Between the Newsreel and Your (tiny) Pain

NOTES:

Author: Yana
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Through S3.
Archive: illuminatedtext.com/Remix Redux -- yes. Others please ask.
Disclaimers: The West Wing and all it contains are not mine.

AN: Written for the Remix Redux II: Electric Boogaloo... My assignment was to remix Delightfully Eccentric's wonderful CJ/T angstfest: It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding).
AN2: The quote is Sophocles. The title and funky remix subtitle (TM) are Leonard Cohen, because he was the only songwriter I could think of who writes more angst than Dylan.

**********

She's a siren, a piper, and she comes to him knowing and demanding that her mere presence lure him. She will crush him once she's taken the payment she needs.

He steels himself against her, knowing the danger he's in, the path down which she'll lead him, but she is persistent, beckoning, seductive, even as she stands silently, challenging his courage.

She blinks once.

And her net is cast: he's caught. Heedless of anything else, he hurries after her. Her snare tightens as he gazes at the sway of her hips in front of him, striding away.

He knows it's a spell, but he doesn't care, doesn't want to break free, not until he's had her under him again.

Because he doesn't want to give her any reason to change her mind, he doesn't speak.

**

She does speak, though not to him, and the sound startles him a bit. The guard bids them both good night.

He realises how long it's been since they've talked. Then realises why they haven't argued.

He thinks about saying something to her now, but decides against it. He doesn't dare risk breaking the seductiveness of her spell, the pull that draws him to her over and over, because he knows it won't last long. Soon they'll be miserable again, together yet apart, flinging words like sharp stones.

She knows this too and isn't in the mood to talk either. As if reading his mind, she quickens her pace as they head to the parking lot, to get out of earshot of anything he might say.

Still, she draws him in, and he hastens to catch up to her, to climb into her car. She kisses him then, swift and closed-mouth, a brief reward for his silence, a tiny spark of arousal to ignite in his body

It's almost enough to make him lose control, to try and touch her, but then he remembers where all this will end and keeps his hands to himself. Maybe if he's quiet, they'll kiss again in silence before it all goes to hell, before she begins her accusations and he begins to argue.

**

She takes him to her home to spring her final trap. He follows, still snared, still silent, up the familiar staircase, through the familiar door, past the familiar window, into that very familiar bedroom.

Only then does he deem it safe to speak. They're next to her bed and he knows she's already halfway aroused. It's going to happen. He's going to be inside her soon. So he opens his mouth.

"We're going to need condoms."

She slaps him hard, and he's not sure why—whether it's the implication that he's fucked someone else since he last fucked her, or the assumption that she's taken other partners herself. Both are true, and he wants to argue about neither.

She makes a frustrated animal cry. Hushing her, he tumbles her to the bed and begins the process of shifting her to an accessible position. He doesn't give her the satisfaction of seeing his emotion or his rising arousal. He's gentle and stolid as he unbuttons and unzips her slacks, tugs off her underwear.

She's crying and he doesn't try to stop her. She wants him as much as he wants her, even though she won't admit it. So he focuses on the task at hand.

When her underwear are finally off, his gaze falls to her naked legs and travels upward to the apex of her thighs and the curly hair there. As always, the sight is enough to make him ready, regardless of what she might be saying or thinking.

He removes his belt. Shucking off his trousers and socks, he stands at the foot of the bed and studies her for a moment. Then he grasps her ankles and tugs them apart, climbing between her legs, preparing to mount her and give her—give both of them—what they need.

Even with a condom between them, her channel is still incomparable. Slim and long and tight and hot, it's everything he remembers, everything he craves, and so much more. He fucks to please himself, knowing from experience that she'll catch up and surpass him whenever she decides. He concentrates on the feel of her, wishes for a moment that the condom isn't there, and moves in and out of her some more. His strokes increase in intensity, but somehow, as he moves, he feels an urge to give her gentleness, the tender loving she will never admit to wanting.

**

After they've both come, he climbs off of her, heads to the bathroom to dispose of the condom, then goes to the kitchen to make cocoa. She's still in a fierce mood, and he hopes the combination of sex and chocolate will placate her, even if he can't.

She hasn't moved a muscle: she is still lying on her back, clutching the edge of the mattress, her legs spread wide. Though she's stopped crying, she isn't speaking. He touches her gently; she doesn't react.

He knows that she's angry, but is completely unprepared for her sudden blow to his chest. It knocks him flat on his back.

"'Cause caffeine is exactly what I need at this time of the fucking night!"

He explains that he hasn't brought her coffee, resolving yet again to stay calm, to refuse to react, to sublimate his own anger at her treatment of him.

After all, he isn't giving her what she wants, either. This thing between them goes both ways.

**

Look. Lust. Lie. Leave.

That's the order of events, what she demands from him whenever they do this. They happen inevitably anyway, but he can still sense her expectation.

Her movements beckon him, tug at him uncomfortably, though he's sure that isn't her intent. Now they're together and nude and he watches her wilt. She slumps against the headboard as she sips, anticipating his next move and appearing to dread it, even if it is a foregone conclusion.

Seating himself next to her on the bed, he tells himself to stay quiet, though for a moment he almost rebels, almost says what he's said before. He knows she hates hearing it, but can't help hoping that he'll have a chance to explain adequately, to use his considerable powers of persuasion.

She says, "Don't." More of a plea than a command.

Sighing, he acquiesces, stuffing the words back down his throat once more in anticipation of that mythical, opportune future moment. She will hear him, he tells himself. And she'll accept it, the way she's accepted his support for her professional successes—though he isn't sure she notices that.

If he can't have everything he wants, he thinks, then he's damn well going to take what he can get. He lets his hand wander across the sheets and squeeze her knee, avoiding her gaze.

She understands and moves her mug to the side.

Out of the way, like so many other things.

It's almost symbolic, he thinks.

He tells himself that that he can't dwell on the other L-word missing from this scenario.

**

And yet he does dwell, finds himself needing to elicit from her some kind of validation for the hell he's putting himself through. He strokes her thighs and the crease of her pelvis, and her legs fall open again. Her body accepts his touch as its due; it is completely divorced from her mind and her emotions.

Pure, amoral id.

It demands the sensation he offers.

When her skin quivers, the words tumble out: "I love you."

He's made the mistake again, as he always does. She goes limp. Even her body can't be anything more than apathetic to him.

**

Fuck this, he thinks. She's going to feel something and she's going to show it, all of it, to him. She isn't going to wall away behind some disinterested mask.

He ducks his head, breaking eye contact, and concentrates on her cunt. He has to focus. He extends his tongue and drags it along her labia. Her agitation is palpable, the tension in her twitching across the muscles of her thighs, but he ignores it. He is going to do his best to show her he means what he's said.

So he stokes her fire slowly, wanting to ensure that she is as focused on this—and on him—as he is on her.

She doesn't fight the reaction and he takes this as encouragement.

When she reaches up and grips the cold iron headboard, he wonders if he should tie her hands there. The thought distracts him a little; he pulls back so that just his beard is touching her. She squirms, so he moves his chin back and forth to make her jump.

He knows she enjoys it because her knuckles whiten as she clutches harder at the iron rails. But he hasn't won yet. She won't ask him for more.

So he goes back, pushing his nose against her briefly before raising his head so that he can breathe. He experiences a tiny satisfaction when her hips lift, chasing after him for once. To reward her, he lets his tongue find the tip of her clit, and he breathes deep, sending air rushing across her mons.

Then she rewards him, with a fleeting, unrestrained sound of pleasure. Even though she immediately tries to negate it by saying other unfriendly things, he knows what the sound means and that she honestly enjoys his acquired expertise. He could take this moment to remind her why he's so good at this with her, but he won't. Her goodwill will only extend so far.

As he shifts his weight the bed groans too, but he's more interested in her body as her muscles tighten and her limbs twist, trying to draw out and purge the pleasure she's experiencing under his mouth. Her conflict is never clearer than at this moment; she is here against her will, yet she'd never forgive him if he abandoned her now. So he drags his tongue back and forth, hoping that some small piece of the pleasure he's giving her sinks in and stays with her after this is all over.

He wouldn't mind being cherished, just a little bit.

She's close, and he can tell by the way her hands clench the headboard rails that she's trying to think of a reason not to come for him. But he's giving her what she craves, as he has so many times before, and he persists, wanting to overwhelm reason just this once.

Or rather, just this once more.

He kisses her where she needs it and revels in the arch of her body as she strains, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of her climax and yet helpless and throbbing and needing him, at this moment, more than anything else in the world. There is blood on her lip when she comes, and he wonders why she needs the pain, and whether he should have tied her up.

He decides that he has been successful in his goal of dispelling her apathy for about half a minute, and he knows that because for those few seconds, her eyes glaze over with desire directed only at him. He pulls away to watch as her body convulses, expunging the last of the pleasure he gave.

Then he sees her tears, and realizes that he's been more successful than he'd hoped.

**

Giving and receiving orgasms might be easy, but their lives never have been.

Even now, when they are both free, the feeling pervades that something's wrong, must be or they wouldn't be here. He can barely remember when they were both together and happy concurrently. Maybe they shouldn't have finally come together out of mutual need. Both of them were at their worst, and though they tried afterwards to move towards normalcy, towards flirting and sunshine and roses, they needed to hit bottom again and again in order to connect.

And so he wonders if it would be better if they'd never come together at all. He'd been faithful during his marriage, at least in body, though he knows that his angry midnight calls to her had little to do with polling data. He'd needed some sort of emotion or passion from her, just like he does tonight.

His words and the delivery thereof had never been adequate, though, not for her. He knows now that she has never believed in his passion, has refused to see what he was trying not to say out loud when they argued. She wanted nothing less than for him to abandon his infertile wife and fuck her senseless instead.

Then, she'd believed that actions speak louder than words, but now she won't believe his actions or his words.

He prefers words, most days. Words just are: if you feed them the right rules, they behave exactly as they are told. A clearly written sentence isn't open to interpretation. So when he says something to her, he expects it will have more truth in it and more weight to it.

Apparently he's wrong about that, though. He knows she invests more significance in his actions: a look, a sidestep, a gesture. She can't believe him and hates that he persists in saying things over and over again, hoping to make her understand.

And he's all out of grand gestures these days. Even if he had one, she'd throw it back in his face. So he sticks with words.

**

And fucking.

Her tears have dried and the few pleasured sounds she'd made have been silenced. In a way he's glad she's stopped, because he knows what those tears and sounds cost her. But mostly he's irritated by the duality: she asked him to come and yet resents the emotions he causes in her.

She may seem detached now, but she isn't, not completely.

He likes the trembling just a bit. The trembling is arousing. It's muscles twitching and tension that can't quite be contained. It's her body wanting his, just a little. So even though she appears indifferent in the wake of her orgasm, he grasps her hips and tugs them towards him, putting her body to work engulfing his cock in a rhythm only slightly slower than he'd prefer.

Other than that she stays mostly still. And he wonders, as he pushes into her over and over, whether this is still a consensual activity. Her body trembles though, so he continues, stroking himself in and out of her, taking what he needs.

If only her eyes would tell him something. They don't. She went from the tears and moaning to nothing, and there was never anything in her eyes he wanted to see.

He decides to try again, to jolt her from her apathy one more time. So he shifts his weight until her hips have no choice but to move in time with his. Then he uses his hands on her.

One finds her breast and squeezes in time with his thrust as he rams his cock into her. He's rewarded with more trembling. His finger finds her hard, erect nipple, and he wishes he could spare a moment to suckle her breast.

Then his other hand reaches down to where their bodies join and he finds her clit waiting for him. Her trembling has pushed him farther into pleasure and he wants to thrust harder and faster, so he resorts to clumsy fumbling over the still-sensitive nub, hoping that will be enough stimulation for her.

Apparently, it is. She takes his hand from her breast and begins to suck at his fingertips. His cock reacts, swelling and hardening further inside her, making her cunt a tighter fit, squeezing him that little bit more. She grunts around his fingers and he wonders if that tightening of her cunt means that she has climaxed again.

He thinks she must have, because as quickly as it began, her response subsides. He is more frustrated than disappointed that the sum total of his efforts has been two excruciatingly brief displays of interest.

And now her eyes are closing. She's falling asleep before he's even finished himself, can't be bothered to do for him what he's done for her.

"Don't," he gasps a harsh urgent breath, slamming into her hard and fast, knowing there can't be long left. Right now he needs to find his own climax in this apathetic woman who wants him to fuck her for reasons he doesn't begin to understand.

Maybe she does it because she wants to know she has this power over him. Maybe she just wants to be fucked. He doesn't know. All he cares about is his orgasm.

And she knows that that is what he wants right now: not her, just his own pleasure. She suddenly awakens under him, pushing her pelvis up to meet him so that his next thrust sends him deeper into her than before. She will have bruises on her thighs by the time he's finished.

He slams again, needing the sound of skin slapping, of bodies thumping together, of the iron headboard clanging against the wall, of the awareness in her expression that he and no one else is inside her.

Her face reflects both pain and hate and some ingrained awareness tells him he should be repelled that he's hurting her. It's too late, though. Her reaction, her shift from apathy to fervent, if negative emotion, gives him the satisfaction he needs.

Finally, he feels powerful. He's made her do the one thing she didn't want to do. And as he slams into her again and sees the speckles of hatred amid all the indignation he explodes inside her and feels her pulsing around him at last.

He understands, as he convulses inside her hot depths, flooding the condom with his sperm, why he never will leave her.

Only when the rush of endorphins finally begins to wear off, seconds later, does he experience resignation. She's immediately decided on sleep, and she isn't even trembling any more.

**

When he has rested himself and thinks she must be sound asleep, he slips clumsily from her bed and bedroom.

Then he realizes that his car is still in the White House parking lot. After all these years, he's still not able to make dignified exits. He is too tired to face a walk at this hour of the night and a taxi is out of the question; as always, this is a clandestine relationship.

She's awake as he eases his way back into the bedroom, and though she doesn't hate him at this moment, he can still tell that she resents his presence.

He decides he'll take that over apathy.

But then, when he slips back into bed, she curls into his side, her arm slung across his torso. And the mixed message isn't quite enough, but he'll take that, too.

He wonders whether, if he could find a way to apologize credibly, she'd forgive him for his past inaction, the midnight calls, his faithfulness to his wife. But there's no way he can do that, at least no way he's found yet.

Then he wonders whether, if he could resist that look, that siren call, that piper's tune she gives him, they could each find some separate peace. But he's never been able to resist her in the past, not since that first time he gave in, so there's no point in imagining he could now.

He loves her. And he thinks she might love him, in some twisted fashion, or she wouldn't keep bringing him to her bed and enduring his painful, ardent ministrations.

But still they treat each other this way.

He doesn't know why they are locked together so tightly, why neither can give the other up and walk away, why neither can bend to forgive or be forgiven.

Why they need each other.

As he sinks into sleep, though, her warm body pressed silently next to him, he feels inexplicably grateful for her. For this particular moment, he decides that that's enough.

THE END

Feedback?
 

BACK TO INDEX