#abw2017

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

Rain On Me Your Sweetness

TWW one-shot, Sam x Ainsley, just a smidge post-series. While @actuallylukedanes​‘s birthday is technically over now, this fic is a belated gift by request.

Summary: A new administration...a new chance at something more. Pure fluff with sequel potential. “Why did he suddenly feel like he was pulled right back to being that kid in the Mess who couldn’t even carry food up stairs without dropping it, because he thought his coworker was pretty?” 

Cross-posted on AO3; additional notes can be found there.

“Sam!” 

The folders Ainsley had been carrying went flying out of her hands when she ran into him, both figuratively and literally, in the bustling White House hallway. 

He didn’t drop anything he was carrying, but his gaping mouth made it obvious that he was just as surprised to see her.

Transition was such chaos, it was no wonder it hadn’t happened yet, Ainsley thought. It turned out that coming into an administration once it was established and running relatively smoothly was vastly different from being a part of it from the ground up. 

He should have expected this, Sam thought ruefully. He’d heard that she was going to be White House Counsel, but hadn’t needed to think about that too much, with all the positions that still needed staffing and the minutia of the transition that Josh had kept piling on his desk. 

Every time he looked at his growing phone sheet, he remembered the jokes they’d crack in the Bartlet Administration about Josh not really having a job to do. He kind of wanted to grab past-Sam by the shoulders and give him a good shake. 

“Ainsley, hi,”  he stammered after what felt like an eternity, trying not to look as uncomfortable as he felt. God, what had it been, four years? Why did he suddenly feel like he was pulled right back to being that kid in the Mess who couldn’t even carry food up stairs without dropping it, because he thought his coworker was pretty?

Shaking his head, Sam crouched down to help gather up her folders. “Sorry about this, I wasn’t even looking, I have a meeting with Carter and he--”

His hand bumped hers and he cut himself off, drawing back. “Doesn’t matter. Here you go.”

“It was my fault,” Ainsley argued, taking the files as they stood back up. “I know better than to read and walk. Or, well--I don’t, obviously.”

He was already angling himself for a retreat, and she wasn’t sure why. 

“Well anyhow, I’m sorry for bumping into you.” 

“It’s really alright,” she tries to tell him, but his phone buzzes and he makes an apologetic face. 

“I have to go.”

“Nice to see you again,” she offers faintly, watching him walk away.

****

How was it that time had barely touched her, Sam wondered. 

He was only half-listening as Lou argued with Carter, giving his mind more time to wander--it wasn’t as though Lou really needed his help when it came to posturing. 

Instead, he was thinking of Ainsley, the way she’d been striding through the halls like she owned them, no longer the insurgent who was afraid to meet the Commander in Chief.

She seemed so much more confident--if no more coordinated, he thought with a smirk...but just as gorgeous. 

Only Ainsley Hayes could crouch in the middle of a West Wing hallway, gathering her paperwork, and look completely radiant.

In the years since she’d left the Counsel’s office and he’d left the White house, he’d thought about her often. She was one of his few regrets: never making a move, being too worried about a scandal or even just looking like an idiot. He’d always had to wonder whether she would have said yes, if only he’d asked.

The last thing he needed now was to remember all of that, to relive it...to have it shoved in his face in the old halls where she glowed like new and he just felt tired.

After the meeting, he was grabbing lunch in the Mess when his attention was diverted from the new drought report by that light drawl.

"Hello again.” 

“Hey.” He grinned at the size of her salad as she joined him. “Famished?”

“It’s lunchtime,” she answered, as though that answered that.

Ainsley studied him while she ate. It was strange to see how little Sam had changed, when the White House was full of it these days. He was still one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen, objectively speaking, who never acted like it. She still had the urge to pick a fight with him on every issue, just to watch his mind work.

“I’d heard you were taking the position as Deputy,” Ainsley told him as they finished eating. “How is it going so far?”

“Well, so far, it’s…madness,” he admitted with a chuckle. She noted with interest that the last few years had sharpened him...he’d lost that sweet, heart-on-his-sleeve look that had been so difficult to resist. He had the polish and steel he would need to be the new Josh, Ainsley thought, but had to give up parts of the old Sam to get there.

She hadn’t kept in touch after she left the Counsel’s office, and now she was left in the dark as to what exactly had happened to change him so much. She wondered if it was a bad breakup, or the congressional debacle she’d watched from afar. It couldn’t have been the White House itself, because here he was, back again.

“That sounds about right,” she replied.

“Yeah. There are perks, though.” His face brightened. “Want to see my office?”

“Even better,” she countered with a laugh. “Want to see mine? No bats at all so far.”

“Wish I could,” Sam told her as he set his napkin aside, “but I’ve got to be on the Hill by one. With the way President Santos likes to chart his own course, though, I’m sure I’ll be seeing it soon enough.” 

With their new working relationship in the administration, Ainsley knew that he couldn’t avoid her entirely. But something compelled her to rush ahead before he could disappear for the second time.

“How about we meet for a drink later and catch up? I’d love to hear all about what I missed when I left. Say, tonight at nine?”

Somehow Sam was certain that socializing with her after hours was a bad idea, but now that he was Deputy COS, the last thing he needed was to antagonize the new White House Counsel before they’d even gotten their administration off the ground. 

Blinking, he couldn’t find a way to politely refuse, so he didn’t. “Sure. Sounds good. The Gibson?”

Ainsley grinned, her smile still pure Southern sunshine. “Great. See you then, Sam.”

****

When he arrived at the bar, it took him a minute to find her, even though he knew she would have gotten there early. That was Ainsley for you, punctual to a fault, obsessed with her codes of honor and truth and star-spangled patriotism. But despite sitting across a table from her earlier that same day, he barely recognized her at The Gibson.

Her long hair was pinned back, framing her face, which had pinked up prettily to contrast her slick red lips. Suddenly Sam wasn’t sure this was a friendly drink after all. What was it she’d said when he agreed to meet? He tried to think back, unable to focus. Whatever it was, it hadn’t prepared him for the silver top that laced across her bare back and showed off creamy skin dipping down to a sweeping black skirt. 

She was chatting with the bartender as he approached, her head tipped back in laughter, making the smooth line of her neck catch the muted light. He admired her ease with strangers, Democrat or Republican; he’d always been a little awkward with them. 

“Sam,” she greeted him with delight, eyes sparkling as he approached. “You made it.”

“Of course I did.” He took a seat at the bar next to her. “It’s busy in the Oval, but we’re not quite at the working-past-eight stage of the chaos yet.”

“Well, I’m glad.” 

The bartender nodded his way, eyes returning to Ainsley afterwards. Sam couldn’t blame him. “What’ll you have?”

“Tom Collins.”

By the time the bartender brought his drink, Ainsley had coaxed out the story of why he had left the Bartlet administration. It was easier than he would’ve expected to admit that the loss of an unwinnable campaign soured him on politics. It was harder to answer her understandable follow-up question.

“Then why did you come back?”

“Josh needed me. President Santos intrigues me. And I just...I missed it.”

He folded his napkin in half, then tucked it into his pocket--an old habit he stopped noticing years ago. "What about you? Why not stay at the...where were you again, the Coolidge Institute?”

“Hoover.”

“Right.” He smiled. “So, why did you come back?”

“Well, first there’s Josh’s winning personality,” Ainsley drawled, making him laugh. 

“But seriously...” She thought about it. “I feel like I did more good working under President Bartlet than I have in the years since. Bipartisanship is where real change happens--where government can actually work for the people.”

He was nodding along, drawn in by her sincerity. There were many things Ainsley Hayes was not, but she always said only what she meant. That was one of his favorite things about her.

“I want to work for the people,” she finished simply. A firm nod punctuated her words. “So I’m here to help the President do that.”

He couldn’t help the slow smile that spread over his face. He was simply enchanted by her strange intensity, always had been. Dazzled.

Sam told her about a few of his strangest encounters after leaving the White House, and she returned the favor with tales of being accosted for her traitorous career choices whenever she went back to her hometown.

“This is fun. Why did we never do this during the Bartlet administration?” Ainsley asked him, sipping her second sparkling pink cocktail.

“Why do you think?” 

“Well, it wouldn’t have been appropriate,” she began the list easily, as though she had it already prepared. “I was new, and wanted respect, not whispers about fraternization. We had nothing in common.

“And also?” She smiled at him. “You never asked me.”

He enjoyed the way her words went soft around the edges with just that hint of the South, he always had. Despite her years in Washington, that had yet to change, and it made him grin back at her in return.

“This time I didn’t have to,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, I’m all about seizing the day now,” Ainsley said with a laugh. “I just thought it would be nice to catch up.”

“Even though we still work together, and have nothing in common.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m a senior counselor,” she replied, growing serious again. “We have history in common. And after Leo...every day matters.”

“Yeah.” Sam blinked back the stinging in his eyes for a second.

“Anyhow, it was just an evening out,” Ainsley beamed at him and finished her drink. “Nothing to worry about here.”

****

Walking amiably next to each other on the way back to her place, they got caught up in a dissection of the latest Supreme Court decision, Roper v. Delaware. 

“It’s clearly a civil rights violation. All you have to do is look at the prior case law, Madison v. Harwick for one.”

“Come on, Sam. You of all people can’t honestly be saying that the Constitution guarantees--”

“Well, clearly I am saying it or you wouldn’t be trying to argue against it!” Sam shook his head. Some things never changed. He was glad this one hadn’t. Ainsley was still his best opponent.

“This is me.” She stopped in front of an unobtrusive brownstone and smiled at him. “We’ll have to continue this during office hours. Maybe we could grab lunch tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

“I’m really glad we’re going to be working together, Sam." Impulsively, Ainsley leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, before shooting him another smile. “Thanks for walking me home.” 

“Goodnight,” he called out as she headed up the stairs, not sure what had just happened. 

Dazed, Sam began the walk back toward his own apartment. His cheek tingled where she’d kissed it. Catching a goofy smile on his own face, he thought back to their evening at the bar, swapping stories and avoiding shop talk. 

Had he just gone on a date with Ainsley Hayes?

[jamiemallan]

RT @YoMoGlasgow: Well done to the staff at @the_brunny for their enthusiasm during Youth Achievement Training on Saturday and sharing to us what #respectmeans to them as part of #ABW2017 @_respectme_ https://t.co/1hX20Ymr8V

Well done to the staff at @the_brunny for their enthusiasm during Youth Achievement Training on Saturday and sharing to us what #respectmeans to them as part of #ABW2017 @_respectme_ http://pic.twitter.com/1hX20Ymr8V

— Young Movers (@YoMoGlasgow) November 20, 2017

via Twitter https://twitter.com/jamiemallan November 20, 2017 at 05:15PM

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

Leander aesthetic moodboard: favorite color edition

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

If We Only Tried, Chapter 2: You Might Really See Me

Finally returning to this Luke x Lorelai fic thanks to a special request by @actuallylukedanes. Happy birthday!! 

Summary: Spring cleaning and reminiscing, with a touch of mutual ogling. There were some things you just didn’t do with your close male friends, and getting trapped alone together without a change of clothes and then letting them use your shower was now officially on that list.

Crossposted on AO3, more notes there.

“Okay, what do you want to watch?”

Luke’s blank stare was priceless. “Whatever you want to watch is fine.”

“Come on, you’re not in the mood for anything specific?”

“No musicals.”

“Deal. But I mean really, Luke. We’ve got, like, all the movies. Cheesy, sappy, fight-y...pick your poison.”

He sighed. “Okay, suspense.”

“Ooh!” Lorelai’s face lit up. “Nice. Rory never goes for suspense first. Let’s see...”

She turned away to dig through a pile of DVDs until she pulled one out triumphantly. “Rear Window. What do you say?”

“Sounds good.”

“Okay.” She handed him the DVD. “Put this in, would you? I’ll get the popcorn.”

She disappeared while he shouted after her, facing the TV. “Popcorn? What popcorn? We searched your entire kitchen yesterday and there was no popcorn there.”

Offering him a grin, Lorelai returned, snacks in hand. “No, you’re right, there’s not. But I do have some, I forgot until just now. It was in my underwear drawer."

“Why was it in--” Luke held up his hands. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, and look on the bright side. Now it can be lunch and we’ll have the choice of pizza or burgers for dinner.”

“Yum.” He looked queasy, and she felt the briefest pang of guilt for not being the kind of person who stocked salad. Then she brushed it off, because who would eat the salad on all the normal days when Luke wasn’t trapped in her house with her?

After coaching him on the movie night rules, and pouting when he blatantly broke all of them, Lorelai settled in. It was weird watching a movie with Luke, Taciturn Guy--but also fun.

When he did have a comment, it was usually perceptive, with a heavy dose of snark. And then she would have to argue against his point, which made watching the movie take longer, but it was worth it to see him get all flustered.

She enjoyed him flustered.

“I still say it doesn’t make any sense,” Luke protested over the rolling credits. “First things first, if you think a guy is a murderer, you don’t just let him--”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lorelai cut him off as she left the couch. “I get it already. The psychological thriller isn’t perfectly logical. It’s a movie, Luke. It’s allowed to be a little ridiculous.”

“Not if it wants me to take it seriously.”

“Grump.”

“Hey, you asked.”

“Actually I didn’t,” she replied over her shoulder, foraging in the kitchen for more crackers. Hungry enough, they weren’t so bad.

“You invited my opinion when you wouldn’t shut up about yours,” he argued.

“Well, mine is right.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, what do you want to do now?” She stared out the kitchen window at the heaps of snow and shook her head. “It’s barely lunchtime.”

“Honestly, I’d like to start putting this place back together. All your piles of crap are giving me nightmares of you dead underneath them.”

“What do you mean?” She frowned at the table, covered in old dishes and infomercial cookery that she’d bought when Rory was little and never bothered to use again. “You want to help me spring clean?”

“Well, ‘want to’ might be overstating it a little. I want something to do, and I desperately want your house not to look like this anymore.” He waved a hand at the debris. “So, yeah, I guess.”

Snacking, she weighed the privacy violation of him sifting through her stuff against the benefits of it actually getting done, and didn’t have to think for long. After all, Luke was already in the middle of her life. What didn’t he know that could surprise him among her junk drawers?

“Okay, let’s do it. We can start here,” she decided. “The kitchen will be easy since it’s not very sentimental.”

“Really.” Luke didn’t sound convinced. “Not this set of baby spoons? Or the duck-shaped measuring cups?”

“Oh, well, those stay. Obviously.” She shot him a grin.

“See? Everything is sentimental with you.” He sighed and prepared to dive into battle over every chipped plate.

****

“Oh, Luke, look!” Lorelai pulled a sheet of blue poster-board out of the closet and handed it to him. “Isn’t it great?”

“It’s...something.” He peered at the careful lettering until he understood it. “Oh, hey, I know what this is.”

“Rory’s class project.” Lorelai sat on the floor next to the closet, and took it back from him to study. “How she agonized over this. Everything had to be just right. The marker color, the letter spacing, the straightness of the lines.”

He grinned. “Well, that’s Rory.”

“Yeah, but she was twelve!” Lorelai met his fond smile with her own. “And then she nearly had a breakdown in the last few weeks when she couldn’t get half the information she needed.”

“Yeah,” Luke said thoughtfully. “I remember.”

Surprised, Lorelai dragged her eyes away from the project. “You do?”

“Mm-hmm. She needed her dad’s side of the family tree and couldn’t get ahold of him. I never heard how you finally found him, by the way. She told me about the A she got on the project afterwards, that was it. What happened there?”

“Christopher,” Lorelai said simply, as though the name alone was an explanation.

“He’d dropped off the map again--he does that,” she pointed out. “Back then, we’d only just moved to Stars Hollow...we’d been living in Hartford, he’d visited us there, but not here. His number was disconnected. So we couldn’t expect to hear from him, we couldn’t go to him, and her assignment was to interview that side of her family just like mine.”

He leaned over to turn the family tree back around and appreciate how tidy--and complete--it was. “So, what did you do?”

“I went over his head.” Her smile was fierce, if a little brittle around the edges. “I went to my mother, who used her connections to get his parents’ information stretching way back. It was just easier.”

He knew how strained her relationship was with her parents in those days, and how nonexistent one was with Rory’s other grandparents. But he also knew it remained a raw wound in some ways, so he nodded as though the story were that simple. “That makes sense.”

Setting the paper aside, Lorelai smiled at him. “I can’t believe you remember that, though. What was it, seven years ago? And you barely knew Rory.”

“Maybe,” he replied easily. “But she made an impression. Just like her mother.”

Lorelai looked away. “Oh, now.”

“I mean it.” He wasn’t smirking anymore. “It was obvious as soon as you moved here, what a great kid Rory was, and what a great mom you had to be to make that happen.”

“No, Rory came out that way,” Lorelai argued. “I barely did a thing there.”

“Stop selling yourself short. Just imagine if Christopher had raised her,” he offered. “Or your mother.”

“Oh, god.” She grimaced. “I’m honestly not sure which picture is worse.” Visions of her little girl dying in a motorcycle crash or marrying a Stanford man at nineteen flashed before her eyes and made her shudder.

“See?”

“Yeah.” She accepted the implied compliment reluctantly. “Thanks, Luke.”

“Always happy to reintroduce reality to your world. Or try, anyway.” He blinked and looked past her to the stack of books at her side. “So how will you decide which of these to get rid of?”

“Oh, those stay.”

“All of them?”

“Yep.”

“You can’t possibly know that they all need to stay.”

“Why not?”

“You haven’t even looked at them.”

“Well, that’s the classics section. Celebrity memoirs, books on movies, kitschy books to put on the coffee table and dust off regularly. Every house needs those.”

“Okay, but when was the last time you read them?”

She quirked her lips at him, not answering, and that was all the answer he needed. “You have to get rid of some of these. Keep the books you actually use.”

Lorelai waved a hand. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ve got like twenty gardening books lying around here. We’ll get rid of all of those and call it even.”

“It doesn’t work that way.” He tried to rein in his exasperation. “You’re supposed to be decluttering. Which equals caring about what you use and don’t--not your relative amount of stuff.”

“Whoa, when did you become the Martha Stewart of home organization?” Lorelai poked him in the arm. “It’s fine if I don’t get rid of every useless thing I own. Let’s face it, that’s like eighty percent of what I own!”

“Fine.” On that, they could agree. “But if you’re not really going through your books, I’m going to leave you to it. Mind if I use your shower? That kitchen cabinet adventure was disgusting.”

“I had no idea the one under the sink was growing alien life!” She protested. “But yeah, go for it. I’ll be here.”

Flipping through a book about the Beatles that she was pretty sure she’d read to Rory as a baby, Lorelai realized that she’d forgotten to tell Luke where the towels were just as he was already in the shower. “Oh, crap.”

Also, whose clothes was he getting into after he cleaned himself up?

She headed upstairs, trying to be extra loud as a warning, before recognizing that the sound of the running water would mask her no matter what she did.

Lorelai knocked on her own bathroom door, feeling miserably awkward. There were some things you just didn’t do with your close male friends, and getting trapped alone together without a change of clothes and then letting them use your shower was now officially on that list.

“Hey, Luke?”

There was a pause, as though he wasn’t sure how to respond, any more than she was. “Yeah, hey.”

“Do you need something to wear? Or, I don’t know, a towel?”

“Found a towel,” he told her, his voice sounding strange through the door. “Hall closet. You think I don’t know where you keep stuff? I’ve fixed every part of your house, Lorelai.”

“Oh. Right.” Idiotic of her. “What about clothes?”

“I’m just going to get back in the ones I was wearing. It’s no big deal.”

“It’s a very big deal,” she told him as she heard the water turn off. “The ones you were wearing came through the snowstorm, and then survived bio-warfare in my kitchen. I can find you something else.”

She could almost hear his frown, but he agreed more quickly than she expected. “Yeah, okay. I guess that would be good.”

“Good.” Triumphant, she thought it over. Best chance of success, her stash of ex-boyfriend clothes. Something of Max’s might fit him. “I’ll be right back. Then we can wash yours.”

“Even better.” He knew exactly where she’d be looking for clothes that would fit him. He didn’t have to like it, but it was practical for the moment.

She was back in two minutes, not having much to choose from, prepared to shove the clothes through a crack in the door and avert her eyes. Luke exited the bathroom before she got the chance.

“Thanks,” he said, taking the clothes and giving them a once-over before stepping back inside the bathroom--with nothing but a towel draped low around his waist, still damp all over from the shower.

When he shut the door behind himself again, Lorelai slumped against the wall to fan herself. Wow. Just...wow. That was what was hiding under those flannel shirts all this time?

I mean, sure, she knew he cleaned up nice, but that was compared to his usual baseball cap-burger flipping style. This was a whole new kind of surprise.

What other surprises was Luke hiding?

****

“Next room?” Luke asked once he was done dressing, damp hair curling behind his ears in a way that made her stare just a little too long.

“Lorelai?”

“Sorry.” She smiled, and with a shake of her head, came back to earth. “You really want to dive back into my mess?”

“Sure. Let’s just aim for a less toxic room this time.” He shrugged at her expression. “What else have we got to do except clean and watch movies all day? Unlike you, I’m not used to sitting on my butt for hours watching fake people live their lives.”

“My god, Luke, so dramatic.” Lorelai led the way to her bedroom, then grinned when she realized he was no longer with her and turned to find him hesitating outside the doorway. “You can cross the threshold. I promise, no garlic or crosses to be found here.”

“So I’m a vampire now?” His familiar scowl returned, but he followed her in.

“Well, I wasn’t sure. Why else would you be standing outside like you needed an invitation?” She sat on the only empty corner of her bed and surveyed the space where she’d successfully pulled out half of all her clothes to sort and downsize them.

“Jeez, this is a mess,” Luke said, evading the question. “How much of this stuff do you even wear?”

“Dunno.” Lorelai beamed up at him, pulling a random shirt off the nearest pile. “But does that really matter when the clothes are as awesome as this?”

“It’s got a tongue on it.”

“It’s vintage.”

“It’s old and it has a tongue on it. There is no way you will ever wear that again.”

“Oh, yeah?” Lorelai reached up and began taking off her long-sleeve shirt.

“Hey--” He started to panic before realizing that she was wearing a tank top underneath. She tugged the t-shirt down, beaming triumphantly. Luke’s mouth went dry, despite how hideous the shirt was. It barely fit, clinging tightly to all of Lorelai’s curves.

“What? Look, I’m wearing it.” She crossed her arms, eyes smirking, waiting for his argument, but it didn’t come.

“Yeah.” He swallowed hard. “Yeah, you are.”

“Nothing?” She tilted her head curiously. “Nothing about the tongue, or the frayed seams, or how I’m too old for t-shirts?”

Luke shut his reaction down hard and fast, knowing how perceptive she was when she focused. “Nope. Who am I to judge your fashion choices, anyway?”

Delight spread over her face--not the response he was expecting. He watched it happen, bemused.

“What a great idea! You are exactly the person who should judge my fashion choices!” She nudged him toward the bed, getting him to sit with a gentle shove.

“Huh?”

“New game.” She removed the t-shirt, Luke watching as it landed on the floor, then grabbed a pile of clothes from her closet floor and dumped them at his feet. “I have to sort through all my clothes, right? Decide what to keep, what to toss. Well, how better to utilize your willingness to help than with the always-in-style fashion show?”

“Fashion show.” He wasn’t sure whether to be amused or scared. You never knew with Lorelai.

“Yeah.” She became more excited about the idea the more she thought about it. “It’ll be way more fun than just sorting and piling to infinity, and it’ll give you a real role in the process. Since we both know all you can really do is make comments I’ll ignore anyway, at least this way, I’m giving you a chance to justify them.”

“This is bizarre.”

“Is that a vote against?”

Resigned, Luke shook his head. “No. Just an observation.”

“Great!” She grabbed a handful of items from the top of the pile and headed for her bathroom. “Stay right there. I’ll be right back to strut the catwalk.”

The terrible French accent she added to her words made him chuckle and remember the fashion show she’d walked in with her mother a few years back. He was still grinning at the memory of that when she came back in, wearing a pair of low-rise black jeans, a blue sequined top, and a pink sweater with feathers along the neckline.

She jutted out one hip. “Well, what do you think?”

“First of all, ow--my eyes.” He grimaced, and she frowned.

“No reason to be mean, you know.”

“Not mean. Honest. That sweater looks like a Valentine’s Day goose was killed for the sake of a very poor life choice. And sequins make anybody look like they should be in Vegas.”

“Fine.” She took off the sweater, apparently indifferent to its fate, and let it join the vintage tee. “What about the jeans?”

Without the sweater, some of her stomach was left exposed between the sequined shirt and the jeans. No part of him could honestly protest that.

“Uh, they’re good. The jeans are fine.”

“Huh. Cool. Thanks.” Pleasantly surprised, Lorelai selected her next offerings and offered him a grin. “Okay, gimme a sec.”

She practically skipped off, delighted by their new pastime, completely oblivious to Luke's realization that he'd just set himself up for an afternoon of slow torture in the form of bare skin and clinging fabric.

“No problem,” he said to the empty room. “I’ll be right here.”

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

All The Days Ahead, Chapter 1: Listen To The Murmurs, Carry Them Inside You

A very special, dare I say maybe even epic, Mal x Simon gift for @actuallylukedanes​. One chapter per character POV, angst+fluff, with only the best of endings for my spouse on their day of birth.

Summary: It was supposed to be just another job on the outskirts of space. Instead, it changed everything.

“You’ll be careful?” Mal shoots him that overconfident, reckless grin. “Always am.” It isn’t reassuring.

Cross-posted on AO3; more notes can be found there.

River screams, high and long, sounding more like a siren than a girl. Preparing for the job on Mykan, most of the crew ignore it, though the sound carries easily from where she sits on her bed. 

So much blood. Screaming, and white light, and he goes...goes...blackbird rising and rings of fire, River thinks, shaking hard as Simon arrives. Her brother will always come when she calls, whether she likes it or not. The broken pieces of her, when she can tug them back together, want more for him than that. But he comes, because she screamed, and that must mean she shouldn’t be alone. 

She wishes she could explain that she’s never alone. She’ll never be alone again. That’s a comfort and a problem. His problem comes soon. She isn’t going to tell him. This time, her silence is a choice, held tight by tremblng lips and the stubborn chin that she got from their father.

He’s not alone either. Not anymore. Handholding at the dinner table and mouths that greet and part in shadows. Simon’s happy. 

He’ll be happier.

She keeps her silence.

She lets it happen. 

She’ll hear his screams next.

“River?” Simon is framing her face in his hands, searching her eyes with his own, attempting to find his little sister inside the chaos they made of her mind. 

She shakes her head, tries to pull away, tries to pull into herself. Turtle into shell. “No. No, no...Simon. I love you, Simon.”

Bewildered, he draws her close until the shaking stops. Until she stops.

Too late now. It’s coming. 

“River, mei-mei, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she tells him, taking in shallow, shuddering breaths. She means it, now. Nothing wrong, nothing broken, she can breathe. Here he comes.

“Hey, Doc, little sis okay?” Mal stands in the doorway, looking rough and ready as always. 

“I don’t know.” Simon’s helpless expression makes Mal want to fix whatever’s wrong, though he tries not to show it. He can’t fix what’s been done to the poor kid’s head. He’s pretty sure nobody can. 

He’ll never say that to Simon, deepening that wounded look in his eyes. But she knows. 

She agrees with him.

Simon passes the question to River, letting her go. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes don’t meet the captain’s when she nods. “Fine. Staying right here. Won’t make trouble.”

Mal frowns, confused, but doesn’t bother arguing. There’s work to be done. While he’s grown a mite fond of the prodigy, he doesn’t spend a lot of time trying to have sensical conversation with her. 

“Alright then. You stay put.” He turns away from her, toward Simon, and the two of them form a closed circle. A loop.

A ring.

It’s like she’s not even there. Is she?

“I’ll be back soon as I can,” the captain tells Simon. His hands roam over her brother’s shoulders, back, arms, aiming to reassure. “Just a simple swap, cargo for pay. Shouldn’t be more’n a few hours.”

Simon reads between the lines, the way she doesn’t have to, because for her the lines dissolve. Salt into water. Carrying out cargo, even to a remote part of the planet, should take an hour at most. “Why so long?”

“Our employer this time around is very...particular,” Mal decides on the word carefully. “Gotta go through screening, and follow a map that he won’t give us ‘til we land.”

“Oh.” Simon nods. Things are usually more straightforward on the border planets, but in his life that was, such requirements were commonplace. Hoops make insecure, powerful men feel safer. Insecure men are dangerous. “You’ll be careful?”

Mal shoots him that overconfident, reckless grin. “Always am.” It isn’t reassuring.

After double-checking his weapons and the rest of his pockets, Mal pulls Simon in for a long, slow kiss. They do that more now. 

River isn’t sure if it’s only in front of her--she can’t get the relevant data. Not accessible. But it makes the metal of the ship heat. It makes her blush sometimes, and Simon doesn’t notice. 

He should notice. But he won’t.

It’s wrong, not telling--little girl keeping secrets next to a wishing well. She loves the captain; he’s family, and Serenity is home. But Simon is...Simon. He’s all she has. Deep down, he is all that she has, and now he has someone else, spinning them off-balance. Tilted. 

When the gravitational force of a planet tilts, you fall.

And then death.

The two men pull back, hands entwined, and her brother brushes his lips against Mal’s cheek. “See you soon, then,” Simon says, smoothing down the front of the brown coat that brands him an outlaw.

Her brother and the outlaw. 

They exit together, leaving her curled up in the cacophonous silence of her room.

Her brother the outlaw.

She hears their feet clatter down the metal stairs, and knows that Simon will see the group off, even as he stays behind in case she needs him.

Her brother.

River squeezes her eyes shut and waits for it to be over. “I love you, Simon,” she whispers again. He can’t hear her; he’s already gone. 

Mal is almost gone, too.

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

Where You Go To Rest Your Bones

TWW one-shot, Josh x Sam, set after "Red Haven's on Fire." An early present for @actuallylukedanes. Happy almost-birthday, spouse of mine!

When Sam disappears after the special election, Josh follows to bring him back home. Unstoppable force meets immovable object...in close quarters with minimal clothes. 

“Sam had always been sunshine and lemonade and puppies, more than any other political operative Josh had ever known. Bitterness didn’t suit him.” 

Cross-posted on AO3; more notes can be found there.

“I called you seventeen times,” Josh said by way of greeting when Sam answered the door. He pushed past Sam into his apartment, squinting his eyes in the darkness. “God, it’s a cave in here.”

“California sun. Late night.” Sam rubbed at his gritty eyes, trying to see the clock over Josh’s shoulder. “Is it two in the morning?”

“Yeah,” Josh agreed. “Five in D.C.”

The weeks on the campaign trail had aged Sam since Josh saw him last. He sounded different in the dark. Weary. “You couldn’t have waited until a more reasonable hour?”

“Nah, why bother?”

“Common courtesy, for one thing.” Sam sighed and shut the door behind him, turning on the light. “Well, you’re here. What did you come to say that you couldn’t have left in a message during one of those seventeen phone calls?”

“You know what I came to say.”

“Oh, god, Josh.” He closed his eyes, willing himself back to the blissful oblivion of sleep. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a dream. “No.”

“No? Just like that?”

“Yes. Just like that. You had to know what my answer would be, after all those missed calls.”

Josh frowned, deep furrows creasing his forehead. “Well, actually I thought that flying all the way across the country might get me a little more consideration.”

Sam yawned, trying to blink the tired away. “You have frequent flyer miles.”

“Still.” Josh raised hopeful eyebrows at him. “There was turbulence.”

“Oh, well, since there was turbulence…nope, still no.” Sam dropped onto his couch, gesturing for Josh to sit. Clearly they were going to have this out.

“Come on, Sam.” Josh pulled out the cajoling tone that he knew usually worked. “What are you going to do with your life that’s better than this? Come home.”

He blinked. Home. That was how he thought of the White House, deep down, secretly. Of course Josh would get that. They were family, and home, and he’d failed them. He couldn’t go back there, take their pity and a job that Will Bailey was better suited for anyway. It was time to move on.

“The weather sucks,” he replied lightly, avoiding the issue. “The pay is even worse.”

“That's crap,” Josh countered evenly. “You don’t care about the money. You never have.”

Sam shrugged. Josh wasn’t wrong. He’d made enough at Gage Whitney to be secure for decades, anyhow. “Not the point.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“I’m not going back.”

Josh froze. He heard the finality in Sam’s voice and began to panic. “You’re not serious. I mean, sure, a little time to lick your wounds, a vacation, even…but not ever? You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Look at my face, Josh.”

He did, and his own crumpled. “Why not?”

“I don’t belong there anymore.”

“That’s idiotic. Of course you do. You write for the President, Sam. How many people can say that? How high up the food chain do you have to be to feel like you’re in the room?”

“I’m not talking about-” He cut himself off with a sigh. “That’s not what I mean. Why would I care about that?”

“Well, then-”

“I can’t help Toby the way he needs, Josh. That’s why I sent Will. I’ve been in the trenches too long and I can’t see past the weeds. I’m just…I’m so damn tired.”

Josh got up to sit next to him on the couch. “I get the feeling we’re not talking about my unexpected wake-up call now.”

“No.”

“Well, god, Sam, we’re all tired. I’m pretty sure Toby’s asleep on his feet half the time at this point. But we have to keep fighting. How else are we going to win?”

“Don’t you get it? That’s the whole point! I didn’t!”

His words echoed in the dimly lit room as the silence stretched out between them.

Stunned by Sam’s explosion, Josh ran a hand through his hair and studied him. “Of course you didn’t.”

His wounded eyes met Josh’s. “I thought I could. That’s what I went there to do. I believed it was possible.”

“So did I,” Josh admitted. “I mean, we’ve seen worse odds.”

Sam quirked an eyebrow his way.

“Okay, maybe not. But close. It’s not like President Bartlet was a shoo-in the first time around…or the second.”

“What was it you said? That you wouldn’t allow me to look like a fool?” He sounded sour, like lemonade before the sugar got added. Sam had always been sunshine and lemonade and puppies, more than any other political operative Josh had ever known. Bitterness didn’t suit him.

“You acted like I had a shot. I believed it because I believed you. Josh, I just got destroyed out there.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Josh reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “I wanted it to be true. I was wrong.”

“I saw the national coverage on Donna and Perez,” Sam told him, changing the subject, even though he knew it wouldn’t work.

“It’ll blow over. One silver lining from your campaign was definitely that disaster of a meeting. She’s been reading books about communists now and going on these long tirades about manifestos and bread. It’s hilarious. Don’t you care that you’re missing it?”

“Of course I miss it!” Sam was insulted by the question. “I’m not exactly enjoying my existential crisis. But I can’t leave here until I decide where I'm going next.”

“Make it easy on yourself and be who you’re supposed to be,” he suggested. “We can catch the same flight back, sit together.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Not happening.” Stretching, he opened the blackout curtains to the neon lights outside his window, giving Josh a better look at him.

He reached over to brush at Sam’s hair with his fingertips. It had grown out so much, Josh thought. He’d never let it get this long in D.C. “You look like a surfer,” he said with a grin.

“You’ve never seen a surfer in your life.”

“Well, you look like a surfer in a movie,” he decided, “all tan, with the hair. Do you even own a suit anymore?”

“It’s been a week since the election, Josh. You’re acting like you haven’t seen me in years.”

Maybe it felt that way, Josh admitted to himself. Despite his visible fatigue, Sam seemed more relaxed here: less Princeton, less anxious. Almost like losing the race had been a relief somehow. “Nothing but phone calls during the campaign,” he pointed out. “So, really, it’s been months. We make a great team, remember?”

“I appreciate the interest,” Sam said with finality, “I really do. But I'm out. I need a different way to accomplish my goals.”

“Hmm.” Josh had already moved on, in that way of his that left no room for argument but refused to cede the point. Sam gave up for the moment. It was 2 o’clock in the morning, after all.

“Can I go back to sleep now?”

“Fine.” Josh rubbed a hand over his hair, making it stick up even worse after the plane ride. “Do you have stuff I could borrow?”

“What do you mean?”

Josh looked down sheepishly. “I was in a hurry. I didn’t exactly book a hotel room, so I was hoping I could stay here. And maybe bum something off you to sleep in?”

Sam laughed. Hand it to Josh to show up unexpectedly, plan to stay without invitation, try to convince him to do what he least wanted to, and then ask to borrow his clothes.

Not that he was likely to say no to any of it. Josh knew him well.

He waved a tired hand toward the couch. “Go for it. I’ll be right back.”

Grabbing the first set of old pajamas he found, Sam returned from his room and tossed them at Josh. “They might be a little tight. You’re…bigger than me.”

Josh swallowed his smirk at that. “Thanks.” He started stripping before Sam was gone.

Sam flopped back in his own bed with the image of Josh shirtless emblazoned on his brain. There was no reason for it to be weird, he scolded himself as he fell asleep. Josh was shirtless all the time: to play basketball, getting ready for public events, even hanging out off-duty sometimes.

But being in California made everything feel slightly off-kilter, like a vacation from reality in the endless sunlight. Then there was his new freedom from responsibility–he could go anywhere now, choose just about any job. What did he want?

Swallowing, he closed his eyes against his brain’s automatic retort. He’d left those feelings for Josh behind a long time ago. Or at least he thought he had. Now, with Josh just one door away, he could feel the same ache, rushing back like it had never faded. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe he had been in denial for all these years.

He laid awake long after Josh started snoring, thinking about all the little moments that had led them here, and where he wanted to go next.

****

When he woke back up, Josh was already checking his messages. “When’s your flight back?” Sam asked over coffee.

“What flight?”

“Your flight back to D.C., Josh. When do you leave?”

“I haven’t got one.” Josh shrugged a shoulder casually. Too casually.

“What do you mean? They won't let you stay here for long, I know that much.”

“Doesn’t mean I booked my flight yet.” Josh sent him a smile. “Told you, I want to get adjacent seats.”

“Josh…”

“I’ve got two days.” He met Sam’s gaze. “Leo gave me two days for this ‘crazy attempt of mine,’ as he called it, before I have to get my ass back to the Oval.”

“Leo doesn’t think I’ll come back.” Sam nodded, oddly comforted by that. If Leo understood, maybe the others would too…and they would hate him less. “But he let you try anyway.”

“He knew I needed to.” Josh talked about leaving his post with the confidence of someone who sat exactly where he wanted to be, no matter the stress and chaos that surrounded him. Sam had always admired that, while he worried and hoped and was never quite sure if he was where he should be.

But California had taught him one very important lesson: wherever that place was, the West Wing wasn’t it anymore.

“Why did you need to?” He asked when he realized Josh had quietly been watching him think for the last few minutes.

“What kind of dumbass question is that?” Josh frowned, as though he expected better. “We need you, Sam. You belong with us, as part of the team. Everybody misses you.”

A hint of a smile played around his mouth. “Margaret and Bonnie the other day, you should have seen–”

“Everybody misses me.” Sam thought about that, too. It wasn’t ‘everybody’ who had been calling him, arguing the case for his return, keeping in touch. It was just Josh.

“Yeah.”

“Including you. You miss me. And…need me?”

Josh returned to frowning. “Yes.”

“Okay.” Sam nodded, more to himself than for Josh’s benefit.

“Okay, as in you’ll come back?”

He laughed. “No. Okay, as in okay, that’s good to know.”

“Come on, Sam,” Josh pleaded, sitting next to him on the bed. “What’s it going to take to bring you back with me? I’m not leaving until we figure this out.”

“There’s nothing you can do. I’m done as Deputy. I’m done with the West Wing.”

He softened his tone, guilt paining him. “It’s not because I won’t miss you guys too. I just can’t…I can’t go back there and shove myself in where I don’t fit.”

“You keep saying that but it doesn’t make sense,” Josh countered. “Of course you fit. What are you talking about?”

“I left the White House to run for an office that I lost spectacularly. I’m a national joke, Josh. The last thing the President needs is that in his news cycle. Or tarnishing all the ones that come after.”

He winced, remembering. “And god, Toby. He came back here for me, even after I abandoned him. How could I expect him to ever work with me again? You should’ve seen the way he looked at me when I left, Josh. It was like I’d punched his mother in the face.”

“That’s…an oddly specific metaphor,” Josh replied with a smirk. “Toby’s a big boy, Sam. He survived without you. But he would take you back in a heartbeat if you let him. I know he would."

Josh held up a hand. "Just--think about it. Okay? Also, can I use your couch as an office?"

Sam nodded, grateful for a break from the sales pitch. He fixed them both bagels for breakfast.

****

Josh spent the day in his apartment, putting out fires over the phone like he'd never left Washington, still wearing Sam’s clothes. The way he sprawled out on the couch in the shorts and threadbare t-shirt made Sam feel like a moron–or a hormonal teenager. Not that the two were very different.

He took his own phone call, the one he was expecting, while Josh was in the shower, and was glad for the coincidental privacy.

Maybe it would be better this way. Maybe this could solve his problem. Of course, Josh was a separate problem, an unsolvable one. “Amy’s back,” he dropped casually into their conversation while they dug into their delivered lunches. “Mrs. Bartlet hired her as Chief of Staff.”

“Huh.” Sam nodded, adding this to the mix. “She’ll be great at it.” And back in Josh’s orbit.

“Yeah. She’s going to give us hell,” Josh said, looking mildly nauseous. “But it was kind of my idea, so I have only myself to blame, really.”

“What do you mean?”

Josh told him the story, and he couldn’t help laughing–it was just so Josh. “You’re not planning to try again with her, are you?” he found himself asking, against his better judgement.

Josh was surprised, but recovered quickly. “No. No, I think that would be a pretty stupid idea. Why?”

“Just curious. She’s…and you…” He gestured vaguely. “I know what you’re like with her around, and I wouldn’t want to see you get all torn up again.”

“Yeah. No, we’re on strictly professional terms these days. She was a big help on your campaign,” Josh pointed out.

“I still can’t believe you held back your budget,” Sam told him, spearing salad with his fork. “You shouldn’t have done that when I was so thoroughly screwed anyway.”

“The alternative was being part of the mob that was actively screwing you,” Josh argued. “No way in hell we were we going to do that instead.”

“Should’ve,” Sam mumbled around his lunch.

“Why?”

He swallowed. “Because the federal budget is more important than one congressional campaign, and so is the President’s ability to work.”

Josh shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t matter now.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Why?”

“Because you had Will Bailey lying to me–which means you knew I wouldn’t go for it. And you were right! I would never have been in favor of your idiotic attempt to protect me.”

Josh’s stare was much too intense for the casual lunch they were enjoying. It made the air in Sam’s lungs hitch for a moment.

“Maybe that’s why I kept it from you then. Idiotic or not–and I say not–I have every right to try and do what I think is best for the President…and to try and look out for you.”

“Yeah? When did that happen?”

Exasperated, Josh pushed up from the table. His plate rattled underneath his fork. “God, Sam, I don’t know. When you stopped me from perjuring myself over Leo’s rehab? When you and Lisa broke up and you could barely get out of bed? Two seconds after we met at that party, when all I wanted to do was reach over, grab you and do this?”

And just like that, Josh was in his space, warm hands behind his neck, fingers trailing up into his hair, kissing him like there would be no tomorrow.

Maybe there wouldn’t be, Sam realized, dazed, as Josh pulled back. This could be the last time they saw each other for years. He could find work here, or in New York, maybe, and Josh would never leave Washington–given the nature of Josh Lyman, he would probably be buried there. They’d bump into each other at a function someday, a Democratic fundraiser where he got his name put on a plaque and didn’t even expect to see Joshua Lyman in attendance, and be complete strangers.

How depressing would that be? How utterly depressing, and heart-wrenching, to look back and know it ended this way?

Well, he decided, since he refused to go and Josh couldn’t stay, they should make the most of the day they had. It didn’t matter that they’d never spoken about the way they sometimes looked at each other, or a night of stolen kisses when they were drunk and stupid and too young to be worried about the political grapevine yet.

What mattered was Josh’s warm breath on his cheek, giving him the space to decide for himself, and broad hands moving down the curve of his back. “Maybe it’s not about my rights at all,” Josh added quietly. “I might just be tired of not doing that.”

Nodding, even though Josh was too close to see it, Sam prepared to enjoy Josh’s surprise–because he knew what Josh expected, and it wasn’t for him to tug him closer and kiss him back.

Josh searched his eyes until he found what he was looking for, then closed his own and let himself get lost. When his tongue found Sam’s, the contact was more intense than when they were kids, his flavor deeper and his touch more heated.

Sam nipped at his bottom lip and he hissed in a breath, oversensitive. He’d done his best to bury these feelings for his best friend, but they’d never gone away, and now it was almost too much, being able to steep himself in Sam’s exquisite taste and scent.

“Wow,” Sam whispered against his lips before deepening the kiss. It was Josh who moaned, and Sam who gripped his arms until his fingernails left little half-moon marks behind, but both of them had to break away for air at the same moment.

“Wow,” Josh agreed, running a shaky hand through his hair. What was he doing? This wasn’t why he'd come here. Of course he missed Sam, desperately some days, but this was purely a business trip. How could he expect him to listen if Sam thought he'd really come just to get him into bed or something? He had to shut it back down.

Josh was trying his best to talk himself back to sanity when Sam met his eyes, those bright, impossibly blue ones like windows he could see right through, and it was as powerful as gravity–all his effort out the window, Sam standing up as they crashed together for a rougher, more forceful kiss.

“Oh, god, I have to–” Josh’s hands were under his ratty sweatshirt, tracing a hot path wherever they touched.

Sam took his t-shirt back, tugging it up over Josh’s head. “That’s better,” he declared, looking his fill without guilt this time.

“Hmm?” Josh’s fingers were toying with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“It drove me crazy last night, seeing you change into my shirt. I don’t know why,” he added, letting Josh pull him closer again. “I see you shirtless all the time. But it tripped something in my brain.”

“Well, whatever it was, I like it.” Josh kissed him, letting their lips meet slowly, softly, so that the heat building was a painful throb that threatened to burn them both up.

When Sam couldn’t stand it any longer, he gripped Josh’s hips, hard, and and enjoyed the sound he made low in his throat. After a few bruising kisses along Josh’s neck, he led him by the hand to his bedroom, where neither of them noticed or cared that the window was open to the breeze.

****

“I got an offer from Gage Whitney,” Sam confessed as they lay tangled up in the sheets later that afternoon.

“You did?” Josh sat up a little to stare at him. “When?”

“This morning. I wanted to give it some time, think about it first, before telling you.”

“Oh.” Josh laid back down, voice flat. “Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.”

“But then I couldn’t. Which you’ll notice, as I’m telling you now, about four hours later.”

“Okay…” With his eyes closed, Josh felt Sam shift his way, settling against his bare chest. He leaned in automatically but didn’t open his eyes.

“I’m going to take the offer,” Sam told him quietly.

Josh swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah. I figured.”

“I can’t go back,” Sam said, reminding Josh of the dark hour when he’d first arrived. So much had changed since that morning and yet here they were, right where they’d started.

“So it’s the private sector then.” There was just a hint of disapproval in Josh’s tone that he couldn’t mask.

“I can’t go back,” Sam repeated, deeply sincere the way Josh loved most, “even more now. It’s not just about the job, Josh. Think about it. What do you want?”

He opened his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“What I’m saying is, I want a career where I can do good, absolutely…maybe even affect change from the inside. Gage Whitney is willing to give me a title bump and more responsibility–turns out getting a man elected President looks good on a resume. But outside of my ambitions, there’s also this.”

He took Josh’s hand. “Us.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Sam grinned. “The whole dating thing will be a scandal. But at least if I’m out of the West Wing, it won’t be against the rules. I’d rather you not get, you know, fired or anything.”

“No way I’d get fired,” Josh scoffed. Then he kissed Sam’s fingers. “Point taken, though. It’d kill the President in the media for weeks, if not longer.”

“So, see? I’ve always been a good lawyer. I’ll do that. You’ll fight with politicians. And we’ll have this, in the meantime.”

“I like this,” Josh murmured against his mouth.

“Me too.”

“And you are a good lawyer.”

“Thank you.”

“Won’t you miss it, though?”

“Oh, only every day.” Sam sighed, thinking about their first few years in the White House. It was crazy, but glorious. “Maybe I could come meet you for lunch occasionally.”

“I’m sure we could arrange that.”

“They’re letting me pick my location. Maybe if I land at the D.C. branch of Gage Whitney, we could share an apartment.”

Josh smiled. “Maybe…”

“I mean, you’re a slob, but I think I could stand it.”

“I’m not a slob, I’ve just got too much to do to worry about the little stuff.”

“The little stuff is important,” Sam argued. “If you don’t shut the toothpaste tube all the way, it leaks. Socks belong in a drawer.”

“You’re a control freak.”

“And there is also that,” Sam agreed as they cuddled. “Still…it could be nice.”

“Very.”

“You know what else is nice?”

“What?”

“This.”

“No argument here.” Josh closed his eyes and did the math. Thirty-four more hours until he was expected back. Practically an eternity, when it came to a vacation of sorts with Sam lying next to him.

He turned his most charming grin Sam’s way. “So, you’ll need to meet with somebody at Gage Whitney, right? To seal the deal.”

“Yeah…” Josh’s tone was innocent; his smile anything but.

“I’ve still got a ticket to buy. How about we fly home together? We can get adjacent seats.”

Sam’s laughter shook the bed and warmed Josh’s chest.

He was already home.

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

okay i’ve got two more official hours to post things for @actuallylukedanes‘s birthday (though the fic is going to keep coming long past that tbh), and more importantly the house all to myself all night, possibly even all of tomorrow. (so quiet. too quiet! i will never turn the music off!) so during writing breaks i may be here way too much. you have been warned. :)

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

April 29, 2017 - happy birthday to the best spouse of all the spouses, @actuallylukedanes!