Josh braked, checked the directions lying on the seat next to him and then turned right. He had been here only a few times, but oddly enough, only at night. Keeping an eye on the house numbers, he slowed to a stop and looked at his watch. Quarter to six. He turned off the car and then rested his arms on the top of the steering wheel.

The house was big, that much he remembered from other visits. He studied it for a minute, trying to decide what style it was. Modern, definitely, with a touch of something else. Mediterranean, perhaps? Whatever it was, it fit the neighborhood's eclectic mix of styles.

Pulling the key from the ignition, Josh grabbed his sweater from the passenger seat. Glancing at the side mirror, he waited as a Mercedes passed him and turned into a driveway a few houses away. When the street was clear, he got out of the car. He stopped at the foot of the driveway long enough to pull on the sweater. Taking a deep breath, he walked up the short flight of steps to the front door.

He rang the doorbell and braced himself when he heard footsteps approaching. A small cowardly voice in his head whispered Run away!, and he was considering it when the door swung open.

David Seaborn looked surprised for an instant, and then recovered. "Josh," he said, offering his hand. "What are you doing so far from home?"

Josh shook hands. "I'm checking in on a couple of Congressional races for the DNC."

David gestured him into the house and closed the door. "I hope one of them is the 46th. O'Dwyer's a clown, Josh."

"And he's facing a conservative Republican who drives a couple million dollars into the DNC's war chest every time he opens his mouth. O'Dwyer winning is bad on so many levels."

"David, who is it?" In the instant it took her to recognize him, Kate's expression went from mild interest to displeasure, almost anger. It was an expression Josh had seen on Sam's face, and it never boded well. "Josh," she said without a trace of warmth.

Fighting the urge to shove his hands in the pockets of his jeans, he forced a smile. In the past, she had always urged him to call her by her first name. Her tone of voice suggested a certain degree of formality might be prudent.

"Mrs. Seaborn, I'm, ah, sorry. I should've called, but I was hoping to see Sam. Is he here?"

She frowned. "Yes, he's out on the terrace."

"May I speak to him?"

Josh looked from Kate to David and back again. There was no mistaking their silent debate — she was strongly in favor of throwing him out on his ear while David supported his request, albeit reluctantly.

"I only want to talk. The last time we spoke..." He glanced down at the floor. "...It didn't go very well, and it was my fault."

David finally nodded. "We're on our way to dinner with a client, and if we don't leave now, we'll be late. You know the way?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right. Come on, Kate."

She started to follow him, but paused in the doorway, turning back to look at Josh. "I'm very disappointed in you."

"Yes, ma'am."

As she left, Josh sighed. No one was as disappointed in him as he was with himself. He had handled the situation with Sam badly from the start and then made it worse with his misplaced confidence that Sam would listen to him without argument. When the DNC had asked him to go to California, he had jumped at the chance to try to repair things between them.

He followed the hallway to the back of the house, pausing to look at a framed picture on a wood chest. It was one he knew well, one he had sent to his mother within days of the Inauguration. In response to some requests from the media, CJ had arranged for a White House photographer to take pictures of each member of the senior staff. He had walked into the Roosevelt Room to find Sam sitting on the conference table. He leaned next to him and watched the photographer's assistant fuss over Leo as he stood against the glassed-in bookshelf beside the portrait of Theodore Roosevelt.

Josh looked at his watch and then at Sam. "Exactly how far behind are we? 'Cause I'm half an hour late, and I know you were before me on the schedule."

"If we're lucky, Leo will be done by the time we run for re-election."

"Shut up, both of you," Leo snapped, brushing away the assistant.

As Sam and Josh laughed, the photographer had snapped their picture. When CJ had given them prints, they had both sent them to their mothers.

The photograph still held pride of place in the center of the chest, but someone had placed a small vase of flowers in front of it, neatly obscuring Josh. He moved it to one side, nodding at the two laughing men before following the hall to the back of the house.

As he opened the door, Josh stopped in mid-step as he caught sight of Sam. He knew he was not particularly astute when it came to family resemblances. He had grown up being told how much he looked like his dad, but had only recently started seeing it himself; and he knew he had his mother's eyes. Now, as Sam looked up from his book, it struck him how much Sam resembled both his parents. His features were a masculine version of his mother's but with David's strong jaw and blue eyes. Sam's hair was darker than Kate's, and Josh wondered what color David's had been before it went white.

Sam's expression hardened into the same look of displeasure Kate's had. "You're staring."

"Sorry," he said, crossing the terrace and dropping into a chair. "I was, ah, thinking." At Sam's raised eyebrow, he added, "About genetics."

Sam considered his words for a second before dismissing them with a slight shake of his head. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to talk."

"Yeah, that went so well last time."

"Can we act like it never happened?"

"And ignore your smug superiority?"

"It'd be nice."

Sam snorted. "Yeah, wouldn't it."

"It's not going to happen, is it?"

"I wouldn't count on it, no."

"I — we need to straighten out some things."

Sam closed his book and tossed it on the table along with his glasses. "We've had that conversation."

"No, we haven't. You might've, but I was too busy being an ass." He waited, but when Sam did not reply, he tried again. "C'mon, Sam! We've been friends for a long time. Give me a chance, okay?"

Sam wavered for a minute before finally nodding. "All right."

Josh took a deep breath, waiting for inspiration to strike. It had been a lot easier talking to the Sam who had taken up residence in his thoughts, that Sam did not look as forbidding as the one sitting across from him now.

"Let's go for a walk," Josh suggested after a moment. "I want to see the ocean."

"You've seen it, remember?"

"It was one o'clock in the morning, Sam! We barely found the beach!"

"You're from Connecticut. You grew up five minutes from the ocean!"

"It was Long Island Sound, and that isn't the same thing! You've got surf and stuff."

Sam stood up. "Fine."

Josh followed him across the lawn, pausing as he looked down the path to the beach. "Wow, this isn't nearly as steep as I remember it."

Sam had already started down, but he turned and glanced at Josh's feet. "At least you're wearing sneakers this time."

"Hey, I wasn't the only one!"

"But it was your idea," Sam returned.

"True." Josh stopped as they reached the bottom. "Wow…"

The sun was a perfect circle of amber as it set into an approaching cloudbank. The clouds gradated from burnt orange at the horizon up to tangerine, slowly fading into hazy strands of pale peach against the blue twilight sky. The ocean reflected the colors, its constant movement mixing and changing them.

"This is fantastic," Josh breathed, "just fantastic."

Sam dropped onto the sand, leaning back on his elbows. Josh sat next to him with his knees up and his arms resting on them. Neither of them spoke, simply enjoying the view. They watched as the sun finally sank below the horizon, and the colors slowly faded into the deep blues and purples of early evening.

"Incredible," Josh finally managed.

Sam nodded as he brushed the sand from his palms. When he started to rise, Josh grabbed his arm.

"Let's talk here, okay?"

Sam shrugged, settling back on the sand.

The words Josh had practiced for days tumbled out. "Look, I treated you like crap for the last couple of months. I said you were wrong when you weren't, and ignored every suggestion, every idea you had. You were right when you accused me of treating you like my stupid little brother. I was condescending and dismissive."

"You told the President I didn't know what I was talking about, Josh!"

Josh blinked. "I did?"

"'Mr. President, what Sam means to say is…' — does that sound familiar?"

"Yeah," Josh breathed, "yeah, it does." He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "God, why the hell didn't you call me on it?"

"Because I didn't think it was appropriate to have an argument in the middle of the Oval with the President sitting there." His voice dropped, and he looked away. "I knew I wouldn't win, and pissing you off would only make things worse."

"Since when have you cared about pissing me off? You've argued with me since the day we met, for god's sake!"

"That was —"

"I swear, Sam, if you say 'That was then, this is now', I will hurt you."

Sam visibly changed tack. "Look, you're the most driven person I've ever met. Your desire to be the best, to win is behind everything you do. You wouldn't be Deputy Chief of Staff without it. Hell, I don't know if the President would've won the election without it."

"You're the same way!" Josh protested.

Sam shook his head, his eyes on the ocean. "I thought I was. I honestly thought I could stand toe to toe with anybody and face them down."

"C'mon! I've seen you do it. Remember the meeting with Claypool?"

"That was different."

"How? You didn't give an inch!"

Sam looked at him then. "You really don't get it, do you?"

"No, I really don't," Josh admitted.

"Claypool was after Leo; he had to be dealt with."

"And that's different how?"

"He was one of them. That's why I didn't have a problem with him."

"You've faced us down before, me especially."

"Sure, when I thought my opinion mattered. When I thought someone was listening to what I said." Sam jumped to his feet and glared at him in the faint light, his hands fisted at his sides. "I know I'm not the strategist you are, but, damn it! I've done my homework! I'm not all that stupid!"

"I never thought that!"

"Then what was it?"

Josh looked down at the sand, running his fingers through it. "When we went to New Hampshire, it had been, what?, eight years since you worked in politics? You'd never worked on a national campaign, never written for anybody more than a Congressman. But you — being you — jumped into the deep end of the pool without any reservation. You sat in on every meeting you could; you argued with Toby — Toby, for god's sake — about language and imagery; and you ended up writing most of the President's stump speech because you understood how he spoke and the things he wanted to say. You were incredible, Sam."

He raised a hand when Sam started to interrupt. "Wait, let me finish. Then we went to the White House, and you — being you, again — never hesitated. You just dove headfirst into everything. And I was so proud of you until..." He took a deep breath. "...Until I realized you were outgrowing the role I'd assigned you. You weren't supposed to come up with your own ideas, your own initiatives, Sam — not for a while. That wasn't part of my plan."

"Your plan," Sam repeated.

"I figured it'd be like the campaign. I'd lead, and you'd follow. But then I realized you weren't following so much any more. You were catching up so fast, I could hear your footsteps behind me." He glanced up at Sam. "When I told you that you blow me away, I wasn't kidding. You've grown so damn much, and it was all your own doing, your hard work. I had nothing to do with it."

Sam dropped down beside him, watching the waves come in. "So you decided to put me in my place — well, in the place you'd assigned me."

"Not consciously." Josh turned, studying Sam in profile. "It wasn't like I woke up one morning and said, 'Sam Seaborn must be stopped'."

"Because you don't talk like a bad science-fiction movie."

And that was so much like his Sam, the snarky Sam who had taken up residence as his conscience, that Josh grinned. "Not for the most part, no. My ego just took over. It was, I don't know, easier to shout you down than to acknowledge what you were saying had merit, that you might have a better idea than I did. And once I started yelling…" He looked down at his hands. "God, Sam, I'm so sorry."

"I wasn't trying to undermine you," Sam said softly, his eyes still on the water.

"I know that. I think I knew it then, too."

"I wanted to… We have such… I —"

Josh patted Sam's shoulder and bit back a smile at the words spilling over each other. "Slow down."

Sam looked at him then, and Josh tried to remember the last time he had seen that intensity of purpose in anyone, including himself. "I wanted to build my own place in this Administration, Josh. I saw the issues facing us, and there were so many that would make a difference in the quality of people's lives, if someone just had time to deal with them. Granted they weren't four-column-inches-above-the-fold type stuff, but they were still important. Those were the things I was interested in, Josh. Those were the things I wanted to handle." He frowned. "I see what you do, Josh. I respect what you do, but I don't want to do it."

"Why didn't you tell me? I would've helped!"

"No, you would've done what you've been doing for the past year. You would've watched over my shoulder and made sure I did things your way."

"Sam, I don't want you to fail!"

"I want to fail! Don't you get that? I learn from failure, Josh. It makes me want to work that much harder!"

"You want to fail," Josh repeated slowly.

A smile tugged at the corners of Sam's mouth. "Okay, maybe I could've put that a little better."

"Ya think?"

"What I'm saying is —"

"You want to do things your way," Josh finished. "Yeah, I get it. It doesn't make me want to stop helping you, though. Not in a I-don't-think-you-can-handle-it way, but as one member of Senior Staff to another. Hell, I go to Leo all the time for advice."

"Do you follow any of it?" Sam asked.

Josh grinned, feeling the tension ease that he had carried with him since that last awful conversation with Sam. "Nah, not so you'd notice it."

"You should tell him. I'm sure he'd sleep better knowing he had nothing to do with most of your faux pas."

Josh considered that. "It wouldn't be half as much fun, though."

Sam's smile was a flash of white in the coming night. "Maybe for you, but the man deserves a good night's rest." Looking around, he started to rise. "We should go in, it's getting dark."

Josh followed him, but stopped Sam with a hand on his arm as they reached the bottom of the path. "We're okay, then?"

Sam nodded slowly. "Yeah, I think we are."

As they started climbing, Josh felt none of the jubilation he had expected he would. Instead, there was only a sense of peace. After all his blunders, he had not lost Sam, not lost one of the most important friendships in his life.

He caught up with him as they reached the lawn, throwing an arm across his shoulders. "You wanna go get something to eat?"

Sam shook his head. "Not necessary. My mother left dinner for me, and I'll never finish it. You're welcome to stay and eat."

"Your mom cooked? Cool!"

"She's done nothing but cook since I've been home. The leftovers would feed a small army."

Josh remembered the other reason he had come to see Sam. "Hey, did you know that, during Medieval times, a king would send one of his most trusted knights to negotiate the conditions of a siege?"

Sam stopped to pick up his book and glasses. "Yeah, it was called a parley."

Josh's smile grew wider as they walked into the house. This might be easier than I thought.