Rating: R

Disclaimer: Sorkin, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Summary: 'Sam looked from CJ to Toby, then pointed to a table across the patio. "I can go sit over there and leave you two to fight."'

Author's Notes: Any discrepancies in canon facts can be blamed on the conspiracy between British TV scheduling and all the VCRs in the UK, which let to me not even having seen the end of season 3 yet. Improbably, I'd like to thank 'My Vitriol' for the title.

Dedication: This is for one of the Bordy gals, though I've yet to figure out which one. I apologise profusely for my tardiness. Season's greetings.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Sweat beaded on CJ's shoulders and chest, trickled downwards and pooled between her breasts. She turned the shower to its coolest setting and shed her sticky pale blue cotton shirt and darker blue sarong, stepping into the spray.

"You didn't used to sweat this much, CJ. You've lost your acclimation to the heat out here." Toby, naked in the doorway, reached past CJ's breasts to the temperature control and turned it up towards lukewarm before stepping in to join her.

"Don't be ridiculous, Toby, once a California girl, always a California girl. Don't you have a shower in your own room?" But she reached for him as she spoke, lathered soap on his chest, hissed as he moved closer and his erection pressed against her thigh.

"Of course I do, CJ." His fingers brushed lightly down her ribs. "Would you like me to go use it?"

Her lips brushed his ear.

"No."

*****

"Chicken Caesar Salad, and a ginger ale with that. Thank you." CJ closed her menu, put it down, and looked across the table at Toby. "He's over a half hour late."

"He'll be here." Toby toyed with the cutlery, the menu, anything he could get his hands on. Their positions should be reversed. Toby should be complaining while CJ is placating. He realises that she still feels dumped, so reserves comment on the discrepancy. "He's busy with re-election. Busier because he actually cares, and not just about the paycheque."

"I would think - thank you." The waitress placed a chilled ginger ale in front of her. "I would think that, of all the people on Sam's campaign trail, I'm one to which you wouldn't feel a pressing need to sell the candidate."

"You've had sex with him. Is that all it takes to ensure you'll vote for him?"

"Sure," she sipped her drink casually. "Quid pro quo. I got his body; he gets my vote. That's exactly how I work Toby, yeah. Shame for him I don't get to vote in California any more."

Toby opened his mouth, then shook his head and closed it. "I'll just sit here and drink my coffee."

*****

The salad had arrived and been half consumed when Sam pulled out a chair. "Sorry I'm late, guys. You know, campaigning."

CJ raised her ginger ale in a mock toast. "It's a bitch."

"I didn't mean to keep you waiting, CJ, I got held up by the press. Give me a break."

"Well, hassle from reporters is something I can appreciate." She smiled, and Toby snorted.

"Don't let that give you the impression she hasn't been counting out how late you are in five minute increments."

"Shut up, Toby."

Sam looked from CJ to Toby, then pointed to a table across the patio. "I can go sit over there and leave you two to fight."

"Alternatively," Toby frowned and brushed the beads of perspiration off his forehead, "I could just go back to the motel and leave the two of you to fight instead."

Either deliberately ignoring the comment, or too preoccupied to notice, Sam smiled. "Don't worry about it Toby, I can't stay long anyway. I have a press junket in forty-five minutes that it'll take me thirty minutes to get to from here." He didn't notice CJ's eyebrows raise. "So I'm just going to grab a drink, catch up with the gossip and run."

It turned out, however, that catching up with what was going on in CJ's and Toby's lives did not require the fifteen minutes Sam had allotted. He apparently felt no pressing urge to hang around for the five minutes remaining, and ten minutes after Sam had joined them, CJ and Toby once again found themselves looking at each other across a white plastic table.

"He certainly has, ah, thrown himself into his campaign."

CJ stretched her lips into a wry smile. "Ah, that's better." She swallowed the rest of her ginger ale, for an extended beat. "This is how it's supposed to be. You're supposed to be the bitch, isn't that right, Toby?"

Toby lit a match, but didn't raise it to the end of his cigar. Toby really didn't belong in California, CJ idly observed. The sulphur odour drifted across the table, smelling of somewhere else. "We're both pissed at him."

"Oh, yes," she nodded her agreement, "but I'm pissed at him in a middle-aged woman waking up to find her younger lover leaving in the dark sort of way. You're just pissed that he gets a good campaign. Much more bitchy, don't you agree?"

"I don't - I don't know what you're talking about, CJ."

"Listen to me Toby. I know you didn't get to run the re-election campaign that you wanted to run. I know Bruno is a pain in the ass who drives you crazy because he's more like you than your own brother is, and I know you feel like he stole your campaign." She paused for breath, and was surprised that Toby didn't jump into the gap.

"You'd never campaigned for an incumbent before, and this was your chance to show what you could do when you went in with the upper hand. I know all this. I also know something else."

Toby drummed his fingers on the table, picked up his glass, set it down again. She was going to make him ask. "What do you know, Mrs Columbo?"

"None of that is Sam's fault."

He looked at her before he spoke. "Did you by any chance, upon hearing that Sam was considering running for the Senate, tell him he should go for it, and that he shouldn't stay here because of a fling with a friend?"

"You're supposed to - that's what you say, Toby. That's how you're supportive."

"But you weren't just being supportive. You meant it." Their hands were close enough that they could have touched, but didn't. "So why don't we just let it go? I can if you can."

CJ tossed a pile of bills onto the table and rose. "We have a plane to catch, Toby. We need to go back to the motel and pack."

"Do we have time for another shower?"

Finis.

Author's Notes, mark 2: Unbeta'd due to time constraints, so if there are any errors just kick me.