6: The Start of the Affair

"What was that?" mumbled Sam confusedly.

Josh looked at the closed door with some dismay. "That, if I'm not very much mistaken, was the beginning of the rumour that we're having a gay affair."

"Who is?"

"Us."

"No we're not."

"Yeah, I noticed that too, Sam."

"'Cuz I'm pretty out of it right now, but I'm pretty sure I'd remember-"

"We're not having a gay affair, Sam," Josh cut him off hurriedly. He realised he was still standing practically nose-to-nose with the younger man, and took a few paces backwards. "And it would probably help our case a lot if you could, you know, get dressed."

Sam nodded, and got back to buttoning his shirt. He winced as he did so, but Josh resisted the automatic urge to offer to help.

'Cuz you just know that if I did that, the president, Leo and the entire White House press corps would miraculously appear outside Sam's office door.

Sam finished buttoning his shirt and cast about for his tie. "We should probably, um, go explain," Josh said.

"Yeah. What're we gonna tell them?"

"Well, we're gonna- We're gonna- We're gonna hide inside this office until everyone else goes home," he decided miserably.

"It's seven o'clock in the morning, Josh."

"We can order takeout and have Donna deliver it." He frowned. "Though she probably won't bring us coffee."

"I don't think barricading ourselves in an office together for sixteen hours is really the way to go with this one, Josh."

Josh groaned, and dropped his head into his hands. "Why is my life so complicated?" he asked the ceiling.

"Your life? Hey, you're not the one who just got bitten by a date and turned into a werewolf." There was a moment of reflective silence where they both tried to pretend that they hadn't just created an enormous problem that they really had to go and straighten out.

"Still, look on the bright side," said Sam eventually. "At least we're not actually having a secret gay affair."

He considered. "I mean, from the standpoint of, well, if we were, everybody would have just found out, as opposed to- Look, I'm not, uh, I'm not trying to say I find the idea of, you know, having an affair with you totally hideous or anything, and um... I should really probably stop talking now, shouldn't I?"

"Better late than never," Josh agreed.

Another moment of silence. Then Sam said "You know, if I'd just interrupted somebody in the middle of what looked like- well, you know, I'd probably be wondering by now why they hadn't come running after me to explain yet."

Josh gulped. "Let's get the hell out of here."

They located Cathy and Ginger hiding in the cafeteria and looking slightly shell-shocked.

Josh launched immediately into political cover-up mode. "Okay. Um. I realise that what you just saw in there might, on reflection, have appeared to you to be... um." His fast-talking wound down just a little.

Instruction manual, please?

Ginger held up a hand. "It's okay, Josh," she said, in a gentle yet slightly amused tone that he somehow didn't find particularly comforting.

He kept going. "I just wanted to point out that, that anything you might have thought was going on is... not, in fact, going on."

"Okay," said Cathy, nodding earnestly. Josh wasn't sure he liked the expression on her face.

"We believe you," agreed Ginger, just as earnestly. "You don't have to explain."

"Whatever you say. We didn't see anything."

"Nothing. Zip."

"And assuming we had seen anything, we really do believe that there was a perfectly good explanation for it," Cathy continued.

"And really, you know, if we had seen anything... well, we wouldn't tell anyone anyway."

"And we won't. Since, well, we didn't see it and it wasn't anything."

"And we totally believe you."

"Totally."

They both got up and scuttled away from the cafeteria area. Josh shot a glance across at Sam. "Technically reassuring news, and yet somehow... not."