All characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. The title's from a 10,000 Maniacs song. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback. Noah's Dove Violet
He is not used to being afraid of her.
He has known her for several years, and he knows her moods. He has seen her rip people to shreds for stupidity, for incompetence, for serious and minor transgressions. She has been angry at him and disappointed in him, and he deserved it more often than not. He knows her power. But he is not used to the fear.
Sometimes his mind seizes on certain images, out of nowhere, and his thoughts return to them at odd moments. Lately, he has been thinking about Noah. When he was a child, that story was always about the animals and the fun and the rainbow in the clouds. These days, he thinks about being trapped on a ship, with no direction, no control.
He cannot get used to sitting on the edge of her bed, distantly wondering where his tie ended up. He is not used to finding her stockings inside the sleeve of his shirt. He is not used to watching through the open bathroom door as she dries her hair. And these are things he should have adapted to, by now. Still, in the delicate early light, this casual intimacy is very strange.
It isn't about the sex anymore, although when he touches her, it's hard to remember that. But he can feel his world changing, and she is close to becoming its center, its axis, its core. He cannot help being startled. He cannot help being scared.
She trusted him upon their first meeting; they were arguing politics practically as soon as they'd exchanged names. But he did not give himself away easily, and he is not sure when he started to trust her. It makes sense, looking back. Andrea was busy with Congress, and he was shuttling between Washington and New York, not much happier with his career than C.J. was with hers in Los Angeles. There had to be someone he could talk to. Someone he stayed in touch with. Someone to commiserate. Someone to fight with who wasn't Andrea, because fighting with her soured the little time they shared. C.J. was there.
And here she is on a Monday morning, a bath towel wrapped around her body, leaning close to the mirror since she hasn't put in her contacts yet. He walks out to the living room to find his tie dangling from a lampshade. She calls after him to ask what time it is. He tells her, and she laughs wryly, musing they were still at work six hours ago.
Six hours ago they were in his office, arguing about whether they should play next week's bill signing up or down. They had been yelling at each other, casting aspersions on each other's intelligence, getting loud enough that they attracted dirty looks from the bullpen. They fight like that a lot, these days. Sometimes he thinks that they have boarded this ship blindly, with no idea what they were getting into, although they knew where they were going. They knew what they were doing when he got into her car, when he couldn't even keep his hands off her long enough to let her set the parking brake, when her mouth was hot on his, when she jumped back, realizing that the car was gently rolling backwards. They knew what they were doing when they walked inside, but now he is certain that they had no idea where they would end up.
It is ridiculous, he knows, for a man of his age and experience to be so teenage and desperate. It's ridiculous that he gets so much unspoken, uncertain pleasure from the way she bends her arms beneath her head while she sleeps. It's laughable that he has memorized her smile, the way she tastes, the way she takes her shoes off by nudging one heel with the toe of the other foot. It's pathetic, because he is not a young lover; he is old and cynical and tired. He is sick of himself, and disgusted that he cannot control this.
Spinning is a big part of what they both do. He has said that their job is to craft the message; what he really means is that they spin. They turn raw reality into something palatable, something acceptable, something they can live with. Sometimes it is easy. Sometimes they just lie. He tries to take this thing -- this thing they can't talk about, this thing they don't have words for -- and he turns it a dozen different ways in his head. None of them satisfy him. None of them stick. This thing does not want to spin.
Maybe it doesn't have to. As the glow from the windows slowly brightens her apartment, he is almost able to believe that. There is a pattern they have fallen into, a pattern of embraces and awkwardness broken by laughter, a pattern of shivers and heat. At work, they cycle through flirtation and confrontation and uncomfortable silence, always coming around to amiable friendship again. He is almost able to believe that this is good, that they can transcend these patterns at will, that the highs outweigh the lows. He almost believes that they could be happy.
Then memory bears down on him like a shadow covering the sun. The years flicker through his mind, and he cannot remember happiness without remembering pain. Even if he could be what she deserves, he thinks, there is no way the scars of the past will disappear. That is real to him, and there is no way he can spin that, either.
So instead of spinning there is stasis, between wanting her and wanting to run. He watches her brushing her hair, and thinks about Noah, and forty days of rain. With nothing but blank ocean as far as the horizon, and knowing that thousands had drowned around him, Noah let a raven fly away. It never came back. It strikes him as a colossal act of faith on Noah's part to send out a dove, to believe in dry land again. Surviving is not simple; starting over is not sweet.
She comes out of the bathroom, and the sun behind her makes a halo of her hair, which is longer and lighter than he remembers it when they first met. And as her towel is slipping to the ground and he is getting out of the clothes he just put on, he tries to believe in dry land. As her hands glide over his shoulders and he tastes the now-familiar salt of her skin, he tries to see the covenant and forget the flood. It isn't about the sex anymore. They are making love, and since he is precise with his words he knows the difference.
He is afraid -- afraid of her, afraid for her, afraid that there is no solid ground left. A scriptural fragment rings through his mind: Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. And he tries to believe that too.
Several hours later, when the sun is sinking instead of rising, he remembers something else. The first thing that Noah did when he reached the shore was sink to his knees and pray. The second thing he did was get drunk. And that sounds a little bit like wisdom on this Monday evening. So he closes his laptop and walks out of the White House, not letting himself wonder about whether he will see her sometime later in the night, and which birds fly home and which ones never return.