sam seaborn and the ten plagues of egypt
by greensilver
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Their argument spilled out into the hallway with the sunlight and the dust motes, because that was what happened when Sam left his door open: Toby, arguments, and dust. There never seemed to be quite so much dust in the office as there was when Toby was stomping around, picking up books and papers like he was actually looking for something, which he never was. In reality, Toby was just letting his hands convey the frustration his shouting alone could not - big gestures, very dramatic - because there was a comma splice on page six, a split infinitive on page nine, and no, he didn't care about artistic license, the stuff of history was not meant to have split infinitives, and last time he checked, Gene Roddenberry still didn't write for Webster's, thank you very much.
Sam didn't mind. In a few minutes they'd be in sync, and the only sound would be Toby muttering over his shoulder as they fixed the comma splice on page six, and yes, even the split infinitive on page nine - because Toby was right about that one, and Sam had put it in there just to get Toby riled up, anyway.
It'd been a long day. He'd needed some action.
Josh leaned in, his fingers drumming out a restless beat on the doorframe. "You guys gonna be done any time soon?"
Toby looked up from the Oxford English Dictionary. "What do you think about 'perpend'?"
Josh squinted a little and rubbed at the space just between his eyebrows, like a headache was forming in exactly that spot. "'Perpend'? Do people really say that?"
"No, people don't," Sam said, giving Josh a pleased smile. "Nobody does."
"Yeah, well, this isn't 3AM at the discothèque, we're writing high oratory, not chatting up your next cheap date." Toby slammed the OED shut and dropped it on a stack of papers, sending up a billow of dust. Josh's nose twitched, right on the verge of a sneeze. "Put it in there."
Toby had picked up the dictionary to make some smartass point about the meaning of informal, but he'd gotten derailed when Sam had called him persnickety, because apparently the traditional form was pernickety - which was ridiculous, because really, who said "pernickety"? - and then he'd gotten distracted by other words in the per's, and that was what the argument had turned into: whether or not they should use perpend in the speech. Toby liked perpend. He liked it a lot. Sam liked perpend, too, but even 'high oratory' had to be written to the average American when the subject was health care, and perpend was about as dusty as the papers Toby kept tossing around. Nobody was going to get fired up about perpend.
Sam folded his arms. "No."
When Sam thought of divine wrath, he thought of Toby, just like this: beetle-browed, eyes boring holes right into your skull like he was going to call all the plagues of Egypt down upon your blasphemous, infinitive-splitting head. Toby should've been a rabbi. Sam would've converted just to hear him talk.
"No?" Toby pressed his hands to either side of his head, as though he were trying to keep his brain from leaking out of his ears. "No?"
"Hey," Josh interrupted, watching Toby the way one might watch Old Faithful just before the geyser was scheduled to go up. "I can get some numbers on 'perpend.'"
That was distraction enough to keep Toby's head from exploding. "You want to poll on 'perpend'?"
Josh didn't have the good sense to look wary. "Yeah?"
Toby's hands fluttered down from his head, and he tapped a fist against the OED, his voice getting steadily louder. "You want to use actual taxpayer dollars to try and prove that Americans are idiots?"
"Isn't that what we usually do?" Sam said, because this round of Toby-baiting was the best entertainment he'd had all week.
Josh pursed his lips, sucked in a breath, and patted the doorframe: that was Josh-speak for whatever, I'm out of here, and he only confirmed it by rubbing that spot between his eyes and muttering, "Yeah, Roosevelt Room in ten," before disappearing into the hallway.
Toby rounded on Sam. "Perpend-"
"Ruminate," Sam suggested, tapping the eraser end of his pencil against the computer screen.
Toby hesitated. "Ruminate is something that old men do on porch swings. Deliberate?"
"Too judicial. Meditate?"
"Is Enya writing our health care plan?"
"That had better have been rhetorical," Sam said, and frowned at the screen, plumbing the depths of his mental thesaurus. "Cogitate?"
Toby almost smiled; Sam could see it in the slight twitch at one corner of his mouth, in the way his eyes narrowed a little in a way that didn't quite suggest fire and brimstone, not yet. "You don't like 'perpend,' but you like 'cogitate'?"
"Point taken." Sam leaned in, reading aloud from the screen. "'...That will surely impact not just our children, but our children's children; rather, we must take the time to weigh,' etcetera."
Toby stepped closer, peering at the screen. "That's what you have? 'Weigh'?"
"'Weigh,'" Sam agreed, turning the screen so Toby could get a better look.
"Hmm." Toby leaned back, idly scratching at a spot just above his right ear. Maybe there was a button or lever hidden in that spot that, when pressed, activated Toby's speechwriting super-powers. Sam wanted one of those buttons. "'Weigh' is good."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Just good?"
Toby ignored him, already moving on. "Why do we always say 'children's children'? Do we have it out for 'grandchildren'?"
"Toby, there's a word I'd like you to look up for me," Sam said, flicking his pencil away, onto the desk.
Toby was already reaching for the OED. "Yeah? What?"
Sam tried to keep a straight face, but it was a losing battle; it was just as well that he'd taken up law instead of vaudeville. "Peroration."
Toby stared at him. "Is that supposed to be funny?"
Sam gave in, and grinned. "Yeah."
"Well, it's not," Toby said, and leaned in again, elbowing Sam to one side. Toby was the reason Sam's desk chair had wheels; Toby, and moments just like this. "Grandchildren."
"Peroration," Sam countered, minimizing the window before Toby could get a good look at the rest of that paragraph. "We'll worry about our grandchildren after the speech has an ending."
"An ending?" Toby was still leaning over Sam's shoulder, staring at the screen like he expected the speech to magically reappear, and his voice was already rising toward a shout. "Josh is off collecting polling data on 'perpend,' and we don't even have an ending?"
Sam shrugged. "Well, what exactly did you think 'TBC' stood for?"
Toby stepped back, and Sam spun in his chair to look up at him. Toby's wrath was all on Sam now, not the screen, and the look on his face foreshadowed frogs and locusts.
"Didn't read that far, did you?" Sam guessed, leaning back. "Got as far as the split infinitive on page nine, and came right over."
Toby raised a hand, like maybe he was going to throttle Sam, or toss the OED at him, or both.
Donna leaned in. "Josh says, quote, 'The leader of the free world requires your presence in the Roosevelt Room.'"
From somewhere out in the hallway, Josh hollered, "Seriously, what part of 'ten minutes' didn't you guys understand?"
Sam gestured at the door. "After you."
Toby just eyed him, chewing on his lower lip; evidently he was still contemplating the possibility of plagues, Bartlet be damned. "TBC."
"Yeah, Toby, TBC." Sam stood up, grabbing his suit jacket. "Got anything better?"
"Perpend," Toby said, finally starting toward the door. The locusts would have to wait.
Sam tapped him on the shoulder. "But not until Josh concludes his poll."
Toby's mouth twitched. He wasn't smiling, he was aggressively not-smiling, and this was why Sam kept his door open: Toby, arguments, and dust spilling out into the hallway.