"So what was that thing?" C.J. grabbed my elbow lightly to make sure I didn't get too far ahead of her as the crowd pushed us along from behind.

"What thing?"

Looking over at me, she imitated the signal that I'd come up with earlier that day, not quite getting it right. "That thing you did with your hand. I looked over at you and Toby in there at one point, and you were doing this thing with your hand."

"Oh, that. It was a signal, letting everyone know the pilot was safe."

"It looked like a hip-hop move."

"That's what Leo said." Or so Josh had told me, teasing, over a late lunch in his office. We'd laughed about that, and about Josh thinking Leo had wanted to hug him. Josh had been a little embarrassed, recounting that part, and I smirked at the memory.

"Toby looked pretty relieved to hear about that pilot."

"Yeah, well, the signal doubled as a signal about the space shuttle, his brother -- you know. It's a- never mind." I changed the subject, bringing the conversation around to what I really wanted to know. "Hey, what happened in there with the jacket, anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

"He took his jacket off."

C.J. raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, but he did it with style."

"I thought we'd decided he wasn't going to do that." My voice sounded more plaintive than I'd intended.

"Sam, you think any of us can stop the President from taking his jacket off if that's what he wants to do?" She glanced over at the energetic crowd cheering at him from behind the metal barriers as he walked past them, ahead of us.

I sighed, and then shrugged. She was right, and I had no reason to complain, anyway -- about anything, at this particular moment, really. The town meeting had gone extremely well, the pilot we'd been worried about all day had gotten out alive, and the space shuttle with Toby's brother on it would be landing in one piece, if it hadn't already. And on top of all that, I'd had a chance to enjoy Josh's company in an almost-non-work context earlier that day, something that had been all too rare over the last couple of busy months.

I was still amazed at how easy and natural a friendship Josh and I had managed to develop, considering the awful way our romantic relationship had ended nearly two years earlier. The first time we'd attempted to be lovers years ago had been a disaster, but somehow the second time had seemed far more tragic because neither of us had been entirely willing to end it. But we'd both put aside our feelings for each other for the President's sake after a radical gay activist group had threatened to reveal our relationship to the media -- and despite some sleepless nights at the beginning, our friendship had definitely emerged intact.

C.J. smiled as we reached the limo, and I echoed the smile mirrored at her. It had been a good day for all of us, despite the fact that it had started out so terribly. "You know what a day like this calls for, C.J.?"

"A nice long bath and a bottle of Chianti?"

"No -- though, if you're offering ..."

"Stow it, Skippy," she glared.

"A big, decadent slice of chocolate-chocolate chip cheesecake. A day like today, you gotta have-"

It was Gina's voice that I heard first. It reached my ears as an incoherent screech -- it was only later that I puzzled out that she'd probably yelled "gun". I turned to face the sound, saw her tackle Zoey Bartlet, and then everything started happening at once. A Secret Service agent bumped into C.J., and as if by some strange instinct, I pushed the press secretary to the ground just before hearing the window of the limo shatter above us, scattering broken glass on top of and all around us. My heart began to pound furiously as I heard the sound of gunfire, much louder than I'd ever imagined it could possibly be from so close. I closed my eyes and ducked my head under the car, not quite believing this was happening.

The world went silent as my ears adjusted to hearing sounds within a normal range again, and then all around me I could hear crowds screaming, people crying, Butterfield yelling at us to stay down. That was just fine; none of us were going anywhere.

I'm not exactly sure how much time passed at that point -- it might have been only a few seconds before the sirens started blaring off in the distance, but it's possible that it was longer. The sirens were quickly followed by the voice of an unfamiliar secret service agent choking out that there were people down. "Who's been hit? Who's been hit?" he screamed in a voice that made my blood run cold. Oh, God. The President, I thought, and pushed myself up from the ground to help.

I stumbled to my feet and gulped at the sight of the car C.J. and I had ducked behind, seeing its windows smashed -- almost certainly by bullets. My heart raced as I imagined how close we had both come to being snuffed out of existence, and I turned around, searching for answers, needing to make sure Bartlet had escaped as easily. The first person I saw was Charlie, standing still, alone, staring off into space, and I ran over to him, putting my hand on his arm.

"Charlie. Charlie! Did you see what happened to the President?" I was out of breath.

The young man looked down at me, numbly, his eyes wide. "He and Zoey are on their way back to the White House." He looked for all the world like a man who'd just seen his girlfriend almost killed and then dragged away in a limo.

Oh, thank God, I thought to myself, letting out an audible sigh of relief. "Where's Leo?"

"They just put him in the car." His voice was flat with shock.

I patted him clumsily on the back in an awkward attempt to reassure him. "Thanks."

Turning around, I saw C.J. kneeling on the ground, holding a cloth to her head and talking to a medic. She looked extremely shaken, almost crying. I looked around, mentally ticking off on a list the people who had been accounted for. The President was okay, Zoey, Charlie, Leo, C.J. -- that left Josh and Toby. Watching the arrival of yet another police car from off in the distance, I walked back toward C.J.

"You all right?" I spoke loudly to be heard over the sirens.

C.J. turned around, dazed. "What?" Her voice was shrill.

I put a hand on her arm. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Where's the President?" She sounded frantic.

"He's on his way back to the White House -- so is Zoey." I was still panting slightly, trying to catch my breath, but I tried to sound reassuring through my own worry. "They just put Leo in the car." I grabbed her arm again, unsure that my words were even registering through her fear. "Are you all right?"

"Somebody pulled me down."

I saw Gina out of the corner of my eye and turned to flag her down. I had to know whether the others were okay, whether Josh and Toby were accounted for. "Gina!"

The Secret Service agent scurried past me, her eyes intent on something I couldn't see. "I can't talk right now," she brushed me aside.

Still staggering, I looked around in an attempt to survey the damage. The crowd had scattered, and very few people were still left on the ground. Those I could see were being attended to by medics. I wondered how on earth the police and medical personnel could have possibly moved so quickly and efficiently as I saw a fire truck drive slowly past, honking. Bright lights flashed and sirens still blared around me, and from somewhere nearby I could hear the faint sounds of a young woman crying.

"I need a- I need a doctor! I need help!"

I spun around at the sound of Toby's voice, feeling simultaneously relieved to hear it and terrified at its distraught tone. He was standing over by the wall, bending down and straining to be heard over the crowd noise, looking -- thank God -- unhurt, but staring, horrified, at something I couldn't see. I followed C.J. as she ran over to him, still clutching the cloth to her head, and we reached the stairs just in time for both of us to see Josh fall over, unconscious, into Toby's arms.

I must have collapsed to the ground myself at that point, because I was suddenly by his side, seeing the hand that he'd been clutching to his chest fall and dangle listlessly. Oh, God, not Josh, not- his eyes were closed, his mouth open, as Toby struggled to support his upper body. And the blood -- it was staining Josh's shirt, the circle of red growing at an alarming rate. "Josh," I said aloud, as if my hoarse whisper would somehow be able to revive him. He didn't stir.

"Someone help! There's someone hurt over here!" I heard Toby yell again, the desperation in his voice mounting.

I grabbed Josh's limp hand and squeezed it. It was covered with blood from where he had been holding his chest. "Come on, Josh, stay with us!" I pleaded, bending closer to him. He was so pale, so terrifyingly pale.

His eyes fluttered open, and I felt a sense of relief wash over me to find him still alive. "Hey there," I croaked, trying to smile.

"You've gotta- gotta tell Silverstein he can tell the truth," he gasped, and my heart lurched. He was delirious. Or something else -- something far more frightening, involving death and pain and the reliving of memories.

"He did tell the truth," I reminded Josh, clutching his arm, trying to keep him conscious. My voice sounded foreign to my own ears, as though it belonged to someone else. Strangely calm, though I felt anything but calm.

"Sam," he coughed.

"I'm right here, Josh. Just stay with us."

"Come with me- to New Haven- I'll show you- the campus ..." His breath was coming in fits and starts, and his eyes rolled up inside his head.

"Maybe you shouldn't try to talk," I pleaded, afraid that speaking was robbing him of what little breath he seemed to have in him. Then all of the little things that made him Josh left his face, as he drifted back into unconsciousness.

I gripped his arm harder and whipped my head around. C.J. was crouching behind me with a horrified look on her face, and Toby was nowhere to be seen. "Somebody- somebody get this man some help!" I screamed.

"We've got it, sir," I heard someone say, and I jerked my head over to see him. As if out of nowhere, a stretcher was beside Josh and paramedics were lifting him onto it. C.J. tried to move me back, out of the way, but I couldn't let go of Josh's arm. I was frozen in place, afraid, suddenly, that releasing him now might mean never touching him again. If I could just stay with him, he'd know- he'd be stronger, I could help him ... the paramedics were spouting incomprehensible medical jargon that I struggled to pay attention to, but my eyes were fixed on Josh's lifeless face.

I ran alongside the stretcher as they carried him down the steps and placed him in the waiting ambulance. When the paramedics moved out of the way, I blindly tried to climb in after him, unable to release my grip on Josh.

"You can't ride with him, sir. Step aside." I felt my hand being ripped away from Josh as I was pushed off to the side again.

"What? What do you mean I can't- he's- I-" I stammered, and then stopped, realizing that I had no explanation to give them. I love him! I screamed silently, my eyes pleading with the paramedics to just let me climb inside, to overlook protocol just this once, but they were too busy to even notice me. I watched the doors slam and the ambulance drive away, terrified beyond belief that I would never see Josh alive again.

"I have to get to the hospital!" I yelled, flailing myself around. "I have to get to the hospital!" Looking frantically over at the limousine C.J. and I had crouched behind what now seemed like hours ago, I wondered if it could still be driven. A couple of broken windows shouldn't prevent it from being roadworthy, I thought, running toward it, desperate to find the driver -- or someone, anyone, who could take me to Josh. I'll drive it myself if I have to.

"Sam!" I felt C.J. grab my arm, and I tried to jerk it away, but she held on tight.

"I've got to get to the hospital!" I repeated, my own voice an unrecognizable shriek.

Just then Toby ran up to us, out of breath. "This officer's going to take us over to GW." I looked up into the eyes of a young policeman, the only calm figure in the eye of this storm, and followed him as he ran to his car.

"Thank you," I breathed as Toby climbed into the front seat and C.J. pushed me into the back with her.

"I'm going to turn on the siren so we can get there faster," the young man said steadily. "It'll be a little loud -- just hang on."

I hardly felt C.J.'s calming hand on my back as I looked at my own hands, covered in streaks of Josh's blood, and wondered if anything would ever be the same again.

###

C.J. had to physically restrain me from jumping out of the car before the young officer had come to a complete stop in front of the hospital. Throwing the doors open, the three of us ran out of the car and into the emergency room. Looking around frantically, I caught sight of several doctors and nurses wheeling Josh's stretcher down the hallway, and dashed off to follow them.

"It's Josh!" C.J. managed to say in explanation as we ran past Leo.

I struggled from the back of the crowd that had gathered around him to see what the doctors were doing, hearing Leo's agitated voice over the constant low mutter of medical jargon. "What happened?"

"We don't know -- he was behind us," Toby said in response, running.

"Josh, I'm here!" I leaped up from behind the crowd, struggling to see him, trying to reassure him. He was pulling at his oxygen mask, trying to remove it from his face.

"I shouldn't be at this meeting," I heard him mumble, still delirious.

The doctors rolled the stretcher into a trauma room, and I tried to push my way up to Josh's side. "Senator ..." his voice trailed off.

"Tell me what's happening!" I heard Leo yell, sounding panicked.

"I don't have time!" one of the doctors responded, and I tried not to think about what that meant.

"I shouldn't be at this meeting!" Josh's voice was rough and increasingly overwrought. "I need to get to New Hampshire!"

Finally pushing my way up next to Josh, I grasped his right arm, trying to calm him, steady him. "You went to New Hampshire. We both did. You came and got me."

"On my count. One. Two. Three!" one doctor called out as Josh was lifted onto the bed of the trauma room and I felt myself being pushed away from him again. "Josh, a bullet collapsed your lung. We're putting in a tube to re-expand it." I stifled a gasp, wondering what sort of training doctors had to have to be able to make such horrific statements so calmly.

"Sir, you'll have to leave now," a young blonde nurse said, pushing me out into the hall. And then I was outside, while the doctors remained behind, poking and prodding at Josh, doing God knows what to keep him alive. To keep Josh alive. Oh, God.

I wandered, dazed, down the hall outside the trauma room, assaulted by the memories of the past two years without Josh. Did he know, now, that I still loved him? Was he aware, when I patted him reassuringly on the back at his desk or put my hand on his arm to steer him around a corner, that I was trying to tell him that in some small way? What if it wasn't enough? What if Josh died now, not knowing how I felt?

I spun around, preparing to do something drastic and ridiculous like running back inside the trauma room and tearfully declaring my love for Joshua Lyman, when I suddenly bumped into a large, dark-skinned nurse in a pink uniform, bringing me crashing back to reality. "I'm sorry," I said, my voice sounding a little lost.

"That's okay." She didn't even look at me.

"I'm sorry. It's just ..." I didn't know how to finish that sentence. It's just that I want to go back and tell him that I still love him, but I can't. Maybe not ever again.

Still stumbling, I turned to walk down the hall and join the others in the waiting room, pushing my way through a door marked "PRIVATE ROOM". I walked in and sat in the first chair I saw, an uncomfortable wooden hospital chair with a ratty blue cushion on it, and rested my forehead on the palms of my hands, my elbows on my knees. Somewhere in the back of my mind it occurred to me that if Josh had been conscious, he would probably have wanted me to pretend I didn't care about him quite so much, so that no one would have been suspicious. But at the moment, I just couldn't bring myself to worry in the slightest about who knew what. They could all go to hell for all it mattered to me right now.

I heard the door open again, and looked up to see Abbey Bartlet entering the room with a slight smile on her face. "The President's going to be fine. The bullet seems to have gone out of its way not to hit anything."

Everyone sighed in relief, and I was washed with confusion. The President- shot? Charlie had said he was on his way back to the White House! C.J. put her arm around Zoey and kissed her on the side of her head, and I suddenly felt terribly ashamed that I hadn't been aware enough of what was going on around me to know that the President of the United States had been shot right in front of my eyes. I struggled to get a hold of myself. I was no good to Josh if I couldn't think straight.

"Now, here's what's happening with Josh," Abbey continued, and I forced myself to focus on what she was saying. "He's in critical condition, and they're going to be doing emergency surgery right away. The bullet collapsed his lung and lodged in his heart, damaging a major artery. It's a very difficult surgery, so he'll be under at least until morning. We'll know more then about the extent of the damage."

"Thanks, Abbey," C.J. said gratefully, and I knew I wasn't the only one who was thinking about how lucky we all were that the President's wife was a doctor.

Despite the gravity of Abbey's explanation, I nonetheless felt somehow reassured by it, and definitely less crazy now that I knew. Over the next several hours I still couldn't bring myself to leave the hospital -- even after the doctor came by and dropped some not-so-subtle hints that he "couldn't make us comfortable here" and that he'd be willing to "keep in touch with us at our homes or offices" -- but at least I was able to excuse myself to the bathroom and wash Josh's blood from my shaking hands. As the night wore on I even managed to occasionally do something that resembled work. Mostly I just made lists, lists of what we all would have been doing that evening if two madmen hadn't decided to try to destroy our lives, lists of the things that would still need to be done after all of this was over. It was calming.

C.J. left sometime just before midnight and went back to the White House, but not without squeezing my hand, her eyes rife with that strange mixture of concern and awkwardness I'd last seen on Election Night. I knew she was thinking about Josh and me. Besides Lisa, my ex-fiancée and close friend, C.J. was the only soul in the world who knew -- and despite the fact that her sympathy made my heart lurch, I was still grateful the press secretary had managed to coax the truth out of me back then. If no one around me had known, it would have been so much easier to call the entire existence of the relationship into question, wonder if it had all been a dream -- and I needed that tangible reality to hold onto at the moment.

At around 3:30 that morning C.J. called me into the office to speak with the National Security Advisor, despite the fact that any one of us could have done that. I was irritated, but still touched at the obvious ploy to get me out of the hospital, to force me to think about other things -- and I later had to admit that it did work. After a quick meeting with Nancy McNally and about a half hour of staring at my desk, wondering how all of this could have possibly happened, I was finally ready to go home and at least go through the motions of trying to sleep.

It must have been close to daylight when I arrived back at my apartment to find Lisa sitting on the front step outside my building. I don't know why I hadn't seen that coming -- whenever my world started to fall apart, she was somehow always there, as if she had an instinct for it. She looked even tinier than she actually was, huddled with a book on her lap, shivering into her gray trenchcoat against the wind that cut through us after sundown despite the early beginnings of summer. Caught up in reading, she didn't see me approach when I walked up and sat down beside her.

"Hi." I sat beside her and bent down to put my head on her shoulder, so grateful to have her there.

"Sam," she breathed, throwing her arms around me and burying her face in my chest. She reached around to clasp the back of my neck, her fingers like ice. Shivering -- or was it trembling? -- she just held me for what seemed like forever. She felt soft, warm, and so very safe.

"How long have you been waiting?" I finally asked, pulling back, but still clutching onto her forearms.

Lisa shrugged. "Oh, a little while," she evaded.

I squeezed her arms and looked at her with concern. I knew it must have been at least a few hours. "Let's go inside." I stood, grabbing Lisa's hand to pull her to a standing position as well. "I'm really glad you came, anyway."

Grabbing her small green bag -- the only luggage she'd brought with her -- I escorted Lisa up the stairs to my apartment, my hand on her back to guide her. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was messy from sitting for hours in the wind. She'd long since wiped away her makeup, and along with it the professional look she always worked so hard to achieve for the courtroom. I'd always preferred the more natural look on her anyway, but I knew she thought her size put her at a disadvantage when she needed to look fierce, and she always worked hard not to be taken for younger and more inexperienced than she was.

Once inside my apartment, she stood in the doorway, still wrapped in her coat, while I stared at the blinking light on the answering machine. I couldn't deal with any of that now. Lisa seemed to understand -- she always did -- standing in front of me and, again, leaning close. It felt good to be held, to have someone in my arms, to remind me what it felt like to be safe.

"I tried calling first. You can ignore the 20-odd messages from me," she said, trying to sound cheerful.

"I had to turn my phone off in the hospital."

"I figured it was something like that. Anyway, when I couldn't reach you, I thought, what the hell, I'll fly to Washington. And here I am."

"Lisa." I shook my head. "You didn't have to do that. A last-minute ticket -- it probably cost you a fortune."

"Yeah, well, you know yourself that New York lawyers don't exactly make chicken feed for money. I don't have anything more important to do with it."

I reached up and touched her cold cheek. "You should have come over to the hospital. You didn't have to sit outside all this time."

"I don't know how welcome I'd have felt there."

I sighed. Josh and Lisa each had a huge blind spot where the other was concerned, unable to understand what I saw in the other. I knew it was mostly due to jealousy on each of their parts: Lisa saw Josh -- accurately, I had to admit -- as the only reason I wasn't still with her, and Josh saw the ten years I'd spent with Lisa as a threat because our relationship had been so normal, so public.

"Josh is in surgery," I said, intending to convey that he'd have been unconscious and not even aware of her presence -- but then I realized that she meant she didn't know whether *I* would have wanted her around. I didn't know, myself. It would have certainly been awkward.

"I know," she said, moving slowly out of my arms.

Lisa put my teakettle on to boil while I called the hospital to check up on Josh. The receptionist put me on hold for about two minutes, causing my heart to beat faster and terrifying images to flood my mind, and I had to carry the cordless phone over to the couch so that I could sit down. But the news turned out to be the same -- he was still in surgery, it was going well but would take several more hours, and they wouldn't know anything for sure until later in the morning.

I turned the phone off and set it on the coffee table, and Lisa came over to sit next to me on the couch. I lay my head down onto her lap, falling back into the easy companionship Lisa and I always managed to recover whenever we were together. Sipping her tea, she stroked my head, and I thought for the first time that maybe I'd actually be able to sleep an hour or so tonight after all.

"Where does Kevin think you are?" I asked suddenly, referring to the latest in a long string of boyfriends Lisa'd had since we'd broken up. I hadn't met this one, but I knew enough about him to know he wouldn't have been too thrilled about the idea of her flying off to Washington to be with me, no matter what the circumstances.

She shrugged. "I suppose he probably thinks I'm still back in New York. It was all pretty spontaneous."

"Lisa-"

She drew her hand away from my forehead and spoke sharply. "He's my boyfriend, not my keeper. We don't even live together."

I looked up at her with a concerned look on my face. I cared deeply about Lisa, and often worried about the fact that she'd never seemed terribly enthusiastic about any of the men she'd dated since we'd broken up. I knew all too well how lonely it could feel to try to replace someone you hadn't wanted to lose.

She let loose an exasperated sigh. "I'll- I'll call him in the morning and tell him I got called away on emergency business, or something- come on, Sam, I didn't come all the way here to talk about Kevin."

Shifting around so that she was lying on the couch behind me, she lay her arm across my chest and squeezed me to her. I was suddenly reminded of lying that way with her many years ago, on a much more well-worn couch in her tiny Manhattan apartment during the Silverstein campaign. Except that back then, she had consoled me because Josh and I had just broken up, and this time he could be dying on an operating table. I drew in a shuddery breath.

"Hey, hey. It's okay. You've had a terrible night."

"I just can't believe this happened," I choked, allowing tears to form for the first time since the shooting.

She squeezed me against her more tightly and put her chin on my shoulder. "You're okay. That's what counts. You'll get through the rest."

"I'm so worried about Josh. What if ..." My voice trailed off, unwilling to complete that sentence.

"What did they say at the hospital?"

"That they don't know any more than they knew when I left." I swallowed hard. "The surgery is going well."

"That's something, isn't it?"

"Yeah." I sighed again.

She sat up. "Come on, it's almost five in the morning. Let's get you some sleep."

I had to be awake by six at the latest. "It's almost not worth it at this point."

Standing and climbing over me, she dragged me to a sitting position. "Sure it is. Come on, I'll tuck you in."

As soon as I walked into my bedroom, I knew I would indeed be able to sleep. Nearly unable to keep my eyes open, I flicked the switch on my alarm clock, undressed down to my boxers and T shirt, and collapsed under the covers. Lisa lay down on top of the covers next to me and began to stroke my head again as I turned on my side, facing away from her.

"Where are you going to sleep?" I mumbled blearily.

"I thought I'd take the couch."

We'd shared a bed when I'd stayed with her in New York almost two years ago, but that had only felt so natural because it had been the bed we'd shared when we'd been a couple. It seemed somehow more awkward in an apartment she'd hardly seen the inside of. "You can stay here if you want," I offered. "It's just an hour."

I thought I heard her murmur a quiet "thank you" as I drifted off to sleep.

###

I must have slept incredibly deeply that short night, because it took me several minutes to even hear the alarm when it went off an hour later. Lisa finally reached across me to my nightstand to silence it, and in my sleep-addled state, I simply caught her on her way back to the other side of the bed and kissed her gently on the mouth, a kiss that she immediately returned. There was no passion in it -- it was a kiss of habit, of the familiarity of two people who had at one time spent many years waking up next to each other in the mornings. But all the same, she drew back from me, startled.

Suddenly I was fully awake, and my face burned with embarrassment. Equally flustered, Lisa scrambled to her feet and brushed the wrinkles from the clothes she'd slept in, as if she could brush away the awkwardness along with them.

"I've really got to get moving." I turned away from her and stood on the opposite side of the bed. My muscles ached from the short night's sleep and the horrors of the previous evening as I walked over to the closet to pick out what I was going to wear that day, suddenly feeling extremely conscious of my lack of clothing.

"Yeah, me too," Lisa responded, out of breath.

I grabbed a suit and shirt along with clean underwear and a T-shirt, and scrambled to the bathroom. "I'm just going to take a quick shower."

"Okay, I'll make us some coffee."

Still unsettled, I stepped under the warm water. I certainly hadn't intended for *that* to happen. When I was being honest with myself I had to admit I was still attracted to Lisa -- she was truly a stunning woman -- but I simply didn't love her like a lover, and I cared about her too much to take advantage of her in the way I often feared she wanted me to. And with Josh still not out of the woods ... well, that would have made an already lousy idea feel just incredibly wrong. Oh, God, Josh. I was suddenly gripped with an overwhelming need to call the hospital and find out how he was doing, and I rinsed off and cut my shower short, dressing quickly.

I was about to dial the number of the hospital on my cell phone when it rang. "Hello?" I said, lifting it to my ear.

"Hey there, sunshine. Did you sleep?" It was C.J.'s voice.

"An hour or so. You?"

"Too busy. I'm hoping to be able to shut the blinds to my office and collapse on the couch for a bit later this morning, but there's no saying. Leo wants you to do the morning shows, so if you could get yourself over-"

"Leo wants *me* to do the morning shows? Wouldn't that be your department?" This sounded like another attempt on C.J.'s part to keep me away from sitting, useless, in the hospital, and her efforts were beginning to grate.

"Leo asked for you, Sam -- don't kill the messenger."

"No, no, it's okay -- I'm just surprised. Where do I need to go?"

"The ABC studio near the White House. You're doing Good Morning America first, then they'll pass you on."

"Okay. Hey, have you spoken with anyone at GW yet this morning?" I tried to sound nonchalant, not wanting to arouse her sympathy.

"Twenty minutes ago. He's still in surgery, and it's still going well. Probably another couple of hours yet."

I sighed. "Okay. Get yourself a nap, C.J."

"Right-o." She hung up with a click.

I finished dressing quickly and walked out into the living room, where Lisa was waiting with a cup of coffee. "I've actually got to run. I just found out I'm doing Good Morning America and God knows what other news shows this morning."

"Ah, the life of a star is never quiet," she said with a grin, looking down at the coffee mug in her hand. "I suppose you won't want to take this in a cab."

"Better not."

"Just a second." She dug in her own bag and removed a plastic coffee cup, pouring the contents of the mug into it and snapping the lid on. "Here. Good luck staying awake."

"Thanks. You'll probably need a key -- there's one in the drawer by the- no, wait, there isn't." I blinked back the tears that suddenly sprang to my eyes, remembering that I'd given my only spare key to Josh one night in a dramatic act of romantic despair. He'd never had a chance to use it.

Coughing away the wave of emotion, I grabbed my own keys from my pants pocket and fumbled with the ring one-handed, finally releasing the key to my apartment to Lisa. "I won't be back until late."

"Thanks. I'll be here." I bent down to give her a hug, and she kissed me on the cheek as I grabbed my briefcase on the way out the door.

How I managed a dispassionate account of the shooting that morning -- and multiple times, at that -- I'm not sure. I felt completely detached from what I was doing the whole time, almost as if I could imagine exactly how I was appearing to the viewers while I was speaking. I recounted what I remembered and nodded sadly -- but only sadly enough to betray the concerns of a co-worker -- as I told them I'd pass on their good wishes to Josh when I saw him later in the day. Afterward, though, I crashed. I felt almost as if I could fall asleep on my feet as I stumbled my way into the White House about an hour later, my feet like huge lead blocks. Refilling the coffee cup Lisa had loaned me, I spoke briefly with C.J., greeted Cathy, and finally collapsed into the chair at my desk.

Propping my head up with my left hand, I allowed myself to close my eyes, but only for a moment. The others were rushing around, trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy in the face of this, figuring out what to do next, but my brain just didn't seem to be functioning on that plane. Grabbing a file folder Cathy had put on my desk, I thumbed through the pages inside and tried to read them, but just couldn't focus on the words. God, was I ever useless today. All I could think about was getting over to the hospital. I'd be able to take an early lunch, maybe as soon as 10:30 -- but that seemed weeks away.

I reached into my desk drawer to grab a paper clip and my hand brushed against a familiar object. Josh's shell. Pulling it out, I examined it, and suddenly my memories became more real to me than the file folders, computer equipment, and books surrounding me. It had belonged to his sister, and for years he had kept it in memory of her -- before giving it to me, then, one sad day just after we'd broken up long ago. For luck, he had said. It had been with me ever since. During the campaign, I'd actually carried it with me from hotel to hotel in the bottom of my suitcase, often forgetting it was there, but it never would have occurred to me to leave it behind. It was like a little piece of Josh. I ran my fingers along its curves, placing it in the palm of my hand. It was white on the outside and pink on the smooth inside, and at the tip the colors swirled together in brown streaks and specks of gold.

If we had ever needed luck, we sure needed it now.

"Why don't you take the rest of the day?"

Snapping back into the present, I looked up and saw Toby standing in the doorway. "Hey. Did you sleep?"

He shook his head. "I'm hoping to catch an hour or two later. But you take the rest of the day."

I held up the folder I'd been attempting to read. "I've got this thing-"

"I'll take care of it."

"I'm the only one around here who seems to have gotten any sleep at all last night, and you're sending *me* home?" I protested crossly.

"Sam. Go over to the hospital already. I've got things covered." Toby's normally gruff voice was gentle, and when my eyes met his, I knew that somehow he understood. Whether he'd figured out the truth or had simply known that I'd want to be with my old friend was unclear, but I certainly wasn't fooling him about where I really wanted to be at that moment.

I nodded and looked away, embarrassed. "Okay. Thanks."

Clutching the shell I still held in my hand, I ducked behind my desk, reached down, and tucked it into my briefcase. If I was going to be leaving the office, the shell would be coming with me. When I looked back up, Toby was gone.

###

I rubbed my eyes and read the same sentence for the fourth time. I'd thought I'd take a few moments to read the Post while waiting for Josh to come out of surgery, but at this point I couldn't even bring myself to focus on that. Shouldn't they be finished by now? They'd said twelve to fourteen hours, and it was now going on fifteen. What if there had been complications they hadn't told us about? I gulped and folded the newspaper, noticing that my hands were shaking again.

The public waiting room was cramped and even more uncomfortable than the private room they'd had us in last night, and the air was thick with the suffocating, antiseptic smell of hospital. It was strange that I managed to associate that smell with death despite having hardly spent any time in hospitals. Perhaps it was the sheer number of people around me -- it was difficult not to think of such things while surrounded by miserable people who had come here to watch their loved ones die.

"Sam!" I looked up at the sound of Leo's voice to find him smiling, standing at the door to the waiting room with an extremely young-looking redheaded nurse.

I leapt to my feet and ran over to them. "Is Josh- is he out of surgery? Is he all right?"

The nurse nodded. "Mr. Lyman is conscious and stable, doing as well as can be expected. The doctors were able to repair most of the damage. He's speaking, and seems coherent."

"Oh, thank God." I rubbed my eyes again, fighting tears of relief.

"He said 'What's next?'" Leo said with a grin.

I laughed out loud and closed my eyes. "I need to- can I see him?"

The nurse blinked and shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir, but in ICU it's immediate family only."

My eyes flashed in anger and I felt every muscle in my body stiffen. After all this, I wasn't even going to get to see him?

"Come on, they just let the President in," Leo responded with an encouraging tone. "Hell, they just let *me* in, and Sam's known him for-"

"I'm sorry, sir." She sounded like a broken record. "I don't have the authority to break the rules."

Leo threw up his hands. "This is ridiculous!"

"Sir, it's not my decision to make. You can go speak with the doctor if you want."

"You can count on that," the Chief of Staff said, irately, as the nurse left.

I sat down in the nearest worn gray chair, feeling both relieved that Josh was out of surgery and well, and angry that I wasn't allowed to confirm that with my own eyes. I couldn't believe Josh was right here -- awake, even speaking, probably not a hundred yards from me -- and they wouldn't even let me see him.

Leo moved around to stand directly in front of me. "Goddamn legalistic- we'll straighten this out, Sam. Let me go talk to someone."

"I didn't come over here to sit in a waiting room," I said vehemently, looking through rather than at Leo.

"I'll fix this."

I raised my voice, so upset I wasn't really hearing him. "I want to see Josh."

"You're going to."

I looked up at him, unable to disguise the confusing mixture of emotions I was feeling. "How did he look?"

Leo sat down in the chair beside me. "He looked- tired, groggy. Weak. But still- you know, like Josh. He's going to make it." He punched me lightly on the arm. "Come on, he said 'what's next', and we both know you've got to be a fighter to look at the world like that."

I gave him a feeble smile. Borrowing Bartlet's phrase like that was probably the easiest quick way for Josh to let us know he was, indeed, going to be all right. "How *is* the President?"

"Terrific. He wants to go back to the office."

I smirked. "That sounds like him." Sighing, I slumped down in my chair. I wouldn't even bother to ask whether I could get in to see the President. They were probably even keeping Abbey out at this rate. I pressed my lips tightly together, feeling angry, and so useless.

"You're still worried about Josh. He's going to be fine, Sam."

"Of course I'm worried about Josh, Leo -- they won't let me in to see him!"

"Let me go take care of that." He put a steadying hand on my arm and turned to stand. "I'll be right back."

"Excuse me, are you Sam Seaborn?"

I looked up to see the same redheaded nurse from a moment ago, now standing in the doorway again. "Yes, I'm Sam Seaborn."

"You can see Mr. Lyman now, if you'd like."

I looked from the nurse to Leo, confused. Quickly, as if I had to get in there before they changed their minds, I stood, grabbed my briefcase from where I had left it on the chair where I'd been sitting earlier, and followed her into the hall. I had no idea what had suddenly changed, but I certainly wasn't going to argue with her.

The young nurse walked with me down a corridor and stopped in front of what must be Josh's room. "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Seaborn, but if I'd known that you and Mr. Lyman- that you were his partner, I wouldn't have said what I said earlier. We'll have to fill out a form for you so you don't have to get special permission to visit him every time."

"Known that I was his- what? What?" I blinked, bewildered. I had to have misheard.

"If I'd known that you were his partner- his lover- we don't want to discriminate-" She cut herself off, thankfully misinterpreting the look of incredulity on my face. "Oh, dear, did I misunderstand that? It's just that Mr. Lyman was asking to see you, insisting that you were family-"

"He- he what?" There was just no way Josh would say such a thing, not to *anyone*. Certainly not to a stranger. A stranger who could speak with the press.

The young nurse looked flustered, the rest of her face turning the color of her freckles. "Oh, I'm making such a mess of this. I'm sorry. I see that I misunderstood."

"No, no, you- yes. I mean- he's my best friend. We're- we're very close. But not- he said I was a member of his family?" I still couldn't believe it.

"I suppose he probably just said that so that we'd let you in to see him, but I guess that shows you just how well he's doing. Just out of surgery and already playing tricks on the nurses." She smiled. "I hope you'll forgive me for misunderstanding."

"No, that's quite all right." I felt an overpowering surge of love for Josh as it began to sink in that he'd really said that, and I felt the tears from a few moments ago return. This was Josh -- the same Josh who had denied the existence of our relationship time and time again to C.J., the same Josh who had always panicked at the very thought of anyone finding out about us. Josh had said I was part of his family.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my left hand. "Can- can I still see him?"

"He was asking for you. Just- go ahead this time." She held out her arm and gestured at the door, and I walked inside.

The lights were dimmed in the small private room, and the blinds in front of the window were lowered, blocking out the late morning sunlight. The heart monitor emitted constant, regular beeps, serving as a reminder that the surgery had been a success and Josh was still alive. And there he lay on a bed near the center of the room, his eyes closed, tubes protruding from his nose, his arms, his fingers. Asleep. Alive.

Moving silently over to the side of the bed so as not to wake him, I grabbed a chair from a few feet away and sat down beside him. I studied Josh's face, still ash-gray and frighteningly ghostlike, much as I had left him last night before the surgery. Yet Leo was right -- somehow, despite the fact that his eyes were closed, he looked so much more alive than he had then, so much more Josh. I could tell now that he was present behind those eyes, and that formed a sharp contrast with the lifeless expression on his face that I had seen the night before. I closed my fingers around his, remembering just how close we had all come to losing him.

Feeling my touch, Josh's eyes fluttered open. "Sam."

I leaned over him until my face was just an inch or two from his so that I could hear the feeble sound of his voice, barely audible over the sounds of the medical equipment. I squeezed his hand gently. "Hey there. It's great to see you."

He smiled through his obvious pain and closed his eyes, and I thought my heart would break. I squeezed his hand harder, wishing I could merge my hand with his and send some of my own strength to Josh through new, shared veins.

"We've all been pretty worried about you."

"Yeah." His eyes were still closed.

I tried to smile at him, making my tone light. Rambling, like I always do when I'm nervous. "Though as the nurse said, if you're thinking clearly enough to lie to the staff to get me in here, you must be doing pretty well."

"Didn't ... lie."

My heart lurched as the confirmation of Josh's own feelings for me penetrated my awareness and settled in my mind, and suddenly I could no longer hold back. The tears I was barely managing to repress began streaming, unchecked, down my cheeks, splashing onto Josh's face below me. God, did I ever love this man, this brilliant, wonderful man with all of his little imperfections -- this man who with every characteristic of his self complemented me as if we had been created to form the perfect team. Josh's words to the nurse were the definitive recognition of that bond, of the fact that Josh himself still felt it, too.

"Sam." Josh opened distressed eyes and tried to look up at me, but he couldn't quite focus on my features.

"No, no, don't try to talk. Josh, I- I- you're going to be okay, and I'm just so- happy." Still holding onto him with my left hand, I reached down into my briefcase and pulled out the shell I had tucked into it earlier. Wrapping Josh's fingers around its familiar curves, I took my own hands and enveloped them around both his hand and it, as a protective outer layer. Tears continued to fall down my cheeks, but I wouldn't let go of Josh to wipe them away. I never wanted to let go of him again.

Josh's eyes closed again as his fingers recognized the shell, and the tension melted away from his face as his anxious expression turned to one of love. A single tear squeezed out of the corner of his own eye, mixing with mine on his cheek.

###

I finally gave in to my fatigue and stumbled back to my own apartment. I had only reluctantly left Josh's side -- afraid that if I did, they might not be willing to let me back in to see him -- but eventually, knowing that Lisa had probably been waiting all day for me back at my apartment made me feel guilty enough to leave just before midnight. Josh had been sleeping most of the rest of the day, anyway, and I knew I was leaving him in the capable hands of the doctors who had saved his life.

Lisa met me at the top of the stairs outside of my apartment, wearing jet-black jeans and a short sleeved green silk blouse that perfectly matched her eyes. She was slightly out of breath as she hugged me, and I bent down to kiss her cheek.

"It's late," she said in a slightly scolding tone. "You must be exhausted." She shut the door behind us and turned the deadbolt as I collapsed onto the couch.

"Yeah, it's been a long day." Although the hours had seemed to fly by as I had sat next to Josh in his hospital room, it had taken a surprising amount out of me. I looked over at the kitchen table, and saw that there were four large grocery bags standing on top of it. "You went shopping?"

"You hardly had anything in the cupboards -- don't you ever eat here?" She moved around so that she was standing behind the couch and began gently rubbing my shoulders.

"Not really. But I'd been planning to pick up some things on- last night." It was incredible to me now that I'd ever intended to do anything so mundane that night. I shook my head. "Thanks for doing that."

"No problem. Sorry I didn't put them away yet -- I fell asleep on the couch." Despite the fact that I couldn't see her, I could hear the smile in her voice. "It's a good thing I didn't get you any ice cream."

"Don't worry about it." I closed my eyes as Lisa worked her fingers around to the front of my neck, rubbing gently, avoiding my throat.

"So, lots of work to catch up on?" she asked, trying not to sound obvious in fishing about why I was late.

"I wouldn't know. Toby sent me away this morning, and I spent the rest of the day at the hospital."

"Oh." Lisa's voice contained a slight edge of something I couldn't quite make out, but it was gone with the next sentence. "How is he doing?" She moved her fingers up to my neck and massaged the muscles at the base of my skull. I felt my tension gradually begin to ease, and I longed for sleep.

"The surgery went well," I murmured. "He's sleeping most of the time right now, but he's alive."

"You must be really relieved." Her tone was flat.

"Yeah. I've got to go back to work tomorrow, though. There's so much to do." I shifted my body around so I could look up at her, remembering that Lisa's job wasn't exactly something she could just run off and leave for a while, either. "You must be swamped, yourself. Can you really stay away this long?"

"Don't worry about that," Lisa breathed, pushing my head back around with her hand and brushing her fingertips against the back of my neck. I felt a tingle begin where she was touching me and then move lower, running right down my spine. Shifting awkwardly on the couch at my uncomfortable physical response to her, I leaned forward, away from her.

Her fingertips became her soft lips as she followed my body forward and brushed gently, almost imperceptibly against me. The tingle in my back spread, and I heard my breath catch in my throat. Every muscle in my shoulders and neck tensed again, and I drew back from her, causing her to move around the couch and sit down on the edge of it, leaning over to continue the contact. "Lisa-"

"Shh," she said, kissing a spot behind my ear.

I moved decisively to the middle of the couch and looked her squarely in the eyes. "Lisa, no. I can't."

The pain on her face was striking. She swallowed hard, then stood and walked over to the kitchen table and began unpacking the groceries, her back to me. Drawing the cans out one by one, she set each of them down onto the table with a hard clang.

I covered my face with my hands and rubbed my eyes. What a mess. What a stupid, fucking mess.

"You'll sleep with a call girl but not with me?"

"I didn't-" I reacted automatically but cut my words off abruptly, knowing this was hardly the time to argue with her about Laurie. "I'm sorry."

She spun around and looked at me, anger and frustration flooding her face. "I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me you're not still attracted to me, Sam Seaborn."

I looked at her across the room. Apart from the pain evident on her face -- pain that was my own damn fault -- she looked beautiful. Her hair was messy from sleeping on the couch, but it only served to put a bit of a wild edge on her otherwise wholesome look. She was a beautiful woman, and I loved her. "I'm still attracted to you," I admitted.

"Then why?" She sounded positively despondent.

My heart ached for her. Brilliant, funny, beautiful, she could have had anyone she wanted. Why did she have to choose me? I wasn't available -- not to her. "I don't want to hurt you, Lisa."

She turned back around and began unpacking the groceries again. "You weren't worried about hurting Laurie. Or any of the others."

"I didn't care about them the same way I care about you." I knew it sounded ridiculous.

She laughed, mocking. "So you won't sleep with me because you care about me. That's a new one." She rustled through the paper bags, punctuating her phrases by slamming boxes of crackers and cans of fruit down against the table.

Standing, I walked over next to her. "I can't give you what you want." I didn't tell her why; she already knew. We'd been here before. She looked pointedly down at the table.

"Look," I said. "You're the most amazing person I've ever known. I don't know anyone else who'd be willing to fly to Washington to help me through this. I don't even know how to begin to repay you for this, or for any of the other times you've pulled me out of the messes I've gotten myself into. But I'm certainly not going to do it like that."

Lisa looked up at me, and her eyes narrowed. "You are so goddamn self-involved." She shook her head. "I don't believe this. You actually think I came all the way here, took time off work that I *really* couldn't afford, just to come take care of you again."

I couldn't do anything but stare at her. This was her angry lawyer voice, a tone I'd most often heard during particularly unpleasant disagreements with one of the partners back at Dewey Ballantine when I'd worked there with her for two years. A tone I'd never, not in all the time I'd known Lisa, heard levelled at me.

"You really do. You really think that." She took her hands off the paper bag she was unpacking as if it had suddenly turned incredibly hot and burned her. "Oh, my God, and I fell right back into it, didn't I? Here I am, holding you on the couch while you cry over Josh again, doing your fucking grocery shopping."

I drew in a breath. "I didn't ask you to-"

It was as if a rubber band inside her had snapped, and a stream of words spilled forth, pent up from many years of frustration. "You think I'm this perfect angel or something, and I only exist to kiss all of your fears away, but I'm not, Sam -- I'm a human being, and I don't always manage to do the right thing. Sometimes I'm not even very nice."

"God, I'm sorry, Lisa," I whispered, feeling a terrible rush of guilt. "I never wanted to take you for granted. I'm so sorry."

Her entire body was shaking with emotion. "Do you have any idea what it was like to watch what happened on *television*? Just think about this from my perspective for a minute, if you can focus on anything outside of your own limited little field of vision." She swallowed hard, tears welling up in her eyes. "I turn on the news, and I catch a glimpse of you following the President and the rest of the staff out of the museum. I watch just a little more carefully, as I always do when you're on. But this time, I hear shots ring out, and see you go down-" Her own sobs stopped the flow of her speech.

"I wasn't even hurt! They- they must have said that!"

"Don't you understand I needed to see that for myself? I needed to see you. I needed to touch you so I could convince myself that you were really still alive." Her face twisted in grief and self-loathing. "Because I'm so pathetic that I actually still love you."

"I'm sorry," I managed to whisper.

"And the worst thing about all this is that you can't love me back because you think I'm too perfect, and of course that's my own damn fault for doing this every *single* time. You love Josh because he's this goddamn asshole to you all the time, but you can't stand the idea of being with anyone who's actually decent to you."

I shook my head wearily. "Stop. Okay? Just stop talking about Josh that way. He's-"

"He destroys you, again and again, and you always run back to him." She laughed angrily. "We're two of a kind that way, you and me."

The accusation felt like a slap in the face, but I ignored it, far more upset about what she was saying about Josh. The letter we'd both received from the activist organization, which had been the major factor in our mutual decision to end the relationship, had been as devastating to him as it had been to me. "Josh was at least as hurt by that letter as I was, Lisa. That wasn't his fault!"

"Listen to yourself! I can't believe you keep defending him after the way he's hurt you! You'd better watch out, Sam -- if he dies tonight in that hospital after all, there won't be anyone left in your life to be that awful to you anymore, and you'll be left completely alone."

I recoiled from her as if she had hit me, staggering back several steps.

Lisa's eyes grew wide and she clasped her hand over her mouth. "Oh, my God."

I stepped back again until I was up against the kitchen cupboards. My anger drained away and was replaced by stunned shock.

She took a step toward me, and I flinched. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sam-"

"I can't believe you just said that to me."

"I'm sorry. I- I think I should go." She grabbed her green bag from the hallway and rushed to the door, placing my key on the table as she brushed past me. I still couldn't do anything but stare at her.

"I really can't be there for you this time, Sam, okay?" She grabbed her trenchcoat from the closet, still crying. "Just- just don't call me for a while." Opening the door, she closed it behind her as she left.

I wanted to scream, to hit something, someone, anyone. Lisa's outburst had shaken me to the core, and I felt suddenly as if the world had turned upside down. Completely disoriented, I stumbled back over to the table, stuck in that frightening place between anger and disbelief. The completely unfamiliar look of rage on Lisa's face seemed permanently branded onto my mind. That was Lisa. Shit.

I reached over to pick up a can from the table to put it away, and found that my hand was trembling. Clenching a fist around it, I squeezed it, then lobbed it as hard as I could across the room at the pantry. It formed a black gouge on the wall before hitting the floor with a crash.

###

The ensuing distance between me and Lisa -- a distance our relationship had never known, not even right after we'd broken up -- felt like the shock of being dunked into a pool of ice water, cold and unexpected. I hadn't even realized how much I'd come to rely on her for support, even about small, everyday things. My bewilderment over her explosion turned into a quiet fury and settled in my stomach, and despite the ache of not being able to talk with her during such a difficult time, I knew she was right to think that we wouldn't be able to sort this one out without a long period of each thinking about it on our own.

Josh, of course, was of more immediate concern. I hardly saw the inside of my apartment over the next two weeks, as I spent every moment with him that I wasn't at work -- even overnight. He grew stronger every day, and although he still slept most of the time, there began to be longer and longer periods when he could hold up his end of a conversation, and I lived for those times. The hospital staff eventually ceased trying to decipher the nature of our relationship and began simply letting me in to see Josh without any sort of justification, and finally they relaxed the visiting rules altogether, making my constant presence easier to explain.

I outlasted Leo, Donna, even Josh's own mother, who all visited but never stayed as long as I did. There were occasional questioning looks, and yet no one even tried to invade the private bubble the two of us had built around ourselves. We both behaved as if the connection between us had never been broken, and more than that, we behaved almost as if we finally had the sort of public relationship I'd always craved with Josh but never had. There were no public displays of romantic affection that couldn't be mistaken for the touches of a concerned friend -- he was still too weak for such demonstrations anyway -- but neither of us made the slightest attempt to hide how much we cared about each other. It was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time, and every time I left the hospital, I felt almost as if we'd just broken up all over again.

At around 9:30 at night a couple of weeks after the shooting I walked through the now familiar hospital-white halls toward the intensive care unit. I was just starting to brace myself for the shock of plunging from the reality of the White House headfirst into the strange illusion I'd helped to build in Josh's hospital room when I ran into a somewhat wild-eyed C.J.

"Sam, I'm glad you're here. You got a minute?"

"I was just going in to see Josh." He'd been asleep when I'd left that morning, and I was longing for a renewal of my contact with him.

"Yeah. That's what I need to talk to you about." She looked concerned.

I shook my head in confusion. "You need to talk to me about going in to see Josh?"

"Come with me a minute."

I could hardly keep up with her as I followed her down the hall toward Josh's room. Her eyes darted around, apparently looking for a place for us to sit down and discuss whatever it was that was bothering her. My heart began to beat faster. C.J. seemed extremely worried about something, and she said it had something to do with Josh. She finally settled on a bench in a quiet corridor near a women's rest room that was closed for maintenance and sat down.

"Is he all right?" I couldn't sit, not until I knew what was wrong.

"He's just upset, Sam. Here." She unrolled the magazine she'd been clutching in her hands and handed it to me.

I looked down at it. Somehow I hadn't expected her to be so nervous about something with Julia Roberts on the cover. "This is a copy of People magazine, C.J."

"Yes."

"Should I be concerned about your choice of reading material?"

"Sam-"

"Does the President know about this little weakness of yours?"

"Page thirty-five, Sam."

I flipped through until I got to the offending page and opened the magazine. It turned out to be a one-page story on the shooting and Josh's condition, under the headline "The Terror Continues". Half-assed sensationalist tabloid journalism, I thought, rolling my eyes. The article consisted of three short columns of text with a small picture at the bottom -- a picture of me. I was sitting at a chair in the hallway outside Josh's room, my head resting on my hands. My tie was loosened, I was unshaven and slouching, and I looked terrible. I knew based on the combination of what I was wearing and where I was sitting precisely when the picture had been taken -- knew, just as well, that I had been *asleep* at the time -- but somehow the angle at which it had been taken made me look like I'd been crying with my head in my hands, utterly destroyed by Josh's condition. The caption on the picture read: White House Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn has spent every night since the shooting at his friend's side.

"Josh saw this this afternoon. He's a little scared."

I rolled the magazine back up and thrust it angrily at C.J. "Well, the idea of Josh voluntarily reading People magazine is pretty scary to me, too."

"I showed it to him."

"Oh, now *that* explains everything." I stood and began walking away from her.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, getting up to follow me.

I spun around and narrowed my eyes at the press secretary. "The man just had a bullet removed from his heart, C.J., what the *hell* are you thinking, bugging him with this crap?"

"I was looking through it while I was here, so I just showed it to him. That picture, the caption -- the folks at People didn't put two and two together, Sam, but you can bet somebody's going to."

"Well, that would be some pretty faulty arithmetic, then, because there's no two and two to put together!" I yelled at her.

"Damn it, Sam!" C.J. said, exasperated, walking past me to put her hand on the wall to prevent me from walking away. "Why does this feel like deja vu all over again?"

"We're just friends, C.J.!"

"Who do you think you're kidding?"

I breathed in deeply. She really thought I was lying to her. I forced myself to calm down, realizing that she probably had good reason to think that. Shit. "I swear to God, Josh and I broke it off in Tampa," I said in a quieter tone. "We're just friends."

She wasn't buying it. "You know how they say that a picture is worth a thousand words?" she yelled, unrolling the magazine again and pointing at the picture. "Well, this one speaks volumes."

"Except that in this case it's volumes of bullshit. If they had wanted a shot of me looking devastated, there were plenty of other candid moments to choose from over the past two weeks, you know -- they didn't have to catch me asleep at just the right angle to get it."

"And the caption, Sam? Someone on hospital staff must've told them how much time you've been spending here."

"It's not even true, C.J. I slept at home the first two nights-"

"Sam. You *know* how this is going to look to people."

I almost wanted to laugh out loud at the absurdity of this whole scenario. For a year Josh and I had gone to great lengths -- and ultimately broken up -- to make sure the press didn't find out about our relationship. We'd managed to keep it a secret the entire time, in the face of what had seemed like insurmountable odds, and I had even been able to avoid telling C.J. the truth until after the breakup. And now, now that we'd spent an agonizing two years apart, the press secretary was worried about the media getting wind of our- our *non*-relationship. I threw my head back in frustration. This was unreal.

C.J. put her hand on my shoulder. "I'm not saying that the two of you shouldn't do this, okay? We just need to talk about it, all of us. That's what I've been saying all along. I'm sorry for showing the article to Josh while he's still so sick -- that was probably a bad idea. But this came out today, and it's really blindsided us. We didn't even find out about it until this afternoon. There's not a lot of time to plan what the official reaction will be once the questions start coming."

I sighed and looked her straight in the eyes. "C.J., this is me, okay? I'm not Josh. I'm the one who told you the truth in the first place. Do you think I'd have any reason to lie to you now?"

C.J. looked taken aback, and scrutinized me. "You're being straight with me?"

I smirked. "Well, apart from a minor objection to your rather unfortunate choice of phrasing there, yes."

The press secretary snorted and raised an eyebrow, continuing to study my expression.

I met her determined gaze head-on. "I swear there's nothing going on between me and Josh. We *are* close -- close *friends*, C.J. -- but we're- there's nothing beyond that. Not for a long time, now."

She gave me one last long look and dropped her hand from the wall. "Okay, I believe you," she breathed, and muttered something mostly inaudible that sounded like a curse. "I'll deal with this."

"You do that." I brushed quickly past her and walked toward Josh's room.

"Hey, wait, Sam."

I spun back around.

C.J. looked ashamed. "I'm sorry I upset Josh. I didn't handle this one very well."

"You better believe you didn't." My tone was vehement.

She put her hands up in the air in admission. "I messed up. I take full responsibility."

I turned back around. "I'm gonna go fix it."

"Sam, he's really upset. You might want to stay away for at least the rest of today."

I looked back at her and shot her a look that I hoped conveyed exactly how offensive I found that suggestion. "Like hell I will."

Stalking across the corridor, I threw open the door to Josh's room and found him asleep. I stood near the door for a few moments to catch my breath and calm myself down, watching him. He looked terrible. Even in sleep his forehead was wrinkled and his eyes pressed together. Damn you, C.J. When I finally felt able to walk slowly and quietly so as not to wake him, I sneaked over to sit in my usual chair by the bed and placed my hand gently over the top of his. Josh jerked awake, startled.

"Hey. Sorry to wake you."

"Sam." He felt my hand over his and moved it uncomfortably to his lap, looking away from me. "You shouldn't ... be here."

I put on a cheerful tone. "C.J. told me she showed you an article in People Magazine and it had you pretty upset. I told her I couldn't imagine you getting upset about anything in People, though, so I had to come see it for myself."

"There's a picture ... of you ... and ..." His breath came in ragged gasps. My heart sank as I realized that he sounded worse today than he had in several days, and I felt another surge of anger at C.J.

"Shh." I tried to imitate Lisa's most soothing tone. "I've seen the article. I'm not worried."

"Not ... worried?"

"No, Josh, I'm not. Think about it. There's nothing to reveal this time. We're not- not ..." my voice trailed off, as I realized I wasn't sure how to phrase what I wanted to say. We're not sleeping together sounded almost irrelevant, in the scheme of things. And we're not in love just sounded- well, wrong.

Josh was unconvinced. "I think ... you shouldn't visit so much."

I tried again. "Josh, the magazine didn't even speculate that there might be something more to our relationship than a close friendship. And there isn't, anyway! We're going to be fine. C.J. just went off the deep end on this one."

"I think you shouldn't ... visit so much," he repeated, closing his eyes. "Or maybe ... at all."

I gulped. "You don't mean that."

There was no response; Josh just lay there with his eyes closed. Only the tense, pained expression on his face let me know that he hadn't fallen asleep again.

"You *do* mean that." My voice was shaking.

Josh opened his eyes and looked at me. They were full of tears.

I blinked and felt a familiar sharp pain in my stomach. It was the same every time -- the same old sense of rejection. I had to wonder why it never got any easier. "Uh, okay," I choked. "Can- can I at least call you?"

Josh looked away from me. "Please ... please call me." I couldn't tell to what extent his gasps were from the injury and to what extent they were from crying. I felt my heart leap into my throat at his tears, but I knew this situation well enough to know that I couldn't be the one to console him at this point.

"Okay." I stood and walked to the door.

"Sam ... I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He sounded frantic, panicked.

"Me too, Josh." My voice was rough, and I knew I had to leave if I didn't want to burst into tears myself for what seemed like the hundredth time in the past two weeks. "I'm sorry, too."

###

That was the last time I saw Josh alone until he came back to the office, and it was the longest five months of my life. Cutting off the daily contact after we'd been so wrapped up in each other for two weeks was like cutting off an arm, and although we spoke frequently on the phone, it wasn't the same. Completely aside from the loss of our two-week bout of spectacular closeness, of course, I was still worried about him. There were hundreds of things that could have still gone wrong -- and I worried more when I wasn't able to see for myself that he was really getting better. His voice became less raspy on the phone, his breathing gradually steadier, but that only went so far in convincing me. I was able to occasionally drop by when the others went, but I always hung to the back of the crowd, afraid of making him nervous. It was incredibly painful.

C.J. only had the vaguest hint of an idea about what had transpired between me and Josh that day, but she knew enough to be aware that she was one of the major reasons why I stopped going over to the hospital after that, and she felt incredibly guilty about it. She even offered to go back and tell him that it would look awfully suspicious if I suddenly stopped coming by at *all* to speak of, *right* after the article appeared, but I begged her not to, fearing that would only upset Josh more. After that, though, she didn't bring it up again, apparently sensing my reluctance to discuss anything with her about how I felt about Josh. Although she probably misunderstood that reluctance as embarrassment, I knew that it was more that when I spoke with C.J., what I'd had with Josh always had to be made into a *situation*, rather than simply letting it be what it was, and I hated that. In any case, the press secretary handled me with kid gloves for a few weeks after that day in the hospital, before finally reverting to her normal sarcastic self.

Lisa never called. As the months passed, my anger at her gradually gave way first to a niggling resentment, and then finally to nothing but concern both for her and for our friendship. I missed her voice on the phone and the stories she told that always managed to make me laugh, but I didn't know whether I could reasonably initiate contact after she'd asked me outright not to call. I wondered every time the phone rang whether it might not be her, but it never was.

By mid-November Josh was finally well enough to come back to work, half-days only at first. He moved a bit more slowly than usual and tired more easily than he ever had before, but he was nonetheless sure he'd be back full-time by the end of the week. There was an air of celebration around the office on his first day back, but I felt so incredibly awkward around him that although it was wonderful to have him around again, the excitement didn't touch me in the same way. It felt like we were in some strange state of limbo, as if he and I had actually recaptured small pieces of our relationship for those two weeks following the shooting, almost involuntarily, and then never quite properly broken up again.

Coming back from a meeting with Leo in the middle of the afternoon, I passed Josh in the hall. We smiled at each other in greeting, but his eyes contained a certain edge of sadness as well. He was always so stoic during the work day, but I knew him well enough to tell from that look that being there with me was strange for him, as well. It was then that I suddenly remembered that I'd been carrying Josh's shell around with me the entire time he'd been gone from work. Opening my briefcase when I arrived back at my office, I took the item out and set it on my desk. It was like the completion of a ritual, having it with me while he was hurt, and returning it to the drawer now that he was well enough to work again.

"Hey."

"Hey," I said, surprised to see Josh, since he'd been walking the opposite direction down the hall. "How're you feeling?"

He shrugged. "Okay. It's good to be back at work. Good to feel useful again."

"Just don't overdo it."

"I've got standing orders from my cardiologist, Donna, *and* Leo that I've got to be out of here by four," he said, disgusted. "So I don't think it's terribly likely that I'll be able to overdo it today."

"No, I guess not."

He gestured at the chair on the opposite side of my desk. "Can I sit down?"

"Sure."

"I just wanted to make sure you weren't still upset about that thing."

"That thing?" If he wanted to have a long discussion about the People article, it would only serve to make an already tense situation worse, but I knew that was exactly the sort of thing Josh tended to do when things were awkward. I braced myself for an emotional confrontation.

"That thing, uh- with Jordan."

I strained to make my sigh of relief as inaudible as possible. So that was all he meant. I had been asked to convince an old law school buddy of mine named Tom Jordan to run for Congress, and then later we'd had to withdraw our support for him when things had started looking a bit dicey in his record on racial issues. Leo had drawn me into a conference call with Josh and they had told me together that the President was going to cut off the financial support for his campaign. I understood their reasoning, but it had hurt to betray an old friend that way.

"Ah. Well, I still say you and Leo were wrong, but no, I'm not really upset about it."

"It was the fraternity thing that cinched it, Sam. We could have worked around his record on jury selection, but on top of that, the fraternity thing was just too deadly."

I peered at him through my glasses. "We didn't end up taking back the House anyway."

"Well, it's easy to say that with 20/20 hindsight. Who knows, we could have ended up losing seats if we'd supported him after his whipping in the press, and that would have been a political nightmare."

"I heard your arguments back in October," I said dismissively.

"I just wanted to make sure you weren't still pissed off at me and Leo."

"I'm not. But I still can't help but think that it must really add insult to injury when you get embarrassed in the press and then your whole support network suddenly disappears." I drew in a sharp breath, instantly wanting to take back my words, but it was too late.

"Ah. Yeah." Josh looked flustered, and then sad. He opened his mouth to say something -- probably to apologize, which I knew would only upset us both -- and I stopped him by changing the subject.

"So Leo says you went to law school with David McWebb? Incoming freshman Republican in the Florida 9th?"

He blinked in surprise, but ran with the topic shift. "Yeah. He was a slimy little bastard back then, too. We all knew he cheated on the final in first year con law. Leo's got a file on him -- you want to see it?"

"Sure."

Josh stood, stretching his arms back, and winced slightly.

"You okay?" I looked at him with concern. Maybe he'd been wrong about not being able to overdo it today.

"Just starting to get a little tired."

"I'll go get the file -- you wait there."

I went down, then, to retrieve the file from Margaret, and when I came back into my office, Josh was standing behind my desk, staring at the shell he'd given me long ago. The blood had drained from his face, leaving behind a gray pallor, and he was bent over the desk -- one hand on the surface to steady himself, the other touching the shell with a cautious finger. It was as if he had seen a mirage, and believed touching it would make it disappear.

"You had this with you in the hospital. I- I thought I dreamed that."

My heart beating faster, I walked around the desk, almost involuntarily, toward him. I remembered that moment almost too well, myself.

He picked up the shell, his hand shaking. "I can't believe you still have this."

"You can never have too much luck. Especially in a job like this one," I joked, trying to make light of it.

He was still visibly touched. "You kept it, all these years."

"I wasn't about to throw it away, Josh," I whispered. "It meant something to you. It- it meant something to me."

Josh set the shell down on my desk and shifted his body to face mine as if to communicate that he was finished focusing on it and would now turn his full attention to me. The effect was powerful. Since we'd taken the jobs in the White House, the physical attraction between us had always felt understated -- subtle, even -- something that could be satisfied by a quick brush of our arms or reaching out briefly to straighten each other's ties. This feeling, however, was about as subtle as a freight train. During those first two weeks we'd spent together in Josh's hospital room, the bond between us had been strong, but not sexual in the slightest. Now, however, my desire for him was almost overpowering.

Josh cleared his throat, visibly flustered, and looked at his watch. "It's ten to four. I'll have to face Donna's wrath if I'm not out of the office right away, and I'm going to be pushing it with the phone calls I still need to make-"

"Okay, then." I tried to sound cheerful enough to eradicate the huskiness from my voice, and it almost worked. "Tell me about McWebb tomorrow."

Josh backed up and walked around the opposite side of the desk toward the door, releasing my chair to me. His eyes were fixed on me the entire time, and I couldn't take mine off of him, either.

"I'm glad to hear there are no hard feelings. About Jordan, I mean. I'll- I'll talk to you tomorrow."

I watched him walk out, and wondered if we'd ever be able to work together normally again.

###

"Hey, Sam, can you make this out?" Leo rushed into my office later that evening and plunked a file down onto my desk. Josh had scribbled something long and indecipherable in the margin, and I squinted at it. During the time Josh had been in the hospital, Leo had often turned to me to puzzle out his chicken scratch, and I could usually manage to read it, but I couldn't make heads nor tails of this.

"Important, with three exclamation points. Be sure to get in touch with- hmm ... about the- something ... before November ... twenty ... the- um. Party? Will need to ... something ... if the- nope, sorry." I handed it the file back to Leo. "He has a real talent for singling out nouns and verbs when he does this, doesn't he?"

"Tell me about it."

I turned back to my computer screen. "I'd give him a call at home. Tomorrow's the twentieth -- if this is important enough for three exclamation points, he won't forgive you if you don't."

"Already did. Woke him up. He didn't remember what he'd written. Said that's why he writes things down in the first place."

I smirked and looked up again at Leo. "Sorry, can't help you."

"Damn, I can't call him again. He already threatened to come back in and have a look at it."

"I was about to head home for the night -- I could take it over to him," I said, and instantly wished I hadn't.

"Hey, that would be great. Just have him call me in the office -- I'll be here for a while yet."

Backpedalling furiously, I groped for any excuse not to do what I'd just offered to do. "Actually, I just remembered, I've still got to-"

Leo tapped the file again with his finger and set it back down on my desk. "Take it over to him. It's got three exclamation points."

I sighed, realizing I couldn't back out of this. "Right."

I kicked myself all the way over to Josh's place for volunteering to do this. What had I been thinking? Things felt so awkward between Josh and me right now that I wasn't even sure a conversation alone in my office was a good idea, much less showing up at his apartment late at night. But there I was, turning onto the wrong street, driving in the wrong direction from the White House, images coming unbidden to my mind depicting things that felt anything but wrong.

It took long enough for Josh to answer the summoning buzz at his door that I figured he must've gone back to sleep. I'd already turned to leave again and head home when I heard his voice through the intercom. "Yeah?"

"It's Sam. I brought you that file."

"Okay, come on in."

He was still wearing his work clothes when I met him at the door, sleeves rolled up and the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He rubbed his eyes, looking rumpled, and I fought the urge to smooth down the unruly piece of hair that protruded from the side of his head. "Sorry I didn't hear the bell right away. I fell asleep in front of the television."

"You should go to bed."

"Yeah. I will, soon as this is taken care of." He took the file from me. "Come on in."

I stepped into Josh's apartment, lingering in the entryway, and watched him open the file and study the page I'd left on top. "Yeah, I remember what this was about."

"Leo wants you to call him in the office."

"Okay." He leaned against the wall and looked over at me. "Hey, I might be in a little late tomorrow, could you bring him something for me?"

"Sure."

"You don't mind playing messenger again?"

"It's not as if I'm not going in there anyway."

"Okay. Be right back." He walked down the hall and headed for the bedroom.

I still wonder sometimes how things would have turned out if Josh hadn't dropped that briefcase. I probably would have just ended up leaving right away, and what happened next wouldn't have happened at all. It's incredible to think about how so many life-changing events depend so much on chance.

As I looked around the living room, trying to find something to occupy my mind so I wouldn't think too hard about the fact that I was alone in an apartment with an incredibly appealing Joshua Lyman, there was a loud crash from the bedroom, and I jumped. "Josh!" I cried out, running instinctively after the sound. Terrifying images flooded my mind of Josh falling and hitting his head, or collapsing in exhaustion to the ground. My worst fears seemed initially confirmed as I arrived at the doorway and saw him lying on the floor on top of a pile of scattered papers, his hand stretched out under the bed. I was instantly down at ground level with him, my hands on his back and shoulders.

He rolled over and saw the look of horror on my face. "I'm all right," he reassured, slightly out of breath. "I just dropped my briefcase. I was just- picking things up." He sat up to prove to me that he was unharmed. "See," he said, holding his arms out to his sides, speaking gently, soothingly. "I'm all right, Sam. I'm all right."

Something inside me stirred. There was something so touching about the way Josh looked, sitting awkwardly among the papers, trying desperately to convince me he was okay, and it just pushed me over the edge. No! You're not fucking all right! I wanted to scream, wanted to shake him, make him understand. You almost died! But something stopped me, as if I might break him if I spoke too loudly or touched him too roughly. My eyes filling with tears, I reached a single, tentative hand out to him, first touching his shoulder, then raising my hand to run my fingers across his face. Then, finally, my eyes spilled over as I cupped his face in my hands. Somehow I had to reassure myself that he was there, that he was real, that he was still alive.

Josh closed his own eyes as my thumb traced every bump, every hollow of his face and neck. I heard his breath begin to catch in his throat in that maddeningly erotic and incredibly familiar way, and suddenly I was on fire. The first kiss was anything but tentative as our lips met and our mouths instantly opened in a mass of searching tongues. I felt myself being pushed to the ground, and as if from somewhere off in the distance I heard the crush of papers as Josh pressed his body against mine and we collapsed onto the floor. His kisses deepened further and my pulse leaped in response, adoring the way his mouth moved against mine.

I knew if I thought about this at all, any of this, I would have to draw back from him, so I banished every coherent thought from my brain and devoured his mouth, my breath coming faster and faster against his upper lip. He began kissing my throat, unbuttoning my shirt and moving lower, reaching up under my T-shirt to caress my bare skin beneath. My erection strained against my pants with his every touch, and I shifted so that I could more easily press against him, causing my penis to brush against his through two layers of fabric. I groaned involuntarily, and I heard Josh's voice echo the sentiment.

I felt his hands fumble with the bottom button on my shirt, fail to get it undone, and then pull at it impatiently as it sprang off and fell somewhere onto the floor. I was as eager to undress as he seemed to see me undressed, so I threw my suit jacket and my shirt off in a single movement, tossing them off to the side. Josh raised my T-shirt and I struggled to get it off as one of his hands fingered my right nipple and the other moved lower to unbuckle my belt. I was past caring about how bad an idea this was, and was simply swept away on a wave of reckless abandon. All I cared about in that moment was Josh's hands stroking my chest, my stomach, my abdomen, and the full length of his glorious body pressing against me.

I felt my pants being lowered down over my hips and down around my ankles along with my boxers, and then suddenly Josh's lips closed around my erection. I gasped, drawing a breath before I suffocated with pleasure. I heard a voice erupt with a series of loud moans, and only a few moments later did it register that the voice was my own. My fingers wove their way through the curls of his hair as I closed my eyes and gave myself over to him. My back arched as I pushed up into his mouth, needing to feel that warm wetness around the entire length of me. Josh lowered his head to meet me, and I cried out his name in response. I reeled in bliss, feeling as if I was about to burst. And then I did, hearing an unfamiliar guttural sound from my own throat as I exploded fully into Josh's. Almost passing out from the purest and fullest gratification I'd felt in so long, I collapsed back down onto the floor in a crinkle of papers and a breathless gasp.

Completely incapacitated, I could do nothing but lie there and catch my breath as Josh scrambled to get out of his own clothes. My eyes closed, I slowly felt sensation drift back into my limbs as the blood returned to my extremities. When I was finally able to move, I reached for Josh, turning to find that he was now fully naked except for his white T-shirt. I ran my fingertips lightly along his arms, and then groped lower to caress his stomach. His breath was now coming in fits and starts, and I saw his erection clench. Knowing how aroused he must be, I gripped him in my fist and began to stroke. His eyes rolled back inside his head and he fell to the ground as tiny droplets of fluid formed on the tip of his penis. I moved my head down to meet it as I touched it first with my tongue, then with the full force of my mouth. "Sam -- oh God, it's you," he cried out as I took him in as deeply as I could before releasing him again.

Wanting -- no, needing to see all of him completely uncovered, I reached up with my free hand to remove his T-shirt, over the protests of his eyes and his hands, until it was up around his neck. It was then that reality reached up and smacked me squarely in the jaw. I gasped in shock at the horrible red scar over his heart from the surgery, and I felt myself being drawn back to the real world.

No longer able to delude myself into thinking this was a fantasy, or that this was sometime during the campaign back when we were still together, I felt myself pull back from him involuntarily. This was real; this was now. Josh had been horribly, almost mortally injured, and we were lying on the floor of his bedroom, on top of God knows what important papers, doing something we'd told each other we'd stop doing long ago. Something we couldn't allow ourselves to do, ever again. A flash of anger crossed Josh's face, as if he had known this would happen. But I knew we had to stop. I pulled back further, sitting up.

But Josh, too, sat up straight and took my shoulders in a firm grip. "Sam. It's okay."

I drew in a sharp breath. "Josh, we can't. We-"

"Listen to me," he panted. "I want you. And I know you want me."

I felt my resolve slip as he let go of me and rummaged in the drawer of his nightstand. He found a condom instantly, but continued sorting through the odds and ends inside, cursing softly, until he drew out an old, familiar tube of lubricant that I hadn't seen in almost two years. I couldn't help but feel a sudden surge of affection for the personality quirk that kept Josh from throwing things away.

"Sam," he pleaded, still gasping. His brown eyes searched mine. "Please."

That was it, for me -- I knew then that I couldn't possibly refuse him. Even more than that, though, I wanted to feel him inside me, right now, to be physically reminded of what it was like to feel him in all of the ways I possibly could. I lay back down on the floor in wordless assent, and Josh instantly put the condom on himself and covered it with lubricant. Covering his fingers then with the same gel-like substance, he reached down and worked it into me as well. I let out a shuddery sigh as I felt the sensations coarse through me like waves as his fingers explored the inside of me, and I raised my legs to welcome him.

And then he was on top of me, clutching the tops of my thighs as he sank against me and then slowly, carefully, into me. I felt a stab of pain, gasping in response, until it melted away into bliss and I moaned. I looked up into those mesmerizing eyes, examining his face as it twisted in pleasure. He murmured hoarsely and incoherently, kissing the sides of my legs as he thrusted. His body was hard against mine as he groaned and tensed ecstatically above me in the most incredibly sensuous beauty I had ever seen. I'd been crazy to think I could have said no to this, this joyous joining of our bodies in an act of celebration of everything we had ever meant to each other.

In one wondrous moment, then, it was over, as Josh cried out in a sudden surge of release. Panting, he slid out of me and collapsed on top of me in a sweaty heap. I stroked his back as he rested, then reached up to press my fingers to his burning face.

For a long time, neither of us dared to speak. We'd been alone countless times in our respective apartments before -- even comforted each other, held each other -- and we'd each had our share of weak moments where we'd tried to convince the other to stay the night. Never, though, at the same time; we'd never slipped like this before. But this tragedy had penetrated our protective shields. Obviously they hadn't been as strong as we'd believed them to be.

"So what does this mean?" I said, breaking the silence. My voice was tentative, and I realized just how frightened I felt at any possible future that could come of this. I couldn't meet his eyes.

Josh propped himself up on his elbow and grinned, beads of sweat still evident on his brow. "Well, I don't know what it means for you, but for me it means that I still can't keep my hands off of you."

"Josh-"

"And it means that I'm still crazy in love with you." His expression was suddenly serious.

I looked over at him, my heart pounding again.

"And it means that I can't imagine facing you at work tomorrow if you tell me now that this can never happen again," he continued, his voice cracking.

I let loose a shuddery sigh. We'd been through this before, and nothing had changed since then. We still worked in the White House. We still didn't know for sure that someone wasn't outside at this very moment, watching to see how long I spent in Josh's apartment. Bartlet was still the President, and still vulnerable to attacks. And Josh- well, Josh was still Josh. The most wonderful man I had ever known, but nonetheless a man who would never be happy sharing our "dirty little secret" with the world.

But there was no denying that I felt the same way about him as he did about me.

"We couldn't possibly make it work," I responded, fully revealing my desperation. "We've tried twice now. What makes you think it could work this time?"

His voice was intense with a combination of insistence and fear. "Because now we know that each time it ends, it just feels worse. So we have to make sure it doesn't end a third time. Either now, or a year from now. Or ever."

My eyes widened. This was the closest I'd ever come to hearing a promise for the future out of Josh Lyman, and I was almost dizzy with the shock of it. I didn't know how to respond verbally, so I just reached a hand out and stroked his face. It was rough with coarse evening hair, and he turned his head to kiss my fingers.

"I love you," I finally managed to say. It came out in a hoarse whisper. "I- I've always loved you. From that first night on that beach in Connecticut -- what was it, fifteen years ago?"

He kissed me then, and I kissed him back, slowly and deeply. When Josh pulled back, his eyes were earnest and full of hope. "I won't lose you again."

I wrapped both of my hands around his fingers and clasped them tightly. "I'm just glad I didn't lose you in a much more permanent way." I held on to his hands as if he might still slip away from me. "After you were shot ... God, it was awful. But it could have been so much worse."

"I- I think I know why I needed to act like we were still together, at first." He squeezed my hand. "It was the only way I could get through the beginning. It was easier to imagine that we were still together than it was to believe that I might still die without- oh, I dunno- with things still so up in the air between us."

I shook my head and swallowed hard to reduce the size of the lump in my throat, remembering that I had felt something very similar. "Right now they feel a lot more up in the air to me than they did then, though."

"They don't have to be." His fingertips traced circles on my chest.

I flinched from his touch, suddenly feeling trapped. It was as if I was being sucked in, unable to think for myself, unable to think clearly at all. All at once I was falling, falling too quickly into Josh's eyes and arms and life. I sat up, reeling with confusion. "I can't stay here."

"Don't leave like this," he said, his eyes flashing panic.

"No, no." I grabbed my clothes, struggling to get dressed with shaking hands. "You need to clean up this mess-"

"Why don't you stay and help." His voice had that falsely soothing tone of a man trying to calm a wounded animal to keep it from biting him.

"And I- I need to go figure things out." I couldn't figure out how his head could be so clear about this when mine felt like it was about to explode from conflicting thoughts and emotions.

He sat up and sighed, giving in. "Okay."

I fumbled with my belt buckle and grabbed at my socks and shoes, almost more out of breath now than I had been fifteen minutes ago. Josh watched me with worried eyes. I put on my tie, on the off chance that someone might otherwise see me leaving the building carrying it, and ran my fingers through my hair to -- I hoped -- rid myself of the rumpled, just-had-spontaneous-sex on-the-floor look. "I've got to go," I said after I was dressed.

"Just a sec." Josh grabbed a robe and followed me out into the living room, throwing it on as I practically sprinted for the door. "Wait."

I turned around. His eyes were flashing wildly, pleading with me. "Promise me one thing, okay? Don't call Lisa. Don't talk to her until you've thought about this yourself."

I gulped. That hadn't even occurred to me, but suddenly it was exactly what I wanted to do. Call Lisa and let her tell me what an awful idea this was. Get her to talk me out of this. He destroys you, again and again, and you always run back to him, she had said, and here I was, doing it one more time. But I knew I couldn't exactly call Lisa now. Especially not about this.

"You've got to at least give us a fair chance." He reached out and touched my cheek.

I closed my eyes, my face warm at the renewed touch. "Okay."

Josh smiled in response, leaned forward, and kissed me. I didn't resist.

"See you tomorrow." My voice shook as I ran out the door without looking back at Josh.

I had barely made it to my car before the tears returned. "Damn it," I yelled, punching the driver's seat as I climbed in. "Damn it! Damn it!" Putting my head down on the steering wheel, I sobbed until my throat was raw, caught up in a terrifying cycle of pain, confusion, and elation.

###

I completely blame Josh for what happened the next morning, though since I haven't been able to provide an adequate explanation to anyone as to precisely *why* I was in an intellectually weakened state, I know I'll never live it down. I don't even know how many times I'd been on television over that past year, and I'd even done Capital Beat dozens of times already, but that morning I was completely tongue-tied. We began the debate that day with a discussion of Bartlet's proposed education package, and the opposite side was assumed by a young, blonde, drop-dead-gorgeous Republican woman named Ainsley Hayes who'd never done television before. It's not as if she made any arguments that were particularly convincing, or said anything I'd never heard before, but the combination of having seriously underestimated this woman and my preoccupation with Josh just killed me. I still say I could have held my own if she hadn't kept interrupting me -- and if she hadn't disarmed me in the first five minutes of the show by shamelessly correcting my geographical knowledge of the northwestern U.S.

I prayed that everyone back at the White House was too busy to watch that day, but it turned out that every single last one of them seemed to have seen it. The resulting heckling absolutely dwarfed any sort of humiliation they'd ever put me through before. Toby was first, with his theories about Ainsley and how she'd put me under her spell, and then C.J., who asked me to confirm that I knew where the city of Geneva was. My saving grace that day was that they hadn't summoned the President to watch with them -- though I wouldn't have put it past C.J. to have tried.

The only redeeming quality of the teasing was the fact that it distracted me from the mental list I was making of all of the pros and cons of getting back together with Josh. The con side was winning by a mile, and I was even more disturbed by that than I'd expected to be. I counted at least twenty political enemies who would leap with glee if the news about our relationship ever broke, imagined the field day the press would have, and worst of all, I thought about how Josh and I always seemed to start off with the best of intentions, but it never ended up working out. The only item on the pro side was that I loved Josh, and wanted to be with him more than anything, but I had to wonder how many times that would be enough before it was time to just give up and say it couldn't possibly work.

"And here I always thought you were from California."

I looked up to the doorway from my desk. Josh stood in the doorway, propped up casually by his arm against the doorframe looking -- well, pretty terrific. "What?" I asked, distracted.

"I could have sworn you told me you were from California. But that can't possibly be true, because if that's where you were really from, you'd certainly have been able to remember that the model town from the education package was in your own home state. I mean, you're not an idiot."

"Oh, God, not you too." I put my head down on my desk and closed my eyes.

I heard him step inside my office. "My favorite moment, though, had to be that point during the discussion on the minimum wage when-"

"Why did you have to pick this *particular* day to be watching me on television, Josh?" I looked up at him blearily. "I mean, it's almost like you have a sixth sense for the most humiliating moments of my life. It's not as if you couldn't have found more important things to do on your second day back at work."

He shrugged. "I always watch you on television."

"What?" I blinked.

He put his hands on the edge of my desk and leaned over it slightly, looking me straight in the eyes. "I always watch you on television. I always have. You look great on television."

For a long moment we just looked at each other. It was obvious that it wouldn't be possible to put off this discussion any longer. "If we're going to talk about this now, at least close the door," I said nervously.

Josh nodded wordlessly, turned to shut the door, and sat down in the chair on the opposite side of my desk. His expression was astonishingly calm, providing a sharp contrast to my churning stomach.

"Okay. I've thought of close to a hundred reasons why we shouldn't do this again, but they basically fit into three categories. In reverse order of importance, then. Number three-" I cut myself off abruptly, noticing his amused smile. "You're not taking this seriously."

He shook his head, wide-eyed with mock innocence. "No, no, go on."

I glared at him. "Number three. Mary Marsh. John Van Dyke. Senators Thomas, O'Brien, Mitchel, Westin, and Lobell. Congressmen Broderick, Cavanaugh, and let us not forget your favorite, Lillianfield. T-"

"Sam-"

"Just shut up and listen to me, okay? You may be willing to just jump right back into this completely on impulse, but I've actually given it some thought."

Josh's eyes twinkled. "Yeah, you're right -- I'd better keep you around to keep me in check on stuff like that."

I struggled to maintain composure. "Can you just keep your mouth closed for one fucking minute?"

"Yep," he said with a smile.

"So. These people could ruin Bartlet. Especially if they all work collectively -- which you can be assured that they would. Number two. People could still be watching us. Out!Now doesn't seem to be active anymore as a group, but who knows whether the individuals who were involved are still interested in hurting us."

"Sam, if they were still after us, don't you think they'd have made something of you spending every night with me in my hospital room for two weeks?"

I ignored him and raised my voice again, finding that it contained a bitterness I hadn't even fully realized I felt. "Number one. *You* freak out whenever we try to do this. *You* can't deal with it. And then *I* can't deal with *you*. I'm not going through that again, Josh. I'm not."

To that, Josh's only reply was an awkward silence, and he fidgeted uncomfortably. There was no way to respond other than with an apology, and he'd already apologized, many times over, every time things had soured. It was never enough, never quite enough to make it better, and he knew it.

"Maybe I'll quit my job. Maybe I'll quit my job, and you can quit yours, and then we can tell everyone, and it won't matter," he said finally.

I shook my head. We'd danced this dance before. "You don't mean that."

"Maybe I do." His voice was vehement.

"No, Josh, I know you *don't*."

"How do you know? What if you're wrong?"

"Because it wouldn't mean just leaving the job, it would mean choosing a whole new career, and there isn't anything else in the world you'd want to do. Because you love this job -- this is all you've ever wanted, and you're not going to give it up for me. And because you always seem a lot more willing to take risks before I agree to start sleeping with you than you ever end up being later once I have."

"That's not fair!"

"No, it's true, and you know it's true." My voice softened. "Besides, *I* don't want to quit *my* job."

His entire body sagged in his chair, defeated, and he put his head down. I wondered if he'd finally given up, and was alarmed to find myself desperately hoping he hadn't.

Finally he looked back up at me. "Okay. I know this is a bad idea. Let's do it anyway."

"Just like that."

"Just like that. I love you, and I know you love me, and we're so good together in so many ways, and-" he saw the skepticism on my face, and his determination intensified. "And we can make it work this time."

I felt caught between admiration for his stubbornness and irritation at how rash and impulsive he was being. "We're not going to be able to make it work if we don't figure a few things out first."

"Like what?"

"Like some ground rules."

"I know you're going to say that we have to tell C.J. I'm willing to go along with-"

I snorted, cutting him off. I knew exactly what would happen if 'we' went to tell C.J. I'd end up doing all the talking -- apart from Josh punctuating my revelation with a defensive explanation of why we'd had to lie to her all that time. "*You* are going to tell C.J., Josh. Not 'we'. You."

He looked taken aback. His eyes searched mine, discovered that I meant it, and he hesitated a moment. "O- okay," he said eventually, obviously unnerved at the idea.

"The whole story. And you'll apologize to her for lying to her about this before."

"Sam-"

"She deserves that, at the very least."

He sighed. "Okay."

"And no overnights."

"No overnights!?" He looked stricken. "When would we ever see each other?"

"Josh, we can't risk you being seen coming out of my apartment in the morning, or me being seen coming out of yours. We're not on the campaign trail anymore, and the folks who could see us now are a lot more threatening than just C.J. and Toby. Remember what they made out of my innocent little congratulatory hug with Laurie. This time we're going to have to be more careful from day one."

He was grinning.

I scowled at him, annoyed by his cavalier attitude toward this incredibly important decision. "I'm serious, Josh. If we're going to do this, I don't want us to screw it up again."

"Sorry. I was just liking the part where you stopped talking about it as a hypothetical."

I drew in a breath. He was right -- somewhere back there, I'd stopped thinking about it as one. Somewhere about the time when Josh had said he'd go along with telling C.J. Or maybe even earlier.

"It isn't a hypothetical, right?" Apparently taking my moment of reflection for hesitation, he suddenly looked unsure. "I- I just don't know what else I can offer. But I really want to try this again. And I think you do, too."

"Yeah," I admitted. "Yeah, I do."

He jumped hastily out of his chair, and for a moment I thought he was going to leap across the desk and kiss me, right there in my office with the big window peeking into the hall. Startled, I backed my chair up, but instead he sprinted for the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm still supposedly working half-days right now, but you've got a lot of work to get done if you want to get out of here even as early as eight o'clock."

"You tell C.J., Josh, or nothing's happening tonight other than each of us going home alone to our respective apartments."

Josh's face went pale. "Today? She's- she's- um, really busy right now, Sam. She seems kind of preoccupied with something to do with a reporter, and she mumbled something else about a court case, and-"

"Somehow I think she'd be willing to clear a half hour in her schedule for this."

"You're going to make me tell her *today*?"

"Well, no."

He looked visibly relieved.

I couldn't help but let a smirk show on my face. "You don't *have* to have dinner with me tonight at my apartment. It's completely up to you-"

Josh closed his eyes and groaned. "Okay, okay," he conceded as he left my office.

I looked down at my desk, grinning, and suddenly I knew that there had really been no other choice. It felt as if we'd been given another chance when Josh had survived the shooting, and crazy as it seemed for us to try again, it would have seemed even crazier to reject a gift like that. And this time, C.J. would know from the first day, because Josh himself would tell her the truth. We still had a long way to go, but it was a start.

I turned back to my work, feeling more at peace with the world than I had in a very long time.

###

"I think there's got to be something about November."

"Mmm." Josh was dozing, his head on my chest. I ran my fingers through his hair absently, marveling at how comfortable, how incredibly right this all felt. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that all of the awful things had never happened, and we'd been together, uninterrupted, for years.

"No, really, think about it. It was November when we went to Connecticut together back in '86, and that was when we started, uh-"

"Seducing each other?" he mumbled sleepily.

"Something like that. Then it was November again in 1997 when we got back together. Then we broke up around Election Day in '98. And now it's November again, and here we are."

"So we're three for one."

"Those are pretty good odds," I said optimistically.

Josh propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at me. "I was hoping for a sure thing this time."

I smiled at him and ran my fingertips along his cheek. "I think our odds went up a lot when you told C.J."

He pulled back from me and glared. "You mean when I made an absolute *fool* out of myself in front of C.J., Sam! I will *never* forgive you for that."

I grinned playfully and looked up at the ceiling. "Oh, to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation."

"You could have at least told me she already knew!"

"What, and take all the fun out of it?"

Josh propped himself up with a pillow and gestured in the air. "Sam, she let me tell her everything. She just *sat* there, pretending to look shocked, for a good twenty minutes!"

"Even better. I bet you blushed a lot."

"I don't blush," he growled.

"Bet you did."

Josh's face set in what looked like the pout of a petulant child. "I think you two cooked this up together, just to make me look ridiculous."

I ran a finger down the center of his chest, carefully avoiding his scar. "I've hardly spoken to C.J. about our relationship since just after we won the election, so any ridiculousness you managed to convey to her was your own doing."

"You just wanted me to look as much like a fool as you managed to make yourself look this morning."

"And whose fault was *that*?" I grumbled, rolling over on top of him and pinning him to the bed.

"Ha." Josh tossed back his head in a scoff. "I wasn't even *there*, Sam -- you let that blonde sex kitten of a Republican take you down all on your own."

"Maybe I was too mesmerized by her beautiful green eyes to think clearly."

Josh gave me a radiant smile. "Nah. I know you prefer brown."

"I prefer you," I said seriously, and pulled him closer again, pressing my nose against his. The playfulness left his face and was replaced by an adoration that always made me melt. I kissed him tenderly once, then again, nuzzling his neck. Josh let out a contented sigh, and I wondered how we'd ever let this get away from us.

Just then the phone rang, and I groped my way to the nightstand with my left hand to answer it, still holding on to Josh with my right arm. I gave him one last long kiss and held the receiver up to my ear. "Hello?"

"Hi." I recognized Lisa's voice instantly, even with just a single word.

"H- hi." I rolled off of Josh, startled by the sound of her voice after so long.

"So. I thought it was about time we talked," she said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah," I said, sitting up. "That sounds like a good idea. I'm glad you called." My eyes slid over to Josh. He shot me a quizzical look that transformed almost instantly -- first into one of recognition, and then into one of resentment.

"Just a second," I said to Lisa, covering the phone with my hand and turning to Josh. "I've got to take this."

He shot me a withering glare, but didn't respond.

I put my hand on his bare arm and tried to look reassuring. "Josh, I haven't talked to her since May. There are some things she and I need to work out. If I tell her I can't talk now, who knows when she'll call back?"

Josh scowled and rolled over to turn his back toward me, and I sighed. I knew that if I could salvage a relationship with Josh and a friendship with Lisa out of this mess, I would be more than thrilled -- but I couldn't help but wish the two of them could come to some sort of understanding as well.

I stood and carried the phone across the room to my closet, grabbing a robe and taking a moment to regain eye contact with Josh. I pointed at the clock on my nightstand, which already read 10:45, and then gestured at his clothes, scattered on the floor in front of me. "No overnights," I mouthed, tossing him his pants. He swore under his breath and got up off the bed.

Throwing on my robe, I put the cordless phone up to my ear again. "Okay, I'm back," I said, walking into the living room.

"And I'm sorry," Lisa blurted.

I sat down on the couch and smiled. "It's okay." I meant it.

"I'm sorry about everything I said. I was- I was pretty fucked up."

"Yeah, you and me both. It was a pretty fucked up couple of days." I sighed. "Hey, I'm sorry, too. I'm sorry I took you for granted."

"You didn't exactly take me for granted, Sam."

I nodded insistently, as if she could see me. "Yeah, I did."

"Okay, maybe you did, but that wasn't the problem. The problem is that you think of me as some sort of guardian angel. The role just got to be too much to take, and I snapped."

I knew she was right. Lisa had always played that role for me, since the very beginning of our relationship, and it would be a hard habit to break, but she was right. "I shouldn't have put that burden on you."

"I'm not a guardian angel, Sam. I'm just ... me. Take it or leave it."

"I think I'll take it. If you're still interested in being friends, I mean."

"I wouldn't be calling if I weren't." Her voice was full of warmth, and I smiled again in response.

"I'm really glad you did call. How are you? How's Kevin?"

"Oh, long gone."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not. I'm holding out for better."

"Good for you." I hoped that didn't mean she was holding out for me, but I didn't say that aloud.

"So how long did it take the two of you to get back together?" Lisa wouldn't say Josh's name, but knew I'd know exactly what name she was avoiding.

I fingered the couch pillow nervously, startled both by her assumption and the fact that she was right. "Um. Actually, we just did. Just this week."

"That took longer than I expected."

"There were some complications."

"There always are."

I scratched my head, recognizing where this was going. Hating it. "Lisa-"

"Let me ask you this just once, and then I'll drop it. Do you really want to do this again? You know what you're risking. Your career, your- your sanity-"

"Yeah, I do. I really want to do this again."

"You're not just thinking with your dick."

I tried to make my voice sound simultaneously respectful of how I knew this was making her feel and completely honest. "I love him, Lisa. He almost died. I almost lost him. We owe it to each other to try again."

There was nothing but static on the other end of the receiver.

"You know, you're wrong about him," I said defensively. "I don't love him because he -- like everyone in the world, I might add -- can sometimes act like a jerk. There are a million little reasons to love him, but that's not one of them."

Lisa still didn't respond.

"I just hate it when the two of you take potshots at each other through me, okay? I love you both, and I-"

"I know. I'm sorry. I never should have said that." She sounded hurt, but still sincere. "I- I said a lot of things I didn't mean that night."

"I'm sorry I provoked you."

"You've got to let me be human, Sam. That's really all I want from you at this point."

"Well, I think I can manage that." That was hardly too much to ask of someone who was supposed to be your best friend.

"I'd appreciate it."

I looked up to see Josh walking out of the bedroom, now fully dressed. He looked past me, not meeting my eyes, and stepped into the kitchen. "Listen, I should really go. I've got a ton of stuff to do, and-"

"He's there." Lisa's tone was flat.

"Yeah."

"Right."

I sighed. God, this was awkward. But I knew we'd dealt with things like this before, and come out okay. I did love her, despite everything. "Lisa, I- I've missed you. A lot."

"I've missed you, too."

"Let's not let this happen again, okay?"

"That's a good plan."

"I love you," I said gently.

I heard her swallow from 200 miles away. "I know you do," she whispered, and I heard a click as she hung up the phone.

Setting down my own phone on the coffee table, I stepped into the kitchen. Josh had a glass of water in his hand and was in the middle of taking a fistful of pills. "So what does she think?" he said as he set the glass back down on the counter, trying to sound nonchalant.

"About what?"

"What do you think, Sam? About us."

"How do you know I told her?"

He raised his eyebrows at me. "I know you. I know Lisa."

"Josh, you *don't* know Lisa. You haven't seen her in fifteen years. She's not the same twenty-three-year-old kid she was back then." In some ways, I felt as if I could only now say that I really knew Lisa, myself.

"I'm right, though. You did tell her."

I shrugged. "What do you expect her to think? She thinks it won't work. You can hardly blame her for being skeptical."

A look of hostility flashed across Josh's face, and he turned his back to me and clutched the edge of the countertop, looking down at its surface. "What do *you* think?"

"I still don't know what I think," I said honestly. "I do know I *want* it to work."

"She's going to talk you out of it." His voice was level.

"Come on." I stepped over to him and put my arm around his waist.

"She has some sort of creepy hold over you, Sam. She's going to talk you out of it."

I turned him gently around until we were face to face and wrapped my arms around him. "I do know how to think for myself, you know. I mean, I'm an educated guy with degrees from two not-so-shabby universities and, I might add, a successful law career under my belt."

"True," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe if you took some remedial geography courses-"

I groaned and buried my face in his shoulder. "You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

"Not if you keep blushing so spectacularly every time I remind you of it." I looked up at him again, and found his eyes dancing.

"Maybe it's remedial anti-blush training I really need, then." I kissed him and reached up to run my fingers affectionately through the curls at the nape of his neck. He needed a haircut.

After a moment he drew back from the kiss and pressed his forehead against mine. "Don't you think it's a little weird for you to be this hung up on your ex-fiancée?" He sounded worried, but no longer angry, which was an improvement.

I looked at him with all the sincerity I could convey with my eyes. "I'm not 'hung up' on her, Josh. I care about her. I know you don't like that, but she matters to me."

"Let me throw out a theory."

"A theory?"

"About Lisa."

"Yes?" I fought the urge to pull back from him, preparing to defend her, wishing yet again that I didn't always have to. Somehow, though, I knew that I was going to have to spend the rest of my life running interference between the two of them.

"Has it ever occurred to you that Lisa might always seem so loving and caring when you need a friend because she just wants to jump your bones?"

I laughed nervously. That wasn't exactly accurate, but it was a little too close to the truth for comfort. "What makes you think that?" I asked, deflecting the question.

"Oh, maybe it's just that I think anyone in their right mind would want to jump your bones," he said, starting to kiss my throat.

I felt a tingle begin where his lips were touching my neck, but I drew back to look him in the eyes, clasping him on the shoulders. "I'm not going to sleep with Lisa, Josh. Okay? If we were going to sleep together, we'd have already done it by now." I smiled, running my hands down his back and lacing them together behind him at his waist. "Luckily for you, yours are the only bones I'm particularly interested in jumping at this point in my life."

"Mmm, I like the way you say that," he breathed into my neck, and I recognized that where this was headed, it wasn't exactly going to get him home at a halfway reasonable hour.

I reluctantly drew the line we'd agreed upon. "You'd better get going -- it's getting late. Your shoes are still in the front entryway."

Josh pulled back from me, an incredulous look on his face. "You're really going to make me leave."

"No overnights. You agreed," I said firmly, grabbing his hand and leading him to the door.

"It's just that I'm *really* tired." He dragged his feet, stopping just short of the entryway.

"Josh-"

He cocked his head at me and tried not to grin. "And you have to let me stay. It's *your* fault that I'm tired."

I peered at him skeptically. "Oh, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you were shot just over five months ago." I bent down to grab his shoes and set them in front of his feet.

"Well, yeah, that, too. It'd take me at least half an hour to get home, and that's another half hour I could be sleeping." He grumbled as I nudged his shoes with my foot, causing them to bump up against his own feet, and he stepped into them, visibly irritated.

"All the more reason for you to get going right away." Opening the closet door, I handed him his coat.

He took it from me, a look of disgust on his face. "You are cruel. Cruel, and heartless, and-"

I grabbed him by his unbuttoned shirt collar and pulled him roughly toward me, cutting him off with a kiss. It began with a hard jolt of shock, then melted into something far more tender as I let go of his shirt and reached around to the back of his neck. I released him slowly, and he staggered back with his eyes still closed, dazed, as I opened the door. "Good night, Josh," I said, pushing him outside and closing the door behind him.

"Callous and insensitive!" he shouted from the hall outside.

I put my hand on the door. It almost felt like I could still touch him through the heavy wood. "Good night, Josh," I repeated, grinning.