Title: Pictures

Title: Pictures

Author: Perpetual Motion

Webpage: www.geocities.com/iwannabedonna

Category: Slash, Angst, Drama

Rating: PG

Fandom: West Wing

Pairing: Sam/Toby

Series: No

Spoilers: No.

Summary: A love in pictures as bad news hangs above.

Archive Instructions: Please, have fun. Drink White Russians. :)

Disclaimer: They're not mine. Aaron Sorkin tends to treat them a bit more nicely.

Author's Notes: Don't ask. It just came to me. Happier fic will follow.

Pictures

By Perpetual Motion

Cancer.

Toby stared blankly at the wall adorned in pictures. His mind kept trying to grasp the word. It tried to strangle the horrid, vile word that was going to kill him.

Cancer.

He looked over every picture in turn. It couldn't be happening. Not to Sam. Not to his Sam. Cancer was not for Sam. Cancer was for Toby. Who smoked cigars and drank scotch and ate his steak bloody. Cancer was not for Sam. Who exercised and ate right and very rarely drank. Sam couldn't have cancer.

His hair would fall out. If Sam had to have chemotherapy, all his beautiful, dark hair would fall out. Toby should have cancer. He had less hair.

Toby looked at the pictures again. There was a whole wall of Toby and Sam. Their entire history was there. A reporter from New Hampshire had covered the sudden change in Governor Bartlet's campaign staff and gone to take a picture. In that picture, it was a ragtag team of hopeful but slightly scared people. Toby and Sam had been on opposite ends of the picture.

The picture the day of the inauguration for Bartlet's first term hung near the campaign shot. The whole staff in their finest giving cocky, giddy smiles to the mob of cameras and flashbulbs.

Pictures done by White House photographers who were willing to give copies. Sam and Toby, typing furiously with their laptops back-to-back. Toby and Sam going over a printed speech. Sam and Toby, with identical weary, eye-rubbing faces and rumpled suits with ties loosened and cuffs rolled up.

Then, the second inauguration day, with everyone's smiles more cocky, but their body language reassuring the country they knew their jobs. Sam and Toby were side-by-side in that picture. A friendly side-by-side. A side-by-side that told America the Communications people were more than co-workers, they were friends. A side-by-side that told the White House that a love was developing.

Toby wiped his eyes as he looked at the next pictures. Another four years of White House photographers who made copies and one picture where there were no copies or negatives because the man who caught Sam sleeping with his head on Toby's lap was a fighter for gay rights who couldn't exploit true love.

Among the pictures, two stood out. They were centered on the wall in heavier frames. The top one was of Sam and Toby as they held up their linked hands outside the Capitol Building. They were both smiling. Sam had tear tracks on his face. Toby's tie was undone. Four years after the Bartlet White House was gone, Sam had accomplished his deepest personal win. The one win that required eight years working for one of the most open men in America before Sam had the talent he needed to nail the most unlawful bill he had ever seen. Sam had put an end to the banning of same sex marriage.

Toby had stood beside him, behind him, and in front of him, and watched Sam shoot down every argument with a precision that reminded Toby very much of Bartlet.

The second picture in the center was of Toby and Sam, a month after Sam performed his miracle on the Hill. It was Sam and Toby getting married. Not a commitment ceremony, but a true wedding. Josh was Sam's best man. Leo was Toby's. The entire staff had been there. Jed and Abby had been the first through the door for both wedding and reception. It had been extra perfection on an already perfect day.

"Toby."

He turned at the sound of his name, his eyes assessing Sam in the doorway. Sam looked tired. He was finally graying at the temples, and it usually looked distinguished, but Toby thought that for the moment in the doorway it made Sam look much to old. "Sam."

"It's benign and it's operable."

Benign. Operable. Toby felt his heart start to beat again. "You'll be okay?"

"I'll be bald when they shave my head, but I'll be fine."

"Oh, God." Toby sunk to the floor. "Oh, God, Sam, it should be me. I smoke. I drink. I've done more than enough to deserve cancer."

Sam crouched next to Toby. He stroked the other man's back. "Cancer isn't deserved, Toby. It happens. Toby, I'm fine. I'm alive. I'll stay alive. I saw you staring at the pictures. We'll have more pictures."

"You can't die until every wall in this house is covered in pictures."

"I won't even die after that."

"Promise?"

"Promise."