Chapter 5: Of Past Regrets and Future Fears
I'm exhausted. My body is screaming at me to crawl in bed, curl up next to Sam, and sleep for a month. I've spent most of the day trying to figure out a strategy for when this breaks tomorrow morning, and in between times prepping for the Convention, taking a meeting with two junior senators whom I absolutely could not blow off, and expending what little energy I had left thinking of excuses to not go anywhere near Sam's office. My brain, unfortunately, is reminding me that I was just kicked out by my boyfriend and that I won't be getting much sleep anytime between now and November, not to mention the minor problem that I can't see Sam being overly keen on the idea of me curling up next to him right now. It's past midnight by the time I park my car back in its usual spot at the White House and clear security in the Northwest Lobby. Aside from a couple of agents, who don't give me more than a passing glance, the West Wing looks to be pretty much deserted.
When I called Donna, she didn't tell me to go away, she didn't ask me what I had done that was so monumentally stupid, and she didn't even ask if I was drunk. She checked that I was physically all in one piece and that I was okay to handle a moving vehicle, and said she would meet me at work in twenty minutes. When I open my office door, she's already there and there's an actual cup of coffee on the desk.
"You brought me coffee?" I muster a smile in spite of myself. "Is it actually, you know, hot?"
"It's fresh. You sounded like you needed it."
She pushes the mug in my general direction, sits down, and waits for me to start talking. I study the brown liquid with an unusual degree of concentration for a few minutes.
"Sam kicked me out," I blurt finally.
"Out?"
"Out of his apartment," I clarify. "I went there so I wouldn't have to see him, but he was there, and then I said some things I probably shouldn't have said, and then he went kinda crazy on me."
"He was there?"
"Yeah," I mutter, not really listening to Donna but being rather more intent on getting this stuff out. "Said I hadn't seemed all that desperate to talk to him."
"He's got a point. And when you say you 'said some stuff you probably shouldn't have said', we're talking what?"
"I may…"
"Josh, just tell me you didn't accuse him of having an affair with Ainsley Hayes."
"The conversation's something of a blur, but it's certainly not out of the question, and my major problem now is that I've insinuated to Sam that I think he's like his dad." I take a deep, shaky breath and rub my eyes. "Sam's worst fear is that anyone would think that."
"Sam's worst fear is of anything happening to you, but I know what you mean. Do you think he's like that?"
"No!" I'm horrified at the bare suggestion. "I just have, um, insecurity issues, and I got too far out of my depth, and then I said the worst possible thing I could have said?"
"Insecurity issues?" Donna seems almost amused at the concept that my overly-large, novelty sized ego might even think about being insecure.
"Yes. With Sam. And women. And the concept that he might want a more normal life and a relationship that isn't going to be plastered across the gutter press. Also with Laurie and Mal and the fact that he's a very good looking, very sexy guy who gets checked out by women in the street, and it's not totally out of the realm of possibility that he might decide he could do better than me."
"And that's why you thought he had a thing for Ainsley Hayes?"
"Do you know for a fact that he doesn't?"
"You said…"
"I said I didn't think he was having a thing with Ainsley, which is very different."
Donna puts her feet on the floor, sits up, and gets that look on her face where I just know she's about to give me a lecture.
"Sam has been involved with you for more than two years. He sat there in that office while you were in that OR and while none of us were sure you were ever going to leave it alive, and he told me that he had been in love with you since he was in college and that he owed you everything, and then I told him that life was too damn short. Then, six months and six days later, we sat in your office and he told me that he loved you and if anything happened he would never forgive himself, and not one word I could say was going to convince him that it wasn't his fault. And he met us at GW and held your hand the whole time they were stitching you up, and he could have cared less what that intern thought."
I nod dumbly.
"He would fall on his sword for you before he would fall on his sword for the President is my point. He'll bring you coffee and he'll monitor your alcohol intake. You'll hear his voice when everyone else sounds like sirens, and you'll have a whole conversation with him using just your eyes." Donna shrugs. "He would've taken that bullet for you, Josh, and all of that is how I know that he does not reciprocate whatever the hell it is Ainsley Hayes feels for him."
I'm silent. Also moved beyond words, though I make a valiant attempt to not show it. I wonder briefly whether it's that obvious to everyone, and then decide that I don't care if it is. And then panic sets in again as I wonder exactly how much I screwed up tonight. Which is another way of saying that I wonder whether, no matter how much I believe that what Donna says is true, I might have been such a jackass tonight that when Sam kicked me out of the apartment it was for good.
"For God's sake, Josh, he hasn't finished with you!"
"How do you do that?" I come out of my silence as I wonder exactly where Donna honed her ESP skills.
"How do I do what?"
"That thing where you know what I'm gonna ask you."
"I'm a woman, Josh, women know everything."
"Women do not…"
"Hey!" She points a pencil at me, the sharp end aimed at worrying proximity to my eyes. "I've been nice to you tonight. I came into the office at midnight on a Friday, I was nice to you, I made you coffee, and I did the substitute-mother thing. Four acts of compassion, none of which are in my job description. So the least you could do is not mock the Sisterhood is all I'm saying."
"Okay, okay." I hold my hands up and admit surrender.
"And you still need to call your real mother."
"What for again?" I vaguely remember this cropping up in a conversation this afternoon, but I'm not at all sure why I was meant to call her.
"To tell her that you're sleeping with your best friend before she reads it in the New York Times."
"Yeah. That." I remember something from a few minutes a go. "Hey, Donna? How do you know that he hasn't finished with me?"
"Because I do." She rolls her eyes as though only person of educational subnormality wouldn't already know the answer to the question. "Because it's you and Sam. Because he's absolutely head over heels in love with you… I thought we covered all that already."
"We did. Strictly speaking, we did. But that was a really awful thing I said to him."
"Yeah," she concedes. "It was."
"And…"
"And Sam is doubtless really pissed at you right now, but he'll get over it, exactly the same way you would if he pissed you off. Buy him some flowers."
I make a face and question her judgement in the gift department.
"Then coffee. Or something. And apologise to him."
"Yeah."
"You should go home."
"Nah."
"Josh…"
"I have to be back here in five hours."
"You live ten minutes away!" Donna's beginning to look frustrated at my lack of cooperation. "Go home, get some sleep."
"I just don't want to go home to an empty apartment, okay? I don't want to go to bed and try to sleep and him not be there." And I know how cheesy and adolescent that sounds, but I can't help it. "I'm gonna borrow Toby's couch for a few hours."
"You're sleeping here?"
"It's not like I haven't done it before."
"Yeah, but that's usually because you're drunk, or, you know, about to be fired, or something equally calamitous. And you usually end up passed out snoring on the floor and smelling like a Dumpster."
"Well, tonight I'm going to end up passed out in Toby's office and not smelling like a Dumpster, and this, I would remind you, was pretty calamitous." I jerk my head in the general direction of the door. "You go home."
"You're gonna be okay?"
"Yeah."
We leave the office together, and I go the long way round to the Communications bullpen, via the lobby. I tell Donna to get some sleep and I'll see her in the morning, to which she replies that it's already morning. When I get to Toby's office, I dispense of my shoes, my jacket, and my tie, and I lay down on the couch. It's a little short for a six-foot tall man, but I'm too exhausted to care at this point. I stay awake for long enough to see on the clock radio that it's 2:16am, and I'm asleep within forty-five seconds. I don't move until five-thirty, when I'm rudely shaken awake by a hand belonging to a person who most definitely was not here when I went to sleep.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Thanks to Rhiannon for correcting my grammar, my sentence structure, and for helping me to sit on what I call my innerGiles - the annoying part of my muse that makes me write things that would sound more appropriate coming out of a Gileslike Watcher with a British flag up his ass, and that phrase does not belong to me but to Joss Whedon, 20th Century Fox, the 'argh' guy, and whoever wrote 'Revelations'. I digress.
Chapter 6 will be up soon - I don't know how soon, but I'm determined I'll have finished at least one more chapter by the time I go back to school, so September 3rd at the absolute latest. A warning would be to bring a pillow and a blanket and copious amounts of caffeine, because this one's going to be long.
I'm exhausted. My body is screaming at me to crawl in bed, curl up next to Sam, and sleep for a month. I've spent most of the day trying to figure out a strategy for when this breaks tomorrow morning, and in between times prepping for the Convention, taking a meeting with two junior senators whom I absolutely could not blow off, and expending what little energy I had left thinking of excuses to not go anywhere near Sam's office. My brain, unfortunately, is reminding me that I was just kicked out by my boyfriend and that I won't be getting much sleep anytime between now and November, not to mention the minor problem that I can't see Sam being overly keen on the idea of me curling up next to him right now. It's past midnight by the time I park my car back in its usual spot at the White House and clear security in the Northwest Lobby. Aside from a couple of agents, who don't give me more than a passing glance, the West Wing looks to be pretty much deserted.
When I called Donna, she didn't tell me to go away, she didn't ask me what I had done that was so monumentally stupid, and she didn't even ask if I was drunk. She checked that I was physically all in one piece and that I was okay to handle a moving vehicle, and said she would meet me at work in twenty minutes. When I open my office door, she's already there and there's an actual cup of coffee on the desk.
"You brought me coffee?" I muster a smile in spite of myself. "Is it actually, you know, hot?"
"It's fresh. You sounded like you needed it."
She pushes the mug in my general direction, sits down, and waits for me to start talking. I study the brown liquid with an unusual degree of concentration for a few minutes.
"Sam kicked me out," I blurt finally.
"Out?"
"Out of his apartment," I clarify. "I went there so I wouldn't have to see him, but he was there, and then I said some things I probably shouldn't have said, and then he went kinda crazy on me."
"He was there?"
"Yeah," I mutter, not really listening to Donna but being rather more intent on getting this stuff out. "Said I hadn't seemed all that desperate to talk to him."
"He's got a point. And when you say you 'said some stuff you probably shouldn't have said', we're talking what?"
"I may…"
"Josh, just tell me you didn't accuse him of having an affair with Ainsley Hayes."
"The conversation's something of a blur, but it's certainly not out of the question, and my major problem now is that I've insinuated to Sam that I think he's like his dad." I take a deep, shaky breath and rub my eyes. "Sam's worst fear is that anyone would think that."
"Sam's worst fear is of anything happening to you, but I know what you mean. Do you think he's like that?"
"No!" I'm horrified at the bare suggestion. "I just have, um, insecurity issues, and I got too far out of my depth, and then I said the worst possible thing I could have said?"
"Insecurity issues?" Donna seems almost amused at the concept that my overly-large, novelty sized ego might even think about being insecure.
"Yes. With Sam. And women. And the concept that he might want a more normal life and a relationship that isn't going to be plastered across the gutter press. Also with Laurie and Mal and the fact that he's a very good looking, very sexy guy who gets checked out by women in the street, and it's not totally out of the realm of possibility that he might decide he could do better than me."
"And that's why you thought he had a thing for Ainsley Hayes?"
"Do you know for a fact that he doesn't?"
"You said…"
"I said I didn't think he was having a thing with Ainsley, which is very different."
Donna puts her feet on the floor, sits up, and gets that look on her face where I just know she's about to give me a lecture.
"Sam has been involved with you for more than two years. He sat there in that office while you were in that OR and while none of us were sure you were ever going to leave it alive, and he told me that he had been in love with you since he was in college and that he owed you everything, and then I told him that life was too damn short. Then, six months and six days later, we sat in your office and he told me that he loved you and if anything happened he would never forgive himself, and not one word I could say was going to convince him that it wasn't his fault. And he met us at GW and held your hand the whole time they were stitching you up, and he could have cared less what that intern thought."
I nod dumbly.
"He would fall on his sword for you before he would fall on his sword for the President is my point. He'll bring you coffee and he'll monitor your alcohol intake. You'll hear his voice when everyone else sounds like sirens, and you'll have a whole conversation with him using just your eyes." Donna shrugs. "He would've taken that bullet for you, Josh, and all of that is how I know that he does not reciprocate whatever the hell it is Ainsley Hayes feels for him."
I'm silent. Also moved beyond words, though I make a valiant attempt to not show it. I wonder briefly whether it's that obvious to everyone, and then decide that I don't care if it is. And then panic sets in again as I wonder exactly how much I screwed up tonight. Which is another way of saying that I wonder whether, no matter how much I believe that what Donna says is true, I might have been such a jackass tonight that when Sam kicked me out of the apartment it was for good.
"For God's sake, Josh, he hasn't finished with you!"
"How do you do that?" I come out of my silence as I wonder exactly where Donna honed her ESP skills.
"How do I do what?"
"That thing where you know what I'm gonna ask you."
"I'm a woman, Josh, women know everything."
"Women do not…"
"Hey!" She points a pencil at me, the sharp end aimed at worrying proximity to my eyes. "I've been nice to you tonight. I came into the office at midnight on a Friday, I was nice to you, I made you coffee, and I did the substitute-mother thing. Four acts of compassion, none of which are in my job description. So the least you could do is not mock the Sisterhood is all I'm saying."
"Okay, okay." I hold my hands up and admit surrender.
"And you still need to call your real mother."
"What for again?" I vaguely remember this cropping up in a conversation this afternoon, but I'm not at all sure why I was meant to call her.
"To tell her that you're sleeping with your best friend before she reads it in the New York Times."
"Yeah. That." I remember something from a few minutes a go. "Hey, Donna? How do you know that he hasn't finished with me?"
"Because I do." She rolls her eyes as though only person of educational subnormality wouldn't already know the answer to the question. "Because it's you and Sam. Because he's absolutely head over heels in love with you… I thought we covered all that already."
"We did. Strictly speaking, we did. But that was a really awful thing I said to him."
"Yeah," she concedes. "It was."
"And…"
"And Sam is doubtless really pissed at you right now, but he'll get over it, exactly the same way you would if he pissed you off. Buy him some flowers."
I make a face and question her judgement in the gift department.
"Then coffee. Or something. And apologise to him."
"Yeah."
"You should go home."
"Nah."
"Josh…"
"I have to be back here in five hours."
"You live ten minutes away!" Donna's beginning to look frustrated at my lack of cooperation. "Go home, get some sleep."
"I just don't want to go home to an empty apartment, okay? I don't want to go to bed and try to sleep and him not be there." And I know how cheesy and adolescent that sounds, but I can't help it. "I'm gonna borrow Toby's couch for a few hours."
"You're sleeping here?"
"It's not like I haven't done it before."
"Yeah, but that's usually because you're drunk, or, you know, about to be fired, or something equally calamitous. And you usually end up passed out snoring on the floor and smelling like a Dumpster."
"Well, tonight I'm going to end up passed out in Toby's office and not smelling like a Dumpster, and this, I would remind you, was pretty calamitous." I jerk my head in the general direction of the door. "You go home."
"You're gonna be okay?"
"Yeah."
We leave the office together, and I go the long way round to the Communications bullpen, via the lobby. I tell Donna to get some sleep and I'll see her in the morning, to which she replies that it's already morning. When I get to Toby's office, I dispense of my shoes, my jacket, and my tie, and I lay down on the couch. It's a little short for a six-foot tall man, but I'm too exhausted to care at this point. I stay awake for long enough to see on the clock radio that it's 2:16am, and I'm asleep within forty-five seconds. I don't move until five-thirty, when I'm rudely shaken awake by a hand belonging to a person who most definitely was not here when I went to sleep.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Thanks to Rhiannon for correcting my grammar, my sentence structure, and for helping me to sit on what I call my innerGiles - the annoying part of my muse that makes me write things that would sound more appropriate coming out of a Gileslike Watcher with a British flag up his ass, and that phrase does not belong to me but to Joss Whedon, 20th Century Fox, the 'argh' guy, and whoever wrote 'Revelations'. I digress.
Chapter 6 will be up soon - I don't know how soon, but I'm determined I'll have finished at least one more chapter by the time I go back to school, so September 3rd at the absolute latest. A warning would be to bring a pillow and a blanket and copious amounts of caffeine, because this one's going to be long.