so, yeah, obviously. West Wing fic.
After binge-viewing a season and change of The West Wing, I found myself sitting up on iuliamentis's couch at three-thirty in the morning, writing fic. Iulia has kindly betaed it and listened to my worrying over every word of the story, to say nothing of putting up with my random outbursts of "OMG SAM! JOSH! SAM! JOSH!"

So, fic. Short and sad. Sam/Josh, PG.



This Is the Way the World Ends

You're buttoning your shirt as you walk to the door, marked by a yellow line of light on the carpet. Your right hand is on the knob as you glance down at yourself, smoothing your left down over the buttons, assuring yourself that putting a tie on at this point would constitute trying too hard. Your eyes are well adjusted to the darkness, and catch a spot of black in the field of white, some betraying speck of lint or dust.

You take your right hand from the doorknob to brush it away, and as your fingers touch the threads you realize the betrayal is worse than that. The dark blot on your chest is a monogram, SNS, and the shirt you're wearing--the shirt in which you were about to step into a brightly-lit hallway--belongs to Samuel Norman Seaborn, asleep in the bed behind you. You left the light off to keep from disturbing him.

You stand still with your hand over your heart as though you were pledging allegiance, your fingertips covering those letters, and wish you could have the last two minutes back. If you'd turned on the light--if you'd grabbed the right shirt--if you'd realized it felt different against your skin now because it was different, and not because you were--if you'd been careful enough or smart enough or awake enough... But wishing won't make it so, and you can't betray the man in the bed behind you further than you already have. You turn back.

He sleeps on his side, covers held tight to his chest. You sit down on the edge of the bed and lower your right hand, and you can feel the pounding of your own heart when you do, as though you'd been holding it back. He startles awake before you can touch him--even asleep, he is careful--and you can see his frown but you can't read his eyes in the dark. There's a secret, sleepy rasp in his voice as he says, "Josh?" and you know you will never hear him say it that way again. Your throat closes as you get a glimpse of what the word never actually means, but you can't lie to him, don't dare hesitate to inform him of the situation. You reach for his hand and raise it to the front of your shirt. His shirt. You see and feel his whole body jerk as he recognizes what he's touching, as if you'd struck him, but his voice is low and even as he says, "We just almost got caught."

He says we and not you, as you always hoped you would if it were him. You don't know how but you hear yourself say, "Yeah." Your voice is oddly steady--but then it's a political crisis, not a personal one, for all that only the two of you know it exists.

"So that's it," Sam says, and the sentence sounds calm and declarative. If you didn't already know, it would not betray a hint of the fact that Sam thought almost got caught was a more than necessarily cautious standard. You thought it was reckless. Relationships are about compromise, and this one bought you more time than you thought it would, but not enough. You never imagined that there would be such a thing as enough between you. You were right.

"Yeah," you say again, and you should be saying more. But you were clever and careful, both of you, and said it all in advance, and now the moment has come and nothing is left to be done. You feel cold and breathless when Sam takes his hand away.

He runs it through his hair, and you can see the contrast of fair skin and dark hair with a white sheet behind. "Okay," he says. You look away and nod, telling yourself to move, and then his hand is a fist closed in the collar of your shirt--his shirt. His knuckles are hard against your throat as he hauls you down for a last kiss, rough and fast and open-mouthed. You plunge your hand into his hair and give as good as you get, and the kiss could last forever if you didn't have to breathe, or move, or work ever again.

You break apart gasping and take your hand from him as he takes his from you, and the moment is already over. By the time your eyes meet his you're already living in the time after the end. You stand up and turn your back, and unbutton Sam's shirt with shaking hands.