Inspired by me finding and utterly failing to open an old puzzle box :p
None of them knew where they had come from. They only knew that they had appeared on each of their desks at the same time, early on the morning of December 23, before any of them had come into work. They had each walked into their offices that morning and found on their desks a small wooden box. Shortly afterward, all four of them found themselves in Toby's office, contemplating the strange gifts.
"But where did they come from?" Josh asked for the third time.
Toby rolled his eyes. "I think we've already established that none of us know the answer to that!" he snapped.
There was silence for a moment as they all fiddled with the boxes.
"So they're puzzle boxes, obviously," Sam said after a few seconds.
"What clued you in, Princeton?"
CJ elbowed Toby in the ribs. "Be nice."
"I would if people would stop stating the obvious."
Silence again. A few minutes passed with each of the four ignoring each other in favor of trying to solve their own boxes. Then there was a soft click.
"Well, that was easy." Toby slid open the drawer of his box and pulled out two Yankees tickets.
"How did you do that?" Josh asked incredulously.
"As if I'm going to tell you."
"Oh, come on! Sam, come on, help me make him tell us."
"No."
"What? Why not?"
"Because I don't want to know."
"Also, it's hilarious that you think he could make me do anything," Toby added sardonically.
Josh ignored him, turning to Sam instead and watching as he turned his box over in his hands. "You're not going to let anyone help you with that, are you?"
"Nope."
"Freak."
"Shut up."
There was another click.
"Oh. Toby's right; that was pretty easy." CJ opened her box and found a gift card to her favorite restaurant.
Josh turned on her. "You have to tell me how you did that."
She smirked and tucked the gift card into her pocket. "No such luck, mi amour. You're on your own with this one."
"Oh, come on!"
"Nope."
Several more minutes passed, Toby and CJ watching Josh and Sam attempt to open their boxes with no small amount of amusement. Finally, Josh let out a loud huff, tossing the box from hand to hand a few times.
"You know what?"
Sam ignored him and Toby appeared to be having too much fun watching Sam fail to open his box, so CJ decided to humor Josh. "What?"
"There's an easier way to do this." Then he grinned, dropped his box on the floor, and smashed it with his heel.
"Joshua!"
"Oh, come on, CJ," he laughed, bending to pick up the remains of the box and its contents. "We're all busy people here. We don't have time to be messing around with trivial puzzles." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his best friend still determinedly working on his box. "Right, Sam?"
"What?"
"I was just pointing out that as we work in the White House, we don't have time to spend our day playing with puzzles. Right?"
"...Right."
"One could argue that as we all work in the White House, we should all be smart enough to figure out the puzzles," Toby pointed out.
CJ chuckled. Josh and Sam ignored him. "Sam?" Josh sighed. "You were planning on getting some work done today, right?"
"You're one to talk," Sam shot back, not looking up from his box. "You spent two hours hiding from Donna in my office just yesterday."
"Yeah, well… shut up."
The door opened, and Ginger stuck her head in. "You guys know you're five minutes late for senior staff, right?"
Thirty seconds later, Leo sat behind his desk glaring at his four best and brightest as they all tumbled into his office practically on top of one another. "Well, it's about damn time."
Josh straightened his tie, grinning sheepishly. "Sorry, Leo. An, um - an unexpected distraction came up."
It was a mark of how accustomed Leo was to dealing with the nonsense of his staff that he didn't even question Josh's excuse.
When the meeting ended, Josh, Sam, and CJ exited hurriedly, their less than excusable late entrance still fresh on their minds. Toby rolled his eyes at their hasty departure, gathering up his papers at a leisurely pace.
"So you all got your Christmas presents, then. Or Hanukkah, I suppose, in yours and Josh's cases."
Toby looked up in surprise to find Leo smirking. "So it was you, then."
"Me and the president, yeah. The boxes were his idea."
"Of course they were."
"How are those working out for you?"
"CJ and I got ours open. Josh broke his."
Leo rolled his eyes. "I should've guessed. What about Sam?"
Toby let out a snort of laughter.
Leo's smirk grew wider. "He hasn't gotten it open yet, has he?"
"Nope."
Leo shook his head. "Top graduate of two of the best schools in the country and speechwriter to the President of the United States, and the kid can't even open a box."
"So, Sam…"
Sam looked up from his work just long enough to give Josh a look that suggested he shouldn't finish his sentence if he valued all of his extremities. Josh chose to ignore him.
"Get your box open yet?"
Sam glared at him.
"I'll take that as a 'no,' then," Josh said, laughing and utterly unthreatened by Sam's expression.
"Go away, Josh."
"Seriously, you should just do what I did."
"I am not smashing it."
Josh shrugged. "Suit yourself."
On December 27, Josh started awake suddenly in the middle of the night. He laid there for a moment, rubbing his eyes blearily, trying to figure out what had woken him up. Finally, he realized that his phone was ringing. Groaning as a thousand terrible possibilities flashed through his mind of crises that might have befallen the country, he fumbled for the phone and grabbed it off his nightstand.
"H'llo?"
"Josh!"
Josh frowned, trying to force himself into wakefulness. "Sam?"
"Josh, I got it open!"
"...What?"
"My box! I got it open!"
"Sam…"
"Yeah?"
"It's three in the morning."
"Yeah, I know," Sam said, sounding apologetic. "But I got it open!"
"...That's great, buddy."
There was a faint click.
"Josh?" Sam glanced at the phone in his hand. Josh had hung up. Disappointed, he considered calling Toby for a moment, but then decided that he valued his life slightly more than his good news. Shrugging, he dropped the phone on his nightstand next to his finally open box and went to sleep.