Chapter Text
Donna wakes up to a dull THUD! and sunlight in her eyes.
She blinks back the rays, trying to think about the last time she woke up after a sunrise. In the few seconds it takes her half-asleep brain to catch up to her body, she realises the sun is up before she is on a Wednesday and that means she’s late for work.
She sits up and looks at the alarm clock in a panic, only to see a note below a blinking 9.18am that reads,
DON’T PANIC! I reset your alarm,
we both don’t have to be in
til after lunch today.
She lets out a sigh of relief and falls back onto her pillow, but is again jolted into surprise by another THUD! coming from outside. Donna grabs her robe at the foot of the bed and walks up to the window, just in time for a ball of snow to explode as it hits the glass. She slides the window open and pokes her head out, goosepimples forming as a chilly breeze enters the warm room.
“Am I dreaming, or has this happened already?” she calls down to Josh, who’s adorably bundled up two stories down and halfway through shoveling snow off their car. There’s a bag of kitty litter on the ground ready to be strewn across the snow.
“I’d like to think I’m a dream come true,” Josh smirks up at her, eyes sparkling. “But, yes, I do feel the déjà vu. Put on a coat, Donnatella, I’m taking you on a breakfast date.”
“We don’t have to be in til noon?”
“Til one!” He flashes her favourite smile at her, dimples out in full force.
“If we’re going to Rosie’s I’m getting a chocolate croissant and a latte,” she hedges.
“Donnatella, you’re talkin’ to me,” Josh puffs his chest up a little. “I know women, I know what you’re like – I’m getting you a latte, a croissant, an eggs benedict, the works, anything you want. I’ll even get you snacks to go.”
Donna shakes her head at this silly man, a toothy grin engulfing her face. “Deal.”
When she opens the front door, all the snow’s been scraped off their car and Josh is just about done sprinkling kitty litter all over the pavement. He looks up at Donna – all disheveled with her hair up in a messy bun and still actually in her pyjamas, but wearing his coat. Josh sets the litter down and runs over to her, meeting her on the bottom step.
He leans in to give her a kiss, a bright smile on his face when he breaks away and pulls back. He drinks her in, eyes warm with something akin to amazement or adoration, something that makes Donna’s insides feel ablaze with a thousand fluttering butterflies.
A beat, and then—
“You look amazing.”
She laughs and rolls her eyes playfully, leaning in for another peck. Out of habit, she deflects, “Yeah, yeah—”
Out of habit, he doesn’t let her get away with it.
“It’s true. I mean it, just like I meant it four years ago outside your apartment,” he insists, the corner of his eyes crinkling from the grin he can’t seem to suppress. He's glowing and it's a good look on him, she thinks, his smile brighter than the freshly fallen snow around them.
“Love you, Wild Thing,” Donna beams after another kiss to the corner of her mouth, untangling her arms from around his neck to loop one through his. “Now c’mon, you promised me the works.”
***
An hour, a shared eggs benedict, and a few coffees later, they walk back arm in arm from the corner café, fresh snow crunching under their boots and a paper bag of pastries-to-go in Josh’s free hand.
“How’s your arm? Is it sore?” she asks, squeezing his bicep.
He looks at her a little confused. “All I did was shovel snow off our car, of course I’m not sore.”
“Actually, I meant from missing the window on all your throws,” Donna teases, earning her a chuckle.
“Yeah, my aim wasn’t that much better five years ago either,” he admits.
“You still got my attention,” she muses. “Although, I kinda wish you’d have done it without the boyband.”
“I needed backup! And bad cops to my good cop!”
“What would you have done differently if they weren’t there?”
“I would’ve kissed you,” Josh states without missing a beat. He looks over at Donna with a mischievous look in his eyes. “And we probably wouldn’t have made it to the inaugural balls at all.”
“Maybe you can show me what I missed out on once we get home,” Donna sticks her tongue out at him and his dimples peek out.
“Don’t look at me with those eyes, Donnatella, we’re still blocks away,” Josh warns, putting his arm around her shoulder and holding her closer. She’s laughing and reaching for his gloved hand with her own when he lets slip, “God, I hope our kids have your eyes.”
She looks at him then, those eyes now wide as saucers, as he starts to ramble.
“I mean, I was just— I was just thinking earlier this morning, while shoveling snow. Uhh, you know, what it might be like once we have kids, and there’s a snow day. Would we, uhh, still be at the White House, you know? And would we get to take a snow day with them…” he continues on.
If this happened with any other person this early into a relationship, Donna might have been running for the hills. But this isn’t any other person, and technically they’re already nine years into a relationship, so she stays put under the secure weight of his arm. She could say something to reassure him but decides Joshua Lyman’s trains of thought are oftentimes best left to come to a stop on their own. Plus, it’s fun to see him sweat a little.
“… I’m not sure if the White House has a policy for snow days, I should ask Matt, because I wonder what they're doing with Peter and Miranda today. Maybe I can draft a memo— because when our kids have a snow day, we should be able to stay home with them and play in the snow and stuff, right? That’s what I did with my parents. Did yours do that, too? I feel like that’s something I’d want to do. I don’t know, I mean, I guess it was kinda dumb— but also not really, because, you know, I actually want to have classic snow days with our kids, and, now… well, now I can think about these things,” he finishes with a sheepish smile, but more resolutely than he thinks he came across.
Donna swoops in and kisses him, deeply, and leans back when their smiles break the kiss. She lays her cards on the table as well. “I don’t think it’s dumb, Josh. I’d want to do all that with you too.”
He looks at her for a beat before kissing her hair and mumbling into it. “I’ll get started on that memo then.”
She’s a little caught up in it all – the fact that they’re walking to their home after a spontaneous breakfast date, that he can say things like this, that she’s allowed to feel giddy instead of guilty about it, that they have a history to look back on and a future to look forward to. It’s been so easy after years of it being so hard, and when they talk about things that hint on forever, it isn’t really that scary at all, she thinks. It feels really, really right.
“We should start every snow day with a breakfast date. Slow mornings are nice with you,” Donna says. They saunter around the corner, coming up on their apartment.
“If I wasn’t sure, I’d think you only keep me around for my ability to supply you with breakfast pastries,” Josh smirks.
“Oh, no, I keep you around for much more than that,” she deadpans as she unlocks their door.
“Is that so?”
She looks at him coyly with those eyes and opens the door. “Mhmm. I’ll show you.”
They make it to the office just in time before one.