samjosh + 5 (things you didn’t say at all)
One Friday morning in 1992, a year with one of the heaviest snowfalls on record for DC, Sam wakes up shivering all over with a thousand moth balls stuffed inside his skull. First, he thinks What?, then my head, Jesus, and then fuck. He makes it off the bed a little and catches a glimpse of snow falling in the haze of the window in his room, and that's when he starts sneezing.
There's puttering in the apartment, he can hear it; the walls don't hide any of the creaks and the noises this place has. Sam had called it character, because he was trying to be optimistic. Josh had raised an eyebrow and called the place about as old as the Lincoln Memorial. It'd been his apartment first, he explained when Sam gave him a long-suffering look, so whatever he wanted to call it was going to stick.
Sam's sneezing into a pile of Kleenex pilfered from the tissue box that's stumbled onto the floor, his head feeling about ready to explode, and then he hears a crash and Josh's voice, clear as a bell—which only makes things worse: "Shit!"
After Sam graduated from Duke, everyone had expected him to take that associate job at Dewey Ballantine. He'd been a summer associate there the summer before and apparently had made a good enough impression that they'd made an offer contingent upon graduation. His professors were telling he was lucky, his friends were telling him he was lucky, his parents were telling him he was lucky, everyone was tossing in their thoughts—but all Sam felt was a little lost. He didn't want to admit it, because admitting anything that was within five miles of uncertainty had always been sort of impossible for him. Sam had grown up with ideas and goals and how to get those things, and it was a little terrifying that he'd done so much, and still wasn't sure of anything at all.
Then there was a fact that a week before the job offer, he'd gotten a letter postmarked from DC saying that he'd gotten the federal judicial clerkship he'd applied for, mostly out of curiosity. Sam's advisor had tacked it on like an afterthought: post-grad opportunities include starting out as an associate at a firm with something you want to specialize in, VAPs, maybe clerking if you want to. Sam knew a few people who were clerking: mostly people who wanted to break into politics like Josh did, or the odd one out who had the high-flying goal of being on the Supreme Court or something.
He'd filled the application—magna cum laude from Princeton, two internships in the Senate, editor on the Duke Law Review—mailed it out. Then midterms showed up, and after that, finals crashed into his life, and Sam promptly forgot about it all.
Sam looked at the envelope, a week into June, and thought—I need time. That's all. Time to figure everything out. It was only two years, and after that he'd make up his mind and do what he had to do.
So he called up Josh, after he’d told his parents and hung up before he had to deal with the whys and you know you’re passing up something great and asked if he knew anyone who needed a roommate in DC. It turned out Josh did—his roommate was moving to New York to work in the governor’s office, and that was that.
Sam manages to stumble out of his room, right about when Josh is pressing a bag of peas to his head.
“There might’ve been an accident,” he says, and his eyes are closed. He’s sitting on the couch that’s been here for about six billion years, a relic from Yale that Josh's never bothered to get rid of. His hair is sticking up even more than usual, and the windows in this room are all the way open. Light spills out, and it hurts Sam’s eyes, makes his head pound a little more. Josh looks tired, but he looks more settled, somehow. Sam can see one freckled collarbone peeking out from under his shirt, and resists the urge to do something idiotic like kiss him. This isn’t new, or anything—it wasn’t new when Sam was twenty and Josh was sliding him snarky, half-beautiful grins across cubicles and intern dorm rooms, and it isn’t new now, when Sam has literally witnessed Josh burn water.
It isn’t new, which is the worst part. Worse is the fact that it won’t go. Worse is that he can’t say this to Josh: you’re brilliant. You make me believe in the things they write in speeches and old documents. You make me believe. You make me want to try. You make me—
“Might is an understatement,” Sam manages, and sits down next to him. “Might is just about the wrong word when it looks like you got into a fight with a door and lost.” He sniffs, and blows his nose with the Kleenex.
“It was the wall, actually,” Josh snipes, but it’s not mean. He’s been stressed all week, and Sam can tell from the way he stays up past midnight when he gets home from the Hill, the kitchenette lights still on and the faint steps of his pacing reverberating through the walls. “I’m pretty sure I held up my own end pretty well. I just need to do that with that asshat Jenkins over in press, and I’ll be fine.”
Right, work. Sam has to go to work. Josh has to go to work. They have work, and that means staring, and filing, and tiny print on blinding white—the whole idea of going to work makes Sam want to trudge back under the covers and possibly not wake up for a week. Maybe two weeks.
Josh blinks, opens his eyes, and it’s then that Sam realizes he hasn’t said anything. It’s too late, because Josh’s eyes go wide, and he says, “You never take my advice on these things, do you?”
“It’s not that bad—” Sam tries, but Josh is already talking over him, a stream of muttering: “I lived in New Jersey, he says. I understand that winter means things get cold, he says. I should wear more than two layers, he says—”
“I did!” Sam protests, and now he’s just irritated. And he’s sick, which also doesn’t help, and Josh is sniping, because Josh is from New England where it snows and has the propensity to act like he knows everything. “And it’s your turn to play the hypocrisy card, since the time you got food poisoning because you didn’t want to take a trip to the—”
“Okay, that, that was the Chinese food’s fault—”
“The fact that you ate it wasn't? Are you reassigning blame to the week-old Chinese, Josh? Also, it’s not my fault everything is so unbearably cold.”
“It’s only unbearable,” Josh mutters, setting the bag of peas down and getting up from the couch. “—if you’re from somewhere with no seasons. Which, you know, you? I think you qualify.”
“It’s below zero outside, Josh!” Sam yells after him. “And it rains in California sometimes! That counts!”
His throat feels clogged up and his head is probably, really going to explode here, right on his lap. It’s awful, he thinks, and pulls his legs up, closes his eyes, and leans his head back. It’s only a minute later when something warm and heavy drops on his lap, abrupt, and he blinks and rubs at his eyes. There’s a quilt sitting in his lap, and Josh is standing next to him with some Ibuprofen and a water glass, bouncing on the balls of his socked feet.
“I’m swooning at the hospitality,” Sam says, and then hitches the quilt up, but something warm crawls up in his chest. It’s a nice quilt—pale green and knitted, and then Josh says, with half a smile, but not quite, “Move over. It’s not just for you.”
Sam rolls his eyes, and obliges, and then accepts the water and Ibuprofen. About five minutes later, after Josh has found a rerun of M*A*S*H, arm slung on the back of Sam’s shoulders, something dawns upon him.
“Josh, are you into playing hooky nowadays?” Sam asks. “Because, you know–”
“If you want me trudging through fourteen inches of snow, I’d be happy to,” Josh replies, half out of the corner of his mouth. “DC’s got nothing on Westport winters, you know. I’ve been ready since I was six—I’ve got snowshoes in the closet, I’ve got—”
“Josh,” Sam presses. “You’re not moonlighting for the—I don’t know—Hill’s extreme sports team, or something, okay?”
“Who’d even make that?” Josh replies, just as quickly, his eyebrows raised. “Sam, in what world does Congress have a normal sports team? I’m not counting Stackhouse’s pool, because, you know, no one’s actually supposed to know about that, and it’s not technically—”
“Howard Stackhouse?” Sam breaks in, half-incredulous, and then starts sneezing again. This time, it devolves into cold, wet, hacking, and it feels like whatever’s in his stomach is going to crawl out of his mouth along with all the coughing. He’s got—he has to call in sick, but if the weather’s that bad—
“Hey,” Josh says, and his voice has gone quiet, this time. His hand’s on the back of Sam’s neck, and it’s warm and grounding and none of this makes sense. Josh doesn’t do this. Josh is half-done ties and half-buttoned shirts and coffee stains; he burns water and eats week-old take-out and never makes grocery lists and barely can keep track of anything that isn’t his near-zealous dedication to his work. Josh doesn’t hold the back of his neck and say things like it’s okay and i’ll make coffee, except, except—he does?
Sam had sort of fallen for Josh’s biting wit, and his dimples and his magnetism, but it’s not until a cold, wintery morning in February in 1992, bent over with one of the worst colds he’s ever had, Josh mumbling to him—Josh here, Josh snarking at him and giving him Ibuprofen and a fucking quilt and his apartment—that he thinks I think I love you.
He doesn’t say it then, or when two years pass by and he moves to New York and gets engaged, or when he follows Josh into a rainstorm, feeling unflinching happy, or when Josh gets shot and Sam has to convince himself out of the tears stinging his eyes when he's waiting to see him after surgery, or all the times when Josh grins at Sam, still so luminous and brilliant and sharp, or when Sam finally leaves, four years later. He barely even thinks it then, on Josh's couch, with Josh's hand on his neck, his voice in Sam's ear, but it’s there.
send me a ship and one of these and i'll write a mini fic!
