Archive of Our Own ^beta

His eyes: warm, radiant, emotive. His pupils sweet and kind, the whites of his eyes glossy and almost impossibly bright. Large and close-set, looking endearingly upwards, or somberly down at the floor, or evasively this way and that, or fixed firmly on her. Encircled with lines: the tired bags below his eyes, the smile lines beside them, the rounded lines above, arcing over the corners of his eyes. She loved the way those lines kissed his face, betraying joy and laughter he seldom showed elsewhere, pointing at his darling eyes, daring her to look, telling her yes, there he was. 

Sad, yes: it was easy to find the sadness in Toby’s eyes, in the hollow of his cheek, in the subdued tones of his voice. But that was not all that she could see. She recognized, though few people did, that his nature could not just be written off as dour. Yes, there was sadness. But so too was there joy and optimism, quiet steady determination, a simmering idealism carefully guarded, a playfulness kept even further from view, and love.

Yes, there was love. For the good he wanted desperately to see in people, for the world he wished to sculpt out of the miserable block of marble before him. For a few people, fiercely and unceasingly. For her, she knew, no matter where they were. They could be apart for years — though she hoped, knew as much as she could know anything, that this would not be so — and the day they returned to one another, they would be back just the same again. 

They could always rely on one another to be exactly who they were, individually and as a pair. She could rely on his fondness, never ebbing, tethering her to himself. He could rely on her jokes, her lively performance of wit and humor and just the right amount of composure. It never felt unnatural because it never was unnatural: because for her, it was so easy to sparkle for him; because for him, she really was that wonderful. 

If she cracked a joke and he laughed out loud (rare) or or feigned bemusement (common) or smiled so subtly that only she would notice (most common of all), she would know he loved it. She enjoyed teasing him and making him laugh, out loud or only to himself or secretly just to her. Recalcitrant audience as he sometimes was, she found a special pleasure in performing for him.

For example: “Toby!” she called to him, stumbling into the doorway. She had good news, and she would not forgo an opportunity to share it via a facetiously boastful song and a little off-tempo dance. What was the point of life, after all, if not to create joy wherever possible?

(In another life, in the universe next door, she would sing and dance and laugh at her own jokes as she walked him to bed, music he claimed he couldn’t stand playing in the background as she smiled full and wide and pulled off her dress.)

***

Of course, he had his fun at her expense too, like the day he came to California to recruit her to the first campaign. She was hardly surprised to find him, unannounced and completely without warning, in her backyard. “Who is that?” she had asked, squinting, and typically of him, he’d just answered “me”, giving an odd little wave. 

“Toby?”, she guessed, partially thanks to the blurry beard she could make out across the yard, partially because he was just the person to do this sort of thing. His “yeah” carried a little undertone: of course it’s me. You can’t tell me you’re surprised. It was only natural that they should be in the same place.

Well, she was shocked enough not to notice the water until she’d fallen in. And of course, Toby being himself, he stayed in his seat, offering the most obvious and unhelpful observation of all time (“CJ, you fell into the pool there”, in his endearly murmury voice) and an almost equally useless piece of advice about feeling her way to dry land.

(If she had been in real danger, of course, he would have jumped in to save her. She would never drown with Toby there.)

“Avert your eyes!” she asked, trying to scrape up what was left of her poise.

“What?” he seemed truly bewildered.

(In another life, his meaning was clear: it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.)

She tried again, and again he responded, “CJ, I really didn’t come here to —”

(In another life, again, his meaning was clear: not this time, but soon again, and again and again and then forever.)

The conversation that followed was like so many of their conversations: a little odd, a little teasing, just the tiniest bit flirty, obfuscating and murmured and then suddenly breathtakingly sincere. Toby was unpredictable like that, and yet she somehow always knew just what to expect.

***

It was easy to deem him her opposite, but she saw him mirrored in her in subtle and profound ways. She was cool and calm and collected, except when she slipped (only very rarely). He was subdued and soft-spoken, except when he blazed up in passion (rather common). They both sank. They both soared.

He was principled, oh so principled, more idealistic than many people realized, something she deeply admired. He had been accused once, in a moment when she could not defend him, of thinking that he was morally superior to everyone else. Well, she thought, perhaps he was.

(“I love when you get all principled,” she told him in another universe.

“I’m not— it was just a, you know, a thing. I mean, what else was I supposed to do?” he mumbled, a bit flustered. “I’m not principled, I’m just saying what any thinking person would say.”

“Sounds principled to me.”

“I’m not—“ but his objections were cut off as she kissed him.)

He was idealistic, but he had seen the world fail itself over and over again. He was not an optimist; she was. He admired her optimism, she knew, but it would not have been possible without him. So much of the good she saw in the world was in Toby.

She continued to believe in the goodness of humanity, something he tended to see much more as a hypothetical. She remembered one night, a night of a poker game; of shots cracking glass, of a speech about her faith in “us” (“the people in this room?” he had asked, meaning “you and me?”; “and many, many others”, she had responded, meaning “yes”); of an egg standing on end (he hadn’t seen it happen, but the next day she told him, and he scoffed but all the same looked straight at her in a way that said I believe you.)

She had stood in front of that window, facing it straight-on, watching the bullets like she always looked out at the world, her eyes wide and open. She hadn’t flinched for a moment, but he had. Though several steps behind her, he ran straight to her — toward the danger, she never let herself forget — and pulled her down. Later he would tell her that it was simply instinct, but god, that just made her love him more. His instinct, she had learned that night, was to save her.

***

CJ was like a prism and Toby was the light shining behind her. So what if he needed to filter through her to disperse his radiance? The color was hers, but the light emanated from him. Yes, she was joyful and lively and frankly delightful wherever she went, but it was his steady presence, the guarantee of love and warmth behind her, that let her shine.

She knew every line on his face, the dearest face in the world; she knew every nuance of his brilliant mind, his wonderful, impossible character, and his tender soul. He was like a lightning storm on a still day: the steady heat, the flashes of fire, the coolness afterwards. He was dawn and day and dusk, dark and still and bright and shining and restless and calm. There was no season she had not seen in him.

Of course, there were ambiguous moments between them, scenes in their lives that might have led somewhere they did not quite lead. There were jokes between them (“You want to make out with me right now, don’t you?” “Well, when don’t I?”); there were late nights (like when she found him sitting on her couch, just as she was about to change her dress, his eyes looking pleadingly up at her); there was the simple fact of their being, how they always seemed to be found together.

There were moments of tenderness, when he bared his love for her free from its usual shroud. She remembered, in a moment of jubilee, his calling out to her, “CJ, dance with me.” She remembered the earnestness of his smiling eyes when they turned to her, his warmth filling her and spreading their dazzling radiance beyond them. She remembered his hands on his heart, one and then the other, and a little thump, as if she didn’t know that his heart could not beat without her. 

***

Her eyes: bright, brilliant, expressive. Wide, wide-set, and open, looking out at the world. Seemingly a different shape every time he looked: almond-shaped, trapezoidal, almost rectangular at times. Stunningly beautiful, of course, and captivating, bold and striking in their outline and handsomeness. Her gaze was impossible to ignore, impossible to turn from, impossible to forget.

There was a certain bravery in her eyes, the openness of her countenance, and the confidence in her gait. It was one of the million things he admired about her. He was always looking down, darting his eyes around, mumbling under his breath. She faced the world, not to mention the press room, fearlessly and honestly. She moved through life with poise and dignity; he fumbled through the shadows, only stepping out to bask in her light. He never understood how she managed to do everything so right. And yet, despite her excellent sense of judgement, she loved him stubbornly and tenaciously.

He may have been a prickly bastard, but he knew to be grateful for her.

***

One of a thousand things she did right: she always knew when to tease him. When he came to sit next to her complaining of sand in his shoes, of course she had to sing a jazzy little number and do a dance (she always danced, with him and for him, in every universe) even as he slammed his shoes on the desk and poured sand on the floor. Really, how much better could their relationship be summarized than through this little moment?: his empty complaining; her jumping at the chance to annoy him just a little; the loud reverberation of his shoes against the wood, the vibrant echo of her voice; he, disheveled, sleeves rolled up; she, elegantly dressed, holding a little mirror and applying lip gloss. He shot her a glare and she shrugged at him: really, you’re going to pretend you’re not enjoying my little show? Of course, he did enjoy it, and he looked back at her, shaking his head but smiling with his eyes. This part of her, her eagerness to entertain him, he kept close to his heart, like everything else about her.

She knew when to treat him seriously, too, when to hold her hand to her heart and tell him, in words or in deeds or in silence, just what he needed to hear. He had come to trust her instinctively, and again and again she treated him with kindness, sympathy, and understanding, more at least of the latter than anyone ever had. Now he turned to her like a sunflower to the sun, following her brightness on instinct, needing her to live, to grow. Without her he would never face the light; without her there would be no sunshine at all.

***

They stood side by side in the warm orange lighting of the party. She was radiant: her noble profile dazzling in the light, the high contours of her cheekbones, the elegant upturn of her nose. Her hair was gently curled, and she was adorned with a black necklace. She wore an elegant black dress with a plunging neckline and the most beautiful face in the world. He wore a look of grief and a cut on his cheek.

“Can this be one of those nights where we get sloshed and forget we work together?” she asked.

(In another life, her meaning was unambiguous. He took her home, their champagne barely tasted despite her request. She carried the orange glow of the ballroom back to his bed — to their bed perhaps — and soon her warm calming hands had soothed his skin, and she had kissed the cut on his cheek a dozen times.)

In this life, too, he felt her tender presence. She brought him a cup of ice and sat with him, listened to his lamentations, looked at him as he cried with unabating sympathy, understanding, and love.

“Do you want me to go?”, she asked, gently and without judgement.

A pause. A few breaths. A small choking sob.

“No,” he finally replied, just above a whisper.

***

In those last few lonely days in the fallout of the leak, he awaited his sentence, sometimes anxious, sometimes morose, rarely hopeful. But when she came to visit him, her spirit coloring his apartment, her hand resting lightly on a wine glass, her radiant eyes fixed firmly on his — then her arms wrapped tightly around him in a long, deep, meaningful embrace — he realized that her pardon was the one he’d most desperately craved.

“I miss you,” he admitted, his eyes on her.

“Yeah,” and she did not break his gaze. “We had it good there for a while.”

(In another universe, what they’d had was something else and yet the same thing, the very same love, just tweaked, expressed a little differently. It was lost, oh so briefly, and found again, oh so eternally. Soon they were together once more, and the weight of those months was behind them, a clear future before them, the floor below them, the ceiling above them, nothing surrounding them but their arms around each other, their eyes and lips and hands in reunion though their hearts had never parted, and beyond them, the darkness outside.)

As she left, he looked out the window, standing with his hands in his pockets in precisely the stance he’d held four years prior, looking out another window, in another house, with another woman getting into a car without him. It was hard not to notice the parallel, in that familiar lonely pose, in that familiar aching solitude. He looked out the window and she did not look up, though she would have found him standing there, staring at the spot on the pavement where her heels had tread even an hour later. But the day of the Inauguration his phone rang, and she called him the day after that, too, and every day for a month. Every week since then, without fail, her warm brassy tones would swirl in his ear.

Yes, he was lonely sometimes. But then again he was kept in the best company imaginable: in the memories of all their joy together, in the knowledge, surer than he might have believed in that solitary time, that he would see her again and again, and in between, in her voice in his ear every week, in the warm, bright feeling that wrapped around him, that she was his best friend.

***

Of course, he wasn’t exactly the only man in her life. There was Danny, who strictly speaking, as her husband and the father of her children, should have been considered the most important one. And he was a good man, light-hearted and ever so easygoing, kind and incredibly patient. But even when she was his, fully his, she was never his alone; in one form or another, her soul never left Toby’s.

Her character was, in many ways, halfway between theirs. Danny was steady and calm, CJ composed but animated, Toby subdued and then suddenly fiery. She was less serious than Toby, more than Danny, but sillier than either of them too. Each was practically inexhaustible, but they carried their energies differently. CJ lit up like a firework; Danny burned like a torch; Toby flared up like embers rustled by a wind. 

She joked with each of them, but not quite in the same way. She sparred, too, with them both, but differently. She took on bits of their respective personalities: with Danny she developed a steady, relaxed contentment, sinking into his cheerfully stoic attitude towards life. With Toby she was more serious, but more silly too, never tiring of making him laugh. Danny spoke honestly and straightforwardly to her; Toby tended to mumble and shroud his meaning, but their conversations were no less authentic, for they understood each other at half-words. She was brilliant and capable and inimitable no matter what, and to their credit, neither man ever stopped admiring her.

With Danny she was herself, yes, fully herself. Who would want her to be anything else? But with Toby she was fully herself, and she was a little bit him too. He was wrapped up in her, and that only made her more herself.

(In another life, she lay with him in the half-shadows, his touch tender and delicate. She gently stroked his lovely hair and he whispered her name, Claudia Jean, in his soft, reverent voice. The brilliant whites of his eyes shined at her and his gaze was oh so earnest. There was nothing he took so seriously as this; not even in his finest writing did he express himself quite so well. He lay above her, below her, beside her, not taking his eyes off her, and all the while she held his hand.)

***

True to their promises, spoken and unspoken, they never stopped being a part of each other’s lives. She would fly across the country every year for his twins’ birthday, showering them with gifts that she knew they would love (and that would annoy him just a little). He would send a portion of his salary to her charity every month, always complete with a note for her, sometimes funny, sometimes poetic, sometimes endearingly pedantic. When he came to visit her, they would sit on her porch swing, looking vaguely at the outline of her yard in the moonlight and thinking with gratitude about each other. They shared every triumph and tragedy in their lives, and even connected only by three thousand miles of telephone wires and that everlasting soul-tie, it was still as if they were walking down a hallway together.

When they went on vacation every year, it did not occur to good, faithful Danny to be jealous — nor should he have been, for he understood that, wellspring of benediction that she was, the loves she had for each of them were not incompatible, that she could love her husband with all her heart and that somehow reserve another soul entirely for her best friend.

(In the universe next door, they stood along the shore at sunset, swaying on the sand. He held her firmly around the waist, and her hand rested on his shoulder. Their other hands were intertwined and he looked up into her eyes — she loved how he looked up at her, with that sparkle of fondness and contentment and yes, just a little sadness — and they slow danced on the beach. He complained about the sand in his shoes, which he did in every universe, but she knew how much he treasured the moment, one of countless with her.)

In this universe, they lay next to each other on the sand, perhaps on the very same beach. It was their annual vacation together, a tradition they’d firmly maintained since just after their days in the White House. She was sipping a pina colada and leaning back on her elbows, her legs growing tan below her beach wrap, sure to leave a line he would laugh at for the rest of their trip. His hands traced patterns in the sand and he examined each particle one by one, rolling them between his fingers. She gazed at the water and he at the sand, until she pulled him out of his reverie.

“Toby, let’s dance,” she told him, switching on a portable radio. The sound came out staticy but her voice was clear as she sang along, dancing ridiculously. She pulled him up by the hand and he looked at her with his arms crossed, feigning bemusement as usual. She rotated him back and forth by the shoulders like a little girl playing with a doll, and she knew that he was glad for her to dance for him like this. She knew, here as always, how much he treasured the moment, one of countless with her.

So it was not so different, after all.

***

“I just want to be a part of your life,” he had admitted, the first time they saw each other after that night at the window.

“Oh, Toby darling. You are. You always will be.” Her large and beautiful hand came to rest on his face, and her thumb stroked the hollow of his cheek. 

It was easy to dismiss what they had, to claim that their friendship was inherently less monumental than love — than the other kind of love, it should be said, for who loved anyone if she did not love Toby? This best friendship, this immortal love, was the most precious and unshakable thing she had.

(In another life he was hers on paper, in the courthouse, in the cathedral, in the temple. Her name was carved on the inside of a simple golden band. She saw the sparkle in his eyes mirrored in the dazzling jewel upon her finger. When they kissed, his nose, large and straight, flared and handsome, would brush against hers, large and straight, rounded and beautiful, a thousand thousand times.)

In this life, though, he was hers too. He was just as much hers, and she was just as much his, no matter what. It was simply part of the fabric of reality: there was gravity, electromagnetism, the relentless passage of time, and their love for one another.

They were linked inextricably together no matter what, as lovers sometimes, yes, but as best friends, too, and always, always as soulmates. How they loved each other was immaterial, compared to the fact that they did love each other, and oh they did indeed. If they were apart, they would fall together again, like magnets righting themselves as they aligned. And, anyway, two people who share a soul can never really be apart. As keenly as he felt everything, as clearly as she knew the world around her, they did not pine in the absence of each other. There was not that pain of longing, somehow, in the time when she was not beside him. They simply relished in that joy, that fondness, and the knowledge of that ever-enduring love. Her colors danced in his heart, and his light warmed up her soul, and there they were.