**********
First it was the Toronto airport. Sam misplaced Josh between Baggage Carousel 11 and a sign suggesting that the best route to Car Rentals was straight up through the ceiling. When Sam turned around to look for him, someone called his name. He turned in search of the voice. The SmarteCartes were speaking to him.
"Sam Seaborn!" A tall, lanky man with dark blond hair and a slightly smug grin detached himself from the SmarteCartes and ambled over.
Sam's stomach sent up a rumble of protest. "Casey McCall." He tried to give the belly-laugh jocks always used to greet each other, but he'd never been a jock, and he couldn't think of anyone he would be less pleased to see.
"Well, I'll be damned," Casey drawled. "Sam Seaborn. It's been..." he dropped off uncertainly.
"A long time," Sam finished, and an awkward silence fell over them.
"So...what brings you to Toronto?"
He was tempted to say "summit of international leaders" or "diverting global economic disaster," but he was wearing jeans and a navy blue sweater that had been stretched beyond recognition, so he shrugged and said, "Painfully boring fundraiser. You?"
"Huge party. Big to-do. It's gonna be a blast." Casey snapped his fingers a couple times. "I heard you and Lisa got engaged."
Sam looked away. "Yeah."
Casey scanned the crowd. "So, is she here?"
"Well, actually--"
"Hey, Sam are you sure about Donna's directions for tomorrow night? 'Cause I'm looking at this map, and I don't think--" Josh stopped. "Oh, I'm sorry. Didn't know you were in the middle of something."
They could've just been two guys on a business trip. But there was something so intimate and domestic about the way Josh stood just behind Sam, map in hand, waiting to be introduced, that sent Casey's visions of Lisa popping like a sinkful of soap bubbles.
Sam smiled. "It's all right. I was just looking for you. This is Casey McCall. We, uh...we knew each other in New York. Casey, this is Josh Lyman."
They'd had more discussions than Sam could count about how to introduce each other. They were too old, they felt, for "my boyfriend," and too not a B-grade soap opera for "my lover." "Partner" belonged in an insurance firm, "life partner" in a made-for-cable movie. So they stuck to "Sam" and "Josh." They had yet to meet anyone who didn't understand what this meant.
Casey's jaw dropped slightly. "Well, that answers that question," he said quietly.
Josh moved in with the grin and handshake that had disarmed politicos and potentates the world over. "Great to meet you, Casey," he said. "New York, huh? Maybe you know the stories Sam won't tell us."
Sam didn't know whether to kiss Josh for throwing himself into the breach, or smack him for opening the vault of misery that was his years in New York.
Casey shrugged -- almost gallantly -- and said, "We were just casual acquaintances, really."
If Josh guessed that this was the understatement of the decade, he didn't let on. "We're on our way to pick up our car. You?"
"I was gonna catch a cab back to the hotel. I was supposed to be picking somebody up, but it turns out he can't make it, so--"
"Which hotel?"
Okay, Josh, Sam thought. You've done the polite conversation thing. Now cut it out.
"Royal York."
Josh whistled. "Nice digs. That's really close to where we're staying. Want a ride?"
Oh, this man wants to suffer, Sam's inner monologue sniped. He sure as hell doesn't want sex this weekend. At all.
Casey looked from Sam to Josh and back. "If you're sure it's no trouble--"
"Trouble?" Josh laughed. "You're like a block from us. Come on." And Josh hauled Casey toward Car Rentals, while Sam stumbled along behind, half blinded by visions of a sex-free weekend haunted by the nightmare that was his past with Casey McCall.
The first disagreement was about who was driving the car. "It's all you," Sam said.
"I was going to navigate."
"The hell you were. I came to see Ontario, not Newfoundland."
"Sam, Newfoundland doesn't even border on -- oh. Hah hah. Very funny, Mr Delta Shuttle from LaGuardia."
"Fine. But you're driving tomorrow night. I don't trust you not to improvise on Donna's directions."
"Who's Donna?" Casey asked. Sam wondered if Casey was hoping he'd misinterpreted the situation and Donna was someone's girlfriend.
"The bane of my existence," Josh said.
"The reason you didn't collapse into a thousand tiny pieces before we even hit the primaries," Sam corrected, meticulously adjusting the rearview mirror.
"My assistant," Josh said, by way of a compromise.
Josh turned out to be not so great a navigator. "I hate the metric system," he said. "I don't know how far we are from anything."
"Sure you do," Casey said helpfully, pointing at the map. "15 kilometers from SkyDome. 10 from the Hockey Hall of Fame."
Josh rolled his eyes. "I mean I have no concept of how far those distances are."
"That has nothing to do with the metric system," Sam told him. "You have no depth perception."
"My depth perception is fine, thank you."
"Quick, Josh! How far is it from my office to yours?"
Josh crossed his arms and scratched his shoulders against the seatback. "You've been working with Toby too long."
"You two work together?" Casey asked.
This was too much for the speechwriter. Casey had no idea what Sam had become, what he'd done with his life. To him, Sam was the same loser he'd been in New York.
"Uh, yeah," Josh threw off casually.
"So, how long have you two been..." Casey trailed off, but Sam thought he heard something not unlike penitence in his voice.
"Almost five years, believe it or not," Josh said. "How the man hasn't killed me by now, I can't say, but I guess there must be something about me..." He smiled that disarming smile again.
"I figure, if you hang out with Toby enough, someone will get lucky with a piece of fruit or something."
"Piece of fruit?" Casey asked.
"There was a...there was this thing with a bunch of protesters and a banana," Josh said, embarrassed.
"And another thing with a bunch of neo-Nazis," Sam added, his voice brittle.
"Oh my God," Casey breathed. "You -- you're Josh Lyman. The one who got shot."
Josh was suddenly uncomfortable, as he always was when someone remembered what he'd fought so hard to put behind him. He scratched the back of his neck and stared out the windshield. "Yeah."
"You both work for the President, then. Jesus."
Sam gloated a little. On the inside, of course.
The car was silent until Sam pulled up outside the magnificent facade of the Royal York. "Here you are," he said, wondering without caring if either of the other men noticed that he hadn't said Casey's name the entire ride.
"You guys want to come up a minute?" he asked. "I'm sure Danny would love to meet you."
A realization almost dawned in Josh's eyes, but Sam snuffed it out with a brusque, "We've got to get to our hotel. Get checked in. Thanks, though."
"Hey, man, thanks for the ride. I really appreciate it."
"You're welcome." Which was a very un-guy thing to say. "No problem," or "don't worry about it" were guy things. To say "you're welcome" almost acknowledged the awkwardness, the inconvenience. Almost.
Josh glanced sharply at Sam, then turned to shake Casey's hand again. "Great to meet you, Casey," he said amiably.
"You too, Josh." He half-waved at Sam. "Good to see you again, Sam."
"Yeah." Sam kept his eyes pointed straight ahead.
Casey looked at the two men, shook his head, and disappeared into the hotel. Josh's immediate reaction was to smack Sam up the side of the head and demand to know what the hell that had been about, but Sam staunchly refused to look at him, and this was unusual all by itself, so Josh shrugged, just barely, and said, "Drive on."
*********
Casey shut the door behind him and stood in the middle of the hotel room, swaying slightly. Dan looked up from his book and frowned. "You don't look so good." Panic sprang into his eyes. "Is something wrong with Isaac?"
Casey smiled and flopped onto the bed, his head next to Dan's knees. "Calm down. It's nothing like that. The only thing wrong with Isaac is that something came up that's going to keep him in New York this weekend."
"His loss." Dan went back to his book.
"It sure is."
"Because this party's going to rock."
"It certainly is."
"So, what's the problem?"
"The problem is that the world is shrinking."
Dan ran his fingers absently through Casey's hair. "That must suck for you."
Casey glanced up at him. Even upside down he was gorgeous. "Only for me?"
"Well, you're taller than me, so it'll suck for you first. How do you know the world is shrinking?"
"I caught a ride from the airport with Sam Seaborn, the ex-boyfriend of Lisa's divorce attorney."
"That's sort of insane."
"And get this: he works for the President now."
"The President of what?" he murmured, turning the page.
Casey craned his neck to stare incredulously at the other man. "Of the country, Dan."
He scribbled a note in the margin. "I'm pretty sure Canada has a prime minister, Case."
"Of our country, Danny. You know, the US?"
"Wow." He looked up. "That's a switch from -- what was he? Corporate law? Wait. Lisa's attorney was also named Lisa."
"Yeah. Somebody laid it on a little thick with the irony trowel."
"It was funny."
"A belly laugh a minute."
"I still don't understand how you came to be friends with your ex-wife's lawyer's boyfriend."
"Friend isn't the word, Danny; really it isn't."
"Nevertheless--"
Casey shivered; even the insides of buildings in this city seemed to suck up the chill that was always in the air. "Danny, please, can we not revisit this dark spot in my memory?"
"I thought you liked him."
He shook his head. "He was smart, rich, beautiful, and perfect."
"Not your type," Dan said wryly.
Casey started at the ceiling and tried not to see the images his brain was trying to throw at him. "Not my type."
"You met him once."
"Just once, and that was by accident." Just once, and we don't talk about it. "By the time Lisa hired her, it was a long-distance relationship. But remember how my Lisa used to talk about him? 'Lisa's boyfriend would never do anything like that.' 'Lisa's boyfriend is a gentleman.' I'd never met him, and I wanted to squish him flatter than an oragami frog."
"Was he as bad in person?"
"Worse." Just once, and we don't think about it.
"So how do you know he and Lisa the attorney broke up?"
"Two reasons. One: the one time I met him, he had come back to New York to break up with her." Casey pulled his knees up.
Dan swatted at his calves. "Feet off the bed."
"For God's sake, Dan, it's not our bed!"
"I don't want to encourage bad habits."
"A man whose desk looked the way yours did is in no position to criticize."
"I didn't sleep on my desk."
"Sure you did. Once they brought in the new desk and we each had our own, we slept at our desks all the time. It's what we were known for."
"And here I thought it was our intelligent, well-crafted dialogue."
"It was the desks. And yours, my friend, was a disaster."
"I don't want to set a precedent. So, the second reason?"
"This is the great part." Dan would never appreciate the depths of irony in that "great." "He's with one of the other guys from the White House."
Dan shrugged. "So they're on a business trip. I'm sure that's common in their job."
"No; he's with this other guy."
Dan snapped his book shut. "Smart, rich, beautiful, perfect, bisexual Sam Seaborn? Now I don't like him."
Casey laughed and rested his hand on Dan's thigh. "Don't worry. Like I said, he's totally not my type. Besides, he's obviously gone over this guy." He shook his head. "Josh Lyman, deputy chief of staff. Incredible." He stretched, pressing his palms against the headboard, as Dan reached for his book again. "That's the one who got shot, you know."
"That was the President," Dan said, flipping through in search of the page he'd been on.
"How do you survive in the world, Danny? The President sustained minor injuries. Josh is the one who was shot in the chest."
Dan considered this. "Wow," he said finally. "Think you'll see them again?"
"Not likely. They're only here 'til Sunday, and they have a big shindig tomorrow night."
"So do we," Dan reminded him. "Maybe it's the same shindig."
"No. Theirs didn't sound like it's going to be any fun."
Dan grinned. "Whereas ours is going to be a blast."
"Indeed it is. Plenty of good alcohol, loud music -- and Canadians."
"Yes, indeed."
"Do you know why I love you, Danny?"
"No one else appreciates Canadians the way we do."
"No one else appreciates Canadians at all. Not even the Canadians." He drew his feet up again.
"Case, either get your feet off the bed or take off your shoes."
Casey sat up. "You know if the shoes go, everything else goes, too."
Dan flipped the book onto the floor and tugged Casey's shirt out of his waistband. "I can live with that."
*********
"I cannot believe you gave him a ride!"
"It's not like it was out of our way, Sam."
"It's not about the drive, Josh. It's -- I was clearly uncomfortable in the situation, and you offered him a ride."
"Yeah, what was up with that? He seemed like a great guy. Something really familiar about him, too."
"He's -- it's -- I'd rather not get into this."
Josh eyed him skeptically, but he seemed unruffled as he went back to unpacking. "At least tell me how you know each other."
Sam shrugged and stared out the window over the hurried streets of Toronto. It was cold outside, and it looked cold. Sometimes in DC, even in the middle of winter, it didn't look like it would only be 25 degrees outside. He imagined Toronto must look cold even at the height of summer. "Lisa was his wife's divorce attorney."
Josh's hand hovered over the drawer. "And again I ask: how do you know each other?"
Sam threw him a grimace and disappeared into the bathroom. "Anyway, I didn't like him." He paused. "At least you didn't take him up on his offer to meet 'Dannie.'" His voice became a sneer on the name. "Probably some flighty anorexic with big tits and bottle-blond hair."
Josh leaned against the bathroom doorframe and watched Sam angrily stuff a hand towel back onto the rack. "You really dislike him," he said.
"Wow, Josh. Those degrees from Harvard and Yale are finally paying off."
Josh grabbed Sam's shoulders. "What happened?" he demanded.
Sam slipped out of his grasp. "He was just too perfect, you know? I think Lisa was smitten with him." He shook his head. "Every time I'd call her, he was all she could talk about. I was just...anybody can be a lawyer, right? But only the great Casey McCall could be co-anchor of a national sports show."
"Anchor of a -- holy shit! How dense can I be? I didn't recognize him without Rydell. Sam, we gave Casey McCall a ride!"
"Oh, no; not you, too!"
"He was co-anchor of 'Sports Night,' Sam. That show was the most intelligent, well-crafted -- Toby and I held a wake when it was cancelled."
"I should've known." He brushed past Josh into the bedroom. The direction this conversation had headed brought a bitter taste to his mouth, like day-old coffee.
But then Josh was standing behind him having one of those "eureka!" moments. "Then Danny must be -- that's no bubble-headed blond, Sam. That's Dan Rydell, the other anchor."
Sam forgot how to move. "Dan?" he repeated quietly. "But the way he was talking..."
Josh nodded, eyes glinting. "Exactly."
Suddenly it was too bad Sam wouldn't see Casey again; wouldn't see Dan Rydell. "Maybe they'll be at the fundraiser," he mused.
"Not a chance," Josh said. "Their thing sounded fun."
Sam sighed. "Ours is important, Josh."
"May I point out -- again -- that everyone there will be Canadian? They can't even vote for us."
"But they can give us their money. Every year, Canadian tourists account for--"
"Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up and kiss me."
"Oh. Oka -- wait. Do you really want to kiss me, or do you just want me to shut up about Canadian tourists?"
"I really want to kiss you. I view the absence of Canadian tourists simply as a perk. Now, if you'd like, we could resume this fascinating discussion later, although I for one--"
"Josh?"
"I'm shutting up and kissing you now."
*********
And then it was a fundraiser full of Canadians.
A man who seldom watched where he was going tripped over the tassels of a throw rug and ended up sprawled across the feet of a man who didn't quite know where he was. Apologizing repeatedly, he struggled to his feet and hoped he didn't look as foolish as he felt. "Sorry," he said again.
"You seem to have fallen there."
"Nah. I'm okay; I think the house is tipping."
The other man laughed. "Drunk?"
"Woefully sober." He stuck out his hand. "Josh Lyman."
"Ah." The other man shook. "Dan Rydell."
"Ah." They grinned knowingly at each other. "You're at our thing."
"You're at ours."
"I thought yours was going to be fun."
"I thought yours was going to suck."
"Well, we're here to raise money."
"There you go. We're just here for the alcohol -- and the Canadians."
Josh laughed. "What have you been doing since the show was cancelled?"
"Casey and I are trying to write a book about the fate of baseball outside the US," Dan said, trying to be more amused than frustrated.
"Together?"
"Yeah. It's this close to driving me insane."
"You've been writing together for over a decade."
Dan nodded. "I know. But somehow this has turned into my worst nightmare. Even Casey's about fed up, and he's willing to take a lot more crap than I am." He paused. "Listen, thanks for giving him a lift last night."
Josh shrugged. "No big thing."
"It was to me." And Josh understood this perfectly.
And suddenly it was uncomfortable that they should be doing this -- two men, hundreds of miles from home, talking at a party, while somewhere else at this party were two other men who seemed to hate each other a great deal.
"So what's up with--"
"What do you know about--"
They chuckled, but they felt shitty about going behind their partners' backs like this.
"Uncommunicative?" Josh asked.
"Uncharacteristically so."
"I'm an inept spy," Josh confessed.
"I'm out of practice." Dan studied him. "I'm glad Sam's with you. I never met him, but I met Lisa, and I didn't like her."
"Neither did I."
"She was just like Lisa," Dan said.
Maybe Josh was drunker than he thought. "Beg your pardon? Lisa was just like Lisa?"
"Almost uncannily."
"Man, that's...what the fuck?"
"Oh, sorry; didn't you know? Casey's ex is named Lisa, too."
"That's sick."
"I laughed."
"Yeah, I guess you'd almost have to."
"What happened with them?" Dan asked. "Sam and his Lisa, I mean."
Josh grinned sheepishly. "I kind of stole him. To work for Bartlet."
"Good for you."
"Yeah. Good for me. What about Casey? You have anything to do with his divorce?"
"Indirectly. He had a chance to do something unimaginably huge, and he chose to do something incredibly small -- because that's where I was. Lisa was unsurprisingly pissed off."
"Good for you."
"Good for me."
"None of which tells us why Sam and Casey curl up into little balls of hurt every time they see each other," Josh mused.
"Little balls of hurt? Man, how much have you had to drink?"
"I spend a lot of time with psychiatrists."
"Oh, I get that." Dan grinned, struck by the outline of a wicked collaboration. "Hey, Josh, what are your plans for after the party?"
Josh looked out at the teeming mass of people he never wanted to see again. He had to go back and be nice so they'd come to the US and buy useless Niagara Falls kitsch. "I plan to drag Sam back to the hotel and make him forget everything he knows about the Canadian tourist dollar."
Dan smiled. "Certainly an admirable plan. But I've got a better one."
"Let's hear it."
"What if we told Case and Sam we met at the party--"
"Which in fact we did."
"Got to talking--"
"So far it's not a plan so much as a recap of the evening."
"And decided we wanted to go out together because the party's too loud."
Josh started catching on. "We force them -- against vehement protest, no doubt -- to some bar--"
"Get them drinking--"
"Get them talking," Josh finished.
Dan watched him. "Well?"
Josh could just see the top of Sam's head over by the stereo. "It may be too devious, even for me."
Dan spotted Casey talking with a former member of the Canadian national curling team. "Yeah. You're probably right." They stood there for a minute. Then he blurted, "But don't you want to know?"
Josh sighed, rubbed the side of his neck, and then smiled resignedly at Dan. "Yeah. I do."
"It's a plan, then."
They shook hands again and set out to corral their unsuspecting lovers.
**********
And then it was a bar half a mile from the party, quieter, darker; not necessarily seedy, just...clandestine. Sam and Casey put up every bit of the fight Dan and Josh expected, but they eventually allowed themselves to be led. Josh and Dan talked about empty surface crap and plied the other men with alcohol as they all squished against each other in the tiny round booth.
Casey wasn't drinking as much as they would've liked, but he'd had more at the party. Sam kept knocking 'em back. With every sip, Casey grew more blurry, and Sam figured eventually he wouldn't be able to see him at all.
Sam was slurring his words. He couldn't keep his hands off Josh. He couldn't keep anyone in focus -- which was fine. But he had this feeling like someone was staring at him, and he was guessing it wasn't Josh.
Dan realized Casey had been staring at Sam for at least five minutes and decided it was time. He looked over at Josh, who gave a wryly amused grin, pulled one of Sam's hands out of his lap and put it on the table with its mate, which had until a moment ago been on his chest, and nodded.
Dan cleared his throat and folded his hands on the table. "Casey, Sam," he said, using the tone you would to explain to a three-year-old why sticking needles in their arm was for their own good, "you both know why you're here."
Casey waved his hands around. "The great mystery of life, Danny-boy. I certainly don't claim to have solved it -- how 'bout you, Sam?" Sam shook his head and took another drink. "There you go. Even Sam -- a brilliant man who understands the economy of language -- doesn't claim to know why we're here."
Dan gritted his teeth. "I meant here, Case. Sitting here, in this bar, with these people."
"Ah," said Casey, in a way that indicated he had no clue why he was sitting here, in this bar, with these people.
"There has been...tension," Josh said. "Yes. There is tension between the two of you, and Dan and I are interested in discovering the origins of this tension."
Sam stared blearily at him. "Whuh?"
The sober men sighed. "Why don't you two get along, Sam?" Josh asked.
Casey held up his hand. "I -- and I think I may safely speak for Sam in this instance -- do not want to talk about it."
Sam downed another drink. "Ditto. Well, except the part about speaking for Sam. Because, you know...that's me." He belched. "Maybe I'm speaking for Casey."
Having a common enemy -- namely, Dan and Josh -- had temporarily forged a bond between them. "Thanks, man," Casey said, reaching across the tiny table and clapping him drunkenly on the shoulder, "but I got that one."
"You guys!" Dan hissed.
"Not. Talking. About. It." Casey clipped his words as only a drunk television anchor can.
"We need to know," Josh said firmly. "As you partners, we feel we have a right to know."
Sam looked very close to sloshed tears. "Aw, jeez, Josh; I didn't know you felt that way about it." He looked at Casey. "Whatd'ya say, Casey?"
Casey peered at Dan. "You really want to know this?"
"I really do."
"Once we tell you, you'll know it. It'll be...it's gonna be out there, and there's noooo takin' it back."
"I understand, Case. Tell us the story."
And Casey went into full story-telling mode. "Long ago--"
Sam broke in, "And oh so far away--"
They burst into song:
"Guys!" Josh yelped.
"Right." Casey squared his shoulders and continued. "One day, I went to Dewey Ballantine, pissed as hell at Lisa, and I--"
"Which one?" Dan asked.
"What?"
"Which Lisa were you mad at?"
"Oh." This stumped him for a minute, then he shrugged. "Either. Both."
"Maybe," Sam suggested, "he was mad not at the particular Lisas involved in this particular situation, but with the Platonic ideal of Lisa -- with all Lisas everywhere, throughout time."
Josh slumped against the back of the booth. "I just had to survive that bullet, didn't I?"
"Anyway, I come to the office, angered by the concept of Lisaness, but neither of them was there. Sam was there." He grinned and chucked Sam's chin affectionately, leaving Josh and Dan to wonder when they'd stepped out onto the other side of the looking glass. "Dependable, reliable, stable Sam. Sitting around waiting for his Lisa."
"And Casey here," Sam picked up the tale, "Casey looked so despondent, so frustrated, so much like he wanted to punch the first Lisa to cross his path. And understand that at this point pretty much every woman in New York City was a Lisa to him. My Lisa and I had reached the end -- I'd only come back from Manchester to break up with her -- so I didn't feel like I was betraying her too much when I invited him out for drinks, because I figured that would lift his spirits."
"That's right!" Casey declared. "To drink as men do, and to speak as men do. Without Lisas everywhere breathing down our necks demanding to know who gets Aunt Bertha's macramé tea cozy. To do the things that men do.'
They clinked their empty glasses together. Sam said loudly, "To men!" Casey seconded, "To the things that men do!" Dan thought he might pass out from second-hand testosterone poisoning.
"And indeed we talked together as men do," Sam said.
"And drank together as men do," Casey added. "And then..." he said, spreading his hands as though the rest of the sentence was self-explanatory.
"And then what?" Josh prompted.
"And then--" Sam pressed his lips together tightly, then released them with an audible pop. "And then we slept together, as men do."
"Though not," Casey said, wholly oblivious to the bugging eyes and dropped jaws of the men across the table, "as often as they talk or drink together."
"Precisely," Sam concurred. "But he never called me. Not even to say, 'Hey, Sam; how's it going?'"
"Man, I am so sorry about that," Casey slurred, then looked at him as steadily as he could manage. "Hey, Sam; how's it going?"
"Not so shabby."
And why this wasn't a possibility either Dan or Josh had ever considered, neither one could say.
**********
Sam woke with one hell of a hangover. He had no memory of the second half of last night. There was the stupid fundraiser, and then Josh and Dan Rydell had dragged Sam and Casey to a round booth at the back of a dark bar. This is where his recollection grew hazy. He thought that perhaps he and Casey had become embarrassingly drunk, while Josh and Dan had not. He had a vague image of singing a Carpenters' song with Casey's arm around his shoulders. "That can't be right," he muttered. And instantly wished he hadn't.
Now Josh knew he was awake.
"You slept with Casey McCall."
"Josh--"
He took a step into the room "No. I mean, you slept with Casey fuckin' McCall."
"Josh, I have pain in parts of my body I didn't know had nerve endings. Can the destruction of my self-worth wait until after I take a shower?"
His eyes narrowed to slits. "Go."
By the time he got out of the shower Sam felt as ready as he ever would to face the Wrath of Josh. He finished toweling off his hair as he came back into the bedroom in his boxers. Josh was sitting on the bed waiting for him. "Feel better now?"
"Fresh as the bright spring morn," he said dryly.
"So, you had sex with Casey McCall."
The absolute flatness of Josh's voice worried Sam far more than his yelling had. "May I remind you, in my own defense," he began, shocked to hear how calm his own voice sounded, "that we told you -- repeatedly -- that we didn't want to talk about it. We told you you didn't want to hear it. You proceeded to strip away our self-control and badger us into telling. I'm not sure you have any right to be complaining here."
"I don't?"
"Possibly not." He said this. Despite ten thousand warning alarms ringing in Sam's head, he said this.
Josh jumped off the bed. "I don't have any right to complain."
"Not in this particular situation, no."
"YOU FUCKED CASEY McCALL!" Josh clenched his fists. They faced each other down across the room.
"Friday you were talking about him like some sort of demi-god."
"Friday you hadn't slept with him."
"Technically--"
"Sam--" Josh said, his voice a warning. He sighed and switched tacks. "How did you never tell me this?"
"I did."
"Oh, I really have to disagree with you on this one."
"No." Sam threw his towel to the floor. "When we started sleeping together, we did the partner history thing, and I told you there was a guy in New York."
He sat on the bed again. "You never told me it was Casey McCall!"
"Of course not! It had no bearing on the conversation we were having."
"I told you about Hoynes--"
"And that mattered, because we had to work with him. I was never going to see Casey again; what difference did his name make?"
"Because it was Casey goddamned McCall, Sam."
"So he's famous. So what? We're not so unknown ourselves, these days."
"Because he's--" Josh broke off violently, rubbing his face hard with his hands and staring at the floor. "Look at him, Sam. He's better looking than me; he's suave, he makes more money...."
Sam sat beside him on the bed. "I assume there's a point in here somewhere."
"If the circumstances had been different..." Josh could not finish that sentence.
And Sam got it. Sam got it, and Sam started laughing. He couldn't help himself. "Do you think I would have gone riding off into the sunset with Casey?" Josh looked away. Sam put a hand on his arm. "Josh, didn't you know I was waiting for you?"
He looked up, eyes wide as doorknobs. "You what?"
"I met Casey between leaving New York and getting together with you. I always knew you'd come back for me. If it hadn't been Bartlet, it would've been Hoynes. Of course, if it had been Hoynes I would've told you where to shove it, but -- I knew you'd be coming around. Then you did, and it was only a matter of time before you got your act together."
"You were engaged to Lisa."
"For three years. We were engaged for three years, and I would never let her set a date. I was waiting for you, Josh."
"And while you were waiting, you thought you'd screw Casey McCall?" But the bitterness was gone from his voice.
"Please. You were still sleeping with Hoynes when you came to New York." Sam sighed. "Listen, Josh. I don't regret what happened between Casey and me, but it didn't mean anything. We were two guys in a bad place who happened to find each other at the right moment."
"You were waiting for me."
"And he was waiting for Dan, I guess. And now I've got you, and I'm not going anywhere. I'm certainly not going anywhere with Casey McCall." He searched Josh's face anxiously. "Are we good now?"
Josh snorted softly, then smiled. "Yeah. We're good now."
**********
Casey opened his eyes to find Dan propped up on his elbow, staring down at him. Casey started to move, but when his body screamed bloody murder, he fell back and eyed his partner quizzically. He had no idea what had happened last night. "Good morning, Danny," he ventured.
"Morning, Sunshine," Dan said. And smacked him in the head.
"God damn it, Dan!" he roared. "What the fuck was that for?"
"For sleeping with Sam Seaborn!"
Casey's eyes popped. "How do you know about that?"
"You told me!"
Now he remembered a few parts of last night. He'd already been drunk by the time the fundraiser ended, but Dan had dragged him out to a bar up the block -- with Josh Lyman and Sam. Actually, now that he thought about it, Dan and Josh had done most of the dragging. So that was it. They'd gotten him and Sam even drunker and pried the story out of them. "You wanted to know."
"I didn't want to know that."
"I know. And that's why I never told you."
"I could've been perfectly happy going my entire life without knowing that."
"So, again, I never mentioned it. However, I did say, when we exchanged sexual histories, that I had slept with one guy during the divorce."
"You didn't tell me it was Sam!"
"You didn't know Sam!"
"I knew who he was, Casey." Dan jumped out of bed and began roaming the hotel room. Not pacing -- just roaming. "I knew who he was, and I knew how Adonis-like he was supposed to be."
"He wasn't that great, Danny."
"'He was 'smart, rich, beautiful, and perfect.' You said that, Case. Two short days ago."
"Yes. He was a like a living Ken doll. He wasn't real."
"He was real enough for you to fuck."
"Christ, Danny. You weren't this upset about Sally."
"I never felt threatened by Sally. I knew that was just something you felt you had to do, and that she wouldn't stick."
"But Sam would have stuck?" he asked in disbelief.
Dan shrugged. "If you started making comparisons between us, I'd hardly come out ahead."
"According to whom?"
"According to anyone, Case." He stopped and pivoted on his heel to face the other man. "Did you look at the guy? I mean really look at him? You know the hours they keep in that place. Think of the stress he must be under, and the sleep he doesn't get, and he still looks like a fucking cover-boy. In those days I imagine he would've put the gods themselves to shame."
Casey let his head drop back against the headboard. "Yes, Dan, you're absolutely right. He was gorgeous. And obscenely rich, and almost inhumanly smart. And when I ran into him that day, I was glad I had, because he was exactly what I needed at that particular moment. But do you know what I felt the next morning when I woke up?"
"Well-fucked?" Dan said acidly.
"Panic. Overwhelming, suffocating panic. I couldn't remember if you were supposed to come over that morning. And I was so scared that you would see him in my bed -- anywhere in my apartment. I kicked him out. I'm not sure he remembers that. I threw him unceremoniously out of my apartment without so much as a glass of water, because I didn't want you to see him."
"I knew you were bi, Casey. I knew it all too well." Dan took a step close=r to the bed.
Casey captured his hand. "That wasn't it at all. I felt..." He cleared his throat. "I felt like I had cheated on you."
Dan sank slowly onto the bed. "Cheated on me?"
Casey nodded. "Yes."
"Not on Lisa, to whom you were technically still married at the time?"
"No."
"On me."
"And do you know why?"
"No, but I'm hoping you're about to tell me."
"Because I loved you, even then. I just couldn't get my head screwed on straight."
"You screwed Sam Seaborn without much difficulty."
"Oh, would you please get over that? It was one drunken night in a bar. You should be impressed by my admission that I've been in love with you the entire time I've known you."
"The entire time?" Dan whispered.
"The entire fucking time."
Dan grinned. "Well then."
"Well then. Am I forgiven?"
Dan squeezed his hand. "Completely absolved. Just don't do it again."
"Sleep with Sam or not tell you about it?"
After pondering this for a moment, Dan smiled and said, "If I were you, I wouldn't do either. Just to keep your bases covered."
**********
So Dan and Casey hopped an evening flight to New York, and Sam and Josh dragged themselves back to DC on the red-eye, and life went back to as close to normal as it ever got. Josh kept his eye out for a book about baseball outside the US, which was not forthcoming. Dan watched coverage of Presidential doings for curly brown hair and a cocky grin, which he could never spot. Sam and Casey studiously ignored the entire situation.
Ask any of them about the big fundraiser in Toronto, and the most you'll ever hear is, "It certainly was an interesting weekend. Lots and lots of Canadians."
END