FF: Fever Dream
Title: Fever Dream
(Or five times he wanted to sleep with her, and didn’t)
Author: little zigzags
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: J/D
Spoilers: Through season six, I guess.
Summary: She thinks that maybe some kissing in dark corners goes beyond their usual level of dysfunction, but really it doesn’t matter if she’s kissing Josh or touching his shoulder or really even just handing him papers in his office late at night; she always feels the same way.
A/N: This one’s been a long time coming. Thanks so much for the commentage on my last, and I’m sorry I didn’t respond, I figured you guys would rather have this written! Seriously though, comments make this all worthwhile. You guys are awesome.
Also, I may or may not have been slightly distracted by Little Manhattan on TV this morning. Uhh, needless to say, BW would NOT be sleeping on the couch in my house! Hee hee...
Some days her shape in the doorway
will speak to me
a bird’s wing on the window
sometimes I’ll hear her when she’s sleeping
her fever dream
A language on her face
Iron and Wine
I.
He doesn’t even know her, really.
Maybe it’s because she’s so young, or maybe it’s because she’s not really his type (too leggy, no, that’s not even the word, she’s lithe, almost fawnish, her eyes a bit big for her face and for God’s sake, she’s almost taller than he is) but he doesn’t realize that maybe all of this good natured conversation in some smokey bar late at night while technically still on the campaign clock might be construed as hitting on her. He’s not really sure.
He should probably talk to CJ about it.
But CJ’s over in the corner getting pleasantly plastered off some unidentifiable beverage, and he decides it’s probably pretty unfair to bug her right now. God help the man that gets between CJ and her well deserved boozing.
In the morning, he’ll blame Mandy, anyway. There’s his type: argumentative, quick-smart, got-your-balls-in-a-twist. They had started a fight over by the pool table. She had chucked her cocktail olive at him in lieu of a goodbye. He supposes this must be foreplay.
He wonders how riled he’ll have to get her before she kicks him in the crotch and he loses all need to have sex. His work environment would certainly be less tense.
But Donna’s here, all pointy knees and careful, sidelong looks. He had expected her to drink something disgusting, watered down, something he thinks a blonde twenty-something from Wisconsin should drink. But she’s sipping down her whisky like she wants the night to be over, like she wants to forget.
He knows the feeling.
And so he’s chatting with her like he might with Zoey until she leans over the bar and reaches for him, and for one brief, ridiculous second he thinks she might kiss him.
He starts a little as he feels her cool fingers slip into the side of his open collar, her drooping shirt revealing just a hint of her peach colored bra as she leans into him.
It’s too many senses at once, too much for his tipsy, melancholy mind. The hair on his neck is standing up where her fingers were, even as she withdraws them from his neck. And he can’t figure out what the hell she’s doing, until she leans close, a small conspirator’s jaunt to her lips.
She holds up one solitary green olive, complete with pimento. He can smell her hair.
“Bobbing for olives?” She leans back, still holding her prize, and for one terrifying moment he thinks she actually might eat it.
“A parting gift.” She frowns, confused, and he shrugs at her. He’s seen her watch him and Mandy, in her careful way. The night’s too old for explaining.
He knows he’ll remember the exact shade of her lingerie. And for that reason he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be talking to her in a crowded bar, four drinks and one foot and two dysfunctional relationships between them.
It’s CJ that tugs him off the bar stool from behind, almost causing him to brain himself on the corner of the bar. “C’mon Captain Planet, let’s go home.”
“Hey, hey with the attempted murder.” He rights himself and adopts something like a glare. “Captain Planet?”
CJ gestures unnecessarily, still immaculate in her dove gray Calvin Klein suit, a lone remnant of her LA days. “You know, you, Sparky, the environmental piece…” she trails off, cocks her hip tipsily.
He grins at her. “By your powers combined.”
Behind him, Donna claps her hand to her mouth. “He’s a dork! You didn’t tell me he was a dork!” She waggles her finger at him and he his stomach lurches awkwardly in a vague recollection of the third grade.
CJ nods solemnly. “He’s a dork.” She jerks her thumb at the door. “Now let’s leave before America notices.”
They drift across the parking lot like space junk in orbit. He scuffs at gravel with the toe of his shoe.
He thinks it should be weird that he doesn’t remember what state they’re in.
The motel in its usual motel fashion is one long strip by the side of the highway. Toby had long ago shut himself in his room with a bottle of something and some legal pads; CJ raps a goodnight onto his door before clopping noisily into her room.
“'Night Joshua, Donnatella.” Her mouth handles the rough terrain of their given names as easily as a future Press Secretary should.
“Night, CJ.” He’s about to walk away when CJ grasps his arm firmly. He looks back at her. Donna’s the quick one here, the one to notice his eyes softening a little under her gaze. She ducks her head; turns towards her room.
“If you’re about to pull the ‘one lonely night in middle America’ card, CJ, then save your breath. I mean, I’m flattered….”
He smirks cheekily even as her arm tightens threateningly around the large bone of his forearm. “Be good, Josh.”
The door slams in his face. He’s not even sure what that’s supposed to mean, but understanding slips over him like an incoming tide as Donna slows up ahead, glancing back at him over her shoulder in the crackling light.
He stalks off, just catches her as she slips through her open door. She looks back at him, her bony fingers grasping the doorjamb.
The wide clarity of her eyes keeps startling him; the pale sleekness of her hair and the unexpected aestheticism of her bony, meek face. She’s so unfamiliar to him, her face too open.
They’re lost in America.
They could pretend to be other people. She’s just that new.
The corner of his mouth and his hand raise in unison for a silent, inadequate goodnight.
She watches him as she closes the door; doesn’t turn away till she hears his footsteps retreating on the pavement.
II.
The summer turns impossibly chilly. The red puckered seam aches like longing in his chest.
She shows up one Sunday and sidles through his doorway along with a whip of cool air.
Chocolate croissants are greasing through her paper bag; the Sunday Times drops with a luggish thunk onto his coffee table. He’s been yearning for the paper all day, but was out of breath before he was even out of sight of his apartment door. The news kiosk has been taunting him; he’s studiously avoided the northeast window.
“Toby wanted to come over again.”
“You should have let him.” Josh is beyond bored; Josh passed bored three weeks ago and is now tip-toeing around something like ennui. He always thought he might end up like this-broken body, mind on overdrive-but figured he probably had another thirty or forty years before it got too serious.
“Toby gets you riled.”
“Riled? What am I, two?” He tries to pace a little and his breath catches in his lungs. He sits.
The corner of her mouth turns up. “Please don’t make me answer that.”
He gives her a small smile. “You let Sam come.” But he knows, knows before she even has to say anything that it’s different. Sam sits in his apartment like some odd creature; with his Armani suits and three hundred dollar haircuts Sam is something sleekly feline ensconced in his armchair. Sam comes with back-issues of the Washington Post for Josh and reads Great Expectations in the faint yellow light of his corner lamp. Sam comes and the hours pass, night comes early.
Donna shrugs and puts a croissant on a plate and hands it to him. She’s not wearing any makeup; her freckles are stark against the paleness of her cheeks, the bridge of her nose.
“You’re not going in today?” He knows she’s been working harder than usual to farm out his duties. He knows it’s been hard, he knows no one can do exactly what he does. CJ’s got her hands full; Sam and Toby know the issues but most of the time they’re cloistered in Toby’s office with couple of Mont Blanc’s and some scrawled-on cocktail napkins from the Hawk and Dove, writing to the staccato beats of pink bouncing balls on plaster. Among them the senior staff have all brands of loyalty but there’s no bulldog in them but Josh. It’s not arrogance, he knows, to think this way. It’s comforting, at least, to know that they need him as much as he needs the job.
“No, it’s pretty quiet, what with the President at the London thing.”
He nods, feeling lugubrious, out of the loop. Donna arranges herself on the edge of his couch with her croissant and the front page. He rifles a bit aimlessly through the Sports section for the baseball stats but is soon deterred by the sight of Donna’s bare feet as she tucks them under herself.
He wouldn’t have guessed that her toes would be painted that particular shade of pink.
“Hey, I got you something.” Her voice startles him out of his reverie, and he drags his gaze up to her face. She’s pulls out a paper bag and hands it across the couch.
He feels a brief wave of apprehension as he takes it from her. He knows it's a book by shape alone, but with Donna monsters come in many forms: some Jane Austen thing she likes; a crime thriller; a cookbook. He’ll read it because she’s Donna but he really doesn’t look forward to setting his house on fire.
He pulls it out from its paper sheath. “The Elegant Universe.” He frowns, flips it over to catch the gist.
“Yea, Josh. String Theory.”
His head snaps up, and he ignores the twinge in his chest. “String Theory? An entire book about it?” She nods, and he grins. “Oh, Donna, imagine how much I can annoy CJ. Just… oh. This is going to be so good.” He flips to the first page and starts to read, glancing back at her. She’s reading the Magazine with a small smile, and he feels a warm pang in his stomach as he goes back to the text.
As the hours creep on he becomes petrified that she’ll leave, but she stays, curled nymph-like at the end of his couch. At some point she puts down the paper and pulls Joanie’s tattered copy of Alice in Wonderland from his bookshelves.
The afternoon grows cooler still; she throws his worn afghan over their knees.
They order spicy Thai and read through soft cellophane noodles and cilantro.
“There is a limit to how finely we can probe the universe,” he tells her.
“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end, then stop.” She grins at him over the top of the fancy leatherbound cover.
Their feet touch and glance away under the blanket; the light is sweet and yellow against the coldish night.
He doesn’t want her to leave.
III.
He’s a Ivy League educated, top-mind-of-his-generation kind of guy, with passing interests in advanced physics and a girlfriend that is almost too hot and probably too tall for him, and he’s transfixed by the sight of his blonde assistant’s legs.
Josh Lyman never wanted to be a cliché.
And yet here he is, and really, this shouldn’t be so scintillating. They’re reading tributes to the mundane: tomorrow’s campaign stop schedule (her); the voting habits of Iowan women aged 30 to 45 in the last five presidential elections (him).
And good God, she’s stretching, she’s stretching and he can see her navel as she sprawls out across his bed. He shifts in the hotel armchair; some pages sift to the floor.
She yawns, and he yawns in return, making her smile her loopy, tired grin. “I’m falling asleep, here. Just call me Harold Ickes.”
“The former Deputy Chief of Staff?”
“Narcoleptic.”
“Really.” He nods, thoughtful. “Maybe that’s where that dent in the desk came from.”
“I think that’s from when, I don’t know, the ceiling caved in.”
“Just call me Chicken Little.”
It’s preposterous, he thinks as he walks to the bathroom. They’re both in their pajamas at one in the morning, and she’s all bare legs in his bed and she’s watching him brush his teeth through the open door of the dingy motel bathroom. It’s at once the sexiest and most frightening moment of his life.
She yawns again as he sits gingerly on the edge of the bed. “I won’t bite, Josh.” She pats the bed and he reluctantly swings his feet up onto the bedspread. She groans suddenly and he’s caught off-guard by the sound of it. “I also don’t think I can move.”
He smiles. “We should have read out in the hall.”
“We should have gone to sleep three hours ago.”
“We were still on the bus three hours ago.”
She shifts; peers at him through one open eye. “You really think anyone would notice if I just, you know, happened to fall asleep here?”
His stomach swills at the thought. He wants to say no, no one will care, but then there’s that joint exit in the morning, and the unmade bed for the maid tomorrow morning, and hell, he can practically see the headline.
She groans again. “Stupid question.”
He sighs. “Yea, probably.” He swivels his head to grin at her. “There’s also no guaranteeing I’d be a gentleman.”
He swats his stomach, hard, and he laughs because he knows, he knows that she knows that he’d never lay a hand on her. Hell, he’d probably sleep on the floor.
“Here’s our solution.” He pads over to her discarded sweatshirt; fishes her key out from the pocket. “I’ll go sleep in your room. Although I also can’t guarantee that all your lingerie will still be there in the morning.”
“Lech.”
“Bedhog.” He turns to watch catch one more glimpse of her lying across his bed as he reaches for the door. “Wake me in the morning.”
IV.
It’s the formal wear, he thinks, as he grasps a handful of the crimped strap of her gown in his fist.
But then again, CJ changes her clothes more than Donnatella Moss-or Donatella Versace for that matter-and he’s never made out with her in the somewhat secluded coat check area of the inaugural ball.
She sighs a little against his mouth and he wonders why its taken him all of five years to press all five feet eight inches of her between himself and the nearest wall.
It’s because they’re pleasure-drunk, he thinks hazily as she slides her hand underneath his tuxedo jacket. He groans against her teeth; tastes the champagne on the inside of her cheek.
Maybe they’re a bit actual-drunk, too.
He hadn’t stopped touching her since that nerve-jangling ride in the cab. He had slid his hand down her thigh like he did it every day, she had resisted the soft sound brewing in the back of her throat. She would blush later, thinking about it, her and Josh stuck in their own private soft-porn world, complete with Toby, Charlie, Will, some sherpa-hatted driver named Chucky, and good God, Danny Concannon was probably taking notes about the Deputy Chief of Staff groping his assistant in what could probably be spun as a staff meeting.
They had done what they always do at these events. He got tipsy and sweaty-palmed and just a little bit loud; she had danced with him longer than was probably good for both her career and her dating life.
And then they are headed off to the next ball and she has his coat check number (of course) and that’s probably how they ended up necking like teenagers.
Except it isn’t really all that frantic: he’s giving her slow, open-mouthed kisses; they’re both running low on oxygen but are too preoccupied to really worry.
She’s pretty sure that this is why they never did this. Because at any moment Toby or Ann Stark or take your pick of the entire White House press corps that are there tonight who could come waltzing into a not so hidden corner of a very crowded building.
Because if he asked, she would probably have sex with him right here, in the spirit of long-standing curiosities.
He pulls back, exhales sharply.
“We should, uh, probably get going.” His voice is throaty; he grins his mischievous, cheshire cat grin at her. His hands lower to her hips, anchor her to him.
She hadn’t expected Josh to be this confident. He’s not really the most debonaire, she thinks, he’s really just a rather tenacious brand of nerd. He watches Nova and listens to NPR and talks with his mouth full. But he’s Josh, and he’s a little unexpected, a little incongruous, murmuring at her in a graveled, lush tone she didn’t know he possessed.
“Yea. CJ and Toby are going to make a showing at one of the other balls, I think. I told them we’d come along.” She runs a slightly shaking hand through his hair.
He groans and drops his head to the crook of her neck, peers up at her from one open eye. “Don’t say ‘balls’ and ‘come’ in the same sentence, please.”
She looks down at his goofy, endearing face and chuckles. “C’mon, Wild Thing. We’ve got things to see.” She takes his slightly sweaty hand in hers.
He bumps her shoulder gently as they walk back into the crowded ballroom. “People to do.” He grins at her again; reluctantly drops her hand.
She’s able to give him one last smile before he is sucked back into the masses by the Secretary of State and the junior Senator from Colorado.
Of course because they’re them it never comes to anything more than that. She thinks that maybe some kissing in dark corners goes beyond their usual level of dysfunction, but really it doesn’t matter if she’s kissing Josh or touching his shoulder or really even just handing him papers in his office late at night; she always feels the same way.
Like she wants to tumble half drunk and half dead into a cab with him at three in the morning when all this nonsense is over. Fall asleep against the pungent leather of the cab; her heel-less feet in his lap. It’s so pathetic, she thinks. She wants to take a nap with Josh Lyman. She can almost imagine Amy’s tooth-bare, mocking laugh.
She could probably go home with him tonight. They’re smart people; they could probably figure out a way to dodge the press for a night. It’s risky, but half the White House is sure that it’s already happened. She could sleep with him and wake up in the morning and they could pretend it never happened. Just another chapter in her lifetime of choked encounters.
Donna’s not like this. Donna’s not a selfish person, except where the rights to Josh Lyman are involved.
She wants all of him.
In their world, there’s always more to be had.
V.
Drinks at the Ritz.
Boy, has he ever been here before.
She’s not unlike Amy, either, brunette, pretty, whip-smart. They’ve both got that praying-mantis-in-heat look that send his meek little Ivy League brain on overdrive.
They’re meeting on the pretense of the campaign, something about the Santos media buys, but somehow between CJ handing him her number and spotting her not-so-subtle hint of cleavage under her black designer suit, he’s pretty sure this is a date.
He’s not having a particularly bad time, but between the fact that Josh hasn’t had had a date in two years and his pretty constant state of exhaustion, he really just wants to pass out on his couch with a Heineken and the recap of the Mets game.
He almost misses the subtle flash of blonde as she sits down across the room.
It’s hard to not look at her. He’s always thought she was pretty, but she’s positively lovely now, effervescent and feline, all impossibly long crossed legs and sleek hair and he thinks he can identify the shade of her lip gloss from across the room.
He realizes now that’s she’s probably always been like this, and he just hasn’t seen it. After all, she’s still Donna: charming, bright eyed, quick-to-grin. The streamlined planes of her face are as familiar to him as the education platforms of the last fifty years of presidents.
She’s chatting with that guy, Josh can’t remember his name, that guy on the show that’s after Capitol Beat. She’s smiling her full toothy grin at him and Josh nearly chokes on his olive.
Olivia is talking to him but he doesn’t hear it, really, just nods and says something polite now and then. He went to law school, after all. He’s mastered the art of the half-listen.
Robert Madsen, he thinks, and groans to himself.
He watches the waitress snake her way over to them with drinks. Watches Donna grin and sip something pink from her glass.
He grins. Hell, he practically whoops for joy when she pulls the Maraschino cherry from her concoction; barely notices when his beautiful, headstrong, legs-for-days date says goodnight, dropping the proposed ad buys with an irritated thwap on the table in front of him.
She’s playing him. She’s playing him and Josh knows it, all the way from across the room. Donna Moss, drinker of things to make sailors balk and flowers wilt at their fumes, drinker of Rusty Nails, of Devil’s Poison, Long Island Ice Tea and once he even witnessed her going shot for shot with Toby, is drinking something watered down and pink and it’s got a goddamn cherry in it, and Josh knows that she’s playing Robert Madsen for all he’s worth.
He’s thinking that she owes him, thinking that it’s a good thing he is a good little boy and waits until the TV anchor shook her hand and tossed some bills onto the table before he saunters over to her little corner. He comes up behind her, just out of her line of vision, so that she starts as he lays his palm warmly on her shoulder.
It’s his turn to start when she actually smiles at him, all warmth and teeth and everything that’s been tweaking around in the back of his mind. “That’s quite an impressive show you put on there.” He walks around from the back of the small sofa on which she sits, choosing to sit next to her instead of the seat occupied by Madsen.
“By all means, sit down, Josh.” Her eyes twinkle a little in the soft light, and he crosses his legs; relaxes into the back of the sofa. “And I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
He gestures at her drink, which sits barely touched on the corner of the table. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. The girly drink, the blonde hair, the, the-” he gestures with his hands to her, all six hundred feet of leg hidden under her feminine suit. She smiles a bit, looks down at her lap. “You’re wooing him. You’re wooing Madsen. What do you want, exactly?” He narrows his eyes at her, chews on his pen. “A spot for Russell, maybe? A key interview? Did you adopt an accent, too? Appeal to his Kentucky values?”
She rolls her eyes at him. “Rob’s from Tennessee, actually.” She watches as his mouth forms the word “Rob” silently. “And the blondeness was already kind of taken care of.”
He shrugs at her. “And so what if I am ‘wooing’ him, Josh? What about you, over there with Olivia Thurston? She controls what, the entire Midwest media market?” She leans back suddenly, still facing him. “She’s your type.”
He didn’t think she had seen them, all the way over at the edge of the room. He looks at her, trying to parse her meanings. Her eyes aren’t nearly as wide with her makeup; he squints in the dim light to read her face. Finally he shrugs noncommittally, flags down a waiter and drops her full drink onto his tray. “She’ll will have a whiskey sour.” He sees her watching him curiously out of the corner of her eye. “I’ll have another martini.” The waiter nods and makes his way back to the bar.
“You don’t need another martini.”
He lets out one sharp half-laugh. “Donna, don’t pretend to know the first thing about what I need right now.”
She jolts a little as though being hit in the face by a handful of sand; he immediately regrets the words. The waiter puts the drinks between them; she takes a long swig.
They sit through several long minutes of silence. He’s beginning to wonder where the nearest fire exit is when he feels the unexpected warmth of her hand on his where it lays on the smooth velvet of the loveseat. “Josh, you need a lot of things. You need to eat better. You need to sleep more than four hours a night. You need to get at least an hour of sunshine every day. You need to stop eating donuts for breakfast.” She pauses for breath, smirks at him. “You need to stop eating donuts for lunch.” It’s his turn to chuff a little, and she squeezes his hand warmly, looks down at her lap. “You need to get a life, Josh. You need to slow down. You need to have sex.” He looks up sharply at her, and she grins mischievously at him. “Lots and lots of it. Ridiculous, mind-blowing, earth-shattering sex to make up for what we will kindly call a slight… dry spell.” He opens his mouth to protest, because really, what knowledge could she possibly have about his sex life. But then she raises a finger at him and he realizes that who is he kidding, Donna knows all, Donna knows everything and she knows his pant size and his standing heart rate and God, she knows what kind of boxers he wears so really, he should just shut up.
She leans in a little, her voice lowering, and he strains to hear in amongst the steady murmurs around him. “But first of all, Josh, you need to get your guy elected. And you need to know that I’m going to make all of this, especially that last thing, pretty damn hard.”
He digests for a moment, then leans in closer. “You’re going to make everything on that list difficult?” He leers at her, and she laughs, full and outright and its the best thing he’s heard in weeks, months even.
He feels his breath catch a little in his throat as she leans in unexpectedly to kiss him on the cheek. “Thanks for the drink, Josh.” And then she’s gone with the soft swish of her skirt, leaving him with nothing but the scent of her shampoo and the sudden vastness of his future.
I want your flowers like babies want God’s love
Or maybe as sure as tomorrow will come
(Or five times he wanted to sleep with her, and didn’t)
Author: little zigzags
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: J/D
Spoilers: Through season six, I guess.
Summary: She thinks that maybe some kissing in dark corners goes beyond their usual level of dysfunction, but really it doesn’t matter if she’s kissing Josh or touching his shoulder or really even just handing him papers in his office late at night; she always feels the same way.
A/N: This one’s been a long time coming. Thanks so much for the commentage on my last, and I’m sorry I didn’t respond, I figured you guys would rather have this written! Seriously though, comments make this all worthwhile. You guys are awesome.
Also, I may or may not have been slightly distracted by Little Manhattan on TV this morning. Uhh, needless to say, BW would NOT be sleeping on the couch in my house! Hee hee...
Some days her shape in the doorway
will speak to me
a bird’s wing on the window
sometimes I’ll hear her when she’s sleeping
her fever dream
A language on her face
Iron and Wine
I.
He doesn’t even know her, really.
Maybe it’s because she’s so young, or maybe it’s because she’s not really his type (too leggy, no, that’s not even the word, she’s lithe, almost fawnish, her eyes a bit big for her face and for God’s sake, she’s almost taller than he is) but he doesn’t realize that maybe all of this good natured conversation in some smokey bar late at night while technically still on the campaign clock might be construed as hitting on her. He’s not really sure.
He should probably talk to CJ about it.
But CJ’s over in the corner getting pleasantly plastered off some unidentifiable beverage, and he decides it’s probably pretty unfair to bug her right now. God help the man that gets between CJ and her well deserved boozing.
In the morning, he’ll blame Mandy, anyway. There’s his type: argumentative, quick-smart, got-your-balls-in-a-twist. They had started a fight over by the pool table. She had chucked her cocktail olive at him in lieu of a goodbye. He supposes this must be foreplay.
He wonders how riled he’ll have to get her before she kicks him in the crotch and he loses all need to have sex. His work environment would certainly be less tense.
But Donna’s here, all pointy knees and careful, sidelong looks. He had expected her to drink something disgusting, watered down, something he thinks a blonde twenty-something from Wisconsin should drink. But she’s sipping down her whisky like she wants the night to be over, like she wants to forget.
He knows the feeling.
And so he’s chatting with her like he might with Zoey until she leans over the bar and reaches for him, and for one brief, ridiculous second he thinks she might kiss him.
He starts a little as he feels her cool fingers slip into the side of his open collar, her drooping shirt revealing just a hint of her peach colored bra as she leans into him.
It’s too many senses at once, too much for his tipsy, melancholy mind. The hair on his neck is standing up where her fingers were, even as she withdraws them from his neck. And he can’t figure out what the hell she’s doing, until she leans close, a small conspirator’s jaunt to her lips.
She holds up one solitary green olive, complete with pimento. He can smell her hair.
“Bobbing for olives?” She leans back, still holding her prize, and for one terrifying moment he thinks she actually might eat it.
“A parting gift.” She frowns, confused, and he shrugs at her. He’s seen her watch him and Mandy, in her careful way. The night’s too old for explaining.
He knows he’ll remember the exact shade of her lingerie. And for that reason he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be talking to her in a crowded bar, four drinks and one foot and two dysfunctional relationships between them.
It’s CJ that tugs him off the bar stool from behind, almost causing him to brain himself on the corner of the bar. “C’mon Captain Planet, let’s go home.”
“Hey, hey with the attempted murder.” He rights himself and adopts something like a glare. “Captain Planet?”
CJ gestures unnecessarily, still immaculate in her dove gray Calvin Klein suit, a lone remnant of her LA days. “You know, you, Sparky, the environmental piece…” she trails off, cocks her hip tipsily.
He grins at her. “By your powers combined.”
Behind him, Donna claps her hand to her mouth. “He’s a dork! You didn’t tell me he was a dork!” She waggles her finger at him and he his stomach lurches awkwardly in a vague recollection of the third grade.
CJ nods solemnly. “He’s a dork.” She jerks her thumb at the door. “Now let’s leave before America notices.”
They drift across the parking lot like space junk in orbit. He scuffs at gravel with the toe of his shoe.
He thinks it should be weird that he doesn’t remember what state they’re in.
The motel in its usual motel fashion is one long strip by the side of the highway. Toby had long ago shut himself in his room with a bottle of something and some legal pads; CJ raps a goodnight onto his door before clopping noisily into her room.
“'Night Joshua, Donnatella.” Her mouth handles the rough terrain of their given names as easily as a future Press Secretary should.
“Night, CJ.” He’s about to walk away when CJ grasps his arm firmly. He looks back at her. Donna’s the quick one here, the one to notice his eyes softening a little under her gaze. She ducks her head; turns towards her room.
“If you’re about to pull the ‘one lonely night in middle America’ card, CJ, then save your breath. I mean, I’m flattered….”
He smirks cheekily even as her arm tightens threateningly around the large bone of his forearm. “Be good, Josh.”
The door slams in his face. He’s not even sure what that’s supposed to mean, but understanding slips over him like an incoming tide as Donna slows up ahead, glancing back at him over her shoulder in the crackling light.
He stalks off, just catches her as she slips through her open door. She looks back at him, her bony fingers grasping the doorjamb.
The wide clarity of her eyes keeps startling him; the pale sleekness of her hair and the unexpected aestheticism of her bony, meek face. She’s so unfamiliar to him, her face too open.
They’re lost in America.
They could pretend to be other people. She’s just that new.
The corner of his mouth and his hand raise in unison for a silent, inadequate goodnight.
She watches him as she closes the door; doesn’t turn away till she hears his footsteps retreating on the pavement.
II.
The summer turns impossibly chilly. The red puckered seam aches like longing in his chest.
She shows up one Sunday and sidles through his doorway along with a whip of cool air.
Chocolate croissants are greasing through her paper bag; the Sunday Times drops with a luggish thunk onto his coffee table. He’s been yearning for the paper all day, but was out of breath before he was even out of sight of his apartment door. The news kiosk has been taunting him; he’s studiously avoided the northeast window.
“Toby wanted to come over again.”
“You should have let him.” Josh is beyond bored; Josh passed bored three weeks ago and is now tip-toeing around something like ennui. He always thought he might end up like this-broken body, mind on overdrive-but figured he probably had another thirty or forty years before it got too serious.
“Toby gets you riled.”
“Riled? What am I, two?” He tries to pace a little and his breath catches in his lungs. He sits.
The corner of her mouth turns up. “Please don’t make me answer that.”
He gives her a small smile. “You let Sam come.” But he knows, knows before she even has to say anything that it’s different. Sam sits in his apartment like some odd creature; with his Armani suits and three hundred dollar haircuts Sam is something sleekly feline ensconced in his armchair. Sam comes with back-issues of the Washington Post for Josh and reads Great Expectations in the faint yellow light of his corner lamp. Sam comes and the hours pass, night comes early.
Donna shrugs and puts a croissant on a plate and hands it to him. She’s not wearing any makeup; her freckles are stark against the paleness of her cheeks, the bridge of her nose.
“You’re not going in today?” He knows she’s been working harder than usual to farm out his duties. He knows it’s been hard, he knows no one can do exactly what he does. CJ’s got her hands full; Sam and Toby know the issues but most of the time they’re cloistered in Toby’s office with couple of Mont Blanc’s and some scrawled-on cocktail napkins from the Hawk and Dove, writing to the staccato beats of pink bouncing balls on plaster. Among them the senior staff have all brands of loyalty but there’s no bulldog in them but Josh. It’s not arrogance, he knows, to think this way. It’s comforting, at least, to know that they need him as much as he needs the job.
“No, it’s pretty quiet, what with the President at the London thing.”
He nods, feeling lugubrious, out of the loop. Donna arranges herself on the edge of his couch with her croissant and the front page. He rifles a bit aimlessly through the Sports section for the baseball stats but is soon deterred by the sight of Donna’s bare feet as she tucks them under herself.
He wouldn’t have guessed that her toes would be painted that particular shade of pink.
“Hey, I got you something.” Her voice startles him out of his reverie, and he drags his gaze up to her face. She’s pulls out a paper bag and hands it across the couch.
He feels a brief wave of apprehension as he takes it from her. He knows it's a book by shape alone, but with Donna monsters come in many forms: some Jane Austen thing she likes; a crime thriller; a cookbook. He’ll read it because she’s Donna but he really doesn’t look forward to setting his house on fire.
He pulls it out from its paper sheath. “The Elegant Universe.” He frowns, flips it over to catch the gist.
“Yea, Josh. String Theory.”
His head snaps up, and he ignores the twinge in his chest. “String Theory? An entire book about it?” She nods, and he grins. “Oh, Donna, imagine how much I can annoy CJ. Just… oh. This is going to be so good.” He flips to the first page and starts to read, glancing back at her. She’s reading the Magazine with a small smile, and he feels a warm pang in his stomach as he goes back to the text.
As the hours creep on he becomes petrified that she’ll leave, but she stays, curled nymph-like at the end of his couch. At some point she puts down the paper and pulls Joanie’s tattered copy of Alice in Wonderland from his bookshelves.
The afternoon grows cooler still; she throws his worn afghan over their knees.
They order spicy Thai and read through soft cellophane noodles and cilantro.
“There is a limit to how finely we can probe the universe,” he tells her.
“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end, then stop.” She grins at him over the top of the fancy leatherbound cover.
Their feet touch and glance away under the blanket; the light is sweet and yellow against the coldish night.
He doesn’t want her to leave.
III.
He’s a Ivy League educated, top-mind-of-his-generation kind of guy, with passing interests in advanced physics and a girlfriend that is almost too hot and probably too tall for him, and he’s transfixed by the sight of his blonde assistant’s legs.
Josh Lyman never wanted to be a cliché.
And yet here he is, and really, this shouldn’t be so scintillating. They’re reading tributes to the mundane: tomorrow’s campaign stop schedule (her); the voting habits of Iowan women aged 30 to 45 in the last five presidential elections (him).
And good God, she’s stretching, she’s stretching and he can see her navel as she sprawls out across his bed. He shifts in the hotel armchair; some pages sift to the floor.
She yawns, and he yawns in return, making her smile her loopy, tired grin. “I’m falling asleep, here. Just call me Harold Ickes.”
“The former Deputy Chief of Staff?”
“Narcoleptic.”
“Really.” He nods, thoughtful. “Maybe that’s where that dent in the desk came from.”
“I think that’s from when, I don’t know, the ceiling caved in.”
“Just call me Chicken Little.”
It’s preposterous, he thinks as he walks to the bathroom. They’re both in their pajamas at one in the morning, and she’s all bare legs in his bed and she’s watching him brush his teeth through the open door of the dingy motel bathroom. It’s at once the sexiest and most frightening moment of his life.
She yawns again as he sits gingerly on the edge of the bed. “I won’t bite, Josh.” She pats the bed and he reluctantly swings his feet up onto the bedspread. She groans suddenly and he’s caught off-guard by the sound of it. “I also don’t think I can move.”
He smiles. “We should have read out in the hall.”
“We should have gone to sleep three hours ago.”
“We were still on the bus three hours ago.”
She shifts; peers at him through one open eye. “You really think anyone would notice if I just, you know, happened to fall asleep here?”
His stomach swills at the thought. He wants to say no, no one will care, but then there’s that joint exit in the morning, and the unmade bed for the maid tomorrow morning, and hell, he can practically see the headline.
She groans again. “Stupid question.”
He sighs. “Yea, probably.” He swivels his head to grin at her. “There’s also no guaranteeing I’d be a gentleman.”
He swats his stomach, hard, and he laughs because he knows, he knows that she knows that he’d never lay a hand on her. Hell, he’d probably sleep on the floor.
“Here’s our solution.” He pads over to her discarded sweatshirt; fishes her key out from the pocket. “I’ll go sleep in your room. Although I also can’t guarantee that all your lingerie will still be there in the morning.”
“Lech.”
“Bedhog.” He turns to watch catch one more glimpse of her lying across his bed as he reaches for the door. “Wake me in the morning.”
IV.
It’s the formal wear, he thinks, as he grasps a handful of the crimped strap of her gown in his fist.
But then again, CJ changes her clothes more than Donnatella Moss-or Donatella Versace for that matter-and he’s never made out with her in the somewhat secluded coat check area of the inaugural ball.
She sighs a little against his mouth and he wonders why its taken him all of five years to press all five feet eight inches of her between himself and the nearest wall.
It’s because they’re pleasure-drunk, he thinks hazily as she slides her hand underneath his tuxedo jacket. He groans against her teeth; tastes the champagne on the inside of her cheek.
Maybe they’re a bit actual-drunk, too.
He hadn’t stopped touching her since that nerve-jangling ride in the cab. He had slid his hand down her thigh like he did it every day, she had resisted the soft sound brewing in the back of her throat. She would blush later, thinking about it, her and Josh stuck in their own private soft-porn world, complete with Toby, Charlie, Will, some sherpa-hatted driver named Chucky, and good God, Danny Concannon was probably taking notes about the Deputy Chief of Staff groping his assistant in what could probably be spun as a staff meeting.
They had done what they always do at these events. He got tipsy and sweaty-palmed and just a little bit loud; she had danced with him longer than was probably good for both her career and her dating life.
And then they are headed off to the next ball and she has his coat check number (of course) and that’s probably how they ended up necking like teenagers.
Except it isn’t really all that frantic: he’s giving her slow, open-mouthed kisses; they’re both running low on oxygen but are too preoccupied to really worry.
She’s pretty sure that this is why they never did this. Because at any moment Toby or Ann Stark or take your pick of the entire White House press corps that are there tonight who could come waltzing into a not so hidden corner of a very crowded building.
Because if he asked, she would probably have sex with him right here, in the spirit of long-standing curiosities.
He pulls back, exhales sharply.
“We should, uh, probably get going.” His voice is throaty; he grins his mischievous, cheshire cat grin at her. His hands lower to her hips, anchor her to him.
She hadn’t expected Josh to be this confident. He’s not really the most debonaire, she thinks, he’s really just a rather tenacious brand of nerd. He watches Nova and listens to NPR and talks with his mouth full. But he’s Josh, and he’s a little unexpected, a little incongruous, murmuring at her in a graveled, lush tone she didn’t know he possessed.
“Yea. CJ and Toby are going to make a showing at one of the other balls, I think. I told them we’d come along.” She runs a slightly shaking hand through his hair.
He groans and drops his head to the crook of her neck, peers up at her from one open eye. “Don’t say ‘balls’ and ‘come’ in the same sentence, please.”
She looks down at his goofy, endearing face and chuckles. “C’mon, Wild Thing. We’ve got things to see.” She takes his slightly sweaty hand in hers.
He bumps her shoulder gently as they walk back into the crowded ballroom. “People to do.” He grins at her again; reluctantly drops her hand.
She’s able to give him one last smile before he is sucked back into the masses by the Secretary of State and the junior Senator from Colorado.
Of course because they’re them it never comes to anything more than that. She thinks that maybe some kissing in dark corners goes beyond their usual level of dysfunction, but really it doesn’t matter if she’s kissing Josh or touching his shoulder or really even just handing him papers in his office late at night; she always feels the same way.
Like she wants to tumble half drunk and half dead into a cab with him at three in the morning when all this nonsense is over. Fall asleep against the pungent leather of the cab; her heel-less feet in his lap. It’s so pathetic, she thinks. She wants to take a nap with Josh Lyman. She can almost imagine Amy’s tooth-bare, mocking laugh.
She could probably go home with him tonight. They’re smart people; they could probably figure out a way to dodge the press for a night. It’s risky, but half the White House is sure that it’s already happened. She could sleep with him and wake up in the morning and they could pretend it never happened. Just another chapter in her lifetime of choked encounters.
Donna’s not like this. Donna’s not a selfish person, except where the rights to Josh Lyman are involved.
She wants all of him.
In their world, there’s always more to be had.
V.
Drinks at the Ritz.
Boy, has he ever been here before.
She’s not unlike Amy, either, brunette, pretty, whip-smart. They’ve both got that praying-mantis-in-heat look that send his meek little Ivy League brain on overdrive.
They’re meeting on the pretense of the campaign, something about the Santos media buys, but somehow between CJ handing him her number and spotting her not-so-subtle hint of cleavage under her black designer suit, he’s pretty sure this is a date.
He’s not having a particularly bad time, but between the fact that Josh hasn’t had had a date in two years and his pretty constant state of exhaustion, he really just wants to pass out on his couch with a Heineken and the recap of the Mets game.
He almost misses the subtle flash of blonde as she sits down across the room.
It’s hard to not look at her. He’s always thought she was pretty, but she’s positively lovely now, effervescent and feline, all impossibly long crossed legs and sleek hair and he thinks he can identify the shade of her lip gloss from across the room.
He realizes now that’s she’s probably always been like this, and he just hasn’t seen it. After all, she’s still Donna: charming, bright eyed, quick-to-grin. The streamlined planes of her face are as familiar to him as the education platforms of the last fifty years of presidents.
She’s chatting with that guy, Josh can’t remember his name, that guy on the show that’s after Capitol Beat. She’s smiling her full toothy grin at him and Josh nearly chokes on his olive.
Olivia is talking to him but he doesn’t hear it, really, just nods and says something polite now and then. He went to law school, after all. He’s mastered the art of the half-listen.
Robert Madsen, he thinks, and groans to himself.
He watches the waitress snake her way over to them with drinks. Watches Donna grin and sip something pink from her glass.
He grins. Hell, he practically whoops for joy when she pulls the Maraschino cherry from her concoction; barely notices when his beautiful, headstrong, legs-for-days date says goodnight, dropping the proposed ad buys with an irritated thwap on the table in front of him.
She’s playing him. She’s playing him and Josh knows it, all the way from across the room. Donna Moss, drinker of things to make sailors balk and flowers wilt at their fumes, drinker of Rusty Nails, of Devil’s Poison, Long Island Ice Tea and once he even witnessed her going shot for shot with Toby, is drinking something watered down and pink and it’s got a goddamn cherry in it, and Josh knows that she’s playing Robert Madsen for all he’s worth.
He’s thinking that she owes him, thinking that it’s a good thing he is a good little boy and waits until the TV anchor shook her hand and tossed some bills onto the table before he saunters over to her little corner. He comes up behind her, just out of her line of vision, so that she starts as he lays his palm warmly on her shoulder.
It’s his turn to start when she actually smiles at him, all warmth and teeth and everything that’s been tweaking around in the back of his mind. “That’s quite an impressive show you put on there.” He walks around from the back of the small sofa on which she sits, choosing to sit next to her instead of the seat occupied by Madsen.
“By all means, sit down, Josh.” Her eyes twinkle a little in the soft light, and he crosses his legs; relaxes into the back of the sofa. “And I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
He gestures at her drink, which sits barely touched on the corner of the table. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. The girly drink, the blonde hair, the, the-” he gestures with his hands to her, all six hundred feet of leg hidden under her feminine suit. She smiles a bit, looks down at her lap. “You’re wooing him. You’re wooing Madsen. What do you want, exactly?” He narrows his eyes at her, chews on his pen. “A spot for Russell, maybe? A key interview? Did you adopt an accent, too? Appeal to his Kentucky values?”
She rolls her eyes at him. “Rob’s from Tennessee, actually.” She watches as his mouth forms the word “Rob” silently. “And the blondeness was already kind of taken care of.”
He shrugs at her. “And so what if I am ‘wooing’ him, Josh? What about you, over there with Olivia Thurston? She controls what, the entire Midwest media market?” She leans back suddenly, still facing him. “She’s your type.”
He didn’t think she had seen them, all the way over at the edge of the room. He looks at her, trying to parse her meanings. Her eyes aren’t nearly as wide with her makeup; he squints in the dim light to read her face. Finally he shrugs noncommittally, flags down a waiter and drops her full drink onto his tray. “She’ll will have a whiskey sour.” He sees her watching him curiously out of the corner of her eye. “I’ll have another martini.” The waiter nods and makes his way back to the bar.
“You don’t need another martini.”
He lets out one sharp half-laugh. “Donna, don’t pretend to know the first thing about what I need right now.”
She jolts a little as though being hit in the face by a handful of sand; he immediately regrets the words. The waiter puts the drinks between them; she takes a long swig.
They sit through several long minutes of silence. He’s beginning to wonder where the nearest fire exit is when he feels the unexpected warmth of her hand on his where it lays on the smooth velvet of the loveseat. “Josh, you need a lot of things. You need to eat better. You need to sleep more than four hours a night. You need to get at least an hour of sunshine every day. You need to stop eating donuts for breakfast.” She pauses for breath, smirks at him. “You need to stop eating donuts for lunch.” It’s his turn to chuff a little, and she squeezes his hand warmly, looks down at her lap. “You need to get a life, Josh. You need to slow down. You need to have sex.” He looks up sharply at her, and she grins mischievously at him. “Lots and lots of it. Ridiculous, mind-blowing, earth-shattering sex to make up for what we will kindly call a slight… dry spell.” He opens his mouth to protest, because really, what knowledge could she possibly have about his sex life. But then she raises a finger at him and he realizes that who is he kidding, Donna knows all, Donna knows everything and she knows his pant size and his standing heart rate and God, she knows what kind of boxers he wears so really, he should just shut up.
She leans in a little, her voice lowering, and he strains to hear in amongst the steady murmurs around him. “But first of all, Josh, you need to get your guy elected. And you need to know that I’m going to make all of this, especially that last thing, pretty damn hard.”
He digests for a moment, then leans in closer. “You’re going to make everything on that list difficult?” He leers at her, and she laughs, full and outright and its the best thing he’s heard in weeks, months even.
He feels his breath catch a little in his throat as she leans in unexpectedly to kiss him on the cheek. “Thanks for the drink, Josh.” And then she’s gone with the soft swish of her skirt, leaving him with nothing but the scent of her shampoo and the sudden vastness of his future.
I want your flowers like babies want God’s love
Or maybe as sure as tomorrow will come