Title: Obsurdesco
Author: bj
Summary: To become deaf, to turn a deaf ear.
Category: Sam, Sam/Josh, angst, post-Rosslyn.
Rating: PG-13 for sex, a little language, and other grown-up stuff.
Spoilers: "What Kind of Day Has it Been?" through "Noel."
Disclaimer: Sorkin & Posse own this crew. Don't sue me.
Author's Note: I really have nothing to say about this one (do the Meposian dance of joy!). Except that it was written in response to Teanna's sound challenge: http://sound.gatefiction.com, and thanks to her for disguising an ego-boost as a beta.
URL: http://www21.brinkster.com/everyirony/obsurdesco.html.
Archive: At the sound challenge. All others: ask and it (probably) shall be given.
Feedback: All comments are appreciated, answered, and archived. allcanadiangirl@lycos.com.
Obsurdesco
prologue: "with eyes closed tight through monuments of grace"
May 26 was the death of sound. It culminated in a spray of gunfire, he grabbed at her shoulders, her neck, pulled her over and down into a fall of glass breaking, her coat protected his face, but he felt her head bounce as she drove her fingers out into the diamond shards, searching for purchase in the lull of gravity.
Screams, everything becoming quiet as he hunched over her. She contracted into a tiny package of bones and glass-beaded hair.
The futility of his own ragged breathing. Then nothing. The silence of a swallowed name.
He looked up to see dark men, wires in ear, guns in hand, rushing toward them and instinct made him put air through his mouth for no and try to pull her away. Recognition separated them, he tucked the chain into his pocket for later. He spread his fingers, blinked his eyes, recited day and year and President for the paramedic.
He heard Toby call for a doctor and he thought the worst. He saw the blood and—
The flash of hospital lights on chrome as he ran down the hallway. No matter how often he says it, he still left Josh behind, and he was still relieved.
one: "the man from harold wood"
Hospital, seven o'clock. Josh has been out of surgery for twenty hours. If he were going to die, he would have died by now. That's what CJ says, counting stitches in the waiting room. Toby returns from washing his hands again and stands above her, glaring at the white staples. Sam throws his Styrofoam cup in the trash and heads for the stairs.
The cement well extends up ten floors, bank after receding bank of fluorescent lights tinting everything yellow. Each step jars his shins, the railing creases into his hand, his heartbeat presses against the metal. He goes two stairs at a time, listening to his breath in the recycled air.
Sylvia under fluorescent light, grey sweat suit, red trim. Her eyes and the hospital smell make him think of winter—car wheels over salt and gravel, the roar of mall crowds, slap of water against hull—muffled silence.
"Oh, Sam, you're back," she says, choked, grasping his upper arms and kissing his cheek.
"Hey, Sylvia." His reply is hushed, relieved that she can speak.
She pulls back, does not look him in the eye. "You can go in if you want, but—he's asleep right now."
Her hands leave his arms as he hears the elevator opens on vacuum. Two orderlies push an empty gurney into the silent green cavern.
He looks to the door, the muted blue glow of the monitors beckons. He says, "In a minute. How're you doing?"
Sylvia tries to laugh, puts a hand to her lips to stop the sob that comes out. She shakes her head. "I'm fine, Sam. Go in there."
There is no stalling. He steps through the doorway into the room. He leaves the lights off, closes the door with a gentle click.
Approaching the gauzy white bed, he hears the alarum syncopation of heart, lung, blood pressure, and kidney monitors. The cacophony masks his breath.
He whispers, "Josh?" and is ashamed for expecting an answer.
He sits beside the bed, puts his hands on the rail. He swallows hard and lets his hands slide over, down, onto the bed. The steel is cold against his wrists. He traces Josh's hand, curved shell-like on the white cotton. If he pressed his hear to it, would he hear the ocean, or only sirens?
The chair makes a sharp squeal as he brings it closer to the bed, and he snaps back. Sylvia doesn't burst in and order him away, closed eyes don't open, so he rests his right hand over Josh's right hand, feeling the dry warmth of his skin. It makes him think of home in the spring and the safety of chamber music.
He breathes slowly, moving his fingers between Josh's thumb and forefinger. It's only to feel the dull thud of arrhythmic pulses through their palms. Just to make sure neither one of them is a ghost.
He moves closer. He moves his free hand over Josh's forehead. He moves his thumb and forefinger around the crest of Josh's ear and down to the lobe.
"I'm sorry," he says, almost silent. He rests his forehead on the rail. "I'm sorry." He's glad Josh can't hear him. They would die if he had to explain.
There is a skip in the beat between their hands and Sam looks up, stricken like Moussorgski's violins, trying to read the monitor screens. He comes to the edge of his chair and lowers his ear to the unbroken side of Josh's inflating/deflating chest.
Kick drum.
He's alive, but Sam killed him in thought. The shame of it. Thank God it was Josh.
two: "ella no puede dejar decirle lo que usted no desea oír"
He dislikes the silence of examination rooms, reading health posters and insurance notices. He takes a pamphlet on organ donation and tucks it into his briefcase just so the locks can snap.
"What can I do for you today, Sam?" Dr. Varella asks, climbing cowboy-style onto her stool across from him. She wears scrubs under her lab coat, like a hospital doctor, stethoscope slung rakishly about her neck, hair slashed to a fine buzz.
Sam looks anywhere but at her and touches his left ear. "For about a month, I've been having problems. With my hearing."
She frowns in his peripheral and leans forward, reaching for his face. She turns his head so she can look into his ear, where his fingers linger over the lobe. "Just this one?"
"No. Both."
She nods, slides off the stool and takes an otoscope from the wall. Fitting the tip, she asks, "What kind of problems?"
He drops his hand and takes a deep breath. "Sometimes I can't hear anything."
She makes a concerned noise, poking the instrument into his ear. "Nothing at all?"
"No. It doesn't last very long. Other times I hear this piercing, I guess you'd call it a squeal. It's like an emergency alert." He stops talking as she takes hold of his chin and switches ears.
"Do you have a family history of hearing loss?"
He hadn't even thought of that. "I'm not sure."
Moving back, she tosses the used tip in a biohazard container and pockets the otoscope. "Ask. I don't see anything unusual in there, but I'd like you to have some tests done asap."
He hates it when people pronounce acronyms like words. He nods. She takes a clipboard from a cupboard and starts filling out paperwork. "Any questions?"
What's the word for it—he can't think in the silence. "Is there any chance it could be caused by some sort of injury? A, well, a trauma to the area?"
She moves her shoulders in a practiced non-condescending shrug. "Something inserted into the aural canal. A sharp blow or two. Why?"
"It started just after—I was in Rosslyn when the President was shot last month."
Her eyes widen momentarily. "You were there? At the Newseum?"
He'd wanted somebody to ask, but now he feels threatened by her curiosity. "Yes. Do you think the shots could have damaged my ears?"
The doctor rips off a sheet of information for the testing centre before answering. "It's possible, I guess. How close were you?"
The scene is abstract and distorted in his memory. He remembers Josh being just a step away, calling him, and he chose not to hear, to save CJ instead, but that's a nightmare like Bartok and she is waiting for his answer. "I'm not sure."
She nods, a familiar reverence in her expression. "Okay. Have the tests done, and we'll deal with cause when the results are in. Any more questions?"
He slides the folded paper into his case. "No. Thanks for your time."
three: "locked in the trunk of a car"
The basement is a cocoon of concrete, vibrations radiating into this storage room like hive memory. Sam leans against a filing cabinet, elbows propped on an open drawer, folder lost between his hands, listening to the womb-like security, thinking of the Wagnerian silence of space and the mournful constancy of the radio signal. The echo of testing sequences: pulse right ear to right hand, left—left. The light is diffused in brushed swing snare drum, gauzy and yellow, a red vein traces "EXIT" down a long hallway outside the open door.
Of a hundred footsteps ringing dully through the ceiling, one set becomes distinct, loping crookedly down the basement stairs.
Sam lifts his head and tries to read what he wrote on the pages in the folder, but the vibrations cease suddenly, leaving the steps in focus for a moment. Then everything condenses into a singularity of c-sharp minor seventh. He slams the drawer shut, taking his tie with it, but he doesn't notice the jerk of pain in the silence of the act.
He steps back, leans forward, tries to ride it out, the disorientation is maddening, like the semi-automatic pop of mob panic. His forehead hits the cool metal of the cabinet and he imagines its atoms buzzing together so fast they're a solid blur. The motion of the cabinet melts into the sound just inside his right ear, and then both are sapped away as a hand touches his shoulder.
"Are you okay?" Josh asks quietly. His voice has never been that thick with worry to Sam's ears. The realisation makes Sam sick with guilt.
Josh moves his hand over Sam's back, the sound similar to the hush of bodies under sheets, and his fingers tuck between Sam's neck and shoulder. Their pulses in clinical precision, and Sam wants to turn around, pull and accept his movement closer. He wants to breathe the thought away, to swallow it and send it back to the glass-scattered asphalt hell where it belongs.
He just nods.
Josh brushes the back of his ear and Sam wonders how the piercing cruel sound can be so present, so close to Josh's inferior matter and yet exist separate from the body. Josh squeezes his neck.
"What is it?" he asks as Sam extracts his tie from the drawer with a tug and stands up.
"It's nothing." If he turns around they'll have to make eye contact, so he opens the cabinet and retrieves his file. "How's the first day back?"
The warm anchor of Josh's hand drops away as he sighs. "You see their faces?"
Sam looks over his shoulder to reply with suitable soothing psychobabble it's just that they thought they weren't scared anymore, but then you show up and we know we are, and he notices the door is closed. He turns back to the file without saying anything.
They've done this before. He had thought it was over, that life after near death would not include hasty, half-kidding intervals in obscure rooms.
He hears Josh's hand in his pocket, and he hears hesitation, and he could tell him right now that it's impossible. He could tell him, he could make this day worse than that one, he could let his crime go to kill and maim the way it was meant to, and Josh's free hand wouldn't be on his hip, coasting around as their breath deepens, stopping over belt buckle. Josh wouldn't be whispering, "Please," and Sam wouldn't be assuming the position. But just like he swallowed the name in Rosslyn he swallows the thought now and puts the file away. The drawer closes with a rumble.
Sam's forehead against the cabinet, Josh's against Sam's neck, this is a waking version of the ghost test, and one of them is failing miserably.
He rocks the cabinet against the wall involuntarily and Josh stops, breathing heavily against the back of Sam's head. Sam lays his cheek on the cabinet and Josh pulls out, away, shrinking. His breath is cruel and loud in Sam's ears, their heartbeats fading into a dim bluesy recessional. Josh tucks himself in, condom falling to the floor. Adjusted tie, hands through hair, he walks out and closes the door.
Sam is bewildered. He knows he should be bereft, but the only feeling is a surfacing clue and disgust that Josh expects him to clean up the mess.
He hitches his pants up, considers leaving it on the floor like a squiggle of damp white guilt.
Latex hitting the can. Adjusted tie, hands through hair. Sam clears his throat and leaves the door open. Abandoned steps echo in the room.
four: "i would stand at your door stop this deafening roar"
So what he does is, he goes home and unplugs the phone. The carpets swallow his steps, the bathroom is a deadened acoustic pit, every appliance is a space-age marvel of silence. He stands in the nexus of his apartment, where the kitchen opens onto the living space and the foyer spills across to the bedroom hallway, arms crossed, trying to understand how there's nothing wrong with him.
"Are you listening, Sam?" Dr. Varella says. He nods. She smiles. "I think you're fine. You were probably too far away to have sustained any damage at all."
No damage at all. Six different tests, a second opinion, and it seems like the only time he can hear everything clearly is when there's a doctor in the room. The worst part might be that he can't blame Ainsley Hayes on his hearing.
Manifestation of guilt, he tells himself. He didn't hear Josh, the screams focus into those moments when he should have been looking for him instead of running for his life.
He puts on Rutter's Requiem. He lays on the couch with a glass of water, examining the sound for panic, finding nothing. He waves his free hand into the curves of the music and ignores the buzzer until he has had enough of confessional harmonies. He picks up the receiver and does not even have time to say hello.
"Sam!"
He wants to think thank God it is Josh, but the basso voices have made him cold to sentiment. "Yes?"
"I need to talk to you," Josh says, desperate as if wolves are advancing up the stoop.
There's no reason not to let him up, so Sam lets him up without responding. He puts his water down on the hall table, then picks it back up so Josh won't think he's expecting contact. He returns to the living room to turn down the stereo, then leaves it loud, tossing the remote to the coffee with a clatter, to show he doesn't care what Josh has to say.
When the knock comes, fleshy and urgent, he pulls back the chain and deadbolt and swings the door open. Josh doesn't look at him, but flinches as sopranos beg for mercy in the background. Sam can smell the angry rush of rum and a year ago he would have given a long-suffering sigh, now he closes his eyes for a moment, unsure how to do this.
"Come on in," he says finally, and Josh trudges over the threshold, shouldering the door closed. "Do you want something to drink? Eat?"
Josh shrugs, standing restlessly in the hall. "Whatever you're having."
That line was stale fifteen years ago. Sam goes to the kitchen, leaves his glass on the counter, pulls a clean one from the shelf, turns on the water and the filter, he is about to offer Josh ice when he hears him muttering, "Fuck, fucking thing," voice pure as oboe over the water and the music, smeared with anger and something like tarnished french horn.
Sam looks over his shoulder into the living room; Josh is fumbling with the remote, leaning heavily against a blocky black chair. "What are you doing?"
Josh does not seem to hear him. Sam twists the water off and moves out of the kitchen. "Josh. What are you doing?"
Upright bass and cello stumble into the air as Josh looks up, face pale and confused. "Can you, can you turn this down?"
Sam is reaching when Josh adds, "Please," in a strained-strings voice. Their fingers don't touch as they pass the remote. Sam presses the stop button, because he does care what Josh has to say. "Is that better?"
Josh laughs as he says, "Sure, yeah," throwing his hands up like it never mattered in the first place.
They stand in the living room, Sam waiting for Josh to speak, Josh shaking his head slowly in the quiet.
"What is it?" Sam asks, becoming frustrated mostly with himself for not knowing what's wrong, but Josh is the one who rang his bell, so, "Why did you come here?"
"I—I've been drinking," Josh confesses.
Sam lets that year-old sigh go. "Yeah. I know."
Josh sniffs the lapel of his coat. It seems like they're both waiting for him to think of a reason. "I needed to talk to you."
Before Sam can roll his eyes and profess knowledge again, Josh says, "And the—I'm sorry."
Sam becomes a wall of negatives. No, this is not Josh. "Whatever for?"
Josh laughs his bitter laugh. "You know. In the basement. I'm sorry I did that."
It would be insulting to play dumb to this, so Sam shakes his head. "You don't need to apologise," he says a little forcefully. "It was three weeks ago. I'm fine. It's okay."
"It's really not." Josh rubs his face, holds his hands over his ears for a moment, his coat rustling like the breath of a straw man. "I shouldn't have just, like, left you there. I don't even know—"
He stops, glances at the remote in Sam's hand, at the stereo in the corner. "Are you sure you turned it down?"
Sam can't answer for a moment, he doesn't know if it's a joke or if Josh has been doing something other than drinking. "Josh, I turned it off."
Josh laughs again, disbelieving, the sound breaking down into syllables of uncertainty like ice, like glass. "Off?"
"Off," Sam replies, frowning. In the back of his mind, Dr. Varella is giving him a very serious look, saying auditory hallucinations and he tells her in his most reasonable voice that he isn't crazy.
As Josh moves around the chair he says, "Off," in a wondering tone. Sam is trying to ask if something's wrong, trying to convince himself that it's all right to ask, all right for him to ask. "Are—Josh, are you okay?"
Sitting, Josh shrugs. "Yeah. I'm fine. Yeah." He lets his head fall back and closes his eyes. "I just. I need some quiet." He covers his face with his hands. "It gets so loud sometimes, Sam."
"I know," Sam says, quietly, standing above him. All sorts of words explode in his mouth and he wants very much to let them all spill out—fear anger pride love memory blood guilt jealousy—but some of them are not things he wants Josh to hear, so he bites his tongue.
He puts a hand over Josh's hands. Josh moves his fingers and envelopes it and his lips are on Sam's palm and they stay in a wash of steel guitar and psalms written in the ruin of a holy city. In the end Sam's knees are buried on either side of the cushion, he is unbuttoning Josh's shirt, he is pressing his lips to Josh's forehead, ear, cheek, avoiding his mouth because they don't need to share words.
"I need to get home," Josh says. "I'm very drunk. I'm going—now."
Sam lets himself be shoved roughly back, watches Josh shuffle towards the door. The shrapnel in his throat collapses into I need you to stay here and I was glad it was you, and Sam keeps his mouth shut because he doesn't know which is louder.
Josh doesn't look back as he turns the handle. He stands in the peach-coloured opening for a moment, then shakes his head and pulls the door closed behind him.
The chain and deadbolt knock back into place like artillery fire.
five: "though their voices are silent, their pleading looks say"
He looks up involuntarily when Josh wanders through Communications, touching walls, touching desks, quiet and significant as a ghost. He feigns confusion when Toby raises an eyebrow through the Plexiglass. Five minutes later the light bounces like a drumhead and he hits print.
He sees CJ's left leg hanging skewed over her right as he stands in Toby's office doorway. She smiles, frosting at one corner of her mouth. "Heya, Sammy. Have a pastry."
"Good morning, CJ." He glances at the plate of strudel and danish, the three triangular spaces where Josh has stolen the turnovers. He can't remember the last time he was hungry. "No, but thanks."
Toby asks, "Are you doing the Christmas thing?"
He's trying, he's making jokes about polling data and Bach. It's junk. He lays it on Toby's desk. "Done."
Toby leans back in his chair, gnawing on his bottom lip. "You talked to Josh last night?" he asks, talking to Sam, looking at CJ, patting the draft. She stands, licking the frosting into her mouth.
"I've got a briefing, boys. Play nice."
She squeezes his hand as she passes, he looks at the ways he could answer, goes with the most familiar—non-answer. "Why would I have spoken to Josh last night?"
"Because," Toby replies impatiently, "when he left the bar, he said he was going to your place. He said, and I quote, I need to talk to Sam. End quote."
They went out last night. They went without him. He wouldn't have gone if they'd asked, but still. "He came by. I can't say we talked. He mumbled drunkenly about the volume of my stereo and then he—left."
Bonnie and Ginger start bickering in the bullpen. Toby motions for him to close the door and Sam turns, his hand on the knob. "How did he seem to you?"
Of course it wouldn't occur to him to non-answer this time. "He seems not as fine as he says he is."
Toby doesn't respond for a long time, and Sam looks over his shoulder. Toby is staring at him with that jesus christ, sam, pay attention expression. "I wanted to know—how drunk you thought he was. He was going to drive, we made him get a cab."
Vibraphone sting of recognition: denial in all its crashing forms. "Yes, Toby, he was too drunk to drive." He can't keep the bitterness out of his voice, and it sounds petulant to him. "You did the right thing."
He leaves Toby's door open, he leaves his door open, he sits at his desk and pulls up a statistics exercise with steady hands. He hears bluegrass and makes out a warbled gloria in excelsius deo. As a child, he always thought the words were "born in Excelsius's stable."
six: "sana quod est saucium"
No. He stands at the back and watches Josh try to drown the piercing echo with anger, and all he can do is unswallow that name, breath it out and it feels like a scream.
Toby corners him in the mess and demands to know what happened—he cannot answer, he has the right words for this, but they are tied up in wrong words. All he can do is direct Toby's accusing gaze to Leo.
He ties his tie in the bathroom and rolls his pocket lint brush over his shoulders. He switches seats with someone from the energy committee so he doesn't have to sit near Toby. He opens his ears to the objective scales of the eighteenth century and he doesn't once let himself look for Josh in the audience.
But when his eyes stray an hour later, he doesn't see him, and Donna looks abandoned five feet from Yo-Yo Ma, so he gets in his car and slips Chopin's sharp etudes in the player. He drives five blocks and he looks up at the golden window. Josh is standing there and he can still feel Josh's hands as he pushed him away in the basement and two weeks ago. He drives on.
He goes home and he packs for Aruba, although he'll end up in California with his parents because his dad sent him a handwritten letter wrapped around the ticket.
He picks up the phone at ten in the morning and misses his flight south while not dialling Josh's home number. At noon he makes the mistake of answering to Leo's office number and stays relatively quiet while Leo explains that Josh is in an important meeting all day. He seriously considers missing his flight west standing white-knuckled in his apartment. Overhead the jetliners roar in fear.
He drives to the White House well after sunset, his suitcase on the back seat, he is taking the scenic route to the airport. He watches them get in Josh's car, Donna behind the wheel, and he pulls around the corner. He has a plane to catch.
End.
---
Musical Notes:
with eyes closed tight through monuments of grace
"Betrayal is a Symptom" by Thrice
"The Man From Harold Wood" by Matthew Good Band
ella no puede dejar decirle lo que usted no desea oír
(she cannot help but tell him that which he does not want to hear)
"Duty to You" by Sid Screamed
"Locked in the Trunk of a Car" by The Tragically Hip
i would stand at your door stop this deafening roar
"Forget" by Conspiracy of Silence
though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
"Hard Times, Come Again No More" by Stephen Foster, performed by James Taylor
sana quod est saucium
(what is wounded, work its cure)
"Veni Sancte Spiritus" by John Rutter, performed by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge
Author: bj
Summary: To become deaf, to turn a deaf ear.
Category: Sam, Sam/Josh, angst, post-Rosslyn.
Rating: PG-13 for sex, a little language, and other grown-up stuff.
Spoilers: "What Kind of Day Has it Been?" through "Noel."
Disclaimer: Sorkin & Posse own this crew. Don't sue me.
Author's Note: I really have nothing to say about this one (do the Meposian dance of joy!). Except that it was written in response to Teanna's sound challenge: http://sound.gatefiction.com, and thanks to her for disguising an ego-boost as a beta.
URL: http://www21.brinkster.com/everyirony/obsurdesco.html.
Archive: At the sound challenge. All others: ask and it (probably) shall be given.
Feedback: All comments are appreciated, answered, and archived. allcanadiangirl@lycos.com.
Obsurdesco
prologue: "with eyes closed tight through monuments of grace"
May 26 was the death of sound. It culminated in a spray of gunfire, he grabbed at her shoulders, her neck, pulled her over and down into a fall of glass breaking, her coat protected his face, but he felt her head bounce as she drove her fingers out into the diamond shards, searching for purchase in the lull of gravity.
Screams, everything becoming quiet as he hunched over her. She contracted into a tiny package of bones and glass-beaded hair.
The futility of his own ragged breathing. Then nothing. The silence of a swallowed name.
He looked up to see dark men, wires in ear, guns in hand, rushing toward them and instinct made him put air through his mouth for no and try to pull her away. Recognition separated them, he tucked the chain into his pocket for later. He spread his fingers, blinked his eyes, recited day and year and President for the paramedic.
He heard Toby call for a doctor and he thought the worst. He saw the blood and—
The flash of hospital lights on chrome as he ran down the hallway. No matter how often he says it, he still left Josh behind, and he was still relieved.
one: "the man from harold wood"
Hospital, seven o'clock. Josh has been out of surgery for twenty hours. If he were going to die, he would have died by now. That's what CJ says, counting stitches in the waiting room. Toby returns from washing his hands again and stands above her, glaring at the white staples. Sam throws his Styrofoam cup in the trash and heads for the stairs.
The cement well extends up ten floors, bank after receding bank of fluorescent lights tinting everything yellow. Each step jars his shins, the railing creases into his hand, his heartbeat presses against the metal. He goes two stairs at a time, listening to his breath in the recycled air.
Sylvia under fluorescent light, grey sweat suit, red trim. Her eyes and the hospital smell make him think of winter—car wheels over salt and gravel, the roar of mall crowds, slap of water against hull—muffled silence.
"Oh, Sam, you're back," she says, choked, grasping his upper arms and kissing his cheek.
"Hey, Sylvia." His reply is hushed, relieved that she can speak.
She pulls back, does not look him in the eye. "You can go in if you want, but—he's asleep right now."
Her hands leave his arms as he hears the elevator opens on vacuum. Two orderlies push an empty gurney into the silent green cavern.
He looks to the door, the muted blue glow of the monitors beckons. He says, "In a minute. How're you doing?"
Sylvia tries to laugh, puts a hand to her lips to stop the sob that comes out. She shakes her head. "I'm fine, Sam. Go in there."
There is no stalling. He steps through the doorway into the room. He leaves the lights off, closes the door with a gentle click.
Approaching the gauzy white bed, he hears the alarum syncopation of heart, lung, blood pressure, and kidney monitors. The cacophony masks his breath.
He whispers, "Josh?" and is ashamed for expecting an answer.
He sits beside the bed, puts his hands on the rail. He swallows hard and lets his hands slide over, down, onto the bed. The steel is cold against his wrists. He traces Josh's hand, curved shell-like on the white cotton. If he pressed his hear to it, would he hear the ocean, or only sirens?
The chair makes a sharp squeal as he brings it closer to the bed, and he snaps back. Sylvia doesn't burst in and order him away, closed eyes don't open, so he rests his right hand over Josh's right hand, feeling the dry warmth of his skin. It makes him think of home in the spring and the safety of chamber music.
He breathes slowly, moving his fingers between Josh's thumb and forefinger. It's only to feel the dull thud of arrhythmic pulses through their palms. Just to make sure neither one of them is a ghost.
He moves closer. He moves his free hand over Josh's forehead. He moves his thumb and forefinger around the crest of Josh's ear and down to the lobe.
"I'm sorry," he says, almost silent. He rests his forehead on the rail. "I'm sorry." He's glad Josh can't hear him. They would die if he had to explain.
There is a skip in the beat between their hands and Sam looks up, stricken like Moussorgski's violins, trying to read the monitor screens. He comes to the edge of his chair and lowers his ear to the unbroken side of Josh's inflating/deflating chest.
Kick drum.
He's alive, but Sam killed him in thought. The shame of it. Thank God it was Josh.
two: "ella no puede dejar decirle lo que usted no desea oír"
He dislikes the silence of examination rooms, reading health posters and insurance notices. He takes a pamphlet on organ donation and tucks it into his briefcase just so the locks can snap.
"What can I do for you today, Sam?" Dr. Varella asks, climbing cowboy-style onto her stool across from him. She wears scrubs under her lab coat, like a hospital doctor, stethoscope slung rakishly about her neck, hair slashed to a fine buzz.
Sam looks anywhere but at her and touches his left ear. "For about a month, I've been having problems. With my hearing."
She frowns in his peripheral and leans forward, reaching for his face. She turns his head so she can look into his ear, where his fingers linger over the lobe. "Just this one?"
"No. Both."
She nods, slides off the stool and takes an otoscope from the wall. Fitting the tip, she asks, "What kind of problems?"
He drops his hand and takes a deep breath. "Sometimes I can't hear anything."
She makes a concerned noise, poking the instrument into his ear. "Nothing at all?"
"No. It doesn't last very long. Other times I hear this piercing, I guess you'd call it a squeal. It's like an emergency alert." He stops talking as she takes hold of his chin and switches ears.
"Do you have a family history of hearing loss?"
He hadn't even thought of that. "I'm not sure."
Moving back, she tosses the used tip in a biohazard container and pockets the otoscope. "Ask. I don't see anything unusual in there, but I'd like you to have some tests done asap."
He hates it when people pronounce acronyms like words. He nods. She takes a clipboard from a cupboard and starts filling out paperwork. "Any questions?"
What's the word for it—he can't think in the silence. "Is there any chance it could be caused by some sort of injury? A, well, a trauma to the area?"
She moves her shoulders in a practiced non-condescending shrug. "Something inserted into the aural canal. A sharp blow or two. Why?"
"It started just after—I was in Rosslyn when the President was shot last month."
Her eyes widen momentarily. "You were there? At the Newseum?"
He'd wanted somebody to ask, but now he feels threatened by her curiosity. "Yes. Do you think the shots could have damaged my ears?"
The doctor rips off a sheet of information for the testing centre before answering. "It's possible, I guess. How close were you?"
The scene is abstract and distorted in his memory. He remembers Josh being just a step away, calling him, and he chose not to hear, to save CJ instead, but that's a nightmare like Bartok and she is waiting for his answer. "I'm not sure."
She nods, a familiar reverence in her expression. "Okay. Have the tests done, and we'll deal with cause when the results are in. Any more questions?"
He slides the folded paper into his case. "No. Thanks for your time."
three: "locked in the trunk of a car"
The basement is a cocoon of concrete, vibrations radiating into this storage room like hive memory. Sam leans against a filing cabinet, elbows propped on an open drawer, folder lost between his hands, listening to the womb-like security, thinking of the Wagnerian silence of space and the mournful constancy of the radio signal. The echo of testing sequences: pulse right ear to right hand, left—left. The light is diffused in brushed swing snare drum, gauzy and yellow, a red vein traces "EXIT" down a long hallway outside the open door.
Of a hundred footsteps ringing dully through the ceiling, one set becomes distinct, loping crookedly down the basement stairs.
Sam lifts his head and tries to read what he wrote on the pages in the folder, but the vibrations cease suddenly, leaving the steps in focus for a moment. Then everything condenses into a singularity of c-sharp minor seventh. He slams the drawer shut, taking his tie with it, but he doesn't notice the jerk of pain in the silence of the act.
He steps back, leans forward, tries to ride it out, the disorientation is maddening, like the semi-automatic pop of mob panic. His forehead hits the cool metal of the cabinet and he imagines its atoms buzzing together so fast they're a solid blur. The motion of the cabinet melts into the sound just inside his right ear, and then both are sapped away as a hand touches his shoulder.
"Are you okay?" Josh asks quietly. His voice has never been that thick with worry to Sam's ears. The realisation makes Sam sick with guilt.
Josh moves his hand over Sam's back, the sound similar to the hush of bodies under sheets, and his fingers tuck between Sam's neck and shoulder. Their pulses in clinical precision, and Sam wants to turn around, pull and accept his movement closer. He wants to breathe the thought away, to swallow it and send it back to the glass-scattered asphalt hell where it belongs.
He just nods.
Josh brushes the back of his ear and Sam wonders how the piercing cruel sound can be so present, so close to Josh's inferior matter and yet exist separate from the body. Josh squeezes his neck.
"What is it?" he asks as Sam extracts his tie from the drawer with a tug and stands up.
"It's nothing." If he turns around they'll have to make eye contact, so he opens the cabinet and retrieves his file. "How's the first day back?"
The warm anchor of Josh's hand drops away as he sighs. "You see their faces?"
Sam looks over his shoulder to reply with suitable soothing psychobabble it's just that they thought they weren't scared anymore, but then you show up and we know we are, and he notices the door is closed. He turns back to the file without saying anything.
They've done this before. He had thought it was over, that life after near death would not include hasty, half-kidding intervals in obscure rooms.
He hears Josh's hand in his pocket, and he hears hesitation, and he could tell him right now that it's impossible. He could tell him, he could make this day worse than that one, he could let his crime go to kill and maim the way it was meant to, and Josh's free hand wouldn't be on his hip, coasting around as their breath deepens, stopping over belt buckle. Josh wouldn't be whispering, "Please," and Sam wouldn't be assuming the position. But just like he swallowed the name in Rosslyn he swallows the thought now and puts the file away. The drawer closes with a rumble.
Sam's forehead against the cabinet, Josh's against Sam's neck, this is a waking version of the ghost test, and one of them is failing miserably.
He rocks the cabinet against the wall involuntarily and Josh stops, breathing heavily against the back of Sam's head. Sam lays his cheek on the cabinet and Josh pulls out, away, shrinking. His breath is cruel and loud in Sam's ears, their heartbeats fading into a dim bluesy recessional. Josh tucks himself in, condom falling to the floor. Adjusted tie, hands through hair, he walks out and closes the door.
Sam is bewildered. He knows he should be bereft, but the only feeling is a surfacing clue and disgust that Josh expects him to clean up the mess.
He hitches his pants up, considers leaving it on the floor like a squiggle of damp white guilt.
Latex hitting the can. Adjusted tie, hands through hair. Sam clears his throat and leaves the door open. Abandoned steps echo in the room.
four: "i would stand at your door stop this deafening roar"
So what he does is, he goes home and unplugs the phone. The carpets swallow his steps, the bathroom is a deadened acoustic pit, every appliance is a space-age marvel of silence. He stands in the nexus of his apartment, where the kitchen opens onto the living space and the foyer spills across to the bedroom hallway, arms crossed, trying to understand how there's nothing wrong with him.
"Are you listening, Sam?" Dr. Varella says. He nods. She smiles. "I think you're fine. You were probably too far away to have sustained any damage at all."
No damage at all. Six different tests, a second opinion, and it seems like the only time he can hear everything clearly is when there's a doctor in the room. The worst part might be that he can't blame Ainsley Hayes on his hearing.
Manifestation of guilt, he tells himself. He didn't hear Josh, the screams focus into those moments when he should have been looking for him instead of running for his life.
He puts on Rutter's Requiem. He lays on the couch with a glass of water, examining the sound for panic, finding nothing. He waves his free hand into the curves of the music and ignores the buzzer until he has had enough of confessional harmonies. He picks up the receiver and does not even have time to say hello.
"Sam!"
He wants to think thank God it is Josh, but the basso voices have made him cold to sentiment. "Yes?"
"I need to talk to you," Josh says, desperate as if wolves are advancing up the stoop.
There's no reason not to let him up, so Sam lets him up without responding. He puts his water down on the hall table, then picks it back up so Josh won't think he's expecting contact. He returns to the living room to turn down the stereo, then leaves it loud, tossing the remote to the coffee with a clatter, to show he doesn't care what Josh has to say.
When the knock comes, fleshy and urgent, he pulls back the chain and deadbolt and swings the door open. Josh doesn't look at him, but flinches as sopranos beg for mercy in the background. Sam can smell the angry rush of rum and a year ago he would have given a long-suffering sigh, now he closes his eyes for a moment, unsure how to do this.
"Come on in," he says finally, and Josh trudges over the threshold, shouldering the door closed. "Do you want something to drink? Eat?"
Josh shrugs, standing restlessly in the hall. "Whatever you're having."
That line was stale fifteen years ago. Sam goes to the kitchen, leaves his glass on the counter, pulls a clean one from the shelf, turns on the water and the filter, he is about to offer Josh ice when he hears him muttering, "Fuck, fucking thing," voice pure as oboe over the water and the music, smeared with anger and something like tarnished french horn.
Sam looks over his shoulder into the living room; Josh is fumbling with the remote, leaning heavily against a blocky black chair. "What are you doing?"
Josh does not seem to hear him. Sam twists the water off and moves out of the kitchen. "Josh. What are you doing?"
Upright bass and cello stumble into the air as Josh looks up, face pale and confused. "Can you, can you turn this down?"
Sam is reaching when Josh adds, "Please," in a strained-strings voice. Their fingers don't touch as they pass the remote. Sam presses the stop button, because he does care what Josh has to say. "Is that better?"
Josh laughs as he says, "Sure, yeah," throwing his hands up like it never mattered in the first place.
They stand in the living room, Sam waiting for Josh to speak, Josh shaking his head slowly in the quiet.
"What is it?" Sam asks, becoming frustrated mostly with himself for not knowing what's wrong, but Josh is the one who rang his bell, so, "Why did you come here?"
"I—I've been drinking," Josh confesses.
Sam lets that year-old sigh go. "Yeah. I know."
Josh sniffs the lapel of his coat. It seems like they're both waiting for him to think of a reason. "I needed to talk to you."
Before Sam can roll his eyes and profess knowledge again, Josh says, "And the—I'm sorry."
Sam becomes a wall of negatives. No, this is not Josh. "Whatever for?"
Josh laughs his bitter laugh. "You know. In the basement. I'm sorry I did that."
It would be insulting to play dumb to this, so Sam shakes his head. "You don't need to apologise," he says a little forcefully. "It was three weeks ago. I'm fine. It's okay."
"It's really not." Josh rubs his face, holds his hands over his ears for a moment, his coat rustling like the breath of a straw man. "I shouldn't have just, like, left you there. I don't even know—"
He stops, glances at the remote in Sam's hand, at the stereo in the corner. "Are you sure you turned it down?"
Sam can't answer for a moment, he doesn't know if it's a joke or if Josh has been doing something other than drinking. "Josh, I turned it off."
Josh laughs again, disbelieving, the sound breaking down into syllables of uncertainty like ice, like glass. "Off?"
"Off," Sam replies, frowning. In the back of his mind, Dr. Varella is giving him a very serious look, saying auditory hallucinations and he tells her in his most reasonable voice that he isn't crazy.
As Josh moves around the chair he says, "Off," in a wondering tone. Sam is trying to ask if something's wrong, trying to convince himself that it's all right to ask, all right for him to ask. "Are—Josh, are you okay?"
Sitting, Josh shrugs. "Yeah. I'm fine. Yeah." He lets his head fall back and closes his eyes. "I just. I need some quiet." He covers his face with his hands. "It gets so loud sometimes, Sam."
"I know," Sam says, quietly, standing above him. All sorts of words explode in his mouth and he wants very much to let them all spill out—fear anger pride love memory blood guilt jealousy—but some of them are not things he wants Josh to hear, so he bites his tongue.
He puts a hand over Josh's hands. Josh moves his fingers and envelopes it and his lips are on Sam's palm and they stay in a wash of steel guitar and psalms written in the ruin of a holy city. In the end Sam's knees are buried on either side of the cushion, he is unbuttoning Josh's shirt, he is pressing his lips to Josh's forehead, ear, cheek, avoiding his mouth because they don't need to share words.
"I need to get home," Josh says. "I'm very drunk. I'm going—now."
Sam lets himself be shoved roughly back, watches Josh shuffle towards the door. The shrapnel in his throat collapses into I need you to stay here and I was glad it was you, and Sam keeps his mouth shut because he doesn't know which is louder.
Josh doesn't look back as he turns the handle. He stands in the peach-coloured opening for a moment, then shakes his head and pulls the door closed behind him.
The chain and deadbolt knock back into place like artillery fire.
five: "though their voices are silent, their pleading looks say"
He looks up involuntarily when Josh wanders through Communications, touching walls, touching desks, quiet and significant as a ghost. He feigns confusion when Toby raises an eyebrow through the Plexiglass. Five minutes later the light bounces like a drumhead and he hits print.
He sees CJ's left leg hanging skewed over her right as he stands in Toby's office doorway. She smiles, frosting at one corner of her mouth. "Heya, Sammy. Have a pastry."
"Good morning, CJ." He glances at the plate of strudel and danish, the three triangular spaces where Josh has stolen the turnovers. He can't remember the last time he was hungry. "No, but thanks."
Toby asks, "Are you doing the Christmas thing?"
He's trying, he's making jokes about polling data and Bach. It's junk. He lays it on Toby's desk. "Done."
Toby leans back in his chair, gnawing on his bottom lip. "You talked to Josh last night?" he asks, talking to Sam, looking at CJ, patting the draft. She stands, licking the frosting into her mouth.
"I've got a briefing, boys. Play nice."
She squeezes his hand as she passes, he looks at the ways he could answer, goes with the most familiar—non-answer. "Why would I have spoken to Josh last night?"
"Because," Toby replies impatiently, "when he left the bar, he said he was going to your place. He said, and I quote, I need to talk to Sam. End quote."
They went out last night. They went without him. He wouldn't have gone if they'd asked, but still. "He came by. I can't say we talked. He mumbled drunkenly about the volume of my stereo and then he—left."
Bonnie and Ginger start bickering in the bullpen. Toby motions for him to close the door and Sam turns, his hand on the knob. "How did he seem to you?"
Of course it wouldn't occur to him to non-answer this time. "He seems not as fine as he says he is."
Toby doesn't respond for a long time, and Sam looks over his shoulder. Toby is staring at him with that jesus christ, sam, pay attention expression. "I wanted to know—how drunk you thought he was. He was going to drive, we made him get a cab."
Vibraphone sting of recognition: denial in all its crashing forms. "Yes, Toby, he was too drunk to drive." He can't keep the bitterness out of his voice, and it sounds petulant to him. "You did the right thing."
He leaves Toby's door open, he leaves his door open, he sits at his desk and pulls up a statistics exercise with steady hands. He hears bluegrass and makes out a warbled gloria in excelsius deo. As a child, he always thought the words were "born in Excelsius's stable."
six: "sana quod est saucium"
No. He stands at the back and watches Josh try to drown the piercing echo with anger, and all he can do is unswallow that name, breath it out and it feels like a scream.
Toby corners him in the mess and demands to know what happened—he cannot answer, he has the right words for this, but they are tied up in wrong words. All he can do is direct Toby's accusing gaze to Leo.
He ties his tie in the bathroom and rolls his pocket lint brush over his shoulders. He switches seats with someone from the energy committee so he doesn't have to sit near Toby. He opens his ears to the objective scales of the eighteenth century and he doesn't once let himself look for Josh in the audience.
But when his eyes stray an hour later, he doesn't see him, and Donna looks abandoned five feet from Yo-Yo Ma, so he gets in his car and slips Chopin's sharp etudes in the player. He drives five blocks and he looks up at the golden window. Josh is standing there and he can still feel Josh's hands as he pushed him away in the basement and two weeks ago. He drives on.
He goes home and he packs for Aruba, although he'll end up in California with his parents because his dad sent him a handwritten letter wrapped around the ticket.
He picks up the phone at ten in the morning and misses his flight south while not dialling Josh's home number. At noon he makes the mistake of answering to Leo's office number and stays relatively quiet while Leo explains that Josh is in an important meeting all day. He seriously considers missing his flight west standing white-knuckled in his apartment. Overhead the jetliners roar in fear.
He drives to the White House well after sunset, his suitcase on the back seat, he is taking the scenic route to the airport. He watches them get in Josh's car, Donna behind the wheel, and he pulls around the corner. He has a plane to catch.
End.
---
Musical Notes:
with eyes closed tight through monuments of grace
"Betrayal is a Symptom" by Thrice
"The Man From Harold Wood" by Matthew Good Band
ella no puede dejar decirle lo que usted no desea oír
(she cannot help but tell him that which he does not want to hear)
"Duty to You" by Sid Screamed
"Locked in the Trunk of a Car" by The Tragically Hip
i would stand at your door stop this deafening roar
"Forget" by Conspiracy of Silence
though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
"Hard Times, Come Again No More" by Stephen Foster, performed by James Taylor
sana quod est saucium
(what is wounded, work its cure)
"Veni Sancte Spiritus" by John Rutter, performed by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge