The Answer

by: Ygrawn

Character(s): Donna, Josh, Sam
Pairing(s): Donna/Josh
Disclaimer(s): Not mine
Rating: PG should be safe..
Category(s): Angst/Romance
Summary: “You can’t kiss me, or have a revelation about something that everybody knows anyway, and believe that’s enough. A pronoun is not enough.”
Author's Note: Sequel to The Door. For the askers...

Donna pulled away.

Josh hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t known what to expect, but he hadn’t expected her to pull away. These were things he could predict, after all. It was his job. It was his life to make order out of the chaos, to state the irrefutable, to make it happen by the sheer will of his say-so. And he’d figured, after careful thought, that when this moment came around, when he offered it up to her, Donna wouldn’t pull away.

But he’d been kissing her, pulling her body towards his, reeling it in and feeling victorious, when she’d pulled away. She’d bent over, collected the scattered crime report and placed it on his desk.

And she’d walked out of his office, collected her bag and coat, and left the White House without looking back at him.

Startled, speechless, Josh had looked down at the report. It was uneven, edges and pages shooting in every direction, some pages facing up, others down. Donna’s little post-it notes on the side with her helpful directions had fallen off and lay on the ground.

Josh frowned.

Donna had been waiting six years for that, right? Josh wasn’t an idiot. Well, when it came to women he was, but he hadn’t misread the signals. He knew he hadn’t. Hell, he’d been waiting six years to do that. They’d been circling and moving and retreating, and there were things Josh knew, things he was good at it, and he knew he hadn’t got it wrong. He knew it.

That moment had just seemed...well, it hadn’t seemed right, exactly. But Josh figured there wasn’t ever going to be a right moment to kiss his assistant, and that one hadn’t seemed wrong. She’d just walked into the office, and he’d been thinking about how thin Donna was these days, and how beautiful she was, and how he wanted to taste the inside of her mouth, and he’d kissed her.

Besides, Josh was so busy all the time, and this wasn’t a romance novel, and he couldn’t...well, damn it. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, and he couldn’t work out why.

He sighed, fingering one corner of the report, flicking it restlessly, continuously.

Josh figured he should call her.

Only that would be disastrous, because he had no idea what to say. He’d been so certain, so damn certain, and now, he had no idea. And he could go and see her, only that wouldn’t help him think of anything to say, so he couldn’t do that either.

He couldn’t do anything.

So, he went home, leaving the unordered report on the edge of the desk, the post-it notes still strewn across the floor.

********

Josh didn’t say anything the next day, because he still didn’t have anything to say. He couldn’t think, because Donna had been bantering and flirting with him for six years, implanting herself in his life, waiting for him to kiss her, and when he’d kissed her, she’d pulled away.

Which would make him wrong, only that can’t be right.

He finds himself in the middle of meetings, in the middle of briefings, in the middle of sentences, wondering what the hell went wrong.

There are things Josh knows he’ll never have. He will never stop being afraid. For himself, for the others around him. For his sanity, for their lives. He carries a scar, but he carries fear, too. There’s probably a version of Josh, somewhere, that didn’t get shot, and that Josh wanders through life without any fear, doesn’t think about darkened alleys, and death threats and what it means to hate Christmas music.

But he’s this Josh, and this Josh is always afraid. It’s like the hum of a refrigerator in his veins, in the back of his head, and he’s learnt to live with it, the way he lives with the real scar.

He’ll always be tired. Always. He can’t think around tomorrow into next week - politics doesn’t give him that luxury, and he’s always tired. It’s better some days and worse others, and there are weeks where he feels almost refreshed. But even after he leaves the White House, he’ll always be tired.

There are countless other things he’ll never be either. He’ll never be the Josh who loves Sam that way; the Josh who stops feeling guilty about all the wrongs in the world; he’ll never be the Josh who can think calmly and rationally and respond objectively.

He knows all of this about himself. He knows things about the life he’s too deeply mired in to get out of now. Because he turned around at a certain point - God knows when - and realized that this was it. He wouldn’t be able to rewrite it - he was stuck with this version of Josh. He was stuck with this life, and that’s okay, because he likes this life. He does.

But ever since he walked into his makeshift office in Manchester, and found a blonde woman standing there with huge blue eyes, he’s figured there would be a point in his life when he admitted the inevitable, and he and Donna would be together.

He thought he’d always be the Josh who loved Donna, and the Josh who was loved by Donna, so he’s not sure why she pulled away.

It can’t be timing, because there’ll never be a perfect moment. Donna must see that. She must see that he can’t take her out on a date, and call her up mid-week and take her on a second date and come home with her, and tell her only the flattering things about himself. Donna knows all that.

It can’t be that she doesn’t love him.

And there isn’t anybody else in her life. There can’t be. He’d know, the way he knew with Cliff Calley. He knows he’s the only one.

So, Josh figures that Donna is waiting for something. There’s something about this situation that he hasn’t seen yet, and she’s waiting for it.

Turns out he taught his assistant very well.

********

He doesn’t say anything the next day, or Thursday, or Friday, or even Sunday, when she comes in to the office wearing faded jeans a dark green turtleneck. She’s piled her hair messily on top of her head and speared a pencil through it, and she looks incredible.

Josh doesn’t say anything the following week, because he needs to work this out before he says anything. He needs to think his way around the problem - work out what it is Donna’s asking for - before he approaches her.

That’s the smart play.

All week Sam looks at him strangely, and Josh knows that Sam knows whatever there is to know about this situation. Sam, of course, knows all and many things, but says nothing. He just keeps looking, watching, cataloguing. Josh thinks it’s partly unintentional on Sam’s part. Writers watch people. Writers are the original voyeurs. Part of it, though, is deliberate.

Donna does her work, and does it as well as she ever did, which is almost perfectly. She doesn’t say anything; doesn’t avoid his gaze; doesn’t hold it too long; doesn’t play any silly games and Josh loves her just a little more for that. She’s waiting for him to work out a strategy, and she’s playing fair.

Josh does his work too, but he goes home at night and wonders why Donna pulled away, when he’s convinced that this was the way things were supposed to happen.

He and Amy are still he and Amy, which doesn’t mean much anymore. Josh isn’t sure it ever meant much, and he feels bad about that. He’s not in the practice of breaking women’s hearts, but he knows that he’ll break Amy’s, one of these days. When he figures out what Donna wants.

Weeks pass, because there’s nothing to say, and if Donna’s not going to say anything, tell him anything, Josh can’t reply.

He can’t understand how it got to this, when he was so sure that things were always heading this direction. But he kissed her, and she pulled away, and he just doesn’t understand it. Here they are, saying nothing, working the same as they ever did, and Josh can’t understand it.

********

Josh is on the phone when it happens. His office door is open and it’s a slow day, so things are kind of peaceful. It’s mid-afternoon, mid-week, and even mid-year. The sun is glorious outside, but he didn’t notice until Donna pointed it out, told him she was going to eat her lunch outside, and he should do the same.

So, he followed her out the door when she went, and they ate their lunch together. It was, Josh realized, nice. The kind of nice that you don’t realise is nice until afterwards, because it seems so natural.

He’s talking to his mother, who’s nagging him about eating right, and sleeping better, and getting out of the office more often. Josh would be annoyed by her harping, only his sister is gone, and his father too, and Josh feels guilty about both and forgives his mother for wanting to hold on a little tighter than she did before.

They make tentative plans for Josh to visit in a few weeks. Their plans will fall through, the way they always do. Something will come up, some crisis, some issue, some disaster, and Josh will have to cancel and he’ll feel guilty about that too, the way he always does. But if they make the plans, write them down in their diaries, it feels like they’re often in contact.

So, they make the plans, and his mother tells him to say hello to Donna for her.

Josh nods, and says, “Yes, Mom. We’ll see you in a few weeks.”

There’s a pause. “We?” his mother asks strangely.

“I will,” Josh immediately corrects. “I’ll see you in a few weeks. Talk to you later, Mom.”

He hangs up, and discovers that having a revelation is a bit like getting a migraine. You lose all sense of balance and feeling, and you need to lie down in a dark and quiet room for a while.

Josh looks out his office door, watching Donna’s head bob back and forth as she talks on the phone and types at the same time. Sam swings through the bullpen and drops something in her in-box. As he walks behind her, Sam touches her shoulder. Donna grazes it with her chin, and they both smile.

He always has assumed Donna will be in his life. Ever after, down into his life, right up into that time of being old, which he can’t properly imagine, he’s figured Donna will be around. With him. Not for him, not working for him, but with him. His equal. His partner.

He’s just never told her that.

********

“The royal we,” Josh says, as Donna enters his office with the file Sam dropped off.

“It’s similar to Rastafarian’s ‘I and I’,” she replies, without missing a beat.

“Oh. Sure. I’m just saying...”

“The royal we,” Donna finishes for him. She’s pulling things in and out of files and baskets and shuffling papers and moving things at the speed of light. It’s like an elaborate card trick - where’s the Queen, where’s the Queen? - can you find the Queen?

Josh thinks he can.

“I used it this morning,” he tells her, “When I was on the phone to my mother.”

“And to whom did this inclusive pronoun refer?”

“You and me.”

Donna doesn’t stop doing whatever it is she’s doing. “What about us?”

“See, right there!” he crows. “You do it too.”

Donna stops now and puts everything down. Her voice is even and pleasant. “What do I do, Josh?”

“There’s a we. An us. You and me - a unit, a thing.”

“Yes, we’re a we. So and you and Sam, and you and CJ, and you and anybody else you refer to in conjunction to yourself. It’s called grammar, and if you’re having trouble understanding it, go and see Toby.”

“Stop being...don’t you get it?”

“Well, I probably would, if I’d checked my common sense at the door and was fluent in Joshuaspeak.”

He frowns. “But you are fluent in Joshuaspeak. You’re the world’s leading expert. You’re like the Professor of Joshuaspeak. That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Okay, Josh, at this point, it’s safe to say I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I have a lot of work to do, so if you could clear this up and let me go, I’d appreciate it.”

“This morning, on the phone to Mom, I was talking about going down for a visit, and I used ‘we’, instead of ‘me’. I said we’d go. I was talking about you. I meant...I meant that whatever I was doing, you’d be doing it too. That’d you be with me.”

“I’m paid to be with you, Josh. I’m paid to be your ‘us’.” She begins to shuffle and move things again. “I know you think this is a thing. That you’ve worked something out. You haven’t, Josh. You can’t kiss me, or have a revelation about something that everybody knows anyway, and believe that’s enough. A pronoun is not enough.”

He’s so startled by this cold, efficient Donna, who won’t look him in the eye that he doesn’t know what to say.

So, he forgets to ask her what is enough.

********

Months later, Josh still doesn’t know what to say. Their relationship is a rhythm of silences now. The usual Josh-and-Donna show still makes its daily appearance, but the rest of their interaction is silent and unspoken and unsure. Donna puts on weight, slowly, until she looks more like the Donna he knows, the one he thought he could predict.

She’s is waiting for him, and she won’t wait forever, and Josh knows he can’t ask Donna the answer to the question he doesn’t know. If he does, he’ll lose her.

There’s a cocktail party that appears on his schedule. On everybody’s schedule. Well, it’s really a fundraiser, but the cause is always secondary to the schmoozing. He has to laugh at pathetic jokes and shake hands and make eye contact, and be seen with the right people.

Leo has forced all of them to go, so Josh has forced Donna to go. The fancy venue, the clothes, the glamour don’t mean so much anymore, and they’ve all worked right up until the last second possible, before getting changed and heading over.

Josh recalls the last fundraiser event they went to. Donna was wearing the new shoes she bought after breaking the White House. They were black, with high, spiky heels and pointy toes, and he admired them, and stood too close to her, and Amy got mad, and Sam watched the whole thing.

He’d circled Donna’s ankle with his thumb and forefinger, stood behind her, held her elbow so she could balance, and he’d spoken into her left ear. Donna didn’t need help balancing, and he didn’t have to talk so close to her hair.

But Amy definitely needed to get mad.

There’s no Amy this evening - no Amy at all anymore, a decision he made with ease and difficulty, and Amy took it the same way. He didn’t tell Donna, but he knows she knows, the way everybody else knows.

Josh gets changed in the cold, cramped, cracking men’s bathrooms across from the Operations bullpen. He emerges, shirt already rumpled. Donna efficiently does his bow-tie whilst running him through some statistics he’ll need tomorrow.

Donna is warm, and her body heat and her perfume envelop him. She hasn’t changed yet - she’s wearing a grey skirt, and a black shirt with an open collar. He has an incredible urge to unbutton and part her shirt, pull the halves away from her body, and see the black material against the vivid white of her skin. His fingers itch, his body begs, and he hasn’t known craving quite like this for a long time. Maybe ever.

Josh wonders what her hips looks like; wonders whether she has a birthmark, whether she makes love with her eyes open or closed, and realizes that he doesn’t know any of those things about Donna.

Sam arrives as Donna finishes, and Sam’s bow-tie somehow looks better, his suit sharper, and his face fresher.

They two men go through a report and argue half-heartedly whilst Donna changes in the women’s bathroom. The whole time, Josh is looking out his door, waiting for his assistant to re-appear.

When she emerges, she’s pinning up the last of her hair. Her arms are up, long, white and smooth. They’re like wings; strong, wide wings.

Donna walks towards him, and moves through spots of light into shadow back to light. She’s wearing a black dress with a V-neck and dangly beads on the knee-length hem. The beads glitter and click together ceaselessly. She’s in stockings, but she doesn’t have shoes on and pads barefoot and sleekly down the wooden corridor.

Josh stands up and moves to his doorway, watching her move. He can feel Sam standing behind him, watching, always watching.

Donna makes her way through the bullpen, shifting around people, her elbows moving in and out, and she looks like a ballet dancer. The men in her wake watch the hypnotic sway of her body and Josh can’t blame them. Even Sam is following the line of her body, her arms, her waist, the arch of her heel.

Women have these moments, Josh thinks, these moments when they’re doing something utterly simple, walking, doing their hair, putting on a coat, reaching for a pen, laughing, turning to look at something, and there is nothing else - nothing else - as simple and graceful in the world. He has never seen anything, anybody, as beautiful as Donna is right now, this minute.

“Ready?” she asks Josh, as she reaches her desk.

“Are you?” he asks, looking pointedly at her feet. His gaze travels back up her body. It’s such a plain dress. Such a plain, simple dress. Other women there tonight will be wearing vivid, expensive ensembles. CJ will be dressed spectacularly as always, but Donna and her black dress are riveting.

Donna bends over and collects her shoes from under her desk, her body a neat comma. They’re the same black shoes from the first cocktail party. Her body is in profile. And with a kind of a flexibility Josh can’t describe - can’t decipher - she balances and slides her shoes on.

Artfully loose strands of her hair swirl around her face as she turns to him and smiles. “I’m ready.”

One strand of hair sticks to her mouth, to her deep plum lipstick. Josh steps forward, lazily, slowly, and pulls the hair away from her mouth, watches it fall back against her neck.

“There,” he says softly.

Donna picks up her evening bag. All she puts in it is her lipstick, pen, a piece of paper and Josh’s cell phone. Later, she’ll put their security tags in. Sam’s too, because she worries that they’ll lose them, or misplace them.

“Let’s go,” she says, and she walks down the hall.

Sam and Josh follow.

********

He doesn’t see her again for two hours. He schmoozes, shakes hands, laughs at pathetic jokes, and he knows that Donna is always within earshot in case he needs her. He doesn’t need her, but he likes seeing the glint of her hair occasionally flash past him.

Two hours later, when they’ve moved from the work part of the evening to the socialising, he sees Donna across the room, deep in discussion with Senator Bawden. Michaela Bawden’s a fascinating woman, a former lawyer, whose work on the Battered Women’s Syndrome as a defence is remarkable. She and Donna have always got along famously, from the first day she came up to the White House to welcome them.

Donna’s champagne glass is empty, so he collects a new one and crosses the room to the two women.

“Hello, Josh,” Michaela says. Her voice is husky, amused.

“Senator,” Josh nods. “Donnatella.”

“Joshua,” she replies, turning her head to smile at him. He hands her the champagne and her smile widens. “Thank you.”

“Donna and I have just been discussing the new environment protection legislation.”

“Mm. It’s going to be in committee for a while,” Josh opines.

Michaela nods. “I was wondering - would you mind if I liaised with Donna on this one?”

Josh is not surprised, and he doesn’t mind. He realizes he honestly isn’t surprised, and can’t imagine why he should be. “Why would I mind?”

Michaela smiles. “Excellent. I’ll get my secretary to call yours, Donna, set up a few preliminary meetings.”

“That’d be great, Michaela.”

The Senator nods and heads over to the bar.

Donna turns to Josh. “She knows I don’t have a secretary, right? That I’ll be organizing my own meetings, and probably typing your memos and answering your phones during them?”

Josh shakes his head. “No, she doesn’t. People assume you must have an office of your own, Donna. That you couldn’t do all the work you do for me by yourself without going insane.”

Donna raised an eyebrow. “Who says they’re wrong?”

Josh smiles and grabs her hand. His is hot; hers is cool. “C’mon. Down your champagne and come dance with me.”

“So that Leo thinks you’re really in the spirit of things?”

“Well, that too. But mostly because you need to come dance with me.”

Josh pulls her towards the dance floor, and Donna hands her champagne over to one of the waiters. They pass CJ and Toby a knot of Representatives. They pass a group of important contributors. They pass the President, dominating a discussion about vertical fiscal imbalance in federalist states.

They arrive at the dance floor and Josh pulls Donna towards him, pulling her body as close to him as he can. It’s an innocuous song, and Josh doesn’t know the name of it, or the lyrics, or anything, but it’s a jazzy kind of slow, and he enjoys the way Donna’s hips sway. He holds his hand against the small of her back, and at the tip of his fingers, he can feel her muscles shifting and contracting at the base of her spine.

He thinks this moment, the contraction, the way it shivers on the tip of his fingers, is more erotic than his craving to undo her shirt, earlier.

They dance two songs, rescue CJ and Toby and dazzle the Representatives, then dance two more. Donna has another glass of champagne.

Josh isn’t sure what’s happening. Donna is still being Donna, but she’s dancing with him, and smiling at him. During the fourth dance, she holds her body tight against his and rests her forehead against his cheek. Her skin isn’t flushed, but perfectly cool.

Her lips brush, for a brief, thrilling second, against his jaw.

In unspoken accord, they separate after that dance. Tongues would wag if they didn’t separate now and circulate. People are already looking at him; CJ, Toby, Michaela Bawden.

Sam.

Things begin to peter out at about eleven-thirty when the President heads off. He’s flying out tomorrow, to London, at an hour when nobody should ever be awake.

Donna tells Josh that she’s going back to the office to finish up some work. Toby heads back to re-edit a speech. He drags Sam with him, and the two of them begin bickering over the content and the grammar before they’ve even left the room. Josh watches them go, and realizes, with a start, that he doesn’t really watch Sam anymore.

CJ and Josh wander back to their area of the White House, slowly and silently. It doesn’t happen often, but he and CJ can sometimes be silent. They separate at CJ’s office, where Carol is waiting for her with the last of the West Coat wires, a stack of messages and a smile.

Josh puts his hands in his pockets and walks back through the empty hallways. The west wing seems so huge when there’s nobody there. There are moments, like this, when the White House is shadowy with magic and Josh believes they really can do anything, simply through the sheer will of wanting it and fighting for it and believing in each other.

Josh has discovered - today, yesterday, last week, whenever - that all the things he thinks he knows aren’t necessarily true. He’s known it for a long time, really, but that kind of uncertainty is depressing, alarming. All the things he believes about Donna are really things about who she is in relation to him.

He can’t understand why he’s only seeing that now. It turns out that revelations aren’t really revelations at all. It turns out that you gradually learn important things in life, until you wake up one morning knowing it.

He can’t say why now or why tonight, or what it was about that moment of watching Donna walk out of the bathroom and across the bullpen that just turned his heart around and upside down. He can’t tell anybody, in any language, about the way time and people work, and how things that couldn’t work before, can suddenly fall into place.

But there is something here tonight, about him, and Donna, and he swears he’s going to follow this through the way his instinct says, instead of telling his heart what he thinks he knows.

Josh rounds the corner.

Donna is at her desk, in the deserted bullpen. Most people had the night off because of the fundraiser. She’s sitting in a pool of light, and it catches those loose strands of her hair about her neck and turns them silver. She’s typing.

“Donna.” He stops behind her. “I need those cases you were looking up earlier. I want to look at them tonight.”

She nods, “Thirty seconds, Josh.”

Josh goes into his office and pulls his jacket off. He loosens his bow tie, rolls his sleeves up. He sits down as Donna arrives. “Here you go.” She hands over the cases. She hesitates. “Josh?”

“Mm.”

“Before, with Michaela Bawden. You weren’t surprised. That she wanted to liaise with me on the environmental stuff.”

He looks up from the case he and Sam were arguing over earlier. Sam was right, then. It was legal stuff and Sam’s always right about legal stuff.

“No,” Josh replies.

“Why not?”

“You’re good on this area. You know all the players involved in this bill. Michaela works well with you.”

“Okay.”

Donna leaves the office and Josh gets up and follows. He stands in the doorway, and fingers the scar in the wood that Donna made when she slammed the door and broke the White House.

“Donna.”

She twists, half-shaded, half-lit. The beads on her dress click ceaselessly. She sees him fingering the scar in the wood, rough against his skin, following the groove with his forefinger. Josh isn’t sure why he’s so taken with the scar, but he has been since the door was fixed.

“Nice shoes,” he tells her.

Donna steps forward, heels tapping, beads clicking, dress swishing, moving into the light of his doorway, and she kisses him.

Josh kisses her back, until her lipstick is gone, until he’s backed up against the doorframe, until Donna’s body is a mould of his. They kiss until the strands of her hair are woven in his fingers, until Josh’s hand is at the very base of her spine, feeling her body contract.

Josh kisses her back, and Donna doesn’t pull away, and Josh realizes he doesn’t have the answer - any answer.

He realizes he doesn’t know a single damn thing about her.

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