And The Forecast Is...

The air is cold, the sky is gray, and a flake of snow falls to his feet. He's sitting on a bench, in a park made of dirt and no grass, filled with trees with no leaves. It is nearing half past two and lunch was over hours ago. He wishes he had it in him to care. Instead, he's sitting here, playing with the frayed edges of his navy blue, lambswool scarf. And he doesn't look up when he hears the sound of approaching footsteps.

"I'm the search party."

He hears the glibness mixed in with curiosity and concern. And he doesn't need to look up to see the crinkled forehead with the indented line right in the center, the narrowed eyes and the half-opened mouth: the I'm-worried-what's-going-on face. He knows the expression too well. He knows his best friend too well.

"CJ wanted to come and Toby's not pleased. But Leo doesn't know anything about it. I managed to cover for you and you're so gonna owe me, Sam. We're talking huge, huge, astronomical here-"

"Josh," he interrupts. And there must be something in his voice that his best friend recognizes because, for once, Joshua Lyman halts mid-speech and remains quiet. Very quiet.

Josh is staring at him. Analytical. Critical. Sizing him up and taking account. Penetrating brown eyes seeing beyond winter coat, black Armani suit, slick hair and a too neat appearance, like he's suddenly acquired Superman's x-ray vision, to find secret wrinkles and mess. Josh squeezes his eyes shut and counts, under his breath, to three. When he opens them, when he speaks, his voice is tight: "We should go, Sam."

"Where?" he asks, although it is more rhetorical than an actual question. Or maybe not. Because lately, around one or two in the morning, when he crawls into bed, Sam wonders where they are going. Where he is going. And when he closes his eyes - body covered by two woolen blankets and one duvet that does little to abate the cold - he dreams. Dreams of walking right over a cliff and falling, falling, falling. Then he wakes up with a start, jerking upwards before slamming back down on the firm mattress with extra bouncy springs.

"We. Should. Go. Back. To. The. White. House," Josh says, in short staccato sentences like Sam is a child.

"Yeah, you should."

He doesn't even realize the slip-up, the mispronunciation, the whatever-you-want-to-call-it, until he looks up to see Josh staring down at him, frozen in horror. He notices five flakes of snow dusting Josh's face like freckles. Washington D.C. is experiencing an extremely light smattering of snow. Nothing to be concerned about. Yet.

"We. You said you but you meant we, not you but we. We!" There is a high-pitched, squeaky quality to Josh's voice. And he's taken to gesturing wildly with his arms.

"I," Sam begins, "I think, I, uh, did mean you." He tugs a little too hard on navy blue wool and a piece of thread unravels, separated from the rest of the scarf.

"No."

The first time Sam met Josh he had been screaming 'no'. "No, no, no. And for the last time: NO!" he had shouted, waving his left fist in the air. Sam had been standing a little too close and had been rewarded with a more purple than black eye, several rounds of beer as an apology, and friendship.

"Josh-" Sam says.

"No," Josh cuts him off. "No."

There's that certain tone in Josh's voice. He's heard it many times before. It's determined. It's absolute. It's petulant. It mimics Josh's crossed arms, legs slightly apart, shoulders and back straight, defensive, geared up for a fight posture. Some people call it denial. He calls it 'entirely Josh'.

He doesn't want to get into some lengthy heated argument and so he says, "I need a new scarf. This one is getting a little frayed at the edges." He holds the dark, dark blue - the color of uniform, military, discipline, order - woolen thread for Josh to see.

"Let me buy you a new one," Josh offers.

"I wouldn't need a scarf if I was in California." He thinks he sounds a little wistful, a little nostalgic, for a place that technically hasn't been his home in over a decade.

Josh is surprisingly silent.

The silence is uneasy. Heavy. He's suddenly aware that he isn't wearing any gloves. The chill in the air gets to his fingers, gets to his bones. He has the sudden urge to qualify his last statement. "Not that it means anything," he says. "I was just saying, you know, California compared to D.C…they're different. Temperature wise."

"Sam, you're rambling."

"I know." And he is rambling. Because he is a goddamn speech writer without any words. So what use is he?

Josh is quiet for a while. They both are. And then he asks, in a soft voice that Sam has never heard before, "Do you ever get the feeling that this is all a dream? More imaginary than real?"

"Maybe more than normal," Sam answers.

Josh nods.

"You know the one thing I missed about New York? Not the job. Not the pay. Okay, maybe the pay a little. Not the apartment. Not even really Lisa. What I missed were the hotdogs. Fresh in the morning with mustard and ketchup. I missed the hotdogs."

The clouds move and he thinks he sees a little blue amidst the gray. Maybe, if he is lucky, he'll catch a glimpse of sun before night falls. Maybe not. Josh decides to sit down and Sam guesses that there is about two-and-half inches of park bench between them.

"I'm not going back," he says.

"I know," Josh says.

"Your poker face sucks," he says.

"I know," Josh says.

They're not looking at one another. Instead, they stare at trees with no leaves, a park with no grass, concrete, cars, government upon government buildings and the world they've known for over four years. He re-wraps the navy blue scarf around his neck and pulls the sides of his coat tighter across the front. His chest almost feels warm. And it doesn't snow.