Archive of Our Own ^beta

“There’s an object... coming toward the Earth.”

Walter Sprout isn’t the kind of guy who Josh normally takes very seriously. He’s a serious guy, but Josh doesn’t take him seriously. If that makes sense. He seems like the kind of guy with perpetually clammy palms. Who has spent his life in a job that requires computer-like diligence that any sign of human emotion makes him go into self-destruct mode without any way to compensate for perspective. Like he’d be breathing into a paper bag if his shoelaces were untied. Or like he is now, gulping back water as if he’s crawled here through the Sonoran to the tropical oasis that is Josh’s office.

That is to say, Walter Sprout doesn’t inspire much confidence. He shouldn’t inspire much of anything.

“From the sky?” Josh sits across from him, shoving down the urge to raise his brows sarcastically.

“An asteroid,” Walter replies, “A-S-0-0-2-6-7.” He takes another desperate sip from the water bottle prompting an unkind image of a robot being refueled. Or something. Robots probably don’t need fuel. Being charged?

“There are a lot of asteroids in the sky...” what he’s thinking about is Judy Garland pouring oil on the Tin Man, and that’s making him have to try not to laugh, “...from my limited understanding.”

Walter confirms with a quicks “Thousands.”

No, this isn’t something that Josh is going to be able to take seriously. The guy is smart, and knows what he’s talking about. But Josh is smart, too, and he’s not much of a gambler, but the odds of two comparatively small objects hitting each other in a literal infinite amount of space just don’t add up mathematically. It’s like getting a whip count, the numbers just don’t make sense. He starts to say, “Well, I'm thinking you should... write up a memo, drop it off…”

“The LINEAR observatory in New Mexico recorded images yesterday that were analyzed by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge,” Walter interjects, his voice faltering in its steadiness, but not in its conviction, “Their data were posted on the NEO Confirmation Page to be verified by astronomers across the globe, myself included. Now, our calculations could be wrong, but if not, they indicate that an object following that trajectory would strike the Earth in approximately forty-eight hours.”

Josh blinks. Okay, so maybe he doesn’t know very much about math. Or space.

“Forty-six,” Walter corrects with a glance at his watch.

“And this asteroid is…?”

“Big.”

“How?”

“Big,” Walter says it like it’s incomprehensibly so. Like if he told Josh in numbers its weight or size, Josh wouldn’t be able to wrap his head around it. He’s not thinking about scenes from The Wizard of Oz anymore; he’s thinking about scenes from those Discovery Channel movies about the dinosaurs going extinct. Only he’s not picturing giant prehistoric ferns and T-rexes being swallowed by a giant burning rock and quilted in fire and ash and destruction; he’s picturing the Empire State Building in New York. He’s picturing a crowded street in New Delhi. He’s picturing a quiet yard in New Haven.

That’s what he’s thinking about when he jumps up to grab the phone and urgently instructs Margaret to get the NASA administrator and Leo. Once he hangs up, he’s just imagining just how he’ll feel at the end of the week when this was all over and it was a false alarm. How stupid he’ll feel for getting riled up. But a tiny part of him, about the same ratio as the size of this asteroid compared to the rest of outer space, is trying to remember what the last thing he said to him mom was in case this does happen. And even though the asteroid is imperceptibly small in the endless vastness of the universe, it feels pretty fucking big right now.

“I loved a man once,” Walter’s unexpected declaration bring Josh back to Earth and lightyears away all at the same time, “I never told him.”

Because now Josh is thinking about Sam. No, Sam is always what he thinks of first. He’s usually able to convince himself that Sam isn’t floating just at the outskirts of his orbit at all times or that Sam isn’t what he thinks of first when an occurrence like this has him teetering into panic mode. Because no matter how long it had been since they’d talked or laughed or almost kissed, if he had a choice to press a button that would reroute an asteroid that was about to hit Earth to a planet that was completely isolated but for Sam Seaborn, he’d have to stop and think about it for a long time. And by the time he’d figured out what to do, they’d all be burning in an apocalypse of space-fire, so it wouldn’t matter much anyway.

So he manages to say, “Okay.”

But Sam’s still there for the rest of the day. He’s always loved Sam. Frankly, he’s always wanted Sam to just go ahead and grab him by the lapels and have his way with him, but that’s only ever been this tiny speck of an asteroid in the expansive galaxy that is what he feels for Sam. But there are days where it’s felt pretty damn big. And right now, there are National Security meetings, and NASA briefings, and exasperating conversations with Donna, and invigorating pep-talks from Leo, but there is also Sam. He feels like he’s standing underneath the shadow of what he never got around to telling Sam as it crashes towards him, and it’s just going to keep getting bigger and bigger as it gets closer and closer until it crashes.

So it’s from his office that evening when picks up the phone. He means to call Matt Santos to tell him wants to talk when he gets back. But as he starts dialing the number, it occurs to him that he should probably do that in person. Besides, if he’s really about to do what his fingers seem to be doing on their own, a quick stop in Houston wouldn’t be too out of his way.

So as he’s redialing, he knows that in a few hours, he is going to tell Matt Santos that he knows how to make him the next President of the United States. And in a few seconds, the asteroid is going to crash.

“Josh Lyman!” Sam’s cries after three rings. His voice is the kind of everyday tired that he veils with cheeriness, “It’s been a while since I saw that number on my caller ID. How ya been?”

Josh closes his eyes for a second and can’t help but feel a twitch of a smile just at the very sound of Sam’s voice. He takes a quick breath and says, “Right now, there is a giant asteroid hurtling through the sky that will collide with the Earth within the next two days if it continues on its current trajectory.”

He can almost hear Sam’s confused blinks for a moment, before he responds simply, “Okay.”

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m in love with you,” and Josh is smiling as he says it, which surprises him probably as much as hearing it surprises Sam.

A faint clink tells Josh that Sam is taking off his glasses, and picturing the puzzled expression he no doubt has right now spreads Josh’s grin all the way across his face.

“Oh,” Sam says. Then, after a pause where Josh isn’t sure if Sam will say anything else but isn’t sure what else to say, Sam asks, “So, was the giant asteroid just a metaphor, or…?” And Josh feels himself crack up into goofy laughter as Sam goes on, “...cause if we’re about to have some kind of natural disaster of unprecedented proportions, I should probably go stock up on canned goods.”

Josh can’t stop laughing for the longest time, and as he’s collecting his breathing, Sam finally, softly, earnestly says, “I’m in love with you, too, Josh.”

“Oh, thank God!” Josh chuckles, wiping away tears, “Cause that would have made this whole thing really awkward.”

They lose track of the time just talking for another hour or so. The asteroid passes, news from the China summit is mixed, but Sam is still there.

And by the time the asteroid has deviated from its trajectory, Josh has one ticket from Ronald Reagan to Houston and one ticket from Houston to San Francisco. Because Josh’s trajectory has never been more sure.