Lately, Toby has been calling her in the middle of the day, just like that, and he'll call to repeat her own words back to her. Words that she'd said during sex, to him, those words.

So.

And CJ's known him and loved him and not - loved him for a long time, and she knows what his problem is, because it's her problem too, and so, she forgives him, shrugs, moves on.

They have stopped having sex, by the way. Sometime between MS and hearings and campaigning they stopped having sex. Almost more important, to CJ: they stopped touching. Those casual touches (her hand on his arm, his hand on the small of her back, her thigh pressing against his under the table, his thumb pressing down on that soft spot between her thumb and index finger) - a thing of the past.

She takes the calls, she listens without speaking as he tells her, to fuck him harder, or something else that, in bed, works, but on the phone, in the West Wing, at work (and he's her boss), doesn't.

It's not like he does it anywhere else. The first few times this happened, the phone calls, she was worried he'd do it during Staff, you know, Leo would be going on about something - or - other, and Toby would turn to her and say: "fuck me where it hurts". Though it might have been worth it, just to see their faces. Josh and Sam and Leo, their faces.

But he's just doing this a couple of times a week, and CJ figures that if this is what keeps him from falling apart, she can put up with it.

His voice is a monotone as he says the words, it lacks all the innuendo, the words lose their meaning because of the empty voice and the bright light of daytime.

Still, she's (again) betraying the sisterhood - this is sexual harassment. And yet, this is important (too), she doesn't feel like a victim.

They pass, in one hallway or another, and they'll talk about some of the thousands of things they have to handle, and they will keep this careful distance, and he won't quite meet her eyes and she'll feel, just like that, she'll feel like there really is no point to anything.

Because. Because her boss (her sometimes lover) (her friend) is making dirty phone calls around noon twice a week, and the President has a brain that's slowly shrinking and no matter what they do, people keep dying. And sometimes, the simplest bill, something that'll make life a bit easier for a few people, it won't pass, and they'll have worked hard for nothing. Again.

And CJ has taken up smoking, again, and she'll sit in some bar and have a drink and a smoke, and that's what her life is, now. Not touching, and drinking, and smoking, and dirty phone calls.

She thinks, one day, she'll call him back. Maybe she will, at that.