Work Text:
"For I will consider my friend, Joshua.
For he is the servant of the President,
Duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East,
He is already in his office,
Yawning and spilling coffee and shouting at Donna.
For he knows that Bartlet is The Real Thing.
For I am blessed in the variety of his friendship.
For there is nothing sweeter
Than his face when he smiles.
For I am in love with a man
Surpassing in beauty
For which I take occasion
To groan and knock my head against the wall.
For Josh is a straight man with a great personal ego
For this a true case -
I once accidentally slept with a call-girl
And he will not let it go
But keeps making unpleasant jokes about it that make me want to hit him.
Also he is now going out with Amy Gardner
As prodigious a creature as she is.
For Josh is a straight man with a great personal ego.
For he is nevertheless of a most adorable disposition.
For I am in twelve hardships
But he that throws a rubber ball repeatedly against my window
Will kick my ass if I don't stop moping
and finish the President's speech that he's giving tomorrow on poverty in the inner-cities."
* * * * * * * * * *
Toby replaced the page with a guilty start and slipped stealthily out of his deputy's office, growling to himself as he went. He would never forgive Leo for this. It was entirely his fault that Sam had got dragged along with the President to that Britten concert, and now the boy was obsessed with some mad Catholic poet from the seventeenth century. Thank goodness he wasn't writing his speeches like that. That would be too much to bear.
Sitting back down at his desk, Toby worried his beard in exasperation. And tried unsuccessfully to fight the smile pricking up the corners of his mouth. He lifted the receiver on his phone.
"Josh? Me. Look, uh, you know what you were telling me last month, about being all "ensorcelled" with Amy Gardner? Yeah. Well, you know what you told me six months ago about how you'd always been secretly in love with Sam, and had been flitting from one bad relationship to another in order to hide it from him, because you were certain that he doesn't feel the same way? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Josh, I think your life is about to become a lot more complicated...".