FF: Trouble Sleeping
Title: Trouble Sleeping
Author: little zigzags
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: J/D
Spoilers: Through the Al Smith Dinner, and a minor one for The Wedding. I mean minor.
Disclaimer: No money from these beauties.
Summary: It somehow makes sense that he should find her down in the hotel bar, a tumbler of Johnnie Walker Black juxtaposed with her delicately crossed legs. She’s a non-sequitur, but he’s always known this: all caution and blind faith, angles and curves, cornflower eyes and a sharp mouth.
A/N: Wow, I seem to be stuck in the angst-fest of Season 6 and early 7. I’m not sure about this one, so reassuring comments would be lovely. Also in the spirit of the confirmed XF movie, a shining set of dimples to those who catch the reference that other sexually frustrated duo.
Also, after I wrote this I saw that caz963 has a S60 fic of the same title. Hopefully she'll share? I mean no infringement on your fabulous fic.
Don’t even say it
I’ve got my eyes shut
-Corrine Bailey Rae
He wants to sleep, but for some reason all he’s dreaming about these days is being at sea. Wild storms; battening down the hatches. The most he’s ever been on the water is out on is his uncle’s schooner on Short Beach. And between his occupation and the importance of the Midwestern vote, he’s pretty much landlocked these days.
It somehow makes sense that he should find her down in the hotel bar, a tumbler of Johnnie Walker Black juxtaposed with her delicately crossed legs. She’s a non-sequitur, but he’s always known this: all caution and blind faith, angles and curves, cornflower eyes and a sharp mouth.
She’s sitting like at a center table like a beacon. He almost turns and leaves. He has a few nips in the mini-bar upstairs, minus the heartfelt confrontation.
In the end, though, he’ll always choose to be with her. Maybe, he thinks, maybe the dreams have just been a primer.
In the end, he’d rather be angry with her than alone.
-
He catches her eye when he’s a scant three feet from her table. The light is catching in her hair and he’s momentarily shell-shocked as she raises her blue, blue eyes to his. She’s beautiful, and always has been, but before her face was always open, all freckles and toothy grins and clear, bright eyes. Now her face is perfect, lovely and closed; she’s sphinx-like with her small, tight grins and askance glances.
He’s never been all that good with riddles.
But still, she’s beautiful. He’ll be damned if his voice doesn’t shake.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” Her voice is more timid than he’s heard in months, and he watches her twist a silver ring on her long index finger.
He’ll never have guessed it-because he’s Josh and getting a Fulbright doesn’t guarantee that he’ll get a clue-but she’s nervous, too. She’s going on nothing but this nebulous idea of what they should mean to each other.
Those government guidelines seem to have met the same end as her White House security pass.
But he’s here, and she’s lonely at her table for one at the Westin Hotel. She’s not good with Philadelphia, either; she can do Los Angeles and Madison and Des Moines, but Philly’s odd and disjointed, at once too urban and too strangely quiet for her taste. And he’s here, looking like his usual mix of underweight and unexpected chic in his dark slacks and slim sweater, and so she asks him to sit.
“Just finish with Lou?” She takes another sip of her drink, sets it down. He’s fidgeting, but only slightly; something only she and maybe his mother would notice. He’s running his fingers down the starched tablecloth; scratching his hair, and she wants to catch both his hands in both of hers and hold on until they just stay still.
“Yea. She’d have kept at it all night, but I reminded her that us diurnal creatures need our rest.”
She plucks at her sleeve nonchalantly. “Arizona?”
He narrows his eyes at her. “We’re still in it.”
She makes a noncommittal noise; leaves him wondering just how much she figured out. She knows he doesn’t trust her, yet, but she also knows that’s crap. He’s toyed with her before, and she’s not sure she’s up for another eight years of playing nice.
He finally shrugs, abandoning his scrutiny of her broad, answer-less cheekbones. “Whatever. I’m just glad I could get Lou to shut up for the night.”
She grins a little, looks up at his soft, tired face. “But you like her, though.”
He chuffs loudly, almost a bark. “Yea, I like her like I like skin fungus, maybe.”
She squints at him shrewdly. “No, you like her. She’s smart. She’s like you, only, you know, a girl, and more alcohol tolerance.”
He opens his mouth to protest, and then just smiles, his eyes downcast. She knows she’s right, because Josh likes women. Sure, he likes dating them, and sleeping with them, but she also knows that he just likes to be around them: CJ, Mrs. Landingham, Abbey Bartlet, Zoey, he loves them for the their smarts and their strength and for their goddamn ability to kick his ass in every round. He loves them for the simple fact that they’re alive. She’s seen Lou fire him up and she knows that the campaign is better for it. That he’s better for it.
She knows, in some silly, pathetic way, that all she’s been waiting for is a sign that he includes her in his bandwagon of Amazons.
It’s only when she really looks at his face that she realizes how tired he is; the taut skin under his eyes and the drooping corners of his mouth. She scoots her half drunk glass at him, watches his eyebrows raise in mild surprise before he raises the glass to his lips takes a long sip.
It’s been a long time since they’ve shared a drink. Or anything, for that matter.
“Are you… settling in okay?”
She looks at him, a bit taken aback at his question. “Yes, Josh, I’m settling in.” The truth is, it’s never taken her long to settle in around him; she just sets up shop and hits the ground running. “I like it here. It’s a good campaign.” She wants to tell him that it’s because of him, that his unbelievable thing is due to nothing but his stunning, hair-on-edge brain. Because God knows, he hasn’t stopped to think about it, hasn’t stopped to think since that first holiday plane ride to Texas.
He looks up at her, his chin rested on one palm, elbow propped on the table. His mother would kill him. “Better than Bingo Bob’s?”
She sighs a little in exasperation. “Can we not do this, Josh?”
“Do what?” He smirks at her, and she can see that little bit of condescension in his eyes that she hates. He’s always been like this: a take-it-or-leave-it personality, a mixed bag. Haughty, smart, stubborn, with more than a handful of sexy and an all-encompassing kindness that just puts him over the top. A first place finish, in her book at least. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to strangle him with her purse straps some days, though.
“Can we just not get into some silly ranking?” She knows what he’s looking for; she’s given it to him before. Yes, you are better than my old boyfriend. But this is more than that, he’s trying to get her to tell him that she was wrong, that she was stupid to leave, that she’d have been better off with him.
She’s lied to him before, but she won’t give him that particular satisfaction.
“You liked working for him, for Russell?” He looks at her in disbelief.
“I liked working for Will.” Let him chew on that one, she thinks as he falls quiet, fiddling once again with the tablecloth. He’s always had an overactive mind, and she still knows exactly how to send it roaming.
He’s silent for several long moments. “You’re right, we shouldn’t do this.”
She nods seriously, looking up at his face, all the intolerable cockiness gone. He looks like himself again, boyish and handsome and sad, and she has to look away.
She starts when she feels his fingers curl over her knuckles on the table. God, they haven’t touched for months. She feels like she hasn’t touched anyone in months. “Donna.” His voice is low, different, and she looks up again at him. He suddenly lets out a big breath. “Are you hungry? Do you want to go get some dinner?”
She looks at him, thrown a little by the change in his voice, the sudden lightness. “Sure,” she says, before she really considers that maybe going to dinner with Josh Lyman on a late Saturday night might be considered a regression.
But then again, they’re all about falling back into patterns, healthy or otherwise.
They’re walking silently through Rittenhouse Square, her arms wrapped in front of her against the unexpected chill.
She doesn’t know what they’re doing, here. She hardly ever does, with him, but then again she’s not his secretary anymore, not a follower on his harebrained, wild-goose-chase, Bartlet-bulldog jaunts. She supposes it’s telling that it takes a whole zoo to describe Josh Lyman, and even it doesn’t even come close.
They find themselves at an intimate little Italian place on a corner. The window table is bothering her; she feels on display, as though Edie and Sam and her mother are in an audience just outside. She’s silent as he orders a bottle of wine, still unable to keep up with him, to put a finger on what exactly is going on. Not long ago he was fighting tooth-and-nail to keep her as far away as possible, now they’re ordering linguini and shellfish over candlelight and a nice bottle of Chardonnay.
She feels off kilter, put out. It never mattered if he called the shots, really; she was always three steps ahead of him anyway.
But here they are, Josh looking tired and aloof and sickeningly good, sipping his wine and asking her mundane things like how she finds her room.
“My room is good, Josh. It’s fine. Better than most of the dives we stayed at during the President’s campaign, and you never asked me about whether I slept well then, so what gives?”
He stiffens at her strident tone. “I don’t know, Donna, I don’t know what to talk to you about anymore.”
She frowns. “Why? I’m the same person I’ve always been.”
“You’re not.”
He won’t look at her, and she feels adrift, as though their lines have been changed in the middle of an act. “Talk to me about what we’ve always talked about.”
He’s silent for a beat; the corner of his mouth turns up. “Your dating life and my pathetic eating habits?”
She chuckles. “Sounds good.”
“But,” he says, putting down his wine glass hastily, “it’s not really good enough, is it? I mean, we have to do something different.”
“Why?” It’s not like him to be cryptic. He’s earnest and he’s got an open face, and she can usually tell what he’s thinking from the bullpen, from the other side of a crowded room, across thousands of miles on their cell-phones.
“You wanted someone, you know, different.” He’s quiet now, picking at his nails. “I’m trying, here.”
“To be different?” She leans forward in her chair. He is different, she thinks. It’s not like him to be this way. He’s not shy with women, he’s endearing and a bit inept, but with that same confidence that permeates everything that he does. She’s seen it with all of them: that cockiness and sure step that gets him Mandy and Amy Gardner but dooms him all the same.
He doesn’t look confident, now. He looks deflated, like he already knows that he’s the guy who won’t get the happy ending.
He looks up at her, candid and unflinching. “To be what you want.”
She crushes her napkin in her lap, overcome. “Jesus, Josh, I wanted another job!”
He purses his lips. “And that’s why you’re here now? Because you wanted the job?”
“Is that why I’m here, now? To talk about work?” She turns away, looks over the restaurant, the candlelight and the sweet white roses on the tables, and knows suddenly that that’s not really the case. It’s a date, she thinks suddenly, turning back to his crestfallen face. Maybe they’re both inept. Maybe they’ve been waiting for so long; maybe she’s been waiting for him, that she can’t even recognize when he asks her out on a Saturday night when neither of them really have any work to do. They’ve been trained for so long, ingrained with some strange code of ethics, CJ’s voice yelling at them in their head and biting news headlines floating around in the possible future, that they haven’t had time to realize that look, they can date, they can go out to dinner and talk about everything and nothing.
The waitress arrives with their food, grinning at him like all these these college poli-sci kids are prone to do, and Donna raises her glass impulsively. “To getting out of the damn car.” She smiles at him brilliantly.
He looks at her quizzically, then toasts her, the wine sloshing a bit as their glasses clink.
She digs into her food. “So,” she says, around a mouthful of pasta. “Anyone screw on the campaign bus yet?”
He chokes a little on a piece of bread, and it’s the best sound she’s heard all year.
-
Maybe it’s because of the wine, or her new job, or because he’s finally allowed to take her on a date, and did-however dysfunctional-but when she stands on her toes outside her hotel room, wraps her fingers warmly around the collar of his suit-jacket, and kisses him, she's really not so astonished with herself.
He however, seems floored, and she chuckles against his mouth as his knees sway just a bit.
“Shut up,” he says, wrapping his arm around her lower back, and she does.
She never thought she would sleep with him tonight. But as she pushes his shirt down over his shoulders, her breath coming in shallow bursts, she’s not all that surprised, really. All they had to do was realize the rules they never completely followed don’t apply anymore. That Toby won’t kill him. That CJ can actually be happy for her. That Leo can do what he would have wished he could have done, and lecture Josh about something important like buying her flowers and leaving the toilet seat down instead of how this will be spun in the morning papers. That he can have her, and his insane, mind-bending, exhilarating job.
That she’s no longer just some awful, heart-wrenching temptation striding around his office and not getting him coffee.
Later, she’ll gasp and tell him cheekily that the new job’s good and all, but the perks of the last one are something to be missed.
“Okay, if you slept with Will, now is really not the time for me to be hearing about it,” he says, gritting his teeth.
“Muffin baskets,” she sighs, as he buries his head in her neck. “I was talking about the muffin baskets.”
“What are you, Ainsley Hayes?”
She laughs quietly in the dark. Batten down the hatches, she thinks, as the rain begins to beat down on the windows.
Author: little zigzags
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: J/D
Spoilers: Through the Al Smith Dinner, and a minor one for The Wedding. I mean minor.
Disclaimer: No money from these beauties.
Summary: It somehow makes sense that he should find her down in the hotel bar, a tumbler of Johnnie Walker Black juxtaposed with her delicately crossed legs. She’s a non-sequitur, but he’s always known this: all caution and blind faith, angles and curves, cornflower eyes and a sharp mouth.
A/N: Wow, I seem to be stuck in the angst-fest of Season 6 and early 7. I’m not sure about this one, so reassuring comments would be lovely. Also in the spirit of the confirmed XF movie, a shining set of dimples to those who catch the reference that other sexually frustrated duo.
Also, after I wrote this I saw that caz963 has a S60 fic of the same title. Hopefully she'll share? I mean no infringement on your fabulous fic.
Don’t even say it
I’ve got my eyes shut
-Corrine Bailey Rae
He wants to sleep, but for some reason all he’s dreaming about these days is being at sea. Wild storms; battening down the hatches. The most he’s ever been on the water is out on is his uncle’s schooner on Short Beach. And between his occupation and the importance of the Midwestern vote, he’s pretty much landlocked these days.
It somehow makes sense that he should find her down in the hotel bar, a tumbler of Johnnie Walker Black juxtaposed with her delicately crossed legs. She’s a non-sequitur, but he’s always known this: all caution and blind faith, angles and curves, cornflower eyes and a sharp mouth.
She’s sitting like at a center table like a beacon. He almost turns and leaves. He has a few nips in the mini-bar upstairs, minus the heartfelt confrontation.
In the end, though, he’ll always choose to be with her. Maybe, he thinks, maybe the dreams have just been a primer.
In the end, he’d rather be angry with her than alone.
-
He catches her eye when he’s a scant three feet from her table. The light is catching in her hair and he’s momentarily shell-shocked as she raises her blue, blue eyes to his. She’s beautiful, and always has been, but before her face was always open, all freckles and toothy grins and clear, bright eyes. Now her face is perfect, lovely and closed; she’s sphinx-like with her small, tight grins and askance glances.
He’s never been all that good with riddles.
But still, she’s beautiful. He’ll be damned if his voice doesn’t shake.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” Her voice is more timid than he’s heard in months, and he watches her twist a silver ring on her long index finger.
He’ll never have guessed it-because he’s Josh and getting a Fulbright doesn’t guarantee that he’ll get a clue-but she’s nervous, too. She’s going on nothing but this nebulous idea of what they should mean to each other.
Those government guidelines seem to have met the same end as her White House security pass.
But he’s here, and she’s lonely at her table for one at the Westin Hotel. She’s not good with Philadelphia, either; she can do Los Angeles and Madison and Des Moines, but Philly’s odd and disjointed, at once too urban and too strangely quiet for her taste. And he’s here, looking like his usual mix of underweight and unexpected chic in his dark slacks and slim sweater, and so she asks him to sit.
“Just finish with Lou?” She takes another sip of her drink, sets it down. He’s fidgeting, but only slightly; something only she and maybe his mother would notice. He’s running his fingers down the starched tablecloth; scratching his hair, and she wants to catch both his hands in both of hers and hold on until they just stay still.
“Yea. She’d have kept at it all night, but I reminded her that us diurnal creatures need our rest.”
She plucks at her sleeve nonchalantly. “Arizona?”
He narrows his eyes at her. “We’re still in it.”
She makes a noncommittal noise; leaves him wondering just how much she figured out. She knows he doesn’t trust her, yet, but she also knows that’s crap. He’s toyed with her before, and she’s not sure she’s up for another eight years of playing nice.
He finally shrugs, abandoning his scrutiny of her broad, answer-less cheekbones. “Whatever. I’m just glad I could get Lou to shut up for the night.”
She grins a little, looks up at his soft, tired face. “But you like her, though.”
He chuffs loudly, almost a bark. “Yea, I like her like I like skin fungus, maybe.”
She squints at him shrewdly. “No, you like her. She’s smart. She’s like you, only, you know, a girl, and more alcohol tolerance.”
He opens his mouth to protest, and then just smiles, his eyes downcast. She knows she’s right, because Josh likes women. Sure, he likes dating them, and sleeping with them, but she also knows that he just likes to be around them: CJ, Mrs. Landingham, Abbey Bartlet, Zoey, he loves them for the their smarts and their strength and for their goddamn ability to kick his ass in every round. He loves them for the simple fact that they’re alive. She’s seen Lou fire him up and she knows that the campaign is better for it. That he’s better for it.
She knows, in some silly, pathetic way, that all she’s been waiting for is a sign that he includes her in his bandwagon of Amazons.
It’s only when she really looks at his face that she realizes how tired he is; the taut skin under his eyes and the drooping corners of his mouth. She scoots her half drunk glass at him, watches his eyebrows raise in mild surprise before he raises the glass to his lips takes a long sip.
It’s been a long time since they’ve shared a drink. Or anything, for that matter.
“Are you… settling in okay?”
She looks at him, a bit taken aback at his question. “Yes, Josh, I’m settling in.” The truth is, it’s never taken her long to settle in around him; she just sets up shop and hits the ground running. “I like it here. It’s a good campaign.” She wants to tell him that it’s because of him, that his unbelievable thing is due to nothing but his stunning, hair-on-edge brain. Because God knows, he hasn’t stopped to think about it, hasn’t stopped to think since that first holiday plane ride to Texas.
He looks up at her, his chin rested on one palm, elbow propped on the table. His mother would kill him. “Better than Bingo Bob’s?”
She sighs a little in exasperation. “Can we not do this, Josh?”
“Do what?” He smirks at her, and she can see that little bit of condescension in his eyes that she hates. He’s always been like this: a take-it-or-leave-it personality, a mixed bag. Haughty, smart, stubborn, with more than a handful of sexy and an all-encompassing kindness that just puts him over the top. A first place finish, in her book at least. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to strangle him with her purse straps some days, though.
“Can we just not get into some silly ranking?” She knows what he’s looking for; she’s given it to him before. Yes, you are better than my old boyfriend. But this is more than that, he’s trying to get her to tell him that she was wrong, that she was stupid to leave, that she’d have been better off with him.
She’s lied to him before, but she won’t give him that particular satisfaction.
“You liked working for him, for Russell?” He looks at her in disbelief.
“I liked working for Will.” Let him chew on that one, she thinks as he falls quiet, fiddling once again with the tablecloth. He’s always had an overactive mind, and she still knows exactly how to send it roaming.
He’s silent for several long moments. “You’re right, we shouldn’t do this.”
She nods seriously, looking up at his face, all the intolerable cockiness gone. He looks like himself again, boyish and handsome and sad, and she has to look away.
She starts when she feels his fingers curl over her knuckles on the table. God, they haven’t touched for months. She feels like she hasn’t touched anyone in months. “Donna.” His voice is low, different, and she looks up again at him. He suddenly lets out a big breath. “Are you hungry? Do you want to go get some dinner?”
She looks at him, thrown a little by the change in his voice, the sudden lightness. “Sure,” she says, before she really considers that maybe going to dinner with Josh Lyman on a late Saturday night might be considered a regression.
But then again, they’re all about falling back into patterns, healthy or otherwise.
They’re walking silently through Rittenhouse Square, her arms wrapped in front of her against the unexpected chill.
She doesn’t know what they’re doing, here. She hardly ever does, with him, but then again she’s not his secretary anymore, not a follower on his harebrained, wild-goose-chase, Bartlet-bulldog jaunts. She supposes it’s telling that it takes a whole zoo to describe Josh Lyman, and even it doesn’t even come close.
They find themselves at an intimate little Italian place on a corner. The window table is bothering her; she feels on display, as though Edie and Sam and her mother are in an audience just outside. She’s silent as he orders a bottle of wine, still unable to keep up with him, to put a finger on what exactly is going on. Not long ago he was fighting tooth-and-nail to keep her as far away as possible, now they’re ordering linguini and shellfish over candlelight and a nice bottle of Chardonnay.
She feels off kilter, put out. It never mattered if he called the shots, really; she was always three steps ahead of him anyway.
But here they are, Josh looking tired and aloof and sickeningly good, sipping his wine and asking her mundane things like how she finds her room.
“My room is good, Josh. It’s fine. Better than most of the dives we stayed at during the President’s campaign, and you never asked me about whether I slept well then, so what gives?”
He stiffens at her strident tone. “I don’t know, Donna, I don’t know what to talk to you about anymore.”
She frowns. “Why? I’m the same person I’ve always been.”
“You’re not.”
He won’t look at her, and she feels adrift, as though their lines have been changed in the middle of an act. “Talk to me about what we’ve always talked about.”
He’s silent for a beat; the corner of his mouth turns up. “Your dating life and my pathetic eating habits?”
She chuckles. “Sounds good.”
“But,” he says, putting down his wine glass hastily, “it’s not really good enough, is it? I mean, we have to do something different.”
“Why?” It’s not like him to be cryptic. He’s earnest and he’s got an open face, and she can usually tell what he’s thinking from the bullpen, from the other side of a crowded room, across thousands of miles on their cell-phones.
“You wanted someone, you know, different.” He’s quiet now, picking at his nails. “I’m trying, here.”
“To be different?” She leans forward in her chair. He is different, she thinks. It’s not like him to be this way. He’s not shy with women, he’s endearing and a bit inept, but with that same confidence that permeates everything that he does. She’s seen it with all of them: that cockiness and sure step that gets him Mandy and Amy Gardner but dooms him all the same.
He doesn’t look confident, now. He looks deflated, like he already knows that he’s the guy who won’t get the happy ending.
He looks up at her, candid and unflinching. “To be what you want.”
She crushes her napkin in her lap, overcome. “Jesus, Josh, I wanted another job!”
He purses his lips. “And that’s why you’re here now? Because you wanted the job?”
“Is that why I’m here, now? To talk about work?” She turns away, looks over the restaurant, the candlelight and the sweet white roses on the tables, and knows suddenly that that’s not really the case. It’s a date, she thinks suddenly, turning back to his crestfallen face. Maybe they’re both inept. Maybe they’ve been waiting for so long; maybe she’s been waiting for him, that she can’t even recognize when he asks her out on a Saturday night when neither of them really have any work to do. They’ve been trained for so long, ingrained with some strange code of ethics, CJ’s voice yelling at them in their head and biting news headlines floating around in the possible future, that they haven’t had time to realize that look, they can date, they can go out to dinner and talk about everything and nothing.
The waitress arrives with their food, grinning at him like all these these college poli-sci kids are prone to do, and Donna raises her glass impulsively. “To getting out of the damn car.” She smiles at him brilliantly.
He looks at her quizzically, then toasts her, the wine sloshing a bit as their glasses clink.
She digs into her food. “So,” she says, around a mouthful of pasta. “Anyone screw on the campaign bus yet?”
He chokes a little on a piece of bread, and it’s the best sound she’s heard all year.
-
Maybe it’s because of the wine, or her new job, or because he’s finally allowed to take her on a date, and did-however dysfunctional-but when she stands on her toes outside her hotel room, wraps her fingers warmly around the collar of his suit-jacket, and kisses him, she's really not so astonished with herself.
He however, seems floored, and she chuckles against his mouth as his knees sway just a bit.
“Shut up,” he says, wrapping his arm around her lower back, and she does.
She never thought she would sleep with him tonight. But as she pushes his shirt down over his shoulders, her breath coming in shallow bursts, she’s not all that surprised, really. All they had to do was realize the rules they never completely followed don’t apply anymore. That Toby won’t kill him. That CJ can actually be happy for her. That Leo can do what he would have wished he could have done, and lecture Josh about something important like buying her flowers and leaving the toilet seat down instead of how this will be spun in the morning papers. That he can have her, and his insane, mind-bending, exhilarating job.
That she’s no longer just some awful, heart-wrenching temptation striding around his office and not getting him coffee.
Later, she’ll gasp and tell him cheekily that the new job’s good and all, but the perks of the last one are something to be missed.
“Okay, if you slept with Will, now is really not the time for me to be hearing about it,” he says, gritting his teeth.
“Muffin baskets,” she sighs, as he buries his head in her neck. “I was talking about the muffin baskets.”
“What are you, Ainsley Hayes?”
She laughs quietly in the dark. Batten down the hatches, she thinks, as the rain begins to beat down on the windows.