Work Text:
When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning,
It’s 1:10am in Lafayette Square and Donna’s trying to focus, she really is, but she’s also genuinely wondering if pet therapists exist or whether her roommate’s cats will simply have to learn to live with the trauma of being berated by a stranger in their own home.
In short: there was a bill, and then there wasn’t. And despite Josh’s insistence that they were gonna win this one, they hadn’t. And despite Donna being new to all of this – the type of new that lodged somewhere between giving interviews about underground White House missile silos to teen magazines and knowing that when Josh insists that something’s ‘gonna sail, Donna, it’s gonna sail,’ that the diametric opposite is probably going to happen instead – she wasn’t so new that she didn’t know that it wasn’t so much the sting of defeat that Josh was attempting to ease with bourbon tonight. That it was more to do with dead fathers, she thought. Of alive friends of dead fathers and the terror of being good enough for neither.
So her buzzer had buzzed. And her PJ’s were blue with little clouds on them and Josh was swaying in her doorway (rumpled and insouciant and infuriating and adorable all at once), yelling at Bella’s cats (something about beady eyes he didn’t trust and curses he insisted were being placed on him by ancient Egyptian Pharaohs?) until suddenly, he’d gotten a panicked look in his eyes. And Donna may have only been enrolled in college for two years, but that was two years long enough to know that look meant she needed to clear a path to the nearest bathroom, stat.
Which is where she finds herself now, a tin of Altoids to the left of the toilet and a glass of water to its right, her hand tracing gentle circles against his back until he wipes his mouth, sits up, looks at her and mumbles, in a way that warms her to her toes because even drunk, he’s still entirely endearing, entirely Josh, “Okay well. I guess that happened.”
She laughs then, full and whole, and catches him smirk at her before lying down on the bathroom floor, its coolness a siren song luring him to shore.
But the floor is hard and probably sticky with something and he doesn’t need to add the insult of waking up with marks imprinted across his face to the inevitable injury of waking up tomorrow at all, or at least that’s what she tells herself, anyway, as she pulls his head into her lap, bracing his right cheek against her crossed legs and holding her breath as he settles into the crease of her thigh.
It’s more intimate than they’ve ever been with one another. But if he notices, he doesn’t let on.
The bathroom is silent for a few minutes and she’s starting to think he may have dozed off, when suddenly, his words echo off the tiles. “I don’t wanna let him down.”
“The President?” she asks with a lilt. Because that doesn’t seem right.
“Leo,” he mumbles. And that makes more sense.
“They can’t all go your way, all the time. This was one of those times. Leo understands that.”
“What if he doesn’t? What if he thinks…” he pauses. “What if he thinks I can’t handle this?”
“Josh,” she murmurs in a tone she’s used with him before and she'll use with him again (Joshua, Josh, Josh), halfway between a cluck and a scold. “Leo counts on you.”
“I know, that’s what I’m—”
“He wouldn’t count on you,” she interrupts him, sure of this as she is of her next intake of breath, “if he didn’t know you could be counted on.”
There’s a pause. His head lolls across her leg so that he can look up at her.
“I count on you,” he says, and the words – the ones he doesn’t say, the ones she hears anyway – nestle right underneath her sternum.
“I know,” she whispers.
He shakes his eyes away from her hers, too drunk to sit up, but nowhere near drunk enough not to be embarrassed. By his admission just now or the entire night, she’s not sure. “I’m pathetic, huh?”
“No,” she says, and she means it. “You’re sensitive. It’s sweet.”
She bites back a smile at the image she’s evoked. Everyone thinks they know the real Josh Lyman. Bartlet’s bulldog, political wunderkind, the man behind Washington’s curtain. But they don’t know him like this. She brushes a sweaty tangle of hair from his forehead and pretends not to notice when he leans into her touch. No, this side of him is reserved just for her.
His mouth opens in surprise, voice pitching up a notch, “I am n—”
“Your system,” she amends. “Your system is sensitive.”
He huffs out a breath and blinks up at her, “Okay, that’s worse.”
“It’s really not.”
The rhythm of his breathing evens out to match her own, his eyelids drooping further toward sleep with every stroke of her fingertips. “Just don’t tell Toby, okay?”
“About your sensitive system?”
“About any of, y’know,” he exasperates, flailing his arm around, “this.” She chuckles as it falls limp by his side.
She makes a mental note to remove Toby (and only Toby) from the list of staffers she’ll regale with this story in the mess on Monday, then nods, her murmured assent the last sound ringing in their ears before sleep overtakes them both, “Okay.”
And two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed where she remains asleep and very warm.
When she says margarita she means daiquiri,
It’s 4:02pm in Terminal C and how Josh managed to secure a job he didn't apply for as Donatella Moss’ personal bellhop, he’ll never understand.
“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t have taken Air Force One.”
“Because, Donna,” he rolls his eyes, “it’s currently occupied by the titular ‘One’.”
“What does that make us, then?”
“Advance.”
“But we’re not advancing the President, we’re following him.”
“Nothing gets past you, does it?” he hefts her bag up over his shoulder, a futile attempt at a readjustment.
“There isn’t some kind of special airline for the advance team?”
“Yes, it’s called British Airways.”
He ignores the glare he earns in response, too preoccupied with the crack his neck just made. “Jesus, Donna. This was supposed to be a peace summit. What’d you, lob off Putin’s head and chunk it in here?”
“First of all, is it necessary to use the Lord’s name in vain—”
“—He’s not my lord.”
“And secondly, don’t you think you should be thanking me?”
“For moving my timeline for back surgery up by 30 years?”
“I’ve got gifts for both our moms in there, Josh. So really, if you think about it, you’re carrying your own luggage.” She smirks at him, satisfied that she and her logic, ever Donna-esque in rationale, have won this round.
“Both our— Donna, how many times have I told you not to get too chummy with my mother?”
“Too many to possibly count.”
“And that doesn’t tell you something…?”
“That you’re wasting the time you should be spending running the country obsessing over whether or not your mother’s sent me your baby photos?”
“Donna!” he whines.
“Josh!” she mimics.
“Nevermind, just… can you offload some of this stuff when we get to Lithuania?”
“This stuff?”
“Hell, there’s a trashcan over there-- offload it now.”
He takes her in: chest puffed in a vestige of defiance, hair golden with sunlight. The color of fools, he thinks to himself, fools who notice things like the way the sunlight hits their assistant’s hair. They’ve worked together for a year now, but sometimes he finds himself longing to know everything he doesn’t yet about this woman, marveling at everything he’s still to learn about her – this energizer bunny with a smart mouth who’s dressed suspiciously like his assistant. Finds himself thinking that the one thing he’s somehow always known is that she’ll be the death of him, one way or another. Finds himself thinking that he welcomes it.
She glares at him and he tries a new tactic, “Look at it this way. You’ll save room for the Western European portion of the tour. I hear Italy makes an adorable miniature tower of Pisa.”
“Fine,” she huffs, snatching the bag from his grasp and bending over to unzip it. “I’ll try to consolidate.”
“That’s all I ask,” he mutters and massages the crick in his neck, weighing whether helping her rearrange will get him in less or more trouble at this point.
“She already did, by the way,” Donna smirks up at him. “Send me baby pictures.”
Josh’s jaw drops. “Of me?”
“In the nude.”
“To you?!” he screeches.
“And possibly to Joey Lucas, given her apparent firsthand knowledge of your cute little political butt.” She pauses, struck with a realization, “Oh my God. Unless she has actual firsthand knowledge of your butt.” She wheels around to face him, luggage forgotten, “Josh!”
“Donna, please,” he begs her to stay on track. “Your suitcase.”
From a few gates down, a customs agent – mustachioed and terrifying, in an Eastern European sort of way – rushes toward them. He gesticulates from Donna to the suitcase and back again, before turning to Josh, barking at him in what Josh can only assume is very fast, very angry Belarusian.
“Listen, buddy, I hear you,” says Josh, arms raised in mock surrender. “We’re getting her out of the country as fast as we can.”
Donna smacks him on the shoulder and he laughs.
It’s when the second, then third, then fourth and fifth agents surround them that the situation becomes decidedly less funny.
Josh tries to keep pace as they yell. “Uh, gentlemen? Seems we’ve found ourself in a bit of a Who’s On First scenario. Is there maybe an interpreter on the premises, or…?”
It’s when the first agent pulls his gun from his holster that it becomes downright unfunny.
“Woah, woah, hold on—” and now his arms are raised in real surrender.
From a hundred yards away, Leo’s secret service detail comes running, their own guns drawn. And Josh thinks to himself that moments like this must be the reason phrases about hell and handbaskets needed coining in the first place.
“Donna,” he grits through clenched teeth. “They’re. Pointing. At. Your. Suitcase.”
His assistant is white as a sheet. Which, for a gal who once spent an entire White House Correspondents’ Dinner explaining to the editor of Glamour Magazine in excruciating detail the level of maintenance required of a blonde with alabaster skin, is really saying something.
“I know,” she grits back, careening now toward hysteria. “Do you think…” her eyes are like saucers, “it’s the Russian nesting dolls?”
“The— what?”
“I know the Cold War is over. But maybe it’s still a sore subject. You think there’s, like… lingering tensions?”
Without warning, Josh finds himself flashing back to his childhood. Evenings spent in front of the living room TV set with his dad, laughing until his stomach ached at reruns of I Love Lucy. And it occurs to him that – cultural and occupational differences aside (though, come to think of it, Josh did play the drums in high school) – he’s never felt more of a kinship with Ricky Ricardo than he does in this moment.
“Cold war tension between Belarus and Russia?” he asks, fingers squeezing the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah.”
“They were on the same side!”
He takes a deep breath, determined to calm down before he goes full Desi Arnaz (‘Luuuucy, you’ve got some splainin’ to do!). This is a triage situation. Get out of Europe before reigniting a world war now, plop Donna in an AP European history class later. As soon as possible, but still, later.
“Donna, tell me,” he tries again, keeping his voice as low as possible. “Please tell me you declared this stuff when we went through customs.”
He watches in horror as realization dawns across her features.
“You have to do that in every country?” she asks, sniffling back the beginnings of a meltdown. “I thought it was more of a bulk thing…” she finishes lamely, “for once we got back home.”
Put simply: they wind up having to evacuate the terminal.
Which takes four hours. Families miss birthdays, friends miss vacations, lovers break-up. And Josh takes it all in with what can only be described as pure awe: bomb-sniffing dogs weaving between their luggage like truffle-hunting pigs and Leo’s face turning red like the states they never had any hope of winning anyway and Donna burying her head in her hands like her future’s written on the inside of her palms: two and a half kids raised in a three bed/two-and-a-half-bath in Wisconsin with a doctor she’ll have sex with in missionary twice a week like clockwork, because no way she makes it out of Belarus with her job intact, not after this. The delay means they’ll miss tonight’s summit in Warsaw and have to forgo the Czech Republic portion of the trip entirely and Josh thinks he’s supposed to be upset, knows he’s probably supposed to fire Donna or maybe turn her over to the CIA, let her penchant for tacky souvenirs land her on the Most Wanted List where she probably belongs. But try as he might (and he does, oh does he), he can’t seem to summon anything but affection for this woman, cheeks red as Lucille Ball’s hair, chin quivering with tears, bag stuffed to the gills with Polish easter eggs and German lederhosen and, yes… eleven scented Minsk candles.
So instead of yelling, he tucks her under his arm. She lets out a mortified groan, burrowing into the safety of his side as he whispers into her ear, eyes flashing with amusement, “Couldn’t have picked something less pungent to smuggle, Donnatella? Belarus is known for its potatoes, too. At least when you burn them, they turn into fries.”
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again," she means, "Put your arms around me from behind as I stand disconsolate at the window,"
It’s 9:24pm in D.C. and all Donna knows right now is that a criminal is never supposed to return to the scene of the crime.
Or at least that’s what she tells herself once Cliff has returned her diary – chancing an apologetic glance in her direction over Josh’s shoulder – when Josh ambles back to their spot by the fountain, his face a swirl of relieved remorse, and asks:
“Can I walk you home?”
She studies his face and thinks of nothing but loss: of his trust, of her privacy, of who they were to one another, before all of this. She wonders who they’ll become after, now that their story necessitates cataloguing, requires categorizing into boxes labeled BC and AD. Before Cliff and After Diary. And maybe it’s silly, because she knows Josh has experienced real loss in his life, that he became more proficient in the art of it at 7 than Donna is at 27. But maybe right now, Donna doesn’t give a damn. Maybe she just feels like feeling sorry for herself. Maybe she feels like letting it take her under with it, this wave of grief.
This morning was denial; screwing up her courage and smarting off at the mouth to Cliff when he’d showed up at her apartment (ignoring the arc of his own mouth, the one that’d done another type of smarting off against her neck a few nights before).
This afternoon was anger; and that one was all Josh, jaw going from slack to clenched and back again before she could even get the words out (nothing in the diary is relevant, I made a mistake, what should I do, what do we do).
The hand-off had been a bargain; the two of them silent on a bench and her journal, leather-bound and smug between their hips like it knew the trouble it had caused, like it knew the secrets it held (it didn’t contain the stuff of conservative fantasy, the kind of secrets that could bring down a President, but Josh didn’t know that. Because it did contain fantasy of another kind, the type that would make certain Donna could never look her boss in the eyes again. And Josh didn’t know that either).
While they’d waited for Cliff to return, that’s when depression had loomed, somewhere between the line where his arm slung across the back of the bench and the slope where her shoulders settled just below, its haze creeping over them like mist from the fountain nearby. Her mind had wandered, then, to the entries she’d allowed Josh to see, the ones dated October 4th and 5th, to the way she’d watched his eyes go opaque as he read (about Cliff’s confidence, his charm, the way his sense of humor was a little like Josh’s, but different, too) and read (about Cliff’s hands against her thighs, how she liked that he’d been rough with her, the way that was different from what she was used to, too) and he’d stopped reading then. Just shut the book closed, then thought better of it, opening it up again and ripping the pages from its spine. “Let’s go,” he’d said. And she’d noticed then, as he’d guided her out the door to their waiting cab, that his hand had pressed harder against the small of her back than it usually did.
So she knew, now that Cliff was gone and the diary was back in her possession and this mess was over with – lots of harm, hardly any foul – she knew acceptance would be next. Because the anger in him seems to have passed, not unlike the denial in her. But to reach acceptance means they’ll be free of this, and that doesn’t seem possible, doesn’t seem right. Because what about guilt? What about shame? What about the way she knows, just knows, they’ll never be the same.
“Donna?” his voice is expectant. Though it sounds far away.
“Sorry. I—” she wets her tongue against her lips, a nervous habit, a stalling tactic. Then blinks up at him and tries again, “No, that’s okay. I’ll just grab a cab.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snaps and she lets him, because it’s probably what he needs. “It’s late. I’m walking you home.”
It’s not what she needs; he doesn’t know what she needs. But how could he, she wonders? When she keeps those answers hidden, curled cursive etched into a book he had to hand over for another man to read.
But he must see it on her face. Read it in her eyes, feel it in the way her body’s buzzing next to his. She’s spent her career as his assistant learning Josh – every cocky, brilliant, insecure piece of him. She prides herself on this, the way she knows him better than he’d ever seek to know himself, the way she can anticipate what he wants before he wants it.
Which is why it catches her wholly off-guard when his expression softens and his tone drops, almost to a whisper, “You don’t want to go home.”
She really doesn’t. Something to do with criminals returning to scenes of crimes, the kind that started as attempts to get over the man standing before her by getting under Republican lawyers and ended with all three of them here, in the aftermath of the storm she’d wrought. But she doesn’t know how to explain this to Josh, where to begin–
“Donna,” he says, and his words are slow. Like he’s sounding them out, testing the weight of them on his tongue. “You don’t have to explain. I understand.”
“Josh, I—” she tries again, but finds it all (the excuses, the truth) maddeningly beyond her grasp.
So instead, her eyes well with tears. She can will them not to fall, she will will them not to fall. But then Josh is pulling her into his chest, his hand firm on the back of her head and suddenly, she can’t think of anything she’d rather do than cry.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs. Her body heaves into his with the weight of her sobs and she finds the rhythm comforting, wonders if he does too. They stand like that for a few minutes. Three, maybe three hundred, she can’t be sure. Until her crying turns to sniffling. But she doesn’t dare move from the shield of his grip. Thinks even if she tried, he wouldn’t let her. The thought makes her want to sob all over again, into the chest of the man she filled every damn page of her diary with, the one she was trying to protect by lying, the one she’d face perjury charges for, go to jail for (die for, Donna, die for). Because what she realizes as he strokes her hair, soothing her sobs, is that maybe Josh would die for her too. Wasn’t that what this was, after all? Risking perjury, risking disbarment, risking upending an entire Presidential administration – that’s what he did for her tonight. And it occurs to her now, clear as the moon draping itself over their heads, that he’d do it all again for her tomorrow. And the next. As many times as she needed saving, he would save her. The thought sends a chill down her spine.
“It may feel like…” he moves the hand holding her head to his face, rubbing it across his mouth. “…like you’re alone in this, Donna but you have my word, okay?” he pulls back, then, lifting his finger under her chin so she can look him in the eyes. His full, gentle eyes. “As long as I’m here, you’re going to be fine. You hear me?”
She nods.
“Do you want to go back to the office?”
She thinks for a moment, chancing a look in that direction. A crowd has formed down the block. A loud boom of laughter wafts in their direction. It sounds so foreign to her; a commotion that only the carefree can make.
He confirms, as if reading her mind, “It’s a… carnival, I think. Some kind of street fair.”
She looks at him and he looks back at her and they don’t say anything. Don’t need to, really. They’re so sick of words (the written kind and the spoken kind and the kind that get stuck in your throat at the most inopportune time) tonight.
So she just nods and he just smiles, because they know where they’re going next. And they can’t always say that, the two of them, so she makes sure to remember this feeling, the relief of it. And his hand goes, softer this time, against the small of her back as they walk: toward the carefree, away from this.
They watch a puppet show that turns out to be a surprisingly moving display and she pretends not to notice when Josh leaves a $20 dollar bill in the man’s tip jar. He buys her a candy apple and laughs when the caramel sticks in her teeth and the sound makes her so giddy she makes sure to be as messy as possible with the hot dog she washes it down with after, holding her breath when he wipes a rogue dot of ketchup from her chin with his thumb. A balloon man makes a show of blowing her a neon dachshund and she insists on a purple elephant for Josh, laughing as he marvels at the man’s breath control because seriously has this guy considered a career in scuba diving or, better yet, the Marines or the Navy or perhaps looked into joining a team of highly trained Special Ops because – and Josh can’t stress this enough – his country needs him and his lungs.
And when the vendors pack up their guitars and paint-by-numbers and hopscotch acts, there is Josh's hand again, impossibly light against the curve of her spine, guiding her left, the direction of his own apartment and not right, the direction of hers. She’ll offer to take the couch but he’ll insist she take the bed and they’ll brush their teeth over his and hers sinks, her toothbrush still in its spot from the last time she was here, and she’ll hear him from his bedroom as he folds the sofa into a bed and marvel at how he knew, he must’ve somehow just known that criminals shouldn’t return to scenes of crimes, and she thinks maybe he includes himself in that category, even though he doesn’t deserve it, because he’ll never let her be Bonnie without a Clyde.
He’s supposed to know that.
What do I owe you? Let's start with an apology. Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead,
It’s 8:43am in the White House and Donna looks like she hasn’t slept all night. And sure, neither has he. But at least he has an excuse.
“So,” she follows him into his office, balancing a cup of Yoplait between her chin and a stack of his files. “How was it?”
“How was what?”
He thuds into his chair and rubs his eyes, at once surprised and not at all so to find her waiting, hands on hips, altogether unamused by the pace at which his brain churns without the caffeine she refuses to bring him anyway.
“Tahiti.”
“So… my apartment. You’re asking how my apartment was.”
She rolls her eyes. “The apartment I bought 200 dollars’ worth of decorations for, yes.”
He can feel himself shifting in his seat, disappointed despite himself by her tone, its lack of subtext. She waits, her expression blank, and he realizes he can’t decide which it is that bothers him more – that she’d helped (that he made her help) concoct his scheme for Amy last night? Or that she’s being so casual about it now?
“Donna, I bought the decorations. And apparently stock in Target. Did you think I wouldn’t look at the receipt?”
“You said to go all out!”
“On tiki torches! Not every issue of People Magazine ever printed.”
She peers up at him through batting eyelashes, “I may have charged some interest.”
And he thinks for a moment that she must know how powerless he is when it comes to her. Thinks she must know that when he looked up at her last night from his newspaper in the dark of the bullpen and asked, ‘okay, what do I do?’ what he really meant was ‘what would you want me to do, if she were you?’
“So,” she leans into him, picking a piece of imaginary lint from his jacket. “Did you get lei’d?”
His eyes widen. Because he knows the joke already (hell, she’s made the joke already, when he met her outside his place last night – her hazard lights flashing as she leaned across the console and through the car window, hair up in a bun, bags of fabric flower necklaces in one hand and his credit card in the other), but something about the glint in her eye when she says it now makes his mouth taste like the Sahara, leaves him unable to discern her grin – the one he thinks doesn’t quite reach her eyes – from real or mirage.
“In a manner of speaking,” he replies. Because she asked, didn’t she?
And it’s not that he’s sick of this game they play, doesn’t think he could ever withdraw from a match when it’s against Donna, no matter how many points he’s down. It’s just that sometimes he likes to watch one of his jabs land, likes the way the sting in her eyes matches the ache in his chest. But then her smile tightens and he remembers that for him to win means she has to lose, that there’s a word for the type of victory that isn’t shared, that it sounds an awful lot like defeat.
He regrets it instantly.
“Well, good,” she nods. “I told you. Girls like dramatic gestures.”
“Why?” he hears the question leave his mouth before he can overthink his need to ask it.
“Why do we like dramatic gestures?”
“Yeah. I mean…” he clears his throat, “I told her I wanted to be with her. Why’s it gotta take some French Polynesian production to prove that I care?”
She blinks up at him, then back down at the files, shuffling through them. He wonders if she’s rifling through her brain, too, her mind rotating, click by click, until she locates the correct reply. The one that will keep this thing between them on the rails, in balance. Like always.
“I guess,” she says, “because with words, it’s easy to lie.”
She finds the folder she’s looking for – the one she spent all night meticulously highlighting and tabbing in preparation for his breakfast with Senator Monroe. Next to the last paragraph, the one that’s circled within an inch of its life, it reads: “IF HE TRIES TO ARGUE PRECEDENT, REMIND HIM OF SB-82 – DON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER.” She gives it to him, tugging her hand back like she’s surprised by the shock that sparks when the tips of her fingers brush against his. Like it doesn’t happen every time they touch.
And he thinks he can almost make out the ghost of a confession lurking behind her eyes when she shrugs carefully and murmurs, “Actions are harder to disguise.”
A sign is held up saying "Laughter." It's a silent picture.
When a man loves a woman he's there,
It’s 12:04am in the Hawk and Dove and who knew that even the rotor blades of news helicopters aren’t built to withstand black ice?
See, it’s Christmas Eve. And Josh didn’t wind up packaging an initiative on infant mortality and Donna didn’t make it to the Washington Inn and the two of them definitely didn’t get to the press briefing room to take a picture of CJ’s dressed-up snowmen. But the getting drunk part? That, they followed through on with flying colors. Or, in Donna’s case, spinning. A kaleidoscope of colors and shapes that blur so inextricably together after her fifth (was it her fifth?) shot of the night that she forces herself to focus extra intently on Josh’s eyes, just to make sure he doesn’t actually have four of them.
“I’m supposed to be in a Swiss chalet right now,” she muses, not for the first time tonight.
He sighs into his glass. “Pretty sure the Washington Inn’s in America--”
“Decked out in diamonds and a giant fur, watching the skiers float past my window…”
“Uh huh,” he eyes her near-empty glass. “And who exactly are you in this scenario? Donnatella Versace?”
“I’m Donnatella Moss,” she whimpers, too drunk to realize she’s missed the joke.
Josh laughs then, full of warmth. “Oh okay. She’s alright too.”
Mollified, she stands – sways, really – to order another round.
“Haaaang on, Betty Ford.” He grabs her by the wrist, stopping her. “I promised to get you drunk, not leave you for dead.”
“C’mon,” she sticks her tongue out at him, “don’t be such a Scrooge.”
“Okay but you realize Scrooge wound up being the hero of that story, right?”
“We’re celebrating. It’s officially…” she checks her watch to be sure, “Jesus’ birthday. As of three minutes ago.”
“Right but see, as a Jew, I didn’t score an invite to his party—”
“Jo-osh,” she whines, heaving herself back into the booth like an overtired toddler.
“Donna, before you strain something, I need you to know that I’m immune to whatever niche Christmas reference you’re about to trot out to convince me to buy you another shot.”
“How ‘bout this?” She waggles her brows at him, pulling an eyelid down in what she hopes looks like a wink but fears looks more like a seizure. “You immune to this, too?”
He throws his head back and lets out the loudest hoot she thinks she’s ever heard from him, disturbing the other patrons around them. Not that Donna notices, too drunk on Patron and the way his laughter reverberates up through his chest, floating across their booth and rumbling through her body until it courses down through the ends of her toes to bother caring about anything else.
His eyes take on a faraway look and he asks, almost as if to himself, “How could I ever be immune to that?”
See, Donna’s drunk, but her heart could be pumping pure bourbon through her veins instead of blood and she’d still know that this right here? This is the part where Josh is supposed to look away. Crack a joke about immunology or vaccinations or 5k races for the cure so that she can roll her eyes, ‘yes-and’ his joke with facts about antibiotics or medical miracles or tell him about that time in college (when she was pre-med for a week and a half) she was supposed to write a 50 page paper on a historical viral outbreak but she forgot to set her alarm the day the assignments were handed-out, so when she got to class the only topic left was the 2nd Cholera Pandemic, and no disrespect to the lives lost in the 2nd Cholera Pandemic, but when the 1st pandemic was novel because it was the first and the 3rd pandemic was noteworthy because it was the last, there’s really not much to write home (much less a 50 page paper) about when it comes to the 2nd pandemic, because, as it turns out, no matter how messy something is or how long it lasts, the only thing people really remember is how it starts and how it ends. Cholera, that is. As in: ‘love in the time of.’
But he doesn’t look away, or crack a joke, or roll his eyes through one of her rambling stories.
So she doesn’t do any of that either.
And suddenly they’re out of sequence, actors willing each other to remember their lines, trying to ignore the anxious, packed audience shifting in rows of seats just beyond their eyeline.
But if Donna knows one thing about herself when it comes to Josh, it’s that she’ll never, ever leave him hanging. Refuses to be anywhere but underneath him holding a net when he trips or leaps or falls. Plus, she’s drunk, and she wonders what it would be like. Just this once.
So she, too, decides to flip the script.
She reaches for him. And then she’s touching him, placing her hand on his thigh, marveling at the sensation – at the way he tenses under her touch, at the scratch of khaki under her palm. And if a whoosh of air didn’t escape his lungs, they might not both look down at the same time. Might not be mesmerized by the sight of her hand, tiny against his leg. Might not know she was touching him at all.
But it does, so they do. And they are. Because she is.
His gaze darkens, zeroing in on the point at which they meet. A point from which they can still return, if they hurry. She’s just not sure she wants to.
Slow, excruciatingly slow, she drags her hand up. Toward his inseam, toward him. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing, but even if she did she doubts she’d be able to stop. It’s like her hand’s gotten wise to her brain’s game, gotten as sick of the ‘will they won’t they’ as the rest of the world, the rest of senior staff, the rest of her own aching body. And she already knows what ‘they won’t’ feels like, how the sound of it crunches under her heels every day between his office and her bullpen. But now that she’s touching him, she simply has to know, has no other choice really but to find out what would happen if ‘they will.’
She feels, rather than sees him start to stir under his trousers, his body responding to her touch. Despite himself, she muses idly. Because of herself, she wants to ask. She looks up at him, the question wide in her eyes. He swallows, hard, feeling her gaze shift. And when he flicks his up to meet her own, something deep in her abdomen throbs, sweet and scalding and stronger than anything she can buy at this bar. Stronger than anything she can buy anywhere.
And still, her hand keeps climbing. And still, he doesn’t stop her. A centimeter a second, if that. The cruelest, sweetest game of chicken she’s ever played.
And then her phone rings.
And she’ll think later that nothing Jack could whisper to her in a four-poster bed in a chalet in Maryland turns her on the way it does when Josh juts his chin out, motioning toward her cell phone, but refusing to break eye contact.
Answer it, he dares her, and it turns the throb to an ache.
So she doesn’t break eye contact or move her hand from its home against his thigh when she uses her free one to flip her cell phone open, voice raw with lust when she murmurs, “Hello?”
It’s Jack.
And it’s when she says as much (“Jack, hi. I thought… I figured you’d be asleep – oh, okay. Really?”) that the spell breaks. Josh averts his eyes from hers, running a hand through his hair, jaw clinching hard on the air between them and she yanks her hand away, bringing it to rest in her lap where it looks every bit as much an imposter to her eyes as it feels to her own leg.
And the world resumes its spin on its axis, no matter how much she wishes it wouldn’t.
She listens as Jack gives her the news, oh it’s excellent news because helicopters may flake out but Jack never does, and he’s sending a friend and she doesn’t think to ask how a friend – however decorated a soldier he may be – can brave black ice when news helicopters can’t because it’s already settled: the car will pick her up at her place at 6am which will get her to Maryland in plenty of time for skiing, where she’ll cling to her boyfriend’s arm, skittering down the baby slopes and pretending she needs saving, because Jack is just a man whose ego needs this, she knows. Which will get her away from this booth in plenty of time before she presses her boss’ lips against her own, skittering across the point of no return and pretending this line they drew years ago is written in pencil instead of stone, because maybe Josh is just a man who needs her, she hopes. But he’d never let her, never forgive himself if he did, because he’s not just a man; he’s Josh, and he doesn’t need a shoulder full of epaulets to prove he’s an officer or a gentleman.
He just is one.
They hammer out the details and a flowery goodbye that sounds ridiculous even to her own ears and she flips her phone closed and chances an apologetic glance his way, stopping short at the figure he cuts. He’s hunched forward, hands covering his lap and when she notices his face burning, neck to nose, she realizes what he’s hiding, has to stop herself from smoothing her hands over his. Though whether to pick up where she left off or to ease his embarrassment, she doesn’t know. Pick up where she… oh God.
In an instant, she’s never felt more sober. Her own cheeks start to blush, hot all the way to her ears because she’s the one who’s embarrassed now. Because she started it. She shouldn’t have.
She almost says as much, until he asks—
“Good news?” His voice entirely too loud and bright.
He still won’t look at her and she knows, in her bones: they’ll never, ever speak of what just happened.
“Uh…yeah. I mean, yes.” She shakes her head, willing herself back toward the sound of Jack’s voice on the phone. “Jack has a friend and there was… something about a police escort? I’ll be on the road by six tomorrow morning.” She bites her lip, hoping he’ll take her next words at anything but face value, hoping he’ll recognize the true meaning behind them when she says, “I’m sorry.”
But if he does, he doesn’t let on.
“No no, all good. A merry Christmas after all. Jack’ll be…”
“Happy,” she finishes for him, feeling everything but. “Jack’ll be happy.”
She catches her own eye in the mirrored paneling above his head and she wonders how on earth a face can look the same as it always has when the person inside it suddenly feels so different.
The moonlight taunts them as they make their way outside, dripping slant against their bodies, illuminating everything the haze of the bar kept hidden. They walk to the corner where he insists on paying for a cab to take her home (a cab just for her, not for them to share, she notices, when he flags one down and steps back). When it pulls up, she climbs inside. Folds her legs under her as he closes the door and watches him lean through the window to give the driver her address. And she thinks maybe, if she screws her eyes shut tight enough, she can pretend that he’s giving him directions to their apartment, the one they share, the one they’ll argue all the way home to about whether to light the Menorah or the Advent candles first before settling on falling into bed wrapped up in one another in lieu of lighting either.
She looks up at him, suddenly shy. “Thank you for tonight.”
“No 14,000-pound ice sculpture in the foyer,” he concedes, and the allusion to the Washington Inn jars her; the sound vulgar in her ears, the taste sour in the air between them.
“I think it was 14,000 bottles of wine in a cellar,” she corrects, wincing at the way her speech slurs.
“Then you did alright on that front anyway,” he says, not unkindly.
She risks a smile. She wants everything to be okay, wants them to go back to how they were before the night began (but, but, but, and yet, and yet, and yet, doesn’t want to ever go back to not knowing what he felt like under her palm, what he looked like under her spell). But she doesn’t know how to phrase it, so she tries a couple versions out in her head, somehow landing on—
“Still. It was…” she drops her chin to her chest when runs out of steam. It was what, Donna? Fun? Memorable? A glimpse at a life she’s not allowed to have?
“Yeah,” he says softly, “it was.” And she feels a wave relief wash over her. Maybe he knows what she’s trying to say, even if she doesn’t.
“Donna,” he tries, and there’s no pleasure in his words, not even a trace of smugness in his tone. Just ragged honesty, the kind that seeps in after a late night and couple of beers and the phantom sensation of your assistant’s hand lingering on your leg, “When I said I wasn’t keeping you here on purpose…”
She freezes, recognizing a callback when she hears one. Twice in one night, in fact.
He clears his throat and pulls his gaze away from her face. “The way this night is ending right now?” (the emptiness that threatens to swallow you whole, when you know what you want and still can’t have it she thinks, and she wonders if maybe that’s what he means too. But his eyes are wild, full of regret, and she thinks it’s probably got less to do with emptiness and more to do with shame. He’s her boss. She’s his assistant. She has a Jack. He has an Amy. And she’s the only one of the two of them who seems to keep forgetting these facts.)
“This,” he gestures between them, signaling toward the awkwardness that radiates off their bones now, the unease that followed them out of the bar and into this stilted goodbye. “This is why.”
Her eyes go wide as the cab pulls away from the curb, leaving her alone inside it, on her way to chalets and hot chocolate and Jack and still, all she can do is stare through the driver’s mirror at Josh’s figure as it recedes in the distance.
She wonders if he’s always looked this small, if her chest has always felt this tight, or if it’s just that objects in the rearview may be closer to her than they appear.
He doesn't complain that she's two hours late and there's nothing in the refrigerator.
They fight all the time,
It’s 12:32pm in the bullpen and Donna has just invited Josh to lunch.
“Uh… I mean, sure, I guess. Yeah.”
She looks at him strangely. “What’s with you?”
“Nothing,” he scratches the back of his neck, trying to dislodge an answer that will neither highlight nor make too big a deal of his current conundrum. “I mean, that lobbyist guy. The one you… went on that date with last week. He won’t care, right?”
“That I’m spending my work lunchbreak with my boss, with whom I work?” she replies, sarcasm dripping from her tongue, “Yeah Josh, I’m sure he’ll be devastated.” She pauses, picking at a thread on her sweater, suddenly self-conscious, “He’s out of the picture anyway.”
“Sorry,” says Josh, sounding positively the opposite.
She shrugs, “Wasn’t a match. Should we go?”
“Uh… okay.” He hesitates, still feeling a step behind, a dollar short. Surely Donna knows what today is, right? She’s the one into all that girly crap, not him. “And Amy, I mean… she’s cool…”
Donna’s blown right past confusion into full-blown bewilderment. “With us eating lunch together?! I sure hope so, Josh. Otherwise just wait ‘til she finds out that I,” her voice drops to a whisper in mock horror, “answer your calls too.” She gasps aloud and he rolls his eyes.
“Seriously,” she presses the backs of her fingers to his forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”
He yanks his head away, “Would you knock it off?” He would’ve told her, if not for that last crack about answering his calls. Instead he decides, feeling more assured now with a plan in place: she’s on her own. “I’m just hungry.” He grabs her purse from her desk, trailing it behind him like a carrot on a stick. “C’mon, I’ll drive.”
It’s not until they reach the diner that Donna begins to sense something’s amiss. Vases of roses line each table. Behind the counter, perfectly good slices of pie are dyed pink. A waitress approaches, and Donna’s gaze moves from her heart-shaped apron, up to Josh’s toothy grin.
“Oh no…” She chokes out.
“Oh yes.” He smirks back.
“It’s…?”
“Happy Valentines Day!” chirps the waitress. “Sit anywhere you want.”
And it all might’ve been fine, had he not spotted the sign in the corner (“Couples eat free!”) and had he not loved torturing her, loved the drop her jaw did when the waitress came to take their order and he kissed Donna's knuckles, loved the way her eyes screamed ‘don’t you dare’ when he’d launched into the story of their torrid love affair, a rooftop proposal followed by a wedding that had to be fast-tracked, because even though Donna was as stunning pregnant in a wedding dress as she would’ve been not-with-child, her Irish Catholic grandmother might’ve gone to an early grave if she’d had to watch her favorite granddaughter waddle down the aisle like a walking billboard for premarital sex.
The waitress, for her part, seems genuinely charmed by their romance, having the decency to blush only a little bit when Josh throws his arm around Donna’s shoulder and explains, his hand making a half moon around his mouth in mock aside, that even though you’d never guess from the looks of Donna – all innocent and farm girl and Wisconsin – his little angel was a real devil in the bedroom. So he’ll have the burger – burned into a piece of Pompeii pumice, if possible – because he needs some protein, has to keep his strength up somehow, since Lord knows the harnesses and swings and machines Donna’s got set up in their bedroom require some serious core-strength to operate.
“I cannot believe you,” she’d all but screamed at him, after he’d launched into a detailed description of their courtship, the narrative of which somehow centered Josh as the put-upon object of Donna’s obsessive, stalker-like affection - no seriously I’m telling you, this little lady put Glenn Close and that bunny to shame – and cast Donna as the luckiest girl in the world to have bagged Washington’s most eligible bachelor.
“You’re impossible—”
“—to hate, I know, babe,” he replies, offering the waitress an apologetic wink. “See what I mean? She can’t resist me.”
“Oh go to hell,” she groans, her elbow upending a cannister of napkins as she flips him the middle finger, sending its contents skittering across the floor.
“Well that’s certainly rich, coming from the little devil herself!” he smirks back, pushing back from the table and looking toward their stunned fellow patrons for support.
She leaves in a huff, slamming twenty bucks down on the table and grabbing her coat before he can beat her to it. He slides the waitress an extra $20 and an apology, then slumps back into his chair with a victorious grin. And it’s not ‘til a few hours later, when CJ, Sam, Toby, Leo, and somehow even Margaret all react to what was supposed to be a charming and hilarious anecdote with abject horror, that he realizes maybe he’d taken it too far.
He doesn’t see her again until 9 o’clock that night, the bullpen empty save for the click of her nails against her keyboard.
He stands over her, cautious, clearing his throat.
She looks up, fixing him with a glare he’s almost sure would frighten Fitzwallace into handing over the nuclear codes on the spot. “Back for round two, Joshua?”
“No. I just, uh… I’m heading out.”
“You have no idea how much you’ll be missed,” she deadpans, looking back down at her computer.
He shuffles his weight from foot to foot. “You need a ride?”
“To my dominatrix lair? No thanks. I drove.”
“Okay.” He pulls on his gloves and nods. Nudges a to-go box across her desk toward her, then walks toward the door, humming softly over his shoulder as he goes, “Happy Valentines Day, Donna.”
He makes himself wait until he’s on the other side of it before sneaking a peek back at her through the window, watching as she types, and then types some more. Until her curiosity must get the better of her, because she looks around once, then pops the sides of the takeout container, peering down into it. Tiramisu, the shape of a heart. The shape of her heart, he’d thought, when he saw it behind the counter.
She dips a fingertip into pink powdered sugar, bringing it to her lips, and her mouth twists into a smile. She doesn’t know it, but just down the corridor, his mouth forms one to match.
And as he turns on his heel, out the door and into the twinkling expanse of DC lights, he decides this is his best Valentine’s Day yet.
It's fun.
When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
It’s 2:39am in Houston and Matt Santos’ electoral votes total 272 and Leo’s body lies in the morgue and Josh’s hands are everywhere, all over her, all at once.
She’d knocked on his door, shown up with a bottle of Lou’s leftover scotch and a smile of steel, ready to be the girl he drinks with or the shoulder he cries on or whatever he needed her to be. And she doesn’t know how she went from offering that to doing *this* (though a voice somewhere in the back of her brain supplies helpfully that it’s probably got something to do with the eight years they spent doing everything but *this*), but it’s just that… She doesn’t want him to think that… to think that *this* is what she came here for.
She stills his movements, clutching his fingers against her chest while she still has a semblance of control over the desire curling inside it. “Josh,” she whispers, “we don’t have to…”
Because the first time they did this was hesitant and hushed and the second was fiery, frenetic and she wants the third to be whatever it wants to be, wants it to be anything but an obligation. Because she knows Josh in triumph and she knows Josh in grief and she knows neither version of him will put his own needs before Donna’s, even tonight. And even though, yes, she wants there to be a third time, and a fourth, and five hundred and sixty seventh, none of that has to happen tonight. Because tonight (every night) what she wants is to give Josh what he wants. Wants to be what he wants, not whatever he thinks she wants. Not even whatever he thinks he wants. What he actually wants. What he needs.
He stares at her for a beat, then coaxes her backwards until she feels the top of the mattress hit the backs of her knees. She falls back against it and he follows, his body flush against hers, trapping her bottom lip between his teeth and damn, he’s so good at this. Every single nerve ending in her pout is on fire and she thinks it’ll be impossible to pull back… until she does. “I just. I don’t want you to feel like…”
She trails off and into his eyes, desperate for direction, certain that if she looks hard enough, she’ll find a map or a guide or some sort of solution because every set of step-by-step instructions that go with Josh were written by her. She knows how to handle him when his bill idles in committee or his sort-of-girlfriend leaves a dead fish in his office or his boss lies to the American people about an incurable illness or his tie doesn’t match his shirt. So she stares into his eyes, wild and moored to her own like he’d rather drown with her than float without her, and her throat tightens when she realizes that, tonight of all nights, instructions on how to handle Josh with care are sold separately. Because he’s lost a father on the same night as he’s won an election once, already, and she’s been there to comfort him through it once, already, but when she sketched those notes in the margins of her brain, she didn’t yet know the way his grip felt against the roll of her hips, rough and delicious and in control. She didn’t yet know that the way her back arched under him would upend it all, leaving her like a diver with the bends, unable to distinguish up from down or where Josh starts from where she ends. She didn’t yet know how an assistant could possibly comfort her boss or a friend could possibly care for her friend when neither title fits who they are to each other, not anymore, not really.
His voice pulls her back to him, the words choked and desperate. “Donna, please.” And she’s not sure if it’s a prayer or a plea or both when his tongue laves against that spot just under her ear, coaxing a whimper from her throat before she can stop it as he trails his lips down her neck, sounding every bit like a man who hopes a woman can recognize an understatement when she hears one as he breathes out, “I need…”
He stops and she pulls back, her search for a solution turned messy, anxious. “What, Josh?”
But suddenly, scrawled across his face: there it is. And if she’s surprised to see the answer written in his own distinctive cursive and not her own indecipherable penmanship, she doesn’t show it. Because there, highlighted in neon and framed in post its, is her guide. A cheat, a clue, a chance to pass go and collect 200 dollars or maybe her own wits about her, if she plays her cards right. A memo she asked him for, for once.
“You, Donna. I need you.”
She kisses him then, hard and decisive, because she knows he’s telling the truth.
And because in all the years spent fitting together the puzzle of Josh, she’d never once considered that the final piece might be her.
When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep.
When a woman loves a man, they have gone to swim naked in the stream on a glorious July day with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle of water rushing over smooth rocks,
It’s 3:35pm in Hawaii when it occurs to Josh that maybe, all this time, he’s had it wrong.
It hits him when he’s wading knee-deep downriver from the spray of the waterfall ahead. A few feet behind Donna, who turns back every few steps to offer a new waterfall-themed fun fact, slipping more than a few times on the rocks and waving off his pleas for her to watch where she’s going.
The thing is, for all his preconceived notions about what a vacation with Donna might entail (and boy did he have notions. Preconceived, fantasized, obsessive notions. For years and years and then a few more years after that.) and for all his fantasies about what the two of them might be like as a couple and for all his imaginings about this woman – hair curled from the salt air, freckles spattered across her chest looking every bit like the most delicious constellation of stars, the kind he’s dying to trace with his finger (I think that one’s Orion’s Belt, Donna, it’s just gotta be) then fasten his mouth against to see if they taste as bright as they shine – in every single scenario, from every anguished angle, with every contingency calculated, never had Josh considered that this version of them had already existed a hundred different times and a hundred different ways. Just as they were then, they are now. They just hadn't known it.
Because at 6:54pm in a beachside cabana rather than 1:10am in Lafayette Square, Josh still had a sensitive system. And even though this time it was the result of a regrettable third Mai Tai on an empty stomach (sipped while staring up at her from their daybed, humming his agreement when she’d marveled at how the pinks and oranges in the sunset matched their drinks and looking not at the sunset, not anywhere near it, which is to say looking only at her), Josh still hoped she wouldn’t tell anyone – not because he was embarrassed, but because this version of him was just for her, only for her.
Because at 11:52pm in a seat at National rather than 4:02pm in Terminal C, Donna still didn’t grasp the concept of customs. And even though this time it was because customs isn’t, like, a thing, given that they were flying domestic (a year’s supply of US Magazines and peanut M&Ms in Donna’s carryon and an O shaped surprise on her face when he slipped his arm through her own and leaned his head against her shoulder, already finding himself more relaxed by the truly excellent notion of an ocean of possibility ahead of them and his blackberry forgotten on his desk behind them), Josh still made a mental note to buy a souvenir (a tshirt emblazoned in block letters: “I go cocoNUTS for you!”) to slip into her bag in Oahu before they board the flight home.
Because at 5:15pm in the street rather than 9:24pm in DC, Donna still didn’t want to return to the scene of the crime, he could just tell. And even though this time the sentiment came drenched in laughter (her pleading for him to delete the picture he’d snapped on his digital camera, the one he’d taken inside the store, an adventure that had started because she’d needed to buy a bikini – which she’d forgotten to bring because he’d given her all of an hour to pack and didn’t he understand that women need 48 hours, minimum, to prepare for a trip, for heaven’s sake Josh – and had somehow ended with him being yanked inside the dressing room, finding himself face to face with the sight of Donna wearing nothing but a grass skirt, her shriek of surprise at the flash of his camera rivaled only by the tsssk of displeasure the saleswoman let out as they tumbled out of the store into the street, having purchased nothing, feeling every bit like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde despite having stolen nothing but each other’s hearts), Josh still knew without a doubt that, if it came down to it, he’d do life in a Hawaiian prison cell alongside her before he ever let her sit in one alone.
Because at 4:49am in the sand rather than 8:43am in the White House, neither of them have slept all night. And even though this time it had to do with big talks and small apologies (her bare feet steady alongside his as they’d made their way up and down the shore, the moonlight bathing them in forgiveness as they’d untangled a decade’s worth of miscommunications and misdirection and picked over their past with a fine tooth comb, revisiting places like Tahiti and people like Amy and marveling at how one person can say exactly the opposite of what they mean and another can mean exactly the opposite of what they say), Josh still realized that Donna likes to show, in the grasp of her hand over his, just how much she cares about him.
Because at 7:02am in the chill of the breeze against their balcony rather than 12:04am in the Hawk and Dove, Donna still rubbed her hand along Josh’s leg. And even though this time it was casual and domestic (her thumb rubbing circles against his bare knee as they each read the paper, sports section for her because she wanted to learn, front page for him because the 12 years he has on her granted him an exemption from learning and maturing and growing, or so he muttered when she caught him and ripped it from his hands, replacing it with a biography of FDR, because she wasn’t a monster, Jesus), Josh still found that his body missed her touch the second it left.
Because at 3:03am in their suite on the night they landed in Hawaii rather than 12:32pm in the bullpen on Valentines Day, Josh still surprised her with a dessert. And even though this time it was a plate of strawberries, chocolate cursive announcing the arrival of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Lyman’ (his panicked explanation stuttered in spurts as he swore the concierge must’ve gotten confused, terrified that he’d managed to scare her out of this relationship before it even had a chance to become a relationship or their toes even had a chance to sink into the sand until finally, she’d simply popped a strawberry into her mouth, something like a challenge sparkling in her eyes as she’d shrugged and said, “I’ll be hyphenating anyway. Moss-Lyman sounds better, don’t you think?,” and his smile had threatened to crack his face down the middle as she’d sauntered toward the bathroom to shower the smell of plane off of her, him closely on her heels to help), Josh still found himself unable to resist watching her eat the whole thing.
Because at 1:49pm in the chill of hotel sheets rather than 2:39am in Houston, Josh still needed her. And even though this time she’d said it first (and louder, more urgently, her hair framing her face and brushing against his shoulders as she leaned first down to kiss, then back to ride him, head rolling back on her neck in pleasure when he did as she begged, hips twisting against hers just like that…Josh…ohhh), Josh still knew that he needed her more.
Because at 3:34pm in Hawaii Donna had said: “Do you know how waterfalls get their power?”
And Josh had deadpanned: “No no wait, Donna, don’t tell me. Is it… protein shakes?”
And Donna had rolled her eyes: “Sunlight.”
And Josh had repeated: “Sunlight?”
And Donna had clarified: “Sunlight provides the energy needed to lift water from the ocean to the head of the river valley.”
And Josh had asked: “Is this like the first draft of the TLC song or something?”
And Donna had pretended like she hadn’t heard him: “So, in other words: if the sun were to stop shining, then all the waterfalls in the world would eventually stop.”
And Josh had retorted: “Donna, if the sun were to stop shining, something tells me waterfalls ceasing to exist wouldn’t exactly be top of mind. Considering the fact that we’d all be, y’know. Dead?”
And Donna had mused: “Well, that would be sad.”
And Josh had agreed: “Yeah, it would.”
And she’d smiled up at him with his favorite smile, the one that wrinkled her nose, the one that showed all her teeth and all her cards, all at once, and Josh had thought to himself that water could cease to fall and suns could choose to no longer rise and none of it would matter to him, and it was because of her.
Because of this life, the one they’d created together, for years, without ever realizing it – in bathrooms in Lafayette Square and airports in Minsk and fountains in Adams Morgan and offices in the West Wing and bars in DC and Valentines in diners and election nights in bed.
Because she loves him and he loves her. And he loves her and she loves him.
Which is why, at 3:35pm in Hawaii, Josh realizes that even though they haven’t said the words out loud today, under a waterfall in Waikiki, that really, it’s the only thing they’ve ever been saying all along.