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i.
Toby isn't prepared for his reaction. He doesn't realise for a moment that the thunderclap that just exploded in his face was the sound of his fist connecting with Sam's jaw. The taste of Sam's tongue is still there on his lips but inside his head there is a great tumult: a thousand red waves, washing out the delicate overtures Sam's mouth made, drowning them.
Sam makes a little sob, blood-choked. It sounds involuntary, and he looks ashamed before he looks angry, which comes second and only in a flash. The blush could be just the bruise, spreading out over his face. There is a red trickle from his split lip and all the other colours in the room seem to dim against it, and then become subsumed within it; all shades of red now.
Toby stands over him, towering. He doesn't feel any pain. He feels like a thunderstorm, rising, swallowing all the air in the room and spitting it back out over anything white and sweet and untouched. He is a bruise-coloured shadow rising over Sam.
He picks Sam up, one fist in the front of his shirt and the other at his hip, fingers ignoring the warmth of Sam's waist, its leanness. Toby pushes him towards the door of the office.
"Get out."
"Toby -- "
"Get out!"
Sam has his hands up by his face. It looks like instinct; like a pretty sensible instinct, Toby thinks absently. The blood has smeared over his mouth. Now it looks like a cherry juice stain, the same purple-crimson that suggests a new contusion. Toby finds himself wondering whether his Deputy's lips will swell up, what that might look like.
"Toby, what the hell is -- "
"Get out of here, Sam."
"What are you ... " he stops, spits out the blood and saliva that were obstructing his words into his hand. "Are you going to beat me into -- "
"Yes," he says, in the voice that he spent months teaching Sam meant business, no deal, no dice, don't fuck with this. "Please don't make me convince you that I'm serious."
Sam looks up at him. There are tears in his eyes, the kind that spring up in response to broken jaws, and possibly to unexpectedly destroyed idols. Or just the product of a fat lip and a slap around the face; water in the eyes. But how can Toby help it if he finds that beautiful, and terrible?
"Please, Sam."
Sam nods once and opens the door shakily, and walks out.
ii.
Earlier that year.
There is a physicality in the wrangling of words that nothing else in Toby's life touches: the sinuosity of a comma, lying misplaced in a sentence, that he stares at, captivated, his finger hovering over the backspace key; the architecture of stray page of a speech, beautiful in its rise and fall, its skylines dark and high; the shape of some words in his mouth, how some are heavy and some sugar-light -- melting before he has a chance to throw them out into the air; how some words are natural betrayers and cling to his tongue or fall over his teeth to go and lie broken and misunderstood at the feet of some more golden person; and how some gatherings of words are like a body -- something he would gladly throw himself against, dash his own body across, and break and bruise himself, or insert his fingers into the white spaces and cup the words in his hands, feel their weight and warmth and read them out loud just for the pleasure of their tastes and textures in his mouth, and lose himself forever in the possibilities of a page of good prose.
Occasionally when he fucks his wife, when the endless argument they are having with each other centres its maelstrom on their bodies and not their opinions, he finds words like these written on her. Like some graphic designer's nightmare he sees sentences in stripes up her back where his fingernails have scored lines, whorls, and bite marks under the swell of her breasts that spell out some kind of perverse love poetry he would never commit to paper but which stays hidden in her until the rush of their blood brings it to the surface of her skin.
Yet he knows that these words have nothing to do with her: that they were made out of his frustration -- his furious desire to burn down all the bridges there are and torch the ships and set alight the town. Let fall this house of cards.
He has never particularly felt like holding Andrea responsible for his flirtations with self-destruction. The mistress has never given the wife even close to a run for her money. But Toby sometimes wonders if Andy understands that, and if she does whether she thinks it a good enough explanation for this darkness he brings home with him; whether the sparks they make in the night make up for that darkness; whether they can ever be bright enough.
He will close his eyes tightly and fuck her desperately. He will wonder who he is that there are days when he cannot think of anyone except her and days when he drives around Dupont Circle in tireless concentric loops, zeroing in on a target whose name he does not know and does not care to learn but whose body -- appearing in fragments, silent offers, codes he does not remember having learnt -- is his one red thought.
They don't have secrets from each other. It's hard to keep secrets from someone with whom your main method of communication is passionate argument; the never-ending debate team game of tag where there are no winners because the argument is about the nature, the fundamental condition, of life, and neither of them have any answers that work longer than a week or a month or, if they are really lucky, a single term of executive office. Toby knows that; Andy knows it too.
They don't have any secrets, except this one.
iii.
Brooklyn, 1975.
He can feel the myriad dirts crowding at his fingernails as he leans against the wall. He can feel them sinking like rotten boats into the canals of the lines on his palms and making the already dark curls at the back of his head truly black.
But the dirt is his last concern and the last thing that his supercharged body could care about, made up as it now is of a thousand tiny explosions directing forward motion against this anonymous body that is pinning his own to the wall. The nameless man's fingers make little invisible sparks against Toby's neck, his lips kindle mouth-sized fires that pass between them and scorch both their tongues, his thigh rubs friction burns through Toby's jeans and wear through a dime-sized hole that Toby could have sworn wasn't there this morning.
The guy's fingers are at Toby's zipper now, pulling apart the sides, and as the he sinks to his knees his mouth joins them. His open mouth is a gyre of wet warmth. He sucks through the cotton of Toby's boxers and his bristle-covered cheek brushes against the uncovered inches of Toby's thigh. Friction burns.
Toby presses his hips back against the wall for a second, two, ten, almost a minute. Then he bucks up into the stranger's mouth and the guy chuckles around the hard part. His fingers scrabble around the waistband of the boxers, pulls them down and over, and goes back and runs his fingers over the tightness of the fabric, as though he's pondering something; what colour to get his next pair in.
Instinct-strong, for a moment, Toby closes his eyes and moves the particles of his cock three inches into the future. Everything goes blood-red, violent.
But.
The guy's head is pressed close into Toby's crotch. He has thick dark hair, cropped short. There is sweat gathering around his hairline in tiny beads, blossoming on his skin, shimmering. Toby thinks about raising the tips of his fingers to the guy's forehead and blurring this sheen; writing his name in the steam on the bathroom mirror. Then he does it. The guy's skin is warm, of course. Soft, smooth. The sweat on his brow slides as it meets the sweat on Toby's thumbpad and Toby smiles.
The guy looks up. His mouth is unnatural around the shape of Toby's cock. It stretches sideways, drawing concentric half-circles in his cheek; tiny furrows, holding the ugliness of this act, and as Toby keeps on looking, its combustive splendour. He strokes the guy's hair with a gentleness that surprises him. Like he could almost care.
Then the future arrives. Everything contracts to a single point, blazing, then explodes to a field of stars.
Toby leans his head back against the wall and waits for it to hit him. It does as he is zipping up; that is when it usually comes. Shame is grey, greasy like the counter-tops in a diner in Queens. It gets under Toby's fingernails. He wants to wash his hands.
"You're Jewish, right?"
Toby raises his head slowly, eyebrows already raised, like this is some hobo off the street asking the question.
"Right?"
Toby wonders, anger rising familiarly, if this just occurred to the guy after he's had Toby's dick in his mouth for a quarter of an hour; whether there is something beyond the circumcision that just screams Jew to this beautiful idiot -- some genetic marker of effeminacy, of book-learning and the rustle of quietly made money rising out of the curly, black hair; something inescapably Semitic about the guy who just came over his cheek.
"Yeah," Toby says. "Why?"
"No, I just. I figured."
"You suck a lot of Gentile cock that you can tell the difference, huh?"
"Jeez, man. I didn't mean anythin' by it."
"You gonna draw me some conclusions about Jews and queers now?"
The guy holds his hands up; Toby notes the dirt clustered around the lines in his palms.
"I was just making conversation."
Toby glowers at the guy; hopes that this makes a solid impression. "Yeah. Okay."
"I guess I'll see you."
"Yeah. See you around, pal."
iv.
Washington D.C., 1994.
It is instant, like a smack in the face. Congresswoman Andrea Wyatt: a little firework party over at the corner of the bar. Fourth of July and it's come early. The colour of her hair makes him want to reach for the kind of similes he despises and throw them at her, see if she can hold on to the pitch. After a few Martinis on her side and a few more Jack Daniel's straight-up on his it turns out that she can. The fifth hour that they know each other is the first they spend in bed. She gives him no quarter, she won't let go, she won't give up her constant needling of him and yet he finds that they fit together like baseball in glove. She pushes and he pulls and there are marks in the morning -- red lines around her wrists and purpling bruises in perfect reproduction of her (it seemed to him) incredibly sharp incisors on his neck, a few more on his shoulders, and a few where they won't show on her, where her thighs open up, where he understands what the world means and where he fits inside it.
Mostly the argument -- the Argument that stands for all the little fights and disagreements and the things that are slowly hollowing out a chasm between them that will one day be deep enough for the fall to break his neck -- is fun. He finds it exhilarating, and she loves to push his buttons, and he'd be an idiot if he didn't understand that all the adrenaline is doing amazing things for his sex life. And as the world contracts around her and he buys a ring and starts composing a particularly difficult speech in his head, none of the crap seems to matter all that much; nothing they can't work out, one way or another.
Andrea shuts down the part of his brain that is always wondering, always considering -- the possibilities and the what ifs, and the couple of memories he has of his few steps down the road not travelled, they fade out. It wouldn't be honest to say that everything in his world is about her, but everything good seems to be: as candidates fall and flake out, as he gets fired time on time, she stays herself, and she stays with him.
They get married in the spring of 1995. And for a time Toby switches off everything else in his head and does nor -- or cannot -- hear the noise they make between them, until it has already become deafening.
v.
At first he only watches.
Alleyways have secret places, alcoves. He makes himself a part of the darkness, draws brickwork patterns on his face with his desire for anonymity. He feels more affinity for the walls than the men fucking against them and arousal never seems to hit him -- not in those first months -- until he's home, parking his car or in the shower and sometimes, if he holds his breath and the cascade of his thoughts, when his wife turns out the light. Walled-up man, he takes what he can get of the comfort that the half-lies give, and sometimes he goes too far: Andrea, never surprised by anything they do only with their bodies, is thrown off-balance once or twice by tenderness where there should have been sarcasm; a smile where she was sure she would see his raised eyebrow; his dark eyes that ought to hold secrets she could always read before are, once or twice, opaque.
She knows, but she does not know what she knows.
The blunt alleyways become streets and the streets stretch out into a secret city. Toby keeps a map in his head. He is looking for a door, a way in; a place that is safe. He can feel it tugging on him.
He journeys a long time, it seems to him. The secret city that he left so young grows dark and marvellous and he loses hold of the thread that he hoped would keep him safe in the labyrinth. He doesn't care so much. He counts his footsteps and the turns, left and right, and he always takes off the dark and the longing before he turns his key in the lock of his own door, removing them like clothes. Andy holds him, tighter -- with anger mostly -- now; her slim white hand lying like a scar over his hipbone. Her fingernails are within millimetres of his cock, and to Toby the closeness feels proprietary. He dreams about the city.
Eventually, he finds it.
It's just a bar like any other, off the Circle like most of the others. On the unwritten list. Toby's spent time in worse bars, and he doesn't mind so much that his jacket sleeve sticks to the counter, or that on Friday nights the whiskey appears to have been mixed down with diesel oil, or that the faces of all the other men here look exactly like his: a pale thing under fluorescents, with the more banal kind of evils smudged under their eyes, and something desperate around their mouths. Even the younger guys look that way; the ones whose tans only go as far as their collar lines, whose shirts have unwise monograms, who remind Toby of things he would rather forget. Some of them look at him: asking.
He isn't ready yet. The path down into the dark is rocky and steep. Toby is still considering his down payment.
So, at first, he just watches. There are places for guys like him; those not brave or curious or foolish enough to really get involved. Places that wrap around you and keep your secrets, and give you cover for the dirty little comes, and the huge swoops of aching that follow. And Toby likes the shadows, since they are friendly, or at least familiar. So that is where he stays, for a little while.
It's a little like an exhibition, in 3D. Something ostentatiously artistic at MOMA. Something that would make him roll his eyes if this was daylight at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
But, since it isn't.
He watches. And he understands, a little better with every night he dares there, what it is that excites the torrent of words he finds in his head on the drive back to his wife, and her bed. Not like a woman, this desire, not like a woman whose softness and impossible beauty in his hands and under his tongue is closer for Toby to the familiar fantastic rush he gets from seeing a home run at Yankee Stadium; the beauty of a man is stranger: the twentieth century poetry of desire, all synapses and pattern-finding; abstract, exhausting. He wonders, in the early weeks, whether that will ever change and two men fucking will become more than just a thought problem, and a memory he half thinks of as a dream. This occupies him for a while, like solving the New York Times crossword on a Saturday morning.
But he writes all the clues out in ink, no second chances.
And one night he looks harder than he has on any of the other nights, and, as if those thoughts of his are bright darts in the blackness, striking broad shoulders and skinny hips and unwashed hair and the same eyes as the ones he sees in the mirror lately, he draws a little attention.
There aren't any men here who make his heart thump. There is no one here he finds beautiful. But it doesn't really matter. There are, instead, some who won't take no for an answer -- a young guy, maybe thirty-five at the outside, not tall or muscled or in any way physically remarkable except for strong hands and a desperate face. He takes hold of Toby's hand, and then slips his fingers up to Toby's collar and when his skin brushes against Toby's there is a spark, then an explosion: this unremarkable kid turns a key and an engine starts, chugs, and chokes Toby's throat with smoke which he breathes out into the other man's mouth.
He never gets a name off the other guy; wouldn't really want one, because he's bound to work for the RNC or the Majority Whip or be the son of a businessman from whom Toby will one day beg for money. Instead he gets a catalogue of physicalities, all indexed and cross-referenced. He would recognise this man again in the dark, in his sleep, and if he walked into the Bullpen and knocked on Toby's office door on Monday morning. Toby gathers up the smells and tastes and sights: stupid things, like the shape of his heavy upper lip in Toby's mouth that later Toby tries to recreate with the length and roundness of his own index finger, at home, after a glass or two of good whiskey and an argument with his wife. He forgets his own responses, hardly remembers his orgasm, comes back to himself after the sensitivities have been dialled back down and everything is ordinary and plain again, with a cramp in his thigh muscles and a looseness in his hips, and a half-naked young man looking up at him, with a sweet smile in his eyes rather than his mouth.
That first time he runs, fast and sick, sweat stinging his eyes by the time he gets back to the car where he sits for ten minutes before he can even turn the key in the ignition, listening to his breathing. He drives home, showers and changes his clothes, thinks about throwing them out. Andrea is out and hasn't told him where, so by the time she turns her key in the lock he is dark-drunk and trying to hold on to the thing that he knows he must not talk about.
But he goes back. When the fights have become mindless battles over territory and the only object either of them have is to reopen as many old wounds as possible, and he knows damn well that each night they do this pulls another page off a calendar that is running low on dates, and he is weak under the weight of all the words he keeps only for her, and how he loves her, and how exhausted he has become from that love.
"You come home and ... I don't know you," she says, late, in their bed one night. "Something in you is disappearing, Toby. And I don't -- "
"Anything in particular, Andrea?"
"You didn't used to have secrets, Toby."
"Yeah?"
"You had silences. You had things you didn't want to talk about. I understood that. This ... this I can't get a hold of."
"I wouldn't ask if you don't want to know," he says, and turns over, and goes to sleep.
He realises that there are three imperatives in his life: his love for his wife, his hatred of himself, and this desire he has to disappear: at the bar, in the bottom of a whiskey bottle, inside the body of a man whose name he does not know. He is no longer sure whether the various bodies in question are instrumental, or incidental.
They twist, those three imperatives: a Möbius strip around his neck, every side up. Desire, and black pain; the last argument, in which Andy becomes calm and cold and points to the packed suitcases by the door that Toby damn near fell over when he came home that night and tells him that she's staying tonight with a friend and she'll pick up everything she can't drag out to the taxicab she's just called for in a few days, when he's out. How the loop tightens like a noose when he finds her crying in the bathroom that night and doesn't even think before he goes over to her and pulls her body inside the span of his own and feels all the atoms of possibility, all the lost things that bled out between them, spark and crackle. She cries for a little while against his chest, until the cab driver honks his horn outside the window and she startles, like the sound woke her up from a dream she was having. She stands up, and kisses him gently on the mouth, and walks out. He watches the cab drive off, then Toby sobs, frightened and small, standing in his bathroom, watching the little shooting stars of his life streak and fizz, and then go out.
The day that the divorce papers come -- to his office -- he spends dazed and confused, tripping over words both spoken and written. Everyone notices, but it isn't until the President murmurs Toby softly in the Oval that his lies fail him. When they comfort him it's all he can do not to twist away from their hands, C.J.'s gentle kiss to his cheek, the way Sam only pats the air around his shoulder and won't come in for a real swoop; that none of them understand how to reconcile this piece of information with what they know about him; that this is turn makes Toby want to laugh -- you ain't seen nothing yet.
That night he goes to Dupont Circle. He doesn't drink so much as a single beer, which is just as well since he doesn't go home either. The night passes and early morning comes, and he isn't lonely, technically speaking. He drives back to the apartment and showers, brushes his teeth, changes his clothes, and goes back to work again.
Though nothing he has ever heard at Temple or read in scripture convinces him that he ought to feel so he starts to believe in the immediacy of punishment: cause and effect. When Rabbi Glassman mentions, not for the first time, that condemnation of homosexuality is anachronistic, Toby still feels his cheeks flare red, smothers a little cough behind his hand. It still feels like sin. Or something does.
He goes to different kinds of bars sometimes. He watches. He never gets any closer to another woman than the accidental brush of his fingers across hers, handing dollar bills over the counter. He still wears his wedding ring; women notice these things. And the nights that he wakes up with the smell of Andrea's hair imagined on his pillow and an uncomfortably insistent erection seem like only what is just.
He goes back to the bar, sometimes. Sometimes he even gets off -- on impersonality and the smell of desperation; on not feeling quite so lonely when he feels like only one of the bright points of a lonely constellation. The guys there who laugh (and they are not few and far between) don't want anything to do with him, rightly thinking, or so Toby considers, that there isn't much to recommend the erotica of dysfunction. The guys who find that kind of thing sexy just make Toby feel sad, and very tired. He goes back to watching, and that's just fine.
He sleeps by himself, because love is just too fucking tiring. And that's fine.
vi.
A year passes.
Toby keeps his secrets well. It doesn't occur to him to wonder whether anyone else might be every bit as adept as he. It doesn't occur to him to parse the heavy looks that Sam sometimes throws his way as anything other than the guy's tendencies towards hero worship, and that doesn't bother him unduly. He doesn't think about it.
On the night after the State of the Union, before Toby's brain has really had enough time to recharge, before it is really able to consider anything that isn't to do with the grammar of the Presidency, Sam knocks on his door. He is wearing a white shirt and he has his sleeves rolled up -- Toby is surprised that he notices this; he never has before. But then Sam becomes a little like a whirlwind and as soon as he opens his mouth (at first tentative, and then anything but) the shirt -- its brightness and shimmer, the reflection of glory, the familiar imagery, the way it brings up Sam's tan and the startling blue of his eyes -- is all Toby can really focus on.
Sam says a series of increasingly stupid things of the kind that Toby would never own up to, though they lurk in his subconscious as well. Words about words and the power they have; the power they have over men like them. Superlatives are dropped like bombs and compliments lodge in Toby's heart like shrapnel.
Sam steps forward, with his right hand outstretched.
They kiss, and it is --
vii.
The next day.
C.J. says: "Jesus, Sam!" as she stands in the middle of the Bullpen, waiting on something Toby cannot give her. He watches from his office, through the casually open door.
"My concealer trick didn't work, then?" Sam says, trying for a smile that turns out more like a wince. "I was thinking about bronzer maybe, but the actual range of products is amazing. Did you know that -- "
Sam is standing by the rack of newspapers on the thin strip of wall that separates Toby's office from his own. Sam hasn't so much as glanced at anything but the front page of the New York Times for ten minutes. Toby has been timing him. C.J., however, will not take misdirection for an answer.
"Sam," she says, in what Toby considers a remarkably even tone, "Could you tell me what the hell happened, please?"
C.J. has her fingers on Sam's bruises almost as soon as he turns away from the papers, they alight and fly away at the startle of purple across the cheekbone, like a series of butterflies. Toby gets up, as quietly as he can, and walks to the door of his office. He feels as though his shoulders and hips are expanding to fill the space within the frame, like Sam will turn towards him and point his finger and the lintel will collapse on top of him: one push for the house of cards.
But Sam smiles again, more successfully this time. "Little argument with the frames at the gym."
"I keep telling you you shouldn't take your pager with you," C.J. says. She turns to Toby. "Don't I keep on saying that?"
"You do," Toby says, quietly.
Sam says, "I think it's more that half the DNC has ended up at my gym."
"Every day's donation day, huh?"
"You bet," Sam says.
They wait until she is gone, or at least until she is a two inch presence on the television screen in Toby's office, before they say anything to each other.
Sam goes to his own office first, and then comes into Toby's, closes the door and parks his ass on the couch. In his hands his closed laptop, a legal pad, Lincoln's Speeches and a briefing book on Cuba. The pen in his shirt pocket is leaking a little. There is a black spot a thumb's length from his left nipple. Toby stares at it.
"So, are you going to talk to me?" Sam says.
"I wasn't particularly planning on it, no."
"That might get a little bit tricky, Toby."
"We can keep up a professional relationship -- "
"I have your knuckle prints on my face and you want to talk about a professional relationship?"
"You indicated that you wanted to talk. I assumed it was regarding ... " Toby takes a breath. "Regarding a negotiation on how we continue to work together."
"I did indicate that I wanted to talk, you're right. But I don't care about -- " he waves his fingers around in the semi-circle of free air surrounding his cheek, "This. That's not my concern."
"What is your concern?"
"Well, I wouldn't mind knowing why you did it for a start."
"If I wanted a shrink, Sam, don't you think I know how to go out and get one myself?"
"I actually think you probably wouldn't have the first clue about how to do that, Toby, but that isn't my concern either."
"You wanna get to the point here?"
"See, you think you're so mysterious. Toby Ziegler. So impassive and impenetrable." To his credit, Toby thinks, Sam doesn't raise his eyebrows even the smallest fraction as he says 'impenetrable'. "But, you know what? I've been here a while now. And most of that time I've been with you. And, you know, I watch people. I'm good at people, it's one of my things."
"Of course," Toby says, under his breath.
"And I've watched you go through your divorce, win an election, agonise over getting a job that there should never have been any doubt was yours. I've been here with you, every day. And a lot of nights too. A lot of what you've done, I did too. We've done a lot of things together. We've written together and I don't want to sound unnecessarily sentimental here but that involves a certain ... a meeting of minds, shall we say?"
"Yes indeed," Toby says, almost entirely to himself, "Why not? I can't think of a better cliché for the occasion."
"That tells you about someone. You get to learn things that no one else does. It's like osmosis." Sam grins. "It's pretty cool actually -- "
"Sam."
"I guess what I mean is: I know you, Toby. And I don't think you did that for no reason. Or, more precisely: I don't think my kissing you was a good enough reason. And I'm curious to know if you have a better one."
"A reason I would tell you?"
"A reason I would actually believe," Sam says.
"Sam -- "
"You could take me to your place."
"My place?"
"I mean the place that you go. I mean that it might be ... easier. That way. What is it, like a bar, a bathroom? I'm guessing not a gym -- "
"Sam."
"Sorry."
He stood up a little while back, in the middle of his stream of consciousness. He came to stand in the middle of the room, where Toby is. Now his hands keep sliding on the air, towards Toby's tie, the lapels of his jacket. Toby's eyes are drawn down to these flights of Sam's fingers, these excursions into intimacy. He considers catching Sam's hands in his own, crushing the fingers, grounding the flights. But he does not.
Sam continues. "I just figured that there would be somewhere. A safe place. A place where the rules aren't really the same."
"Because I can't keep a lid on my animal lusts?"
Sam smiles, a little sadly. "No, Toby."
Toby takes in a deep breath and sighs. "There's a bar, off Dupont Circle. The manager is, ah, friendly. And he has a spacious men's room."
"You go there a lot?"
"A little," Toby says.
Sam nods. Like he does when he is filing away information; little Post-Its of the mind to be unstuck and brandished in Toby's face at the most inconvenient time possible.
"I never had a place," he says.
"You had ... "
"Boyfriends? A few. Well, one." He smiles up at Toby. "Didn't really end that well."
"You're every bit as slick with men as with women, huh?" Toby says, flickering a smile around his face, around the words.
Sam smiles again. "Yeah."
He is blushing, Toby thinks: little spots of pink appearing like pinpricks on his cheeks. Toby blinks the image back.
Toby mutters, again mostly to himself: "I don't know why I'm telling you all this."
Sam smiles. "My winning personality."
Toby looks at him, only returns the smile inside the privacy of his own head. "That must be it."
Sam opens his mouth again: "Toby, look -- I think ... that I could help you with this."
"Help me?"
"Help you, you know, figure some stuff out."
"Sam, I'm not going to enter into any kind of ... non-professional relationship with you. If that's what you're suggesting ... "
"It is, so not even if I promise it's just as friends?"
"Sam!"
"That's all, Toby. Just friendship."
"And ... " Toby grits his teeth. "Sex."
"Yes," Sam says, brightly but not, to Toby's eyes, entirely genuine in his brightness. He looks to Toby like he expects to get punched in the face again. Toby is surprised by how much he does not want that to happen again, and not only for the obvious reason.
"Sam, I'm not going to have sex with you," he says; he tries to say it gently.
Sam smiles then, like he knows something Toby doesn't; like he's always known it -- something as simple to him as breathing, that for Toby is more like trying to hold his breath all the way through a flight from New York to California.
"You kissed me back," Sam says.
"Sam, please -- "
"And all right, after you kissed me back you punched me in the face but I'm pretty sure I know what Freud would have to say about that -- "
"I don't care what Freud would have to say about that!"
"Have you ever told anyone else about this?"
"About what?"
"About pursuing the love of a good man."
"Oh for god's -- "
"You know, for a liberal? You've got kinda twisted around on this whole thing."
"I'm not ... gay, Sam."
"No, I know that."
"Then what the hell are you yammering on about!"
"You're bisexual, right?" He reaches down for the briefing book he left on the couch and leafs through a few pages, then holds up one index finger when he's found the page he's looking for. "I did some reading, made some notes. You're in good company. I mean, apart from me of course."
"You're enjoying this far too much."
He grins. "Yes, I am." The grin fades; Toby watches it go like a sunset. "I'm not wrong though, am I?"
"Sam -- "
"Just trust me," he says, his face an inch away now. "Dammit, Toby." He says it softly, a coax, or a goad. Toby can't tell.
"I can't ... "
"It's that hard just to trust me?"
Sam is smiling, but Toby cannot. He would like to close his eyes against all of this. Sam seems to know that, somehow; his fingers brush over Toby's eyes, suggesting a close. Toby fears the darkness as much as he fears Sam's blue eyes -- one clear and one threaded with a red blush, a little bruise. He feels like a coward but he closes his eyes, with his heart clanging and, after a minute, a prickling in his cock which is Sam's warm hand, cupping him. Sam's mouth is warm too, and open, and wet. He tastes clean: toothpaste and idealism; Toby's tongue seems to squeak over the surface of his front teeth. They kiss and the darkness reddens for Toby. Sam's fingers scrabble (Sam-like, needing three passes and a muffled 'ow' when the teeth of the zipper bite at his fingers) at Toby's fly. His hand seems unnaturally big and hot, peremptory against Toby's cock. At first. He tugs once, twice and he laughs into Toby's mouth; swallows the moan Toby makes. But then he is gentle, steps half a step closer to Toby's body so that there is no space between them and all the air is close and hot and full of friction, and makes a rhythm like calm breathing rubbing Toby's dick. Sam is on his knees when Toby comes and Toby thinks he will die, just for a second crumple and fall, or dissolve into nothing but that point of heat and wetness and the dark. Pleasure is a strange, compromised thing -- aware as he is of the too-bright light coming in from the half-open shutters on the windows, the possibility of discovery, the screaming pain in his knees from the half-crouch he's been in, the welling-up of shame, and of a larger desire that is not sated, that never will be. He comes, hard, and tries to make no noise. Sam swallows what he can, lets the rest fall in spurts onto his collar, kisses and licks Toby as he softens with his hands stroking Toby's belly, like he's comforting a kid with a stomach ache. Toby is surprised -- in a dull, sleepy way -- that he doesn't want to move, shake Sam off and slam the door on him. He unclamps one hand from where it was, flat against the door holding him upright, and pushes it forward into air that feels thick, or else his hand very heavy. When his hand is close to Sam's head, he stops, brings his fingers close and lets them curl around Sam's skull. He strokes Sam's hair for a little while, then Sam grins and presses a final kiss to Toby's thigh, then stands up.
They look at each other, for a minute, not saying anything. Then Sam starts:
"I'll let you, you know, zip up."
"Huh?" Toby looks down at himself: stupid, fragile, pathetically open. He feels as though he can see the tracks of Sam's hands and mouth and he closes his eyes very tightly for a second. "Oh. Yeah."
"And there's no need to thank me," Sam says, looking as amused as Toby's ever seen him.
Toby stares at him, until something suitably sarcastic coalesces in his head. "You're the expert on this kind of transaction, Sam."
Sam grins. "I was worried I'd caused some kind of irrevocable damage for a while there, but I see my concerns were unfounded."
"Sam -- "
"S'okay. I'll just remember how big you owe me."
"We seem to have drastically altered our bartering system, Sam."
"Yeah. Well. We'll see."
"Sam -- " Toby says the name like it means something more than it usually does; closer to a plea than an order; don't go yet.
"I have to go now," he says, gesturing at the door. "Write the thing, you know?"
"Yeah," Toby says, stupidly. "Yeah. Sorry."
Sam smiles, steps forward and strokes the length of Toby's face, from cheekbone to chin, then kisses his lips. "You look kinda sweaty, there. A little disorientated maybe? Not entirely in your right mind?" Sam grins. "So, I'll pretend I never heard that apology." Another kiss, to Toby's cheek. "You should wash up."
Toby stares at him as he takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and rubs at the invisible stain on his collar, smiling to himself. He rubs at the smile too, with the back of his hand. It doesn't do any good. Suddenly Toby knows what his question is.
"Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"Did you always know? About ... about me?"
Sam shakes his head. "No."
Toby stares at him. No words, just a head tilt, back and forth, an embarrassed half-smile. Something like: I don't understand.
"I just guessed," he says. "I mean, with Andy and everything. With you still wearing your ring." He smiles, with what looks like mild embarrassment. " I didn't know. But I'm glad I was right."
"Sam -- "
"Anyway, I'll see you later. I have to be on the Hill in an hour. You really should wash up or something."
After a pause Toby nods and says, "Okay."
"Okay."
viii.
That night, as Toby is cleaning up and packing away, turning off the bank of television screens and wondering how it can be that they haven't blown sky high yet, as he is closing up his briefcase and shrugging into his overcoat, there he is. Sam is at the doorway, neat and tidy, though it has now been over fifteen hours since he walked into the Bullpen this morning. The light in his office has been off for better than an hour now and Toby thought he had gone home, and was trying not to wonder how that made him feel. But here he is, smiling, white shirt and perfect tie-knot and one darkening bruise.
Toby isn't as surprised as he feels he should be to find that his heart is thumping, and that there are words crowding at the close of his lips: none of them ordered, or sane, but some that remind him of the shape of a heavy upper lip inside his own mouth, and some that he wrote in invisible ink on a woman's back.
Sam says, "Hey. I wondered if you might ... want some company." He smiles: embarrassed and freakish and Sam. "At least as far as your car anyway."
Sam stands by the door and waits. Toby thinks about asking where his coat and briefcase are, then decides he doesn't care. In this brave new world where Sam Seaborn, of all people, is holding the kite strings of perception and destiny, where his office has become somewhere he gets blowjobs from other men who know without having to be told that he really does go for that kind of thing on occasion, Toby isn't interested in being the tough guy. Just this once.
He stands, for a moment, still. Then nods. "Yeah. Okay."
Sam stands in the doorway and watches papers get piled into bags and laptops get put away and lights get switched off, all the while with a quiet little smile on his face.
They walk out together, as they have done a hundred times. Toby feels eyes that are not there, watching him, judging and taking notes, but Sam is babbling about something -- the trade deficit Toby thinks, which everyone who works in the West Wing knows is code for what you talk about when you want to avoid a topic that is more interesting, and more likely to cause you big trouble -- so that's what he concentrates on. The sound of Sam's voice, impossibly bright and young and stupid.
The car park is as dank and joyless as ever. Even Sam stops talking as they enter it. Toby's car is close by the entrance and it only takes ten steps to get over there, during which the silence gets heavier and the unpleasant buzzing nervousness in Toby's belly more pronounced. He lays one hand on the roof of the car, unlocks the driver's side and throws his coat and briefcase in the back, then stops and looks up at Sam, who has gone to stand by the passenger door.
"Can I come with you?"
"Sam -- "
"Just company, Toby. If that's what you want."
Toby stares at him. Nothing in Sam's face seems insincere, but then it never does. It reminds him of algebraic math problems at college and the sleepless hours of frustration they used to cost him, bartering solutions with his brain, insisting that he can't be that stupid. He sighs. Maybe he was just tired back in college; he certainly feels pretty tired right now.
"Get in," he says.
They make the drive in silence. Toby takes them through Dupont Circle and doesn't register where he is until he has already raised his hand and pointed a finger -- "Over there. That's my place." The bar looms a little, out of the dark alleys, out of Toby's remembrances.
"You been there lately?"
"No."
"Okay," is all Sam says.
The drive continues. They get to Toby's place. The engine turns off and begins to grow cold. They sit in the front of the car together and don't talk or make any move to get out of the car. Toby is staring straight ahead, not at all convinced he remembers how to get up and open the door of the old Dodge, close it, lock it, go up the steps to his building ...
"Toby?"
Sam's hand in warm on Toby's knee, just for a second but that's long enough.
"What?"
"Are we ... going inside?"
"You know ... you know that we can't do this. Right?"
"Go inside the apartment?"
"Sam."
"You're referring to the other thing?"
"Yes."
Sam nods. "Yes, I do know that."
"Quite apart from the ... the gay issue, it would be unprofessional. I'm yo- your boss and -- "
"Toby," Sam says, with his palms raised in surrender. "I get it."
"You do." Toby says.
"I do. I mean, as well as those other things, there's the whole thing where we work for the leader of the free world and we barely have enough time to breathe, let alone conduct successful romantic relationships -- "
"Sam?"
"Stop talking?"
"Yeah."
"Look, Toby, I know all that. I was just ... I was joking before. What I said."
"About us ... " Toby sighs, looks from the dashboard to the window, to Sam. "About us having sex."
"Yeah, Toby."
"Is that something ... I mean, do you ...? "
Sam grins, like Toby's just given him his birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah and Easter bunny gifts all at once. "Do I ... like you? Is that what you're asking?"
Toby stares at him. "Yes," he says, eventually. The word skims off his lips and onto the floor between them, in the dust by the gear stick. Toby imagines it lying there, confessional, full of subtext. He imagines Sam picking it up, holding it in his hands, gently. He imagines Sam laughing, and taking what he probably thinks of as Toby's only vulnerable spot and showing it around at the office. He imagines someone leaking it to the press. He imagines reading about himself described in some cheap right-wing commentary as 'Toby Ziegler, White House Senior Aide and recently outed homosexual' and not knowing whether he should be more outraged at the sloppy approach to factual accuracy or the slow smothering of his career. He looks back up at Sam, who is still smiling.
"Yes," he says. "I like you, Toby. I like you very much."
"Yeah?"
Sam nods. "Yeah."
"But you understand that -- "
"Yes, I get it. I understand the risk. And I understand what we'd be doing. And while I don't understand the attitude of the people who'd condemn us for -- "
"Sam."
"Yes. I understand."
Toby sighs. Then re-arranges his hands in his lap. Glances again out of the window. Rubs his thumb knuckle into his forehead.
"But, tonight ... "
"Tonight?"
"Yeah."
"Toby?"
"I realise everything I just said is ... Well. I realise that ... " Toby sighs. "I -- "
"I think what you're trying to say, Toby, is that you find me -- my charm and good looks, my striking intelligence, talent and lovable nature -- irresistible."
"Well, actually, I would never say ... anything like that -- "
"And that you'd like a one time only deal. Tonight."
" ... yes."
"Because although you're coming to terms, you know, slowly and painfully and in your own idiosyncratic fashion, with the fact that you find men as well as women attractive, you're not about to do anything that might jeopardise the President of the United States."
"Yes."
"Even though you do find me extremely attractive."
"Sam."
He holds up his hands again, still smiling. "It's okay. I can tell you agree from your face, Toby. You don't need to say anything else."
"Sam?"
"What?"
"Get out of the damn car. Take my keys. I'll be right up."
Sam laughs: white, and blinding like his shirt. The sound jangles in Toby's head. Then Sam says, "Yeah," and flicks open the passenger door. He leaves it open for a second, letting in a few swirls of cold air. Toby watches him, one eyebrow raised. Then Sam turns back into the warmth of the car and leans across the gear stick with one hand steadying himself on the dash and the other cupping Toby's face. Sam kisses him gently, and Toby returns the gentleness with more than a measure of confusion, and a dash of hard-dispelled gratitude. He realises his hands have come up to Sam's face too and his fingertips are noting how smooth Sam's skin is, not a trace of stubble. He's still marvelling at this, like someone has coshed him around the head with the evidence of his desire, when he hears Sam whisper:
"You're with friends, you know. I meant that part."
"Yeah."
"I mean, I'm your friend."
Toby smiles; this once he can't help it. "I got it. Thank you."
"And you're safe here. With me."
"Yes, Sam."
"And you're a very good kisser," Sam says, grinning again, with his china-white teeth. "In case you were wondering."
"I actually already knew that."
"Of course."
"Facile compliments will only get you so far, Princeton."
"Got me this far," he says, then drops another kiss on Toby's mouth, just to the east of centre. "You'll be right up?"
"I will be, as I said, right up."
"Okay."
"Okay."
Sam pops the door again, closes it quietly. Toby can still hear his own keys jingling with the door shut. They glitter as Sam lets himself in, then disappear. Toby stares at the space where Sam was for a second. He genuinely has nothing to say to himself: no reproach bubbling up where it should, only a slight glow -- something like contentment, even if it only lasts one night. Toby smiles to himself, reaches into the back for his case and coat, and gets out of the car.
ix.
Little darknesses explode that night into clouds of stars. And, if not possibility, then at least something that isn't so afraid of the dark starts to form in Toby's heart. Not so lonely anymore. Sam's right hand lies inside Toby's left for a while: a twice-five-point constellation. Silence is between them again -- that slow disposal of words they seem to be getting so good at. Secrets will be kept, Toby knows.
He doesn't sleep because he wants to see this night out, and the next day in. It seems important to mark it somehow, even if it's only a nod at the opening of dawn followed by a slow fall back into sleep, and against Sam -- his stillness. Toby feels calmed at that, and forgiven, even though he is starting to forget exactly what the sin was supposed to have been.
He sleeps and, in the morning, doesn't feel so tired.