Rating: G
Category: general
Spoilers: ‘Stirred’ specifically, various others very generally
Summary: Josh and Sam in the wee hours of the morning (a ‘Stirred’ post-ep)
Archive: ask (it can be found at https://www.angelfire.com/pa5/mdime02)
Disclaimer: alas, not mine
 
 

 He was on his way out but decided to see if Josh was still around.  He was.  Sam leaned against the doorframe, waiting to be noticed and watching Josh work.  The only light in the room came from his desk lamp, which cast shadows across the stack of files and binders waiting to be read.  Josh was oblivious to his surroundings, intent on underlining important information and scribbling notes in the margin before tossing that folder aside to begin on the next one.  Sam shook his head, wondering if his friend had been home before midnight in the last month and knowing that the question didn’t even need to be asked.  Glancing at his watch and noticing only that the hour hand was far too close to the two, he decided that it was break time.

 “Ulysses S. Grant?”

 Josh looked up in surprise, grinning as he saw who it was.  “What are you still doing here?”

 “I’m just wondering...Ulysses S. Grant?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Why?”

 “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

 “Of course, because Civil War heroes are hard to come by these days and having Grant on the ticket would really help us out.”

 Josh sighed, dropping his pen to the desk and stretching in his seat. “Yeah.”

 “Getting him on board might have been a problem.”

 “I think we could have won him over.  Sit down, stay a while.”

 “You should go home.”

 “I know.”

 “Josh.”

 “I’ve got to finish...”  He sighed.  “You know, *I* didn’t even want to be at my meeting.”

 Sam nodded.  “It would have been uncomfortable, me knowing about the discussion when I was working with him on the bill.”

 “Why else would you think I didn’t tell you?”

 “Because I would have been –”

 “Irate?”

 “Among other things.”

 “S’okay.  Everyone else was.  I was.”

 “You were in charge.”

 “Only because I had to be.”

 “But you were there.”

 “It wasn’t because...we just found out about the education thing, you were the best choice.”

 “I know.  It wasn’t ever that serious, was it?”

 “No.”

 “Then why...?”

 “Because there was electoral math, and it’s my job.”

 Sam simply nodded, still working through the multitude of things which had just been said.  Hoynes had his faults, but he was a good man.  Josh had worked for him – would have made him president, too, if not for a little trip to Nashua.  He could imagine the reaction the others had, and he couldn’t imagine any of it being pleasant.  Josh’s discomfort with his meeting had been obvious, palpable, but when Sam found out he had ignored it and reacted in much the same way – as if Josh were at fault, as if he were forcing something upon them.  “You’re right.”

 Josh looked at him curiously, trying to remember what it was that he had been right about.

 “It’s your job.  And besides, it’s not like you enjoyed it.”

 Josh grinned then, shaking his head slightly.  “I tried to escape at every opportunity.  At one point I practically begged Leo to let me stay in his office.”

 “But you had to have the meeting.”

 “Yeah.”

 “And someone had to fix the bill.”

 “Yeah.”

 “So that leaves me with one question.”

 “Am I going to regret hearing it?”

 “No, I’m just wondering.  If this was Bruno and Doug’s thing, why weren’t Bruno and Doug there?”

 “That’s not a serious question, is it?”

 Sam shrugged his shoulders.

 “Think about the reaction I got, Sam, and then think what the reaction would have been if it came from them.”

 “Ouch.”

 “Yeah.”

 “So.”

 “So?”

 “All that, and the best you could come up with was Ulysses S. Grant?”

 “Don’t forget Fitzwallace.  That would have been something to see...”

 Sam nodded absently, trying to picture it in his mind.  It would have been something...maybe he could be Hoynes’ running mate in 2006.

 “And then there’s Bartlet-McGarry.”

 “Well, there’s a problem with that one.”

 “What?”

 “Leo would never leave you in charge of his White House.”

 “Hey!”

 “I’m just saying...you’ve tried to burn the place down, I don’t think that we should entrust you with –”

 “You were there too, Mr. ‘It Has to be a Hardwood.’”

 “Secret plan to fight inflation?”

 “Sleeping with a call girl?”

 “Insulting Mary Marsh.”

 “Capital Beat with Ainsley Hayes.”

 “Posting to your fan site.”

 “Nuclear weapons in Kyrgyzstan.”

 “Mandy.”

 “Lisa.”

 “Your sensitive system.”

 “An inability to stay in your boat.”

 “Your assistant was briefly Canadian.”

 “You were scared of yours.”

 “Theoretical physics.”

 “Recording secretary for the Princeton Gilbert & Sullivan society.”

 “At least I never wanted to be a ballerina.”

 “I never spent an entire day trying to figure out why we need pennies.”

 “What about the lunatic map makers?”

 “That was CJ’s meeting.”

 Suddenly struck with the absurdity of what they were doing, the two men burst out laughing.  Josh put his head down on the desk, shoulders shaking from laughter.  Sam tried to stop, but Josh chose that moment to look up and they started all over again.

 “I think...it’s time...to go home.”

 “I really should finish this.”

 “The government won’t self-destruct if we leave.  It will be here in the morning.”

 “It is the morning.”

 Sam turned thoughtful.  “You know, I never spent this much time after hours at Gage Whitney.”

 “You got paid a lot more, too.”

 “Yeah.  The thing is, that day you came to see me?”

 “On my way to New Hampshire.”

 “Yeah.  I stayed up most of that night, researching oil spills.  I found them a better boat, I worked out the pros and cons, I figured out the legal stuff.”

 “Because of what I said?”

 Sam nodded.  “I told them, and they just...didn’t care.”

 “It’s cheaper for them that way.”

 “It’s more than that, though.  It wasn’t just their way of thinking, it was who they were.  Who I would have been.”

 “I came and got you, Sam.”

 “I know.”

 “You never would have been like them.”

 “I don’t think I would have realized it.”

 “You never would have been like them.”

 “He didn’t even think twice.  He just said, ‘take my name off,’ and that was it.”

 “He cares.  We make him out to be the bad guy more often than not, but he cares.”

 “And so do we.  Which is why we stay up late, and why we listen to the advisors and the crackpots and sometimes even the Republicans, and why we fight so hard.  It’s also why you hated having that meeting, and why you wrote a memo to the President about a Wisconsin school teacher.”

 Josh grinned.  “Yeah.”

 “Of course, it also kept you out of the Roosevelt room.”

 “Very funny.  That had nothing to do with it.”

 “I know.”

 “Let’s go home, Samuel.”

 “Really?  But we’ve got almost...”  He checked his watch.  “Four and a half hours before we have to come back.”

 “I realize that you won’t know what to do with yourself in the intervening time, but I’ve been told that the government can run without us and Donna yells when I don’t sleep.”

 “The country never sleeps, why should we?”

 “Stop stealing my excuses.”

 “Just want you to realize how unreasonable you sound.”

 “Never.”

 “Okay.”

 Josh grabbed his backpack and took his coat from the hook.  “You ready?”

 “I was ready an hour ago.  In fact, I could have gone home an hour ago.”

 “And you didn’t because...?”

 Sam looked confused.  “I don’t really remember anymore.”

 “I think that a certain Civil War general had something to do with it.”

 “Oh yeah.  That.”

 “Let’s go.”  They left Josh’s office, walked through the long-ago deserted bullpen.  “You know, if we lived here it would be much easier to go home.”

 “That might not work so well.”

 “Where’s the problem?  Walk upstairs, you’re there.”

 “You know those lectures and history lessons that the President occasionally is benevolent enough to cut short so we can go home?”

 Josh stopped in his tracks.  “Oh dear.”

 “Yeah.”

 “Never mind, then.”

 “Yeah.”

 They left the White House, waving goodnight to the security guards.  They reached Sam’s car first.  “See you in a few hours.”

 “Good night, Josh.”

 “Good night.”