TITLE: Bad Poker Face AUTHOR: Kasey POSTEP: Noël RATING: PG-13 Samfic SUMMARY: “He claims he’s fine, but I know damn well he’s not…After all, he’s got a really bad poker face.” I grew up in LA.  As a child I saw brutal murders without true causation or rhyme or reason at least once a week.  Sometimes people I knew, sometimes people I didn’t. At the age of seventeen I moved three thousand miles away from everything I had ever known, everyone I had ever cared about, knowing exactly no one and hoping to God I would make it. I’ve gambled a fair amount in my life, I would say, what with leaving my nice, safe job in Manhattan and my fiancee for the chance to work for a tenth the pay for maybe as little as a few months.  I’ve feared my commitment to the woman I loved, and I’ve been faced with the terrifying prospect and reality of living my entire life without her. But I have never, ever, been as afraid, as utterly terrified, as I was as I stood in the Oval Office yesterday. Josh is going crazy and I don’t know when it started or why, or how, or when it will stop, or what I can do to make it better, or what made it start in the first place, or even what it is. I’m sitting here in my office, just-…watching him walk by from time to time. His walk’s even different lately – he’s storming everywhere, clenched fists, vaguely hunched in the way he holds his head and his neck, his jaw so tight I would think it might break. Dammit, this is JOSH, he’s s’posed to be…invincible or something.  It’s JOSH, he’s…the same guy who dragged me into this campaign, the same guy who got me where I am today, the same guy who made me Campbell’s soup and coffee the night Lisa left, when I couldn’t even find my bedroom and my hands were so shaky that I couldn’t hold the spoon. Only that was then, and this is now, and he’s got a bandage on his hand and a meeting with a guy from ATVA and all I can think about is the friend of my sister who tried to kill herself by slitting her wrist, then tried to hide the mark with one of those bangle bracelets – ‘cause it was the 80s back then and those weren’t conspicuous. He claims he’s fine, but I know damn well he’s not. After all, he’s got a really bad poker face.