author: aj (another_juxtaposition@hotmail.com)
codes: josh/sam
rating: pg-13
archive: ask, and ye shall receive.
notes: the characters are clearly not mine. themes of euclidean geometry and walking are loosely borrowed from jeanette winterson. it all began with dani beth's summer challenge - i picked 3 of 5 elements: a beach, a boardwalk, and the couple of your choosing.

summary: "Somewhere he hates himself for letting this happen, night after night, beer after beer, but most of all he hates himself for loving the way Josh says his name as they are a jumbled mess of legs and arms amidst cotton sheets."

for miss ellen m, always understanding that even the most beautiful things cast shadows, and as always, for rachel, who is anything brighter than even the sun.

*

There are times when he thinks he has made the wrong decision, that Gage Whitney held more than this administration ever could, and he thinks that Lisa was the best decision of his. There are times when he doubts everything, when he drinks just so he can stop thinking. There are times when he thinks he might have a problem.

And there are times when he finds himself in Josh's arms, wrapped in sweat, legs and arms and skin tangled in a mass of desire and passion, caught in the moment. Then he knows he has a problem. But then he remembers and his skin tingles with the memories of clandestine moments and he thinks that maybe things can be overcome, that maybe you have to be a little crazy to create something powerful and this is their own version of crazy.

There are times when he loses himself, when he forgets words and his vocabulary diminishes, when his command of speech disappears into the foggy nights and humid mornings. And there are times when Josh isn't there and he wonders why he goes through this. Why he deals with the anger in CJ's eyes and the feelings of disappointment. Because somewhere amidst the words and the pages and speeches and the successes and the failures, Sam Seaborne has lost himself. He doesn't know where to begin looking.

So sometimes he doesn't sleep, instead reads pages and pages of things he can't do anything about, but thinks he should. And sometimes he goes with Josh when he knows he shouldn't. And sometimes he drinks, and he drinks more than he should, and sometimes there's a voice in the back of his head sounding suspiciously like Mallory's informing him he's fucking up yet again. But he washes her away with a glass of beer or perhaps a whiskey sour, and sleeps it off in the morning.

And there are times when he doesn't change his clothes and forgets to shower, watching television but nothing registers, because he can't understand the words. They are in a different language from his own. The Tower of Babel repeats itself and he can't help grinning at the idea that the President's obsessive Bible Trivia has seeped into his insomniac ponderings.

*

There is a knock on his door, light. He knows without looking up from his copious notes that Josh has entered the room, and he congratulates himself for keeping his hands steady.

"Wanna go grab a beer?"

It begins the same way each time, Sam's life stuck in a groove like a scratched record.

*

He is drunk. The room is taking second to focus and he has to clutch his bed post to remain upright. He is drunk and his pants are around his ankles, and his dick is in Josh's mouth, and all he can think is that he is drunk.

His head swims with thoughts and words and incomprehensible desires, and he falls back onto his bed while Josh moves to climb on top of him. He doesn't want to want this. Somewhere he hates himself for letting this happen, night after night, beer after beer, but most of all he hates himself for loving the way Josh says his name as they are a jumbled mess of legs and arms amidst cotton sheets.

*

It is morning now and Sam's shower refuses to get any hotter. He sits down on the tile, his back straight against the steaming wall, letting the water pound his neck and his head. The sound drowns out any other thoughts, and he believes briefly that he can wash the memories of Josh's mouth off his skin. But it occurs to him that it is too late. Josh has crept into his pores, been picked up by his red blood cells and swiftly carried off to his heart.

*

Meeting in Toby's office seemed reasonable at the time, though Sam finds himself distracted by the stark reds of the painting hanging on the wall. Josh perches on the edge of Toby's desk, the epitome of nervous energy. CJ is covered in papers and post-its, and Sam wonders how she can keep anything straight with her organizational skills such as they are.

The air is thick with tension, and though ideas are simply being tossed around, each of them fears heads will be rolling before decisions are made. It isn't that any of them mind going to California on principle. But this isn't merely a trip, and this isn't just work, this is an attempt to avoid the political downfall of the century, and about completing a promise made in all honesty three years before.

"Dammit Toby! Enough with the green beans. I dropped the ball, I screwed up, though heaven knows I'm not the only on in this room who has ever made a mistake." Sam hears CJ speaking directly to him, though her eyes are fixed elsewhere.

She throws her hands in the air dramatically in an attempt to assuage the tension. "Karma will come and bite you in the butt!"

"On the butt," Sam corrects without looking up, his dark hair brushing the edges of his glasses as he scribbles something illegible.

"Oh shut up Sam! He got the point." There is frustration in CJ's voice, and he finds a reprimand beneath the surface. Recoiling, his father's voice echoes "Children should be seen and not heard."

Toby takes the cue to throw his pen on the table and paces recklessly around the room, hands stabbing the air emphatically. "CJ you are not getting the point! We cannot afford to isolate anymore voters! We are almost worse off than we were four years ago, because though no one knew Bartlet, we could invent him for them! Now he's a liar and a cheat, and we're going to ignore the farmers! The farmers! The foundation of this country! The cultivators of our resources, and yet the beneficiaries of what? Salinas is the Salad Bowl Capital of the world, and gang-related crime is rising, English as a second language is huge, their public schools are horrid, and they have major immigration and illegal alien problems! Migrant farm workers constitute a large part of the Salinas Valley livelihood, and we don't even know how many of them there are because the census doesn't count them! We should use this stop to address all of these issues, show that we aren't afraid to tacked the big ones!"

"Toby, I get the picture." Irritation seeps into her tone. "First stop after Fresno, Salinas. Happy?" She gives him a pointed stare, and he shrugs in return, but sits down nonetheless. "However, we promised to be a part of the University of California at Santa Cruz's discussion panel entitled 'The Shrinking Left: Liberal Policies in the 21st Century'."

"Sam and Josh can deal with them." Toby says this dismissively, throwing his ball against the wall with excessive force.

"You're going to send the Hardy boys to deal with the neo-hippies? Oh, this should be fun."

Toby glares in response, and sighs as if inferiors surround him. Rolling her eyes, CJ notes the change in front of her and Sam looks at Josh, wondering when the two of them left the conversation. Josh gives him a subtle smile, promising. And Sam is reminded of his fears, and he worries his eyes will betray his longing.

"Don't you know the area pretty well, Sam?"

"You probably know it better, thanks to all your time as a Berkeley feminista," Josh snorts at this but Sam continues nonplussed, "but I know where the Boardwalk, the UC campus, the city hall, and the best place to buy incense are."

"Well, what more do you need to know?"

"Can we stay at that new bed and breakfast, the one that provides free weed with all meals?" Josh's eyes twinkle at the prospect.

"First of all, I'm pretty darn sure you have to prove you need it for medical purposes, and no, your paper cut does not constitute a need for medicinal marijuana, and secondly, may I remind you this is a day trip? You two will be meeting us in San Jose for the tech dinner at 7."

"Children, this meeting is over. I trust you all have work to do in the comfort of your own offices?"

They file out of Toby's office, Josh's hand resting on the small of Sam's back, and all his insecurities disappear into the dark recesses of his head because all he understands is that Josh's hand is on his back, touching him.

*

Sam walks through the maze outside of Josh's office, his nose buried in a report he isn't really reading, and runs smack into Donna. Dozens of color-coded note-cards scatter across the bullpen carpet, and for a moment he is mesmerized by the way Donna's hands slide in and out of the colored cards, shuffling them quickly back into order.

"Nice to know chivalry isn't dead." Donna brushes by Sam, leaving him momentarily confused.

She yells over her shoulder, "By the way Sam, if you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair." She disappears around a corner and he likes the way she makes him smile when he thinks he has forgotten how.

*

Gravity affects him more than usual this morning, and he has to fight harder to keep his feet moving forward, to keep his eyes open and his head up. There is a heaviness to his existence that he has never felt before, and as he stands it occurs to him that one day it might all just fall. That this thing he created with Leo and the President, and the others, is nothing more than a house built of cards, and he worries he will breathe a little too hard and everything will come tumbling down. He is heavier today, and older today, uneasy.

Because Sam is afraid, somewhere, that this isn't going to be the fairy tale ending that they have all been hoping for. He's tired of looking younger and being treated younger. He was forced to learn long ago how to deal with defeat, disappointment, disillusionment, and despite that, he still managed to hang on to shreds of optimism. Because he thinks life is pointless without hope.

So he reaches out into the shadows, into the mist of the northern California morning, and clutches tightly at this tenuous thing that breathes with a life of its own. And there is Josh, speaking and convincing, the world his stage and his message the truth, and Sam in the background, waiting.

His eyes are alive, flashing with passion that can't be faked. And Sam knows his own eyes are cloudy, matching the weather outside and the turmoil within. He doesn't quite know when they stopped listening to him, and wonders if perhaps he lost his voice instead. If the fog somehow swallowed it, light and flowing.

He used to be content with his position in this stress-filled world, working in the wings to create the magic of the show, hearing his words being spoken with an element of pride. Now he feels as if they have stopped being his words, though they flowed from his pen and his thoughts, and became the President's, and Toby's, and Josh's. As if his words are not good enough simply being Sam's words. He remembers CJ, talking down to him in ways she never had, and he remembers being angry, watching her eyes widen at his fury. But most of all he remembers feeling lonely, and unimportant. Dispensable, and young.

And he remembers the silence afterwards.

Someone asks him if he knows the time, and Sam is brought back from this world of misty reverie into the present, this room filled with people focused on Josh, his Josh with dark smoldering eyes. This is not a time for pity he admonishes himself, and vows to spend the day focused, at dealing with words, his words and other words. But he can't quite bring himself to forget the feeling of the heat of Josh's hand radiating through his crisp white shirt as they walked into the room or the way their hands kept colliding during the drive over.

Because somewhere, Sam knows, there is a part of him that wants to announce to this room of idealistic liberal college students that he sometimes wants to touch Joshua Lyman so badly he can't think, he can't speak, and he wonders if that is where his voice disappeared.

*

"How's it going?" CJ's voice echoes through the phone, reverberating in Sam's inner ear. It occurs to him he doesn't know if CJ has ever been in love. He wants to know, but that's not what she's asking and his courage has fled for the safety of the shadows. He assures her that Josh is not isolating any large groups of voters, that they are winning votes left and right.

"You're winning votes on the Right too? Jeez Sam, I should send the Dynamic Duo out campaigning more often." Her voice is a little too upbeat, and he figures she is trying in some small way to tell him that he's doing fine, that she is sorry for the way she treated him.

He tries to express that optimism they all expect from him. His command of vocabulary and phrasing seem to have washed out with the last tide, and finds himself resorting to a weak attempt at humor.

"You know CJ, I think you might want to make a stop in Castroville on your way up. I hear someone leaked that classified info about the President's dislike of artichokes, and we wouldn't want to lose the political power of those artichoke farmers, now would we?"

"I am choosing to ignore the fact you know too much about the agricultural regions of central California. Instead, I'm going to go talk to the press from the Monterey County Post and the Carmel Pine Cone, whom, I assure you, are only the most professional of all reporters, having the best interests of the nation at heart. It seems the issue getting the most coverage these days is the debate over whether or not Carmel should have door to door mail delivery service. They want to know how the president feels about the presence of mailboxes in the classic village community. Apparently some people feel it detracts from the quaint atmosphere. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to hide behind a giant head of lettuce."

*

And now the panel is over and Josh and Sam are alone in their light blue rental car, and now their lips are touching and their tongues are swirling, tracing, traveling, laughing. A car alarm goes off and they break apart, suddenly, startled, and Sam begins to drive.

He questions, as they depart from the relaxed UC campus, if Josh ever wants to kiss him because he is Sam, or if it is only because he is there, because he gets caught up in the moment. He wonders if Josh ever dreams of him, reaches out in the early hours of the morning and wishes he were there beside him. The answer is often a toss-up, a fifty-fifty deal with fate. Although Sam wants to believe so badly that this intelligent man desires him, he knows that wanting doesn't mean existing.

Josh sits beside him in silence, seatbelt fastened, staring out the window at the passing houses, at the passing people, at nothing at all.

Santa Cruz is a beach town stuck in those formative years of the sixties, the streets lined with first and second generation hippies and the stores filled with glass-blown pipes. Sam has always felt out of place here, the way he feels when he is walking around St. Mark's Place in New York, suspiciously conspicuous in these laid-back atmospheres with his freshly pressed suit and impeccable tie.

The car stops. Josh looks ahead to see a long stretch of color, roller coasters and a carousel. A large sign spans the obvious entrance: "Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk."

"I haven't been here in years," Sam says quietly. "Years."

Two car doors open, two car doors slam, and two lean male bodies advance toward the shore.

*

We met because space is curved and time doesn't exist. In space, two parallel lines always meet, and triangles have more than 180 degrees. The world is round, and we intersected, and we will always intersect, until we are one.

There is an interrelatedness to everything around us, to ourselves, to the world. Look at this sand. Tiny, inconsequential particles banding together to create this vast and beautiful beach. Look at you, made up of invisible particles, banding together to create the image before me. We are both the sand and the beach, the shore and the ocean, the moon and the sun. We are. We are alive and young, and you are the axis around which my heart rotates.

The seasons change the visual, but you remain stable. My existence is contingent upon yours. Philosophers wonder what makes humanity get out of bed every morning, and my answer is you. You with your scars and bruises, brown eyes and thin fingers. You with the way you say my name half-whispered in the refuge of the shadows, you with the skin that jumps and trembles at my touch.

We are two parallel lines, destined to meet because Euclidean geometry does not fit in a four dimensional world. We intersected against the odds, against the rules, against the logic. We met because space is curved and time doesn't exist. Only love, love that permeates all, endures all, exists beyond all, creates all, and is all.

*

The wind ruffles through their hair, lightly covering each strand with the salty-sweet smell found only near the ocean. It is the smell of Sam's childhood, comfortable and known. It makes Josh slightly uncomfortable, aware of the vast expanse of the unknown, the uncontrollable.

*

Walk with me.

Walk with me across this sand that scalds in sun and cuts in cold. Walk with me across this beach and into the sea, vast and unknown. Let it swallow me whole. You will walk on water, dance lightly on the foam tipped waves, laughing at impossibility. Walk with me. Along the stone cold bottom of the ocean, waving at the passing fish, breathing each other. Walk with me where time doesn't exist and physics don't apply, into eternity, into infinity, into heaven if it exists.

Walk with me.

Walk with me into the darkness, the strength of each other will illuminate the night. Walk with me through impossible things and failures and crushed dreams. If you can't dance on waves I will keep you afloat with the buoyancy of my own body, with the light in my heart. I will not let you fall. Walk with me, for I am nothing without you.

Walk with me.

Walk with me into tomorrow, remembering the shattered fragments of yesteryear scattered in the purples and reds of the sunset. I will slay your dragons, rescue your fair ladies, juggle red balls of fears to make you laugh. I'll be the owl and you the pussycat and hand in hand on the edge of the sand we'll dance by the light of the moon, dreaming in color and breathing in stardust.

Walk with me.

Let me run my fingers through your dark hair, memorizing each strand. Let me meld into your skin, filling every pore. You have become part of me, I am made of your flesh, rib from rib, dream from dream. You have captured my heart and held it sacred in the shelter of the storm. I will wait for you, and we will breathe each other's dream for the next years and sustain, survive. But in the meantime . . .

Walk with me, Josh, walk with me.

*

He feels old, walking barefoot on the sand, as if he is attempting to recapture something long past. Time is cheating him, forcing him to wait, wait, yet stealing years when his back is turned. Sam's eyes cloud over, staring out at the expanse of choppy water. He envies Josh's carefree attitude toward all of this, toward this campaign and toward this relationship. He wants an acknowledgment of something, and he feels like a 5 year old seeking validation from the revered father figure.

Sometimes, he thinks, I repulse myself.

Their shoes kicked off long ago, Josh swings his loafers in rhythm with their matched stride as they wander along where the Santa Cruz sand meets the cold waters of the Pacific. They are waiting for something, though neither knows what, and Sam desperately wants to taste Josh's skin, but instead scans the horizon. The water catches Josh's toes, slightly purple in the evening chill, and Sam notes the way the water always recedes for Josh. He thinks it might be part of Josh's magic, that he can control not just Sam, but the seas as well.

Sam is caught unawares and the sea splashes about his ankles, soaking the ends of his rolled trousers. The sinking sun reflects its reds and oranges in the rolling water, causing the sand to become a fascinating canvas of sunset colors, painted with the carelessness of an ambivalent sea.

Josh turns and smiles at Sam, grabs his hand and leads him away from the water, retreating farther up on the shore until the sand squeaks in the wake of their damp footprints. They sit, side by side, and stare at the horizon, far and flat.

All Sam thinks he knows is that he wants to touch Josh, where his shoulder and collarbone meet, trace the gentle curve with his mouth, taste the salty sea air on his skin. The words begin to tumble from Sam's mouth, as if he is afraid of the silence, and he thinks perhaps he is, because unlike Josh he can't seem to find the control panel.

"We came here, to the Boardwalk, with my senior class as a graduation trip. The six-hour bus drive pretty much killed the chaperones, but the lure of the roller coasters and the shadows under the pier created this feeling of mass excitement. Except for me. I was never really a fan of roller coasters."

"Now there's a big surprise, Mr. Head of the Gilbert and Sullivan Recording Club."

He wonders if Josh ever thinks about him seriously, ever gives up the safety of his sharp wit to reach out, and he hopes that Cathy is wrong when she says that Josh and Donna have a future together because he wants Josh so badly he has lost his voice in the depths of that desire.

"Paul Kaiser was my best friend, but he ditched me to hide under the pier with Jessica Alberts." He pauses, hoping history will not repeat itself. "So I sat right here, almost in this exact same spot, and stared out into the ocean. It was one of those foggy nights, where the mist is so thick you can barely see past your outstretched fingertips, wrapping everything in a cool shroud of mystery. I thought about where I was going, about Princeton, about what the future held, and there was o distinction between the ocean and the sky. They just flowed, flowed into one another and all the lines disappeared."

Sam tosses some sand in the general direction of the ocean, feigning a lighthearted attitude he doesn't think he ever possessed.

"And here I am again, in this same spot, and the lines have been erased once again. But this time it's not the lines that break the sea from the sky, but the lines that define my life, define my future, define me. There are no lines anymore, nothing is straight in this world. It's all curved, curved and spinning. There are no constants, except that nothing is perfectly still. It spins. It spins because the world is spinning, and it spins because we spin it Josh. We spin the world to our liking, and we spin it well, but does our spinning mean it exists?"

His breath catches in his throat, and he yearns to be held by the man next to him, to feel the warmth of his body, to be reminded that they are alive.

"Do we exist? As a we, and not a you and I?" He almost whispers these last words, terrified that he has crossed some unspoken barrier. He holds his breath, silently daring Josh to break the spell. He knows the answer will come, and he dreads it, because an answer means lives have to be put on hold and fragmented into circles and spheres, because triangles and squares aren't easily spun.

"It's only another four years Sam. Four years and then it will be over." There is a hint of hope in Josh's tone, and Sam so desperately wants to believe it, to grab it and never let go. Yet he knows, somewhere deep inside, that four years will meld into six, and then twelve. He understands that in a world where time doesn't exist, numbers mean nothing, that they are merely symbolic of the eternal attempt to create reality from dreams.

Exhaling, Sam allows his head to drop to his chest, his dark hair cascading downward.

Beside him, Josh straightens and opens his eyes widely, as if seeing the view before him clearly for the very first time. His toes bend and clench sand between their spaces, and Sam watches them curl and uncurl, grab and release.

"We exist because we love Sam." Josh's fingers stop making circles in the sand, and Sam raises his head to see those dark smoldering eyes reflecting a passion that seems distantly familiar, only this time, directed at him.

He grabs on to that hope, so tangible he can touch it, and promises with his eyes to never let go.

And that, he thinks, is something.

*

the end.
  . send a flower .
    . back to the garden .