Rating: PG
Pairing: Sam/Carol
Spoilers: For most of season two; I've seen up to 100,000 Airplanes, so up to there to be safe.
Feedback: Makes my day
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site The Band Gazebo (helsinkibaby.ahkay.net) Anywhere else please ask first.
Summary: Carol goes looking for Sam.
Author's Note: This, dear friends, is what happens when you write while on drugs. Well, antibiotics really. See, I had come down with tonsillitis and was off work, with nothing to do, so what's a girl to do, but work her way through her film collection? So, I got to St Elmo's Fire and got to the scene called "Billy on the Roof" …and all of a sudden, all I could see was Sam sitting on the roof like that…and this is the result. For those of you who haven't guessed, it's also fluffier than the fluffiest fluffy ball of fluff.

"Sam, what in the world are you doing out there?"

It had been a reasonably innocent question that had been asked of her a few minutes ago, Carol knew that much. Two words, "Where's Sam?" One that she should have been able to answer fairly easily. Or very easily. After all, she was his girlfriend, they were sharing a room together, and with the exception of the times when Sam and the rest of the Senior Staff had been locked in strategy meetings, she and Sam had been practically stuck together all weekend, to the extent that the rest of the group were teasing them incessantly about it. Not that there was much new in that.

But when she told them that she didn't know, that she had no idea as to Sam's whereabouts, conversation stopped, heads were turned in her direction, and it was as if she'd told them that she'd always thought that Galileo had it wrong and that the world was really flat.

She'd taken the hint and left the rest of them playing Trivial Pursuit in Aspen Lodge, almost happy to escape the inevitable infighting that was going to break out at any time. When you had Josh who hated to lose, playing against the President, who was a trivia geek, not to mention Toby in the mix as well, it was either a recipe for disaster, or some pretty decent dinner theatre.

Should the worse come to the worst, Carol preferred to be out of there.

Besides, she wanted to know where Sam was.

So she bundled up in her coat and scarf and went out looking for him, the only comfort to her being that he couldn't have gone far. It was nearly three weeks since President Bartlet had been re-elected, after a long, hard struggle, even more draining than the battle four years previous, and with about the same percentage voting for him this time. It had been a close battle, a long Election Day, and while four years ago the announcement that they had won had brought about jubilation and hysteria, this one had only brought about a sense of weary relief.

To thank his staff for the effort they'd put in, to give them a break and to re-energise them for the four years that lay ahead, the President and First Lady had decided to stage a Presidential retreat at Camp David, inviting along all of the Senior Staff, and assistants. And while some planning and strategising had been done, by the Senior Staff at any rate, and in spite of the President's complaints that Camp David was "boring", the assistants had done more enjoying of the recreational side of life, relaxing in a way that they hadn't in far too long. For that matter, the Senior Staff hadn't been that far behind them.

Which is why they'd probably agreed to the Trivial Pursuit game in the first place.

Part of Carol wanted to stay and watch, but the other part, the larger part if she was honest with herself, wanted to know where Sam was, why he'd wandered off by himself. If she was even more honest with herself, she'd admit that she was worried about him. He'd been quieter, more subdued than she'd ever seen him, despite the general lightening of mood that had taken place after Election Day. She'd seen Sam when he got into that kind of mood, knew that he needed someone to talk to him, to bring him out of his funk, and for now, that was her.

And that suited her just fine.

So she walked around Camp David, making some discreet enquiries, and it didn't take her long to find him.

Just not somewhere she would have expected to find him.

"Are you ok?"

She leaned out of the window, both hands resting on the sill, and looked over at him, sitting blithely on the roof, looking up at the night sky. His head turned around to her, and he smiled slightly, nodding. "I'm fine."

"Good." But despite her answer, she knew that her smile was a great deal more confused than reassured. "You're out on the roof you know."

"I know that." His arms were resting on his knees, and she eyed the bottle of beer in his hands with open suspicion.

"Are you drunk?"

He looked affronted at that. "I am sober as a judge." Then he frowned. "Although why judges are known as being sober, and not some other profession has always been a mystery to me-"

"Sam." She interrupted him, and he snapped back to reality.

"Sorry." Then he looked at her, still standing inside and extended a hand to her. "Come on out."

"Oh, I don't think so." She was shaking her head and smiling at him, wondering what in the world had got into her nice sensible boyfriend.

"C'mon." The hand was still extended and her nice sensible boyfriend was looking at her with that look in his eyes, the one that made her weak at the knees, made her tremble inside, made her want to do whatever it was he was suggesting. And although some part of her mind was telling her that being weak-kneed and trembly while climbing through a window and walking on a roof probably wasn't the best thing to do, she found herself swinging her legs over the edge of the sill, moving carefully over to him before sitting down beside him. She was rewarded with a smile, and one of his hands reached out and took hers, holding it in between them, their knees touching. "There. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

The doubt still totally hadn't vanished from her face. "I don't know that being on a roof is such a good idea with your reputation."

Both eyebrows were lifted to the sky. "My reputation? Carol, if you think that I'm going to... that we would…on the roof…"

She swatted him, not sure if he was joking or being serious. "I was thinking of your reputation as a klutz."

"Are you still talking about the boat thing?"

"You fell off a boat Sam, I think people are going to be talking about it for quite a while."

"Do people still talk about Josh's secret plan to fight inflation?"

"Well, you just did."

"Good point."

There was a moment of silence then, a moment where their eyes met and they just smiled at each other. It was a familiar sensation to both of them, a time when no words were needed, when they could just acknowledge to themselves that they had each other and that things were perfectly fine. Then Sam looked away and looked up to the sky and the moment was broken.

"How did you find me?"

She shrugged. "This is Camp David, Sam. I asked a Secret Service agent."

"I thought they didn't follow the President around here." His look was curious, and she nodded her head.

"They don't. That doesn't mean they're not here. And when I did my best helpless female act, and explained that I'd lost my boyfriend…" She let her voice trail off and was gratified when Sam laughed.

"Somehow, I don't see you as the helpless female type."

"Well, they didn't know that." Another moment of silence. "You still haven't told me what you're doing out here."

He sighed, taking another sip of his beer. "I'm looking at the stars. Trying to count them." His gaze was fixed to the heavens as he spoke, on the pinpoints of silver against the inky black sky. It was a clear winter night, the kind where the air is crisp and felt good against your skin, where the stars seemed almost close enough to touch. Their breath came out as frosted puffs of white when they spoke, and there wasn't a sound from around, save their voices. It was as if they were the only two people on earth. "The stars…" he murmured now. "The stars…what is the stars Joxer?" She must have giggled, or made some sort of noise, because he turned and looked at her. "It's a quote from O'Casey," he explained but she cut him off with a wave of her hand.

"Sam? A surname like Fitzpatrick and you don't think I'm familiar with Sean O'Casey?"

"Ah."

"But I know what you mean about that sky…" She shook her head admiringly, looking up. "You don't get a view like this in Washington."

"You sure don't." There was something different in his voice and she turned to look at him, to find that he was looking at her. And that look was back in his eyes again and the whole moment sent a rush of red to her cheeks. He grinned briefly at her before casting his eyes back up again. "I used to love looking at the stars when I was a kid," he told her. "I had a tree-house in our back yard, and there were some nights that my dad would have to come up and carry me to bed, because I'd fallen asleep up there, looking at them. And I used to love when he'd take me out on the boat, because he'd let me lie in the hammock when it was bedtime, and I'd fall asleep trying to count them all. I never did succeed, but I used to love trying. It was a challenge…back when I thought that anything was possible. That I could do anything." He shrugged. "And then I grew up, and I got older, and wiser. And I stopped looking at the sky, and stopped trying to count the stars."

"Why did you start again tonight?" Carol asked him softly.

He shrugged. "The President was talking to us today, about new beginnings. How the last four years were behind us, and how we didn't have to take the baggage with us into the new term. And I got to thinking about the last four years…and how things have changed…"

His voice trailed off and Carol moved closer to him, bringing their joined hands to her lips. "I know," she whispered.

She thought that his next words might be a detailed account of what had changed. Or details about how he was feeling right now. His fears, his hopes, his dreams. She was ready for all that.

So his next quiet admission floored her.

"I don't know what I would have done without you."

Their eyes met again, his sad and serious, hers wide and curious. And she found herself remembering how things had started between them, how they were just one of the things that had changed.

They'd never really had much to do with one another on the campaign trail. She'd been one of the many volunteers, although towards the end, she'd been adopted by CJ as her assistant, a role that she'd continued to fill when they got to the White House. And she'd known who Sam was, of course she'd known who Sam was. All the girls on staff knew who Sam was. It had long been a joke among the staff that while Josh was the one with the fan club of college kids, Sam was the one with the fan club of staffers. While Josh had an ego the size of Texas and could shout and scream and rant and rave at Olympic level, Sam was the nice one, the sweet one, the one who'd do anything for you.

He was also the engaged one.

And then the news went around that Lisa had called off the engagement, that she didn't want to play the part of the political wife, and that he was devastated. Which anyone with eyes had been able to see. And while the Sam Seaborn fan club were privately doing the happy dance of delirious joy that their object of desire was now on the market, they knew that nothing would ever happen while he was so obviously broken hearted.

By the time he wasn't broken hearted any more, they'd all begun to stop seeing him as some pin-up boy and more as a brother, and no-one had wanted to start on the rocky road of office romances, so nothing had come of it for anyone.

Besides, it wasn't like she was pining over him, or anything of the sort. She dated, she had her friends, her family, her own interests, when she got out of the White House long enough to pursue them. She was happy, and he was just Sam to her, some guy from work.

Then one terrible day, or night, or morning, when her body clock was shot to hell, and her emotional equilibrium was all over the place, they'd ended up in the deserted mess at the same time. Neither one of them was in the best of shape, being shot at would do that to you, and she'd been running around after CJ and after the Press, trying to do at least seven things at once and he was running between the hospital and the office, and they'd both reached the coffee pot at the same time. Tired grins had been exchanged, and ever the gentleman, he'd let her go first. The trouble was, she was so tired and so drained emotionally that she was literally shaking, and the pot made a clacking sound as it hit against the rim of the mug, and the more she tried to stop it, the faster the noise got. She was putting it back with a noise of disgust when disgust turned to pain as a splash of coffee hit her hand. She didn't even remember putting down the pot, didn't remember how she got there, but the next thing she knew, she was in the kitchen, with one of Sam's arms around her waist, the other holding her wrist under the cold water tap.

And maybe it was the shock of the night, maybe it was the pain of the scald, maybe it was the feel of having someone's arm around her, that warm comforting sensation that she got from being so close to him, that brought her tears to the surface. But whatever it was, she found herself sobbing on his shoulder. And he let her.

When she calmed down, she was mortified, but he told her not to worry about it, and he found a clean cloth and wet it, made her hold it down on her still tender wrist. Then he made her sit down and got her a cup of coffee and sat down with her while they both drank. She'd protested, saying that she had to get back to work, that CJ would be looking for her, and he'd held up a hand and told her that CJ and the press corps could damn well wait, that she needed a break.

It surprised her later when she realised that they had hardly spoken at all, just sat there, drinking coffee, looking at one another. It surprised her even more when she realised that it hadn't been awkward at all, and that she wasn't embarrassed at crying on his shoulder like that.

Well, maybe a little.

But a couple of days later, when things had calmed down slightly, and they knew that Josh and the President were going to be ok, he'd appeared at her desk, wondering how her arm was. She told him that it was fine, that it didn't hurt at all, and he'd seemed flustered, like he had something on his mind, and it was then that he'd asked her out to dinner for the first time. He'd bumbled his way around it, and she'd stopped him halfway through, more to save him any embarrassment than anything else, because she found it rather cute, and she'd told him that she'd love to have dinner with him.

That had been how things started.

She'd been sitting at home on her couch, cringing in embarrassment when Ainsley Hayes kicked his ass on Capitol Beat, and she'd got it from both ends when Leo told him and CJ that she was going to be working at the White House. CJ had slammed her office door so hard that Carol had thought it was going to come off its hinges, and the kitchen cabinets in Sam's apartment had never been slammed with as much force as they had been that night.

The next week, she'd had to break a lunch date with him to run to the Pentagon to get a two-star general over to see CJ, and had spent that evening helping him and the rest of the Senior Staff fix up Ainsley's office with all manner of Gilbert and Sullivan memorabilia. She was used to hearing Sam talk in his sleep, mumbling about adjective use and house resolutions, but that night had been the first time that she'd ever heard him singing, and she'd given him hell over it the next morning.

She still smiled when she remembered a trip to Portland on Air Force One, when he'd been so upset over his writing on the Education Speech, and she'd tried to entice him into joining the Mile High Club with her, in the hopes that it would snap him out of his bad mood. She'd been joking of course; at least that was what she'd told herself later. Not that it had mattered - he'd been so out of it that he hadn't even registered her words, and it was later, when they got home that he'd turned to her, a quizzical look on his face and asked her, "Did you mean it…" When she'd said yes, the look on his face had been priceless.

He was the one who reassured her that Mallory meant nothing to him when he met her at the Kennedy Centre, and she was the one that he came to when Josh blew up in the Oval Office. She sat with him that Christmas Eve night until Leo called, telling them the diagnosis. He complained to her when Toby put a drop-in into a speech that he'd spent hours on; they'd laughed over what the President had said to Ainsley Hayes on their first meeting.

When he'd found out the truth about his father, he'd arrived on her doorstep in the middle of the night, drunk out of his mind, too upset to find his key. She'd been terrified, afraid that something really bad was wrong, and she'd let him cry in her arms until he was ready to tell her the whole story. And a couple of weeks later, when he'd stayed late at the office for a meeting with Leo, which CJ had done the night before and had spent all that day in meetings with Oliver Babish, she hadn't gone to bed, just waited for him, knowing that something terrible was happening. He'd knocked at her door again that night, sober this time, but just as upset, and she didn't know which was worse. He hadn't told her what was wrong that night, told her that she'd know when she needed to know, which hadn't pleased her much, but she kept her mouth shut, and just held him.

Just like he'd held her briefly in his office after CJ had told her. He'd whispered to her that he'd been a coward, that he hadn't known how to tell her, what to say, and that he'd asked CJ to do it. She'd told him to just shut up and hold her, and bless him, that's just what he'd done.

Hours later, when the news of a crash at Eighteenth and Potomac had filtered through the West Wing, they held each other and cried together.

And a couple of days later, when the President, against all odds and predictions announced that he was going to run for re-election after all, they'd snatched a hurried kiss in a deserted storeroom, but it had been hours before they could get to her apartment to finish what they started. The next morning, he'd returned to the office earlier than she had, and she'd been surprised as she looked around that morning when she figured out that half of the things scattered around the apartment now belonged to him.

The whole year after that had been a blur of meetings and hearings and stress and pressure, highlighted by a wonderful State of the Union address which had done the President's numbers a power of good. Their personal relationship was under stress, partly because Sam was going through a hard time, not sure of what he was doing in the White House, partly because his ex-fiancée was back on the scene and Carol was feeling a little insecure. But they'd worked through it, got past it, and managed to make it through the Election in one piece.

And now, here he was, telling her that he couldn't have made it through without her.

Her first instinct was to shake her head, to deny that she'd made that much of a difference to him. She even opened her mouth to do so, but shut it when she realised a simple truth.

She couldn't have made it through the last few years without him either.

"I mean it Carol," he continued now. "You've been there for me, every step of the way. And you've never asked questions, you've never made any demands on me. You've just been there, and there have been times when I've given you no reason to be…"

"I don't need a reason." She was surprised by how shaky her voice was, either from emotion or cold, she didn't know. "I love you."

He smiled at her. "I love you too."

She leaned into him for a kiss then, and when she pulled back, he kept his arm around her, pulling her closer in to him. "Can we go in now?" she asked him eventually, peering down over the edge of the roof.

"Nope." There was a smile on his face. "I've something else to show you."

"Besides the moon and the stars?" She lifted an eyebrow, and he nodded, placing his bottle of beer beside him on the roof. "Come on then Captain Boyle…what do you have to show me?"

Her voice was light and teasing, her smile bright, but it vanished when he pulled a small box out of his jacket pocket. It was shaped like a square, covered in black velvet, and a box like that could carry only one thing. Even as her mind was trying to tell her this, she was still surprised when he whispered, "This," and opened the box.

It was a simple ring, three small, square, diamonds on a golden band. Even in the pale moonlight, the stones sparkled, very nearly matching the sparkle in Sam's eyes when she looked into them. One hand went to her lips in shock, and tears came into her eyes as she looked at him, knowing what this meant, not daring to believe it.

"I picked it out this summer," he admitted. "I was just walking around, looking for your birthday present actually, and I wasn't really looking at anything specific, and then I saw this out of the corner of my eye…and I knew. I knew that this was your ring. I thought that I might ask you after the Election, if we won, but then we won, and things happened…and when we found out we were coming here, I brought it with me…I was looking for the right time, but when can we ever plan the right time, and then, now, it just seemed…"

He stopped talking when she laid her finger on his lips. "Sam." He nodded. "Is there a question in there?" When he nodded again, she took her hand away.

"OK. A question. Right." He took a deep breath, then another. "Carol, I love you. I can't imagine my life without you in it. And I would be honoured if you'd become my wife."

Her smile was bright when she nodded, and one word was all she needed for her answer. "Yes."

Sam's face broke into a smile that was the match of hers, and he leaned forward and kissed her briefly, before taking the ring from the box and slipping it on her finger. It slid on easily and he frowned, turning it left and right, studying it. "Is it a little loose?"

She shook her head. "It's fine…my hands are just cold, that's all…"

He took her hands in both of his, rubbing them. "You want to go in?"

She took her hands away from him, slipping her arms around his waist, inside his jacket. "I want to stay here a while," she told him. "Look at the stars…maybe see how many there are…"

He chuckled lightly. "I think I like the sound of that." Her head rested on his shoulder and he put both his arms around her, and they stayed like that for a long time, just the two of them, counting the stars.