West Wing FF: "Never Happened" (Sam/Toby/Josh) and "Different kinds of silence" (Huck&Toby)
This is entirely for my own records, so feel free to disregard. Just a repost of things posted on journals not my own.
Title: Never happened
Fandom: The West Wing
Pairing: Sam/Josh/Toby
Rating: R
Genre: PWP
Length: 441 words
Disclaimer: TWW belongs to Sorkin and Wells, not me
Spoilers: Season 2
AN: For oxoniensis's porn battle here
Prompt: The West Wing, Josh/Sam/Toby, secret
This one lies somewhere between “by the way, I used to sing in musicals” and “I have a relapsing-remitting course of MS.” That is an average, of course. For Toby, their secret is many times worse than Sagittarius, because they know better, because it is sordid and personal and because it sometimes makes him happy. Josh would place it somewhere in the middle - he has been due a sex scandal for some time now anyway. It is Sam who holds their indiscretion close to his heart and makes a shield of it. It protects him from passwords and the wrong answer they are so close to using.
The other one is dark and huge. It gapes at them, it will swallow them whole and they will be falling forever. This one is like spun sugar - it will crack or melt, and none of the three will be able to call themselves surprised. But it is now and real and Sam would like to write it down.
He would start with Toby’s shoulders and the way they twist under Josh’s hands. How Toby strains and wrenches upwards like he’s trying to get away even when he kisses. Sam has always felt that Toby is his secret: something in the flickering of his dark eyes in the office is a whisper in Sam’s ear. You me we.
Any words Sam devoted to Josh would be only another verse of the long saga that is their unvoiced history. He makes a catalogue of similarities and differences between his first big secret (I’m not straight, I’m not good) and his latest (I’m risking my job for this). There’s not many. It’s still an office carpet and a locked door. Josh still says, “Sam, you know that this isn’t… you know that we can’t…” He’s still right.
His own parts are the ones he least wants to capture. There is stubble burn on his neck where he had pressed too close to Toby. He comes embarrassingly fast, rubbing himself off between Josh’s thighs because none of them were carrying a condom. They laugh, and Sam has a worrying suspicion that he might have been the cause.
But it’s okay, because they all know that this never happened. Toby had never slipped his fingers under Sam’s shirttails, long after they were supposed to be finished, and pressed them closer. Josh hadn’t grinned and kissed Toby to say goodbye. Sam hadn’t wanted to hide a little longer.
Sam tucks his shirt in and straightens his tie. Josh nods sharp approval, and Toby unlocks the door. In the corridor, no one looks at them twice. There’s nothing to see.
( Thread posting)
- - - - -
Title: Different kinds of silence
Characters: Huck & Toby
Rating: PG
Genre: Angsty
Length: 517 words
Spoilers: Season 4
AN: This one was for raedbard
Prompt: silence
Different from all the other silences, this one. Huck sits with his arms wrapped, very tightly, around his knees, and watches the hem of his jeans turn dark in the wet grass.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” he whispers, capital letters still though they haven’t spoken in such a long time. “For being late,” because clarity is important, and he is not yet sorry about other things.
He stares out at the Potomac, where he can just see it, through the buildings. Little rivers flow to the ocean, and he could float away in it, away from this city which is all stone, and other hard things.
“I saw Sam wrote the foreword for your new edition. He was the one that found me an editor. They keep selling them together. They’re not very alike, though.” Huck swivels his shoulder, about to turn around and test his father’s reaction. Instead he slips his hands down and around his ankles, hiding his face in the dip between his knees.
“Molly thinks mine is sadder. I don’t… I don’t think it is though. It has a happier ending. But they keep asking about you. Whether the main character is me or you. It’s a dumb question. I don’t know what to say.”
He knows what his father would have said, had anyone ever asked him that question at a signing. “They talk more,” Huck says. “In mine, I mean. So it can’t be me or you, clearly.” Huck laughs too quietly, enough to feel inappropriate but not enough to break the still.
There are tiny pebbles at the edge of the grass. He picks two up and rolls them between his fingers, displacement activity he had never quite grown out of. Molly talked, and he fidgeted; even now when he is filling silence he can’t stop the nervous habit.
“President Bartlet’s memoirs were published yesterday. I don’t know… I mean, you can’t tell… whether he finished before or after. And Dr Bartlet edited them after he… But he’s really nice about you, Daddy. He loved you, I think. Maybe… maybe when everyone reads that…”
Huck sighs, and leans his head back heavily against the cold stone. Without looking backwards, he traces his fingers through the grooves that make up his father’s name, and two sets of dates. Sam had petitioned hard for more words, but the will had forbidden them absolutely. His father had not wanted any mention of legacy on the headstone, neither the complex lines tangling him and Huck’s mother, nor the innocent ones his children made. They were left to be the record-keepers that he had not wanted.
Huck is reading from the wrong book, and does not know the prayers of memorial, but stretches out beside the grave even so. Huck thumbs back to the index, then forward to the first mention. He reads in a borrowed voice the words his father would not say, and the words he alone could not. My father Toby was a brilliant man.
He writes words over all the long years of silence, before and after. And I loved him dearly.
- - - - -
Title: Proof
Characters: Sam/Toby
Rating: PG
Genre: Angsty
Length: 100 words
Spoilers: Season 4
AN: Also for raedbard, though in an AU I'm writing. Also I've just realised that it's actually a similar verse to the Huck one.
He walks past Toby’s sad-eyed children, past his widow.
He had been looking for the evidence in the margins of his own life, in the scraps of speeches and handshakes and hands-on-shoulders. In the way that Toby is the only one who will not visit, but who never neglects to call.
He had not known to look here. To Sam. With love. It is Toby, in the end, who is the chronicler of their strange affair.
The secret service agents form back around him as he walks back out of a dead man’s life, the proof clutched to his chest.
Title: Never happened
Fandom: The West Wing
Pairing: Sam/Josh/Toby
Rating: R
Genre: PWP
Length: 441 words
Disclaimer: TWW belongs to Sorkin and Wells, not me
Spoilers: Season 2
AN: For oxoniensis's porn battle here
Prompt: The West Wing, Josh/Sam/Toby, secret
This one lies somewhere between “by the way, I used to sing in musicals” and “I have a relapsing-remitting course of MS.” That is an average, of course. For Toby, their secret is many times worse than Sagittarius, because they know better, because it is sordid and personal and because it sometimes makes him happy. Josh would place it somewhere in the middle - he has been due a sex scandal for some time now anyway. It is Sam who holds their indiscretion close to his heart and makes a shield of it. It protects him from passwords and the wrong answer they are so close to using.
The other one is dark and huge. It gapes at them, it will swallow them whole and they will be falling forever. This one is like spun sugar - it will crack or melt, and none of the three will be able to call themselves surprised. But it is now and real and Sam would like to write it down.
He would start with Toby’s shoulders and the way they twist under Josh’s hands. How Toby strains and wrenches upwards like he’s trying to get away even when he kisses. Sam has always felt that Toby is his secret: something in the flickering of his dark eyes in the office is a whisper in Sam’s ear. You me we.
Any words Sam devoted to Josh would be only another verse of the long saga that is their unvoiced history. He makes a catalogue of similarities and differences between his first big secret (I’m not straight, I’m not good) and his latest (I’m risking my job for this). There’s not many. It’s still an office carpet and a locked door. Josh still says, “Sam, you know that this isn’t… you know that we can’t…” He’s still right.
His own parts are the ones he least wants to capture. There is stubble burn on his neck where he had pressed too close to Toby. He comes embarrassingly fast, rubbing himself off between Josh’s thighs because none of them were carrying a condom. They laugh, and Sam has a worrying suspicion that he might have been the cause.
But it’s okay, because they all know that this never happened. Toby had never slipped his fingers under Sam’s shirttails, long after they were supposed to be finished, and pressed them closer. Josh hadn’t grinned and kissed Toby to say goodbye. Sam hadn’t wanted to hide a little longer.
Sam tucks his shirt in and straightens his tie. Josh nods sharp approval, and Toby unlocks the door. In the corridor, no one looks at them twice. There’s nothing to see.
( Thread posting)
- - - - -
Title: Different kinds of silence
Characters: Huck & Toby
Rating: PG
Genre: Angsty
Length: 517 words
Spoilers: Season 4
AN: This one was for raedbard
Prompt: silence
Different from all the other silences, this one. Huck sits with his arms wrapped, very tightly, around his knees, and watches the hem of his jeans turn dark in the wet grass.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” he whispers, capital letters still though they haven’t spoken in such a long time. “For being late,” because clarity is important, and he is not yet sorry about other things.
He stares out at the Potomac, where he can just see it, through the buildings. Little rivers flow to the ocean, and he could float away in it, away from this city which is all stone, and other hard things.
“I saw Sam wrote the foreword for your new edition. He was the one that found me an editor. They keep selling them together. They’re not very alike, though.” Huck swivels his shoulder, about to turn around and test his father’s reaction. Instead he slips his hands down and around his ankles, hiding his face in the dip between his knees.
“Molly thinks mine is sadder. I don’t… I don’t think it is though. It has a happier ending. But they keep asking about you. Whether the main character is me or you. It’s a dumb question. I don’t know what to say.”
He knows what his father would have said, had anyone ever asked him that question at a signing. “They talk more,” Huck says. “In mine, I mean. So it can’t be me or you, clearly.” Huck laughs too quietly, enough to feel inappropriate but not enough to break the still.
There are tiny pebbles at the edge of the grass. He picks two up and rolls them between his fingers, displacement activity he had never quite grown out of. Molly talked, and he fidgeted; even now when he is filling silence he can’t stop the nervous habit.
“President Bartlet’s memoirs were published yesterday. I don’t know… I mean, you can’t tell… whether he finished before or after. And Dr Bartlet edited them after he… But he’s really nice about you, Daddy. He loved you, I think. Maybe… maybe when everyone reads that…”
Huck sighs, and leans his head back heavily against the cold stone. Without looking backwards, he traces his fingers through the grooves that make up his father’s name, and two sets of dates. Sam had petitioned hard for more words, but the will had forbidden them absolutely. His father had not wanted any mention of legacy on the headstone, neither the complex lines tangling him and Huck’s mother, nor the innocent ones his children made. They were left to be the record-keepers that he had not wanted.
Huck is reading from the wrong book, and does not know the prayers of memorial, but stretches out beside the grave even so. Huck thumbs back to the index, then forward to the first mention. He reads in a borrowed voice the words his father would not say, and the words he alone could not. My father Toby was a brilliant man.
He writes words over all the long years of silence, before and after. And I loved him dearly.
- - - - -
Title: Proof
Characters: Sam/Toby
Rating: PG
Genre: Angsty
Length: 100 words
Spoilers: Season 4
AN: Also for raedbard, though in an AU I'm writing. Also I've just realised that it's actually a similar verse to the Huck one.
He walks past Toby’s sad-eyed children, past his widow.
He had been looking for the evidence in the margins of his own life, in the scraps of speeches and handshakes and hands-on-shoulders. In the way that Toby is the only one who will not visit, but who never neglects to call.
He had not known to look here. To Sam. With love. It is Toby, in the end, who is the chronicler of their strange affair.
The secret service agents form back around him as he walks back out of a dead man’s life, the proof clutched to his chest.