Chapter Fifteen
Josh sat in his car even though he had cut the engine five minutes ago. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt as nervous as this but was pretty sure that whenever it was, his nerves had been more likely due to politics than his love life. He picked up the bottle of wine from the passenger seat, checked his appearance in the mirror, got out of the car and made his way up to Sam's apartment.
He took the stairs instead of the elevator and walked slowly along the hallway before knocking on Sam's door.
"Just a minute," was called from inside and a few seconds later the door was opened to reveal a red faced, dripping Sam. "I was taking a shower," Sam said as he finished pulling his sweatshirt on.
"Oh," Josh replied and glanced around the room in an attempt to look at anything but Sam. "I brought this." Josh held up the bottle of wine and hurried off into the kitchen.
He realised with disbelief that his fingers were shaking as he tried to peel the foil away from the bottle's neck and mumbled at himself to get a grip.
"What did you say?" Sam asked appearing in the doorway and leaning against the frame.
"I said would you like a sip?"
"Oh."
Sam walked back into the living room and Josh followed with two glasses, one of which he had already drained and refilled.
"So, tell me about the President. Leo said he was in a state."
Josh relaxed as he started to tell Sam how Bartlet had reacted to his attack and Sam made sympathetic noises while trying not to laugh at Josh's recount. He finally collapsed when Josh demonstrated the look on Frank Hulme's and then Bartlet's face following the farcical scene that had played out in his office.
The sound of their laughter filled the room and after the tension of the day it sounded wonderful to both men's ears. Eventually Sam wiped at his eyes, sat up straighter and let out a huge sigh before reaching for his drink. "All this time I've been scared to death of having an attack in the Oval office and turns out there's going to be someone more scared of it than me."
"You should use that! Next time we're in there and losing an argument you should grab at your head and moan."
"You think he'd leave the room."
"I think he'd run for the Residence!"
Sam laughed quietly and then a silence filled the room that was made all the more noticeable by the absence of the laughter it had followed. "It's funny isn't it that the things that scare you most never turn out to be as bad as you think."
Josh turned to Sam. If ever there was a cue for him to say what he wanted to it was now. "Sam…"
Sam looked at him and waited.
"Sam…"
"Still here."
"Sam, I…"
Sam nodded encouragingly and his gaze followed Josh as he stood up and walked away from the sofa.
"I've been…the thing is, I've been thinking a lot- No, hang on that's not… I've spent a lot of time thinking and, okay, hold on because this sounded really good in the car."
"Josh?" Sam's perplexed expression caused Josh to take a deep breath and start again.
"Okay, the thing is, I know I treated you like crap and I know you haven't really forgiven me yet."
"It's not a case of-"
"Sam, please, let me say this now or I never will." Josh stared at Sam for a moment before returning to the sofa. "Whatever you think about what I'm about to say, I don't want it to be that I'm saying this because I feel sorry for you or I think that you can't cope with what's been happening to you, because I'm not and I don't."
"Okay."
"When we split up the second time, I knew it was wrong. I knew it was a mistake as surely as I knew that I'd pushed us into having no choice but to split up. I'm not going to sit here and analyse it or try to justify how I felt then because that's in the past but you need to know, what I'm trying to make you see, is that I've felt like this for a long time. Do you believe me?" Sam nodded and so Josh continued. "I felt like it when I was ignoring you because of Kevin Kahn. I felt like it when I was avoiding you because of the MS revelation and I felt like it when I heard you shout my name when they were wheeling me through the ER."
Josh reached out and tentatively took hold of Sam's hand. "What I'm saying is that I never stopped loving you and when these attacks started I wanted to be there for you. I wanted to be the one you needed and I wasn't. I was jealous of Toby, can you believe that! When you stayed at his place or went to him when you were in pain, I was jealous." Josh shook his head and smiled. "Toby thinks I should be telling you this by the way." He laughed at Sam's shocked expression. "Yeah, I know, it freaked me out too." Josh reached out for Sam's hand. "Please give us another chance, just one more chance. We deserve it don't you think? I love you, Sam. I never stopped and I don't want to have to live with regretting not being able to show you how much."
Sam didn't reply. He removed his hand from Josh's and stood up but after a few moments he sat back down. "I don't think I can. I'm not sure I want to." He looked at Josh and held his gaze. "I know that I can't go through breaking up with you again. And, we need to be practical. We broke up because the job was more important and so what's the point of risking all that again when we-"
"To me, it was more important to me! I was the one that finished it, what I did made it impossible for us not to finish. You're not listening to what I'm saying!" Josh jumped up and walked to the other side of the room. "I don't care about the job. I swear to God, if you tell me right here and now that you think being together means one of us leaving the White House I'll be clearing my office tonight. I get it now, I know what I've lost, and I'm willing to do anything to get it back."
Sam walked over to Josh, his expression was unreadable. "You'd do it too, wouldn't you?" Josh nodded. "I'd never ask that of you but I'm glad you said it." Sam reached for Josh and pulled him back to the sofa. "These past few weeks you've been… I don't know what I would have done without you and I know you've been trying to show me that I can trust you, that you deserve another chance and I know I can trust you and I think that we should try again but what I don't trust is us. No matter whose fault it is we always manage to fuck it up. Seriously, I can't go through that again."
"You won't need to. It won't happen." Josh was almost afraid to say anything more. He had delivered his speech and didn't want to tempt fate by adding to it.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because if you want me back there's no way on this earth I'll ever leave again."
The silence that followed was filled only by the sound of their breathing although Josh was sure Sam would be able to hear his heart it was pumping so furiously. He watched as Sam studied him, giving nothing away in his expression. Finally Sam relaxed and smiled. He leant forward and kissed Josh's forehead before whispering, "Great speech, Josh, but you know, I was sold in the broom cupboard."
Sam felt the warmth on his face as Josh's held breath was released in laughter. They stayed like that for a while, foreheads touching and their breath mingling. It was Josh who made the first move but Sam soon followed. He followed Josh's kisses with his own. He followed Josh's gentle yet urgent caresses with similar actions. He followed Josh into the bedroom.
"He's over there."
"Yeah."
"Standing by the door."
"Yeah."
"On his own."
"Sam, I'm standing right next to you, I can see Adler as well!" Josh took another sip of his drink. "I'm waiting for the right moment."
"The right moment was two weeks ago!" Sam pointed out.
"And I seem to remember I chose you over political gain. A truer declaration of love the world has never-"
"He's coming this way."
"Okay, here I go. We should charge people to watch this stuff!"
Sam smiled and shook his head as he watched Josh saunter off towards Adler. He knew without any doubt that Josh would salvage the situation, save the bill and not stop going on about it for weeks. He smiled again and walked towards the edge of the room where he could watch discretely.
It took Josh eighteen minutes to talk Adler round and then another four to find Sam who was talking to Toby.
"It's done?" Toby asked as Josh joined them.
"It's done and with the usual Lyman guile and savvy. Years from now this moment will be written about in someone's memoirs and they'll talk of the political strategist who single-handedly saved the bill from the clutches of Adler's coup. It'll probably get its own chapter, maybe two. The great Lyman seals another deal and those around him can only marvel at his ability to move and shake the seemingly unmovable and unshakable."
"Is that what the chapter will be called?" Sam asked. "I'm just saying; it's a little wordy."
"That would be the in the intro. The title would be 'Moving and Shaking the Lyman Way'."
"He's going to drive us to distraction and then round the corner to despair," Toby groaned.
Sam smiled and nodded in agreement just as Leo joined the group. "It's done?"
"Yeah, and it was an example of guile and savvy being put to-"
"I'd say good job but I should have been saying that two weeks ago. It was a good save though. The President would have been pissed as all hell if you'd not got that bill back on track."
"I'm not getting the warm fuzzies from you, Leo," Josh complained.
"Yeah, Josh, it's this thing I do when I'm trying to save someone from his own ego."
"Too late for that," Sam pointed out.
CJ appeared after finally escaping from the clutches of the French Ambassador. "Do I look like a gal who knows her cheese?" she asked cryptically and Sam appeared to be seriously considering the question when Toby changed the subject.
"So now that we've taken care of business-"
"We?" Josh objected.
"Yes, it was a team thing, you were just the conduit. So now that it's done, does anyone object if I go smoke this ridiculously expensive cigar that I've been saving for the last two weeks? You remember that, Josh? The dinner two weeks ago at which you were meant to do what you've just done now saving us all a lot of time and energy."
"Yes, Toby, I remember that and does anyone here remember why I did it?"
Sam's eyebrows shot up and for a moment he returned to another dinner at the White House, a dinner where Josh had gone out of his way to prove that he and Sam were friends and nothing more. He glanced at Josh and swore he saw the flicker of the same memory play across his face.
"I did it because I chose a selfless act of love over political gain," he whispered. "An act, I might point out that has been largely ignored by my so-called friends and when they're done writing the story of my political career they'll write another one and it will chronicle my selfless act of devotion and you, my friends, will be largely ignored." Josh reached out and grabbed Sam's arm. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go be somewhere with Sam."
Toby shook his head as he watched Josh lead a dumbstruck Sam from the room. Leo's gaze also followed them and he smiled inwardly at the trust and respect that existed between the colleagues that he viewed as family. CJ watched them too but her attention soon turned back to the Ambassador that had been troubling her earlier. "I mean, I like Brie, I can always make room for Gouda but really, is there anything about me that would make a total stranger suspect that I know my cheese?"
CJ's question had gone unanswered. Leo and Toby had exchanged a glance and then made their excuses and left her to ponder it alone. She had talked to a few of the guests before returning to her office. She loved the West Wing at night and even more so when there was a dinner or some other event. She loved walking from a room filled with atmosphere into the empty Bullpen which seemed to have its own atmosphere of sadness at being suddenly deserted by the men and women who had bustled through it during the day. She threw her wrap onto the desk and lay down on the sofa, carefully avoiding rumpling her dress. She closed her eyes and listened to the muted sounds of the dance band and chatter drifting into her office. It was times like this that she actually slowed down enough to appreciate where she worked and what she had made of her life.
"He may have thought you were French." Toby's arrival and nonsensical statement brought her reverie to an abrupt end. "It's possible the Ambassador who thought you knew your cheese might have mistaken you for a French person."
"French people know cheese?"
"Not all of them, most of them, it's possible some French people have a better grasp of cheese than your average American press secretary."
CJ smiled and rose from the sofa. "You need me?"
"Margaret does. The White House photographer's been asked to get a shot of us all in Leo's office. Where're Josh and Sam?"
Sam and Josh could also hear the music from where they were. They couldn't really distinguish the tune but the gentle, steady rhythm was clear enough for them to be able to move in time to it. They stood, arms around each other, not dancing but rather swaying to the distant melody drifting in. Sam's head rested on Josh's shoulder and Josh's eyes were closed as he moved almost imperceptibly from side to side.
"I love you."
The words were quietly spoken, too quietly for anyone outside the room to hear. CJ didn't need to hear them to know what Josh had said. She had almost given up her search for them when a crack of light spilling from the Green Room had caught her eye.
She rested her head against the door jam and smiled at the sight of her two friends. She knew that she was invading their privacy but after the past few weeks it was just too comforting to see her friends looking so happy and peaceful for her to turn away. She wrapped her arms around her waist as she watched Josh gently lift Sam's head towards his own. The two men locked eyes and then Josh cupped Sam's face and reverently kissed the space above his eye where the headaches struck. Slowly he placed kisses across Sam's forehead and down towards his ear, following the route that the pain always took. Eventually Sam's head returned to Josh's shoulder, Josh's hand gently stroking the back of it. CJ couldn't help the sigh that escaped as she silently turned away from the scene.
"You find them?" For the second time that evening, Toby appeared from nowhere causing CJ to jump. She pulled the door to, careful not to disturb the men inside the room. "No, can't find them anywhere. They must be back in the East Room let's go check there."
Behind the closed door Josh and Sam remained in their embrace. Unaware of CJ's observation of them or Toby's near interruption, they continued to sway effortlessly to the distant rhythm and it was coming as no great revelation to either man that rediscovering their own rhythm was proving to be just as easy.