(Untitled)

[regtuesdaysuit]

Okay, just because he is important and influential, Josh does not want to know about your mindless trivia. This goes for the President telling him about every national park in the United States, and this certainly goes for Donna reading him factoids about what life was like a hundred years ago. It does not matter. Josh has to get a new Chairman of

Comments

[gavemea_45]

Back on the other side of the door, Dean's asleep.

Sam hadn't been able; he's still trying to figure out how to tell his brother about the message on their dad's phone, which is why he's now slouched in a booth in Milliways thinking about it.

The yelling gets his attention fast, however.

"Something wrong?"

[regtuesdaysuit]

"Yes, something is wrong! All my staffers can talk about is respect for the dead and drive-by shootings in Denver a hundred years ago, and I get stuck here while they inevitably run the country into the ground without me!"

Once he's gotten that all out, Josh realizes he's shouting at someone he doesn't know. Like, really doesn't know.

Like, a kid.

He furrows his brow, trying to regain some composure. "Not that I'm helping run the country into the ground. That was a little bit of fun with misplaced modifiers there."

[gavemea_45]

"... right."

Sam offers him an easy smile, even if the look in his eyes is slightly speculative.

"If you don't mind my asking, what do drive-by shootings a hundred years ago have to do with the present day?"

[regtuesdaysuit]

"See, that? That is a very fair question."

There is certainly nothing agitated in that response. "Agitated" isn't even in Josh's vocabulary. Any more than his picture appears next to it in the dictionary.

"You wouldn't happen to want a job working at the White House, would you? Because that is entirely the kind of good sense my office is severely lacking today."

[gavemea_45]

A quick and very amused grin lights up his face.

"If you're going to be offering me a job like that, we should probably go ahead and get introductions out of the way, huh?"

A beat.

"Sam Winchester."

[regtuesdaysuit]

One eyebrow goes up.

Smooth, that's for sure. Less than a minute and Josh is already convinced he's got smarts. He might get a decent conversation out of this day yet.

"Josh Lyman, Deputy Chief of Staff." He holds out a hand. "I'm not kidding, there may be an opening as soon as I get back if things don't start shaping up. You got any interest in politics?"

[gavemea_45]

Sam leans forward to shake Josh's hand.

"Some, yeah," he says. "Goes with being pre-law."

Or having been, rather.

A beat.

"I'm still curious about the drive-by shooting thing, though, too."

[regtuesdaysuit]

College kid? Figures. Though he's not really dressed for it.

"Pre-law, huh? Where?"

He rakes a hand through his already frazzled hair. "I don't even know. Something people have been yammering at me all day. And how Florence and Bertha were the top two names for girls in 1900. This isn't even the weirdest my job gets, but it's definitely up there toward the most pointless."

[gavemea_45]

"Stanford," Sam says. Easily.

There's a beat of silence as he takes the rest in, and then,

"Sounds like there's a lot that goes into your job that the public doesn't hear about."

[regtuesdaysuit]

"If I told you that, I'd have to have the Secret Service take you down after. But yeah, it's not everything you see on C-SPAN."

Kid's pre-law at Stanford, Josh can definitely count on having something resembling intelligent conversation with him. "I'm sure this is all some sort of exercise in taming my inner control freak. Or, I dunno, making my inner control freak a little less external. But that door better come back. They need me back there. I've got, you know, memos to read and meetings to sit through."

[gavemea_45]

He winces and gives a swift glance to the door.

"Ouch."

"This isn't your first time here, is it?"

[regtuesdaysuit]

"No, it keeps popping up in my office. You meet some really alarming people here."

People who can't banter.

Really, truly alarming.

"What about you? Must be kinda crummy, to keep coming from California into this." He glances out the window. If there's any place with worse weather than D.C. right now, Scotland is probably it. Whose idea is that, anyway? There should be a caucus about that.

[gavemea_45]

"Nah, it's not so bad," Sam says. "The beer's good, anyway."

Perhaps notably, he doesn't say anything at all about the people.

[regtuesdaysuit]

"The beer is definitely good."

It's hard, not staying twitchy in the face of that smooth stretch of wall which should by rights lead him straight back into his bullpen.

"I still kinda think it spends most of its time laughing at us, though."

Josh feels he has a lot of practice recognizing this state.

[gavemea_45]

"The bar, or the place in general?"

He straightens up and jerks a thumb at the seat across from him.

"Want to sit?"

[regtuesdaysuit]

"I've found it's a sensation that follows me wherever I go."

He eyes the empty seat and weighs his options: yell some more and get worked up while everyone stares and the door doesn't open, or engage with one of the bright young minds of his generation and display some real leadership, not to mention common sense.

"...Yeah, okay."

His therapist would be proud of him. And this totally preempts anyone's ability to tell him off for something that's not actually his fault.