, see the cigarette sliding between her fingers and lips.
Amy straightens her skirt, nods yes at her reflection. She is pretty. And not entirely unwanted. She walks out of the bathroom knowing that she is walking into Josh's arms.
*
As soon as he's closed the door she is shedding her clothes, humming "just show me your diamonds." His eyebrows jump. He thinks she wants him. She just wants.