ANOTHER SLICE OF CHEESE
Author: Dis
Rating: PG
Spoilers... All Mallory episodes, The Crackpots and These Women, and
Somebody's Going to Emergency...
Summary: Sam and Josh have a little fun, and they get a little
punishment
Author's Notes: To the Sirens, who encourage me to write. This
story has got definite Sam/Mal, but other than that I'm not promising
anything good. (The underlying statement there is that if it's
Sam/Mal, then it has to be good. *g*) This is also dedicated to the
DC 2002 project. I had this idea when I was completely bumming about
having to go into my mother's high school and help her set up the
labs, so if you don't like the story, you should blame it on her.
Special thanks to Flip, the bestest online pal ever to log on. The
idea was developed when we sat there joking about it... see Flip? You
shouldn't joke about things like this... it encourages me to write!
Feedback: I'm considering perhaps doing a sequel, so let me know one
way or the other... it'd really help here. *g*
Sam Seaborn looked at his best friend and partner in
crime. "Well?" he asked expectantly.
Josh surveyed the object in front of them. "Yeah, we're
good," he replied.
"Good," Sam grinned.
"But I still say we should make a horse," Josh started out,
but was interrupted by Sam's groan.
"Josh. No horse. It is three AM. We have staff in five
hours. We have to get there to put this in the room before anyone
sees us. I am *not* taking the time to sculpt a horse out of
*cheese*." Sam fixed his friend with a hard stare.
"Fine," Josh relented. "But no one's gonna know who it is."
"Who do we talk about every year on Big Block of Cheese Day?"
"Andrew Jackson."
"Who had a two ton block of cheese in the foyer of the White
House?"
"Andrew Jackson."
"Whose administration does Leo McGarry want model Big Block
of Cheese Day after?"
"Andrew Jackson's."
"When you see a hunk of cheese, what's the first thing that
comes to mind?"
"I'm lactose intolerant."
"You're a pain the a—"
"Fine, fine! No horse!" Josh threw up his hands in
defeat. "So, you're gonna bring this in tomorrow morning?"
"Me? Me? How did this go from us to me?"
"That was my amazingly strategic political mind working
overtime to get me what I wanted... namely, another hour's sleep.
Thanks, man, you're the best. Can't wait to see the look on Leo's
face... they're all gonna roll laughing." With that, Josh grabbed his
jacket and was out the door. Sam let out a sigh and looked back to
the cheese sculpture of Andrew Jackson. Josh was right; if everyone
in the room hadn't known all about Big Block of Cheese Day and Leo's
obsession with Andrew Jackson, there was no way this statue would be
recognizable. Of course, neither of then were hired to be
sculptors. Picking up the...well, it was a stretch to call it anything
more than a stick figure with a sword, he grabbed his own coat and
left the office to get a few hours shut eye.
~*~*~*~
The next morning C.J. walked into the Roosevelt Room, looked
up from the conversation she was having with Toby, and started
laughing. Toby, who was behind her when she suddenly stopped,
grumbled at her, "C.J. you need to lay off the coffee."
Unable to speak, C.J. merely stepped aside and pointed at the
cheese...thing on the middle on the conference table. At the base,
there was a little placard that read, "Andrew Jackson, in cheese,
Josh Lyman." Even Toby afforded himself a chuckle when he saw it.
"I just can't believe he was stupid enough to sign it,
though," he muttered to C.J.
"This is *Josh* we're talking about," she reminded him. Toby
merely nodded his consent. Evidently the Deputy Chief of Staff *was*
that stupid. Shaking his head, he took his place across the table
from C.J.
Soon after other members of the Senior Staff and a few
assistants piled in. When Sam walked in, he glanced around, looking
for both Josh and to see if anyone else suspected anything other than
Josh being Josh. To his relief, the answers to both questions seemed
to be negative.
Leo stopped in Josh's office. "Hey," he said.
Josh looked up and grinned at his boss. "Good morning Leo!"
"Aren't we chipper this morning," Leo replied, not caring all
that much. "You coming to staff?"
"Of course I am!" He picked up a few folders and followed
Leo out of the office and over to the Roosevelt Room. He had wanted
to be one of the first in to see the reaction, but he was going to
have live with watching them all through staff, while each of them
tried to figure out who the mystery sculptor could have been. This
was definitely one of his better ideas, he thought. Not watching
where he was walking, he walked straight into Leo, who had come to a
short stop at the entrance of the room.
Leo slowly took one step forward and turned to glare at
Josh. "What the hell is this?"
"I'm sorry, Leo. I wasn't watching where I was going..." he
replied, confused as to why Leo was so upset over it.
"I work very hard on that speech, fine-tuning it each year to
best inspire you people to do what we were sent here to do! You
people don't realize what a difference that one day a year makes in
the polls... we get the support of the crazy amateurs and the lunatic
mapmakers all in one day, just by *acting* interested! I don't give
a damn about shark cartilage either, but that person who made it to
the West Wing of the White House for a meeting will definitely vote
for us in November because we took the time to care for him. You are
reassuring yourself of a job for four more years... that is, if you
even make it to re-election!"
During this scolding, Josh dared to look at the table. To
his horror, he saw his own handwriting and signature proclaiming the
cheese statue to be his. With a fierce glare, he turned to glower at
his now former best friend. Sam, on the other hand, was doing a fine
job of examining his pen and trying to ignore the eyeballs boring a
hole in the back of his neck.
"It.—it was just a joke Leo... we did it to be funny. We
didn't mean any disrespect," Josh said, trying to emphasize the `we'.
"We? Who the hell else?"
"Sam!" Josh exclaimed, finally able to get a little
revenge. He noted with satisfaction Sam's head snap up, but was
surprised to see a look of innocence and shock on the face of the co-
conspirator.
Leo snorted. "I don't know why he's friends with you, Josh.
If I were him I would have sent you shipping to the South Pacific
long ago. I must admit though, I am a little surprised at your
audacity in signing your own name." Leo glared around the room, and
noticed the other staffers trying not to laugh. "You're all on my
list now." Leo smiled in satisfaction at the sudden groaning heard
throughout the room. "Just remember to thank Josh for this."
~*~*~*~*~
About a week later, Margaret walked in and dropped a memo on
Sam's desk.
"What's this?" he asked the tall redhead.
"Leo's calling it, `Another Slice of Cheese'. He's having a
meeting in a half an hour to explain the assignments."
Sam tried not to groan. "He's making us do Big Block of
Cheese Day twice a year from now on?"
Margaret shook her head. "Oh no. This is much different."
She grinned, and Sam could almost swear it was an evil grin. He just
put his head down on the desk and decided to hope the meeting never
came.
~*~*~*~*~
Back at her desk, Margaret was sorting through the
assignments. Next to the file folders, she had a hat, and the names
of each senior staffer would was going to be assigned a `Slice of
Cheese' assignment. Picking a name out of a hat, she wrote that
staffer's name on the top of the folder. "Hm," she said with a
grin. So Toby would be going out and helping at a local fair for
underprivileged kids. "I want pictures if he's assigned to be the
clown," she muttered to herself. Just then Leo's door opened. She
quickly put the hat under the table.
"Did you assign Josh to anything yet?" he asked. Margaret
just shook her head. "Good," he continued. "Then this is for him."
He handed her a folder and went back inside.
Looking inside at the assignment, Margaret had to put her
hand over her mouth to keep her from laughing out loud. Josh was
assigned to help pick up all the garbage and clean graffiti in the U
Street Corridor. "Maybe I can get him to get me a bowl of Ben's
Chili," she wondered aloud as she wrote Josh's name on the folder.
The phone rang, and Margaret answered it absently, suddenly
hungry for Ben's world famous Chili. "Leo McGarry's office."
"Hey Margaret," a familiar voice responded.
"Hi Mal, how are you?" she asked warmly.
"I'm good thanks. How are you?"
"Doing well. You want to talk to your father?"
"Actually... I wanted to talk to you. Dad told me about the
newest addition to the Cheese Day thing. Are you the one doling out
the assignments?"
"Yeah," she grinned. "Your father definitely could be
brought up for cruel and unusual punishment."
"Especially for one particular speechwriter..." Mal drifted off.
"Why? Does he have a special assignment for Sam?" Margaret
started looking, fairly sure she had only gotten a special folder for
Josh.
"No. I do."
Margaret chuckled. "Well, tempting as that sounds, I don't
really want to get in the middle of you and Sam..."
"Oh, you would just be matching the appropriate staffer with
the appropriate assignment," Mallory said, quoting her
father. "There should be a file there with the assignment to go to
Clearlake. Can you make sure that Sam gets that?"
"Did you ask for that assignment to be put in?"
"Actually, I had nothing to do with it. I wasn't even going
to be here on Saturday. But Jeannie, another teacher was, and she
was the one who had put the request in and told me about it. Now it
turns out she's going away for the weekend, and she asked me to cover
this for her. I told her I would... and I want to make sure I get the
most cooperative member of Senior Staff."
"And that wouldn't be C.J.?"
"I don't have the power over C.J. that I have over Sam."
"Oohh," Margaret said with a grin. "Well, I never was one to
get in the way of a blossoming romance..."
"So you'll do it?" Mallory asked, excited.
"Sure."
"Thank you so much Margaret! And oh, uhm, one more thing...
would it be possible not to mention this to my father?"
Margaret laughed. "You got it Mal. You'll see Sam at
Clearlake on Saturday."
~*~*~*~*~
Underneath Leo's speech about the reason this administration
was put in office, which was namely to serve those who most needed
the government's help, there was a steady chorus of groans. On one
side of the table Josh alternated between groaning the loudest and
shooting death looks at Sam. Sam, on the other hand was so
completely shocked by his assignment that he was unable to do
anything other than stare at what was written in the file in front of
him:
Assignment: Assist teachers in cleaning out the classrooms
for the end of the year and helping to move the equipment needed for
next year.
Location: Clearlake Elementary School
Report to: Mallory O'Brien, Rm. 204
He wanted to just cry. How did Leo know that he had been in
on it? How was he being punished so cruelly? He didn't get a
lecture... he just had to spend a day with the woman who most detested
him in this world. Well, ok, he knew that wasn't true. But he also
knew how pissed Mallory was... pissed enough to date a hockey player.
If they were moving around equipment, chances are she would bring him
along to help with the heavy stuff. "Well, this is bad on so many
levels," he murmured softly to himself.
"I'm sorry Sam, what did you say?" Leo asked sharply.
Sam just looked up at his boss silently, asking him `why'
with his eyes. He couldn't even speak. He felt like he had just
been thrown to the wolves.
Leo just stared back, wondering what was so horrible with
Sam's assignment that he had turned so pale, or looked so upset. He
made a mental note to ask Margaret what Sam was going to be doing
this weekend on his assignment.
~*~*~*~*~
Sam went through the rest of the week completely unlike his
normal self. He was quiet and withdrawn. Toby started to ask him
about it once, but realized he really didn't want to hear a big sob
story about Sam's teddy bear, or whatever it was that had gotten him
so upset. C.J. asked once, and after she had been given a
sullen, "Nothing," decided there was nothing more she could do. Josh
was still completely pissed at Sam for framing him.
Leo noticed all this. He kept meaning to ask Sam what was
wrong, but at the end of every meeting, something else would come up
that required his complete attention.
And so the week passed, Sam completely dreading his
assignment for Saturday. He thought more than once about quitting.
After all, it was obvious that his boss hated him. And so did Josh,
but that was just Josh's tough luck. That will serve Josh right for
blaming him for the fire. Glancing up at the clock, Sam saw that it
was 9pm on Friday. It was time to go home. He slowly got up and
dragged himself out of the office, suddenly wondering if in Josh's
string theory, if you could pull out one piece of string and stop
that event from occurring.
~*~*~*~*~
Mallory was lying in bed, completely restless. Although she
hated to admit it to herself, she was very excited about the
following morning. The last time she had seen Sam, at the Kennedy
Center, all the feelings she thought had managed to suppress came
pouring over her again. She had it bad for Sam Seaborn. And as much
as she liked to think he would be an awful guy to date, she had to
admit that those gentle loving eyes told her differently each time.
She loved the way he would argue with her. She loved his
absolute passion for what he did, his sense of perfectionism with
something as insignificant as a birthday card—message, she corrected
herself in her head. "No matter what I do, I just can't stop
thinking about him," she told her stuffed animal, Leonard the Liberal
Lion.
With a sigh, and realizing that sleep was not coming anytime
soon, she rolled over and snapped on the radio. Rotating through all
of her favorite stations, she found that they were all playing sappy
love songs. She sighed again and snapped the radio off. "I would
count sheep, but I'm half afraid they'd turn into Sam's jumping a
fence." The thought made her chuckle, and she relaxed a bit, enough
to fall into a light, yet dream-filled sleep.
~*~*~*~*~
"Steve! Could you *please* just move the scales where I
asked?" Mallory shouted Saturday morning to the teacher who was
moving the scales everywhere *but* where she asked. "I'm never
letting Jeannie con me into this again," she muttered.
"Con you into what?" Mal spun around at the familiar voice,
and worked very hard not to grin.
"Nice of you to show up," she commented.
"I'm sorry. I was.. uh... polishing a speech," Sam stammered.
Actually, what he was doing was driving to the White House, ready to
tell them he quit. He couldn't stand the idea of working with people
who hated him so much that they found this situation amusing. But he
just couldn't go through with it. He figured he would just suffer
through this one day and be done with it. After that, he never had
to see her again.
"Y'know, you're a crappy liar, Sam." She gazed at him
intently. He not only lied like crap, but he looked it, as well.
But there was something else, something more to it than that. He
looked... well, he looked like this was the last place on earth he
wanted to be. He looked pretty miserable. She pulled him off to the
side. "Y'know, we're doing pretty well here right now. You really
don't need to stay. Why don't you go home, take a Saturday off for a
change? When my father asks I'll tell him you were here the whole
day." When she saw the look on his face, she lightly placed her hand
on his arm. "Really. It's ok. Go home."
For an entire week Sam had been stressing out about this day,
and how much his coworkers must hate him in order to give him this
assignment. Now, Mallory, who, if you asked *anyone* would tell you
how much she hated Sam, was trying to let him off the hook? He
didn't buy it. Not for a second. And what's more, he had had it
with people screwing with his head.
"Y'know what? Don't do me any *favors*," he told her
harshly. "I'm so sick of being the butt of everyone's jokes. So sue
me. I screwed up. Doesn't everyone? I should have called, Mal, I
see that now. But I didn't. And I'm sorry. And one day you are
going to have to forgive me for that, because, quite honestly, it's
*sick* they way you people use that just screw with me. And yeah.
I'll leave. But it's only to drive straight to the White House and
type up my resignation." With that, he turned on his heel, shaking
his head and muttering to himself.
Mallory stood there, dumbfounded. She had no idea what just
happened. She was trying to be nice. She thought that he must have
given up on her. And, she had realized sadly, she deserved it. But...
she never meant for this to happen... Sam was halfway across the room
before she realized he was really leaving, and she had better do
something. "Sam, wait!" She yelled, rushing after him.
"Sorry, Mallory. Too little, too late." He wanted to slow
down, but he didn't. He just couldn't subject himself to the pain of
rejection, again.
Mal caught up with him just as he reached the door. She
grabbed onto his arm, and with all the strength she had, she spun him
around to face her. "No. I listened to you, now you listen to me.
I was trying to be nice. I had no intention of screwing you over.
You looked like this was the last place you wanted to be. I asked
Margaret to give you this assignment because I wanted to have an
excuse to see you. If you are over me, then that's fine, I'll have
to learn to deal. But I can't stand the thought of you walking out
that door thinking I was trying to screw you. That was honestly the
last thing on my mind." She sighed sadly. "Really. Go if you want...
but don't quit. Please. They need you. I will cover for you."
Sam merely stared at her, completely uncertain as to what to
say. He tried to process everything she had just told him.
"You—you asked Margaret to give me this assignment?" He
asked, trying not to sound hopeful at the prospect.
She nodded. "Yeah. And..." She shrugged. "Never mind."
"No, wait. What?"
"And even though it didn't say it on the assignment sheet, I
was kinda hoping we could go to dinner afterwards."
"All the teachers?"
"No." She rolled her eyes. He could be really dense when he
wanted to be.
"You mean... you and me?"
"Yeah. You and *I*, oh speechwriter."
He grinned in spite of himself. "Yeah. You and I."
"Was that a yeah to the grammar, or a yeah to the dinner?"
His smile broadened. "Both."
Mallory let out a breath she didn't realize she had been
holding. "Well, good then."
"But..."
"But?" She raised her eyebrows. There were conditions to her
taking him out to dinner?
"But I need to know that I'm not going to be sitting in my
office heartbroken again."
"Well, if you just lay off the call girls, we shouldn't have
a problem."
"I'm serious, Mallory. I'm not saying this relationship has
to work out, or that it has to be a forever, all-or-nothing kind of
deal. I'm saying... I'm saying... just don't shut me out again. When I
make a mistake, let me know. I don't want to ruin this before it
gets started, but I'm not about to be played."
Mallory looked up to see soft blue eyes that were trying to
forget the pain she had caused. "I promise," she told him
quietly. "And I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For everything. For every time I've hurt you. I just... I
guess I was trying to protect my own heart, I guess." She tried not
to roll her eyes at the sappy sentimentality of it all. It wasn't
that she was being sarcastic; she meant what she was saying. But at
the same time she didn't feel all that comfortable expressing her
emotions.
Sam smiled at her. "And I'm sorry too."
"What are you sorry for?"
"Well... namely... the picture and the not calling thing... but
still y'know... I was really the one that was in trouble..." Sam stopped
when Mallory playfully swatted at his arm.
"Let's not open that can of worms again, ok?"
"You got it." With the grin that could make Mallory's heart
melt, he turned at started walking out.
"Where do you think you're going, Skipper?"
"Home. You said I should take a Saturday off."
"Get back in here," she ordered, but with a smile.
He turned to give her an angelic look. "I don't get my vacation now?"
"Do you still want dinner?"
He nodded emphatically. "I'll be back to pick you up at six."
"No work, no food."
"But Mal..." he started whining.
"I think there's a lab full of test tubes for you to clean."
"Oh yeah?" Mal nodded. "Well, what are *you* gonna be doing?"
Mallory looked around the room. "Supervising."
"Oh no. I'm not slaving over some test tubes while you are sipping
coffee making sure everyone does their work."
Mallory walked towards him. Stopping just short of him, she looped
her fingers in the loops for his buckle on his jeans. "You go start
like a good boy," she said, her face slowly nearing his. Sam watched
her expectantly. "And I'll be in just as soon as I get all the rest
of the teachers settled." With a kiss on the cheek she pulled back
from him. "Go. Room 204."
"You're a tease, you know that?" He called to her already retreating
figure. She just looked at him and blew him a kiss over her
shoulder, never breaking her stride.
Sam grinned and turned to go upstairs. He found Room 204 and started
scrubbing quickly. After all, if he had the test tubes finished
before she got there, they would just have to think of other things
to do. Maybe today wasn't going to be all that bad, after all.
TBC
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