Down The Rabbit Hole

by: Abigale

Character(s): Josh, Sam, Toby
Category(s): Humor
Rating: YTEEN
Summary: Toby and Josh guide Sam through a labyrinth.

"I don't appreciate that, Josh. You have no idea how much I've
tortured him this week." Sam's hands were jammed in his pockets as he and Josh ambled towards the mess hall. Josh had been away four days, accompanying the President and CJ on a blitz through six western states looking at power utilities, and Sam was incredibly relieved he was back.

Josh had been on Air Force One for four days with the President, and was incredibly relieved to *be* back. "Oh, I know. Trust me, after the cat stuff, he was ready to blow. But you got his attention with the sperm." Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Josh quickly held up a commanding hand. "I *really* don't want to talk about it again. Besides, whatever happened to you purging all sexual imagery before going to bed?"

Color rising to his cheeks, Sam glanced apprehensively at Josh. "Do you have any idea how much sexual imagery there is around us?"

"Us?" Josh's eyes nervously darted around the empty hallway.

"No, not *us,* I'm talking about around us," Sam exclaimed, dragging his hands from his pockets for emphasis. "It's unavoidable. And, that's coming from someone who's been trying to avoid it."

"Ya know..." Josh had been pretty sure he didn't want to go here again, but to his way of thinking he considered it a practical benefit of Ambien induced dreams. "I just don't know why you can't relax and enjoy this little side effect. Work it to your advantage some. If these dreams are as explosively vivid as you say - "

"I'm going to ignore your really provocative, and frankly tasteless choice of words there..." Sam held open the door to the mess for Josh, shaking his head mildly.

"Enjoy it, man! Give in and allow yourself to, you know..." wiggling his eyebrows, Josh swaggered through.

Sam's voice was low and gravelly now that they were in the populated public area. "Josh. Abby Bartlet. Do I have to remind you?" he hissed, grabbing a container of yogurt and heading for the fresh fruit.

Clearly, from the stricken look on his face, Josh had forgotten about that. Forgotten that, although Sam could sometimes influence his drug saturated subconscious apparitions by what he watched or thought of right before falling asleep, he really had no control over them whatsoever. Which had led to the unfortunate appearance of Abigail Bartlet in a particularly sweaty dream right after they had come to the White House. Leading Sam to declare the entire subject of sex one hundred percent off limits when he was so susceptible to the heightened intensity he experienced while taking the pills.

And yet, there were the sperm...

Accepting a bowl of steaming minestrone from the food service worker, Josh contemplated bringing up the subject they had briefly covered in a static riddled phone call on Tuesday, the day following Night Two of Sam's attempt to reconstruct his shattered sleep cycle. Though truth be told, he'd heard from CJ that Toby had handled it all quite deftly, and Josh loathed stepping on his toes. But then what were friends for...?

"So, about the sperm."

Sam's head snapped up from examining the nectarine in his hand and he took two quick steps to his left, grabbing a bottle of water. "He's buying," he informed the cashier and moved away to find as secluded a table as possible.

By the time Josh joined him, the color had left Sam's cheeks, and he had visually swept the area quite thoroughly.

"So, about the sperm." Josh, folding himself into a chair.

"That wasn't about sex. And I gotta tell you, Josh, I just know this is going to come back and haunt me tonight." Sam sounded as grumpy as he looked.

Well, now Josh really wanted to know. "How is sperm not about sex?"

"When it's about the *sperm!*" Sam snapped. Risking a quick glance at Josh's startled and somewhat baffled expression he softened a little. "It was more... warfare. Picture a battle. An epic battle. Like Braveheart or something."

In all these years, Sam could still delight Josh in ways he never imagined. "You're sperm were - "

"Well, I don't know that they were mine. I prefer to think of them as anonymous. And until you just said that," Sam sighed deeply, "I had no trouble doing so."

Okay. "You said something about... a function of evolution. I'm not sure I really got the point on the phone. And then the pigeons happened." Josh slurped at his soup and waited for Sam to pick up the thread.

Setting aside his half finished yogurt that was, frankly, completely unappetizing at this point, Sam sat back in his chair. "Some drive towards the egg, the others... they seek out other men's sperm, to, um, kill or, uh, block them. And it's believed that the proportions of each kind depends on the man's belief at the time of ejaculation about whether his are the only sperm in there. They think. They're pretty sure."

Oh, this was so much better in person. "Who are "they," Sam?" So. Much. Better.

"Uh, the experts. I imagine. Scientists."

"Uh huh. And "they" know what the sperm's motivations are?"

"Yes, they believe they do."

And you believed them? Josh was dying to add. There were just too many possibilities colliding inside his brain right now.

"I know what you're going to - " Sam was cut off when Bonnie and Ginger walked past, Ginger patting Josh affectionately on the shoulder.

"Good to have you back, Josh."

"Good to be back." It's nice to be wanted.

"No, she means," Bonnie aimed a knowing look in Sam's direction. "It's *really* *really* good to have you back."

Josh snickered as the women moved away towards the exit. A thought suddenly occurred to him. "You did *not* ask them to help you with your `research,' Sam. That would certainly fall under the Inappropriate Office Behavior chapter, don't you think?" Josh was sincerely alarmed at the idea.

"Ginger was very helpful with the cats," Sam offered. "The history of the tabby pattern is convoluted. The African Wild - "

"Sam." Josh could easily see how Toby had become impatient with that subject, especially when something more interesting was right around the corner.

"Right. They're called blocker sperm. It's all on the internet. I didn't need any help. I ordered a book from the Princeton Press, I'll loan it to you when it comes."

Josh choked down his cracker at Sam's choice of wording. "Um, that's okay, Sam. I'm kinda enjoying you telling me about it yourself." That blush again.

Sam looked towards the entrance to the Mess and was surprised to see Toby shuffling in. He hadn't seen them yet, Sam realized, and he raised his hand to get Toby's attention. But the moment they established eye contact, Toby darted back through the doorway, jostling a man behind him.

"That was weird..." Sam took a long pull on his bottle of water.

The Mess was filling up with people, and Josh decided it would be prudent to continue whatever they had left of the sperm discussion in a more private atmosphere. Besides. Toby was obviously expecting Josh to pick up the pieces of the latest manifestation of Sam's warped subconscious, and he still didn't know anything about it.

"I can see how it would take something like the pigeons to knock that off the page, Sam. But what happened last night?"

"Oh." Sam considered the nectarine in front of him for a moment before deciding to save it for later. "I think I might have... I woke up with what I know now is a quote from Disraeli stuck in my head."

"That sounds pretty tame for you," Josh smirked.

Sam made a face back, was about to stick out his tongue, in fact, when he came to his senses. "Yeah. That's why it's bugging me. I can't figure out where it fits in."

Josh exhaled extravagantly and relaxed further back in his seat. "What was the dream?"

Sam's expression became distant for a moment. Re-focusing on Josh, he took a deep breath. "There was this woman, when I was at Princeton. Ruby. She was beautiful and smart. And, forceful, I guess. Anyway, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about her. `Cause she had the most amazing shoes..."

Josh was sitting straight up in his chair now. "You're kidding me!" he practically yelped. "You fantasized about her shoes?! You sick, sick bastard. How come I never knew this about you?"

"I didn't fantasize about her shoes!" That *was* a yelp, one that drew a few stares from the closest tables. "Okay, lets go." In light of this latest humiliation, Sam felt it necessary to assert himself a little. He sprang to his feet and motioned Josh to follow.

Once out in the hallway again, Sam took a not too gentle hold of Josh's elbow, guiding him up the stairs that would take them back to the ground floor before he resumed speaking. "I always wondered why a professor of Women's Studies would wear such complicated and, seriously, masochistic shoes. They weren't sexy. They were frightening." And Sam was truly looking a little spooked just talking about it.

"So you never had a thing for her?" Not waiting for an answer, Josh stopped on the stairs. "Wait. You took a Women's Studies course at Princeton?" The grin on Josh's face widened until Sam was quite sure his dimples were going to swallow the entire White House.

"Can we move back to the subject?" Sam scolded. Ascending the steps again. "In the dream, I was walking across the Princeton campus - "

In spite of the fact that every molecule in his considerably intelligent brain was screaming at him to - for once in his life - keep his damn mouth shut, Josh broke in. "Were you naked?"

To Josh's utter shock, Sam hardly missed a beat. "Keep it to yourself. There were people everywhere. And some animals. Big, really big squirrels, I remember."

"Would these be the same squirrels from two years ago? `Cause this animal thing you have going is getting pretty interesting, Sam."

"I'm fairly confident in saying they were the same squirrels. But that's of no significance here."

"How do you know? I thought you weren't sure *what* this dream was telling you?" Josh sounded a little petulant there; he really was trying to help.

"Please stop interrupting. The squirrels played no further role in this dream. They were just part of the... landscape. So I'm walking across campus, and *everyone* is wearing these `Ruby' shoes. All colors and styles, men, women - "

"Squirrels?"

"You really think I'm that twisted, Josh?" Sam paused to consider Josh for a moment, then continued. "But they were all scary, and there was a bit of conversation and interaction along the way. Then I went into my room - which wasn't my room, it was more of a vast array of office cubicles - and I slipped on some pens that were all over the floor, and I fell down, and as I sat there I could see under the bed, and there was something big and dark and round there."

"So you climbed under the bed and looked down it."

They had reached the top of the stairs, and Sam stopped dead in his tracks to stare aghast at Josh. "How could you possibly know that?"

"The rabbit hole, Sam." Josh answered breezily, high-fiving himself in his head at having guessed right. He'd taken a few more steps before he realized Sam was still standing there, eyes wide in astonishment. "If you've told me about the rabbit hole once, you've told me a thousand times. Do you really think I don't pay attention to you? C'mon." And when Josh wiggled his fingers, Sam began moving again.

Sam walked silently for a few moments, absorbing the idea that Josh really *did* listen to him, even when he babbled about long ago childhood fears and the things that brought them back to life. The notion that there was someone out there who understood him that well, who despite the teasing and the occasional ridicule thought enough of what everyone else dismissed as incoherent ramblings, not only listened closely, but could recall it when needed gave Sam an incredible sense of security.

When he finally found his voice again, it was clouded with emotion. "I went down the rabbit hole, Josh."

It was Josh's turn to stop. "Good for you, Sam." He tried to read his friend's face, but there was too much playing across it, Josh wasn't able to pick out any one emotion. "So what was down there?"

Josh thought back to all the allusions to the rabbit hole Sam had made over their years together. How as a child he'd alternated between rapture over Lewis Carroll's imagery, and being horrified at the prospect of getting trapped in another reality which he neither understood nor belonged in. How the feeling had culminated when he was ten, and had whooping cough, and knelt racked by fever next to the tub while his parents filled the bathroom with clouds of soothing steam.

Josh remembered Sam telling him about the feeling of growing larger, swelling out of his own body while simultaneously moving further and further away through a long narrowing tunnel until he was nothing but the feeling of swollen skin and spinning abandonment. And how to this day, when Sam felt himself coming down with something, he dreaded the prospect of running a fever. For Sam to voluntarily go down the rabbit hole was incredibly brave.

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 |

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