Work Text:
Josh liked working late at night, it was almost relaxing. He was used to working long hours every day, and every day seemed to get more chaotic than the one before, so he liked how the West Wing was quiet at that time, almost empty except for him and Donna. It was past 10 p.m. and she was in his office, working opposite him at the other side of his desk. There was a sort of unspoken agreement between the two of them: when everyone left the bullpen, she would leave her desk and come work with Josh in his office. They mostly worked in a peaceful, comfortable silence, and tonight was no exception.
“Donna”, Josh’s voice interrupted the silence. She simply raised her head. “I need you to translate something for me from English to Italian, so I can look smart and cultivated to the new ambassador”, he said. Donna looked puzzled, to say the least. Here we go, another absurd request from Josh, she thought. “You do speak Italian, right?”, he added.
“Joshua, why on Earth do you think I would speak Italian?”, Donna answered, smiling a little.
“Well, Donnatella, I have to break this to you, maybe you don’t know this, but you are Italian, or half-Italian, whatever. You should be more connected to your roots”, he quipped.
“Connected to my roots?”, she answered, feeling pleased that they were entering the territory of their usual, familiar banter. “Okay, fine. But then you have to start talking to me in Yiddish”.
“Italian is sexier than Yiddish, though”, he said with a small grin. He couldn’t say much more than that. He couldn’t cross that line. He couldn’t say that he did not find the Italian language to be particularly sexy per se, but it was the idea of Donna saying certain things, in Italian, in English, in whatever other language, that he found sexy. On top of that, he wasn’t sure if she had the same thoughts he had. Sometimes he could sense that something was going on between the two of them, he thought that the way Donna was looking at him sometimes was not the way you would look at a friend. But he wasn’t sure, and he couldn’t risk too much. It was too delicate. The banter was easy, it was fun, but he felt that as the days and the weeks and the months passed, it wasn’t enough anymore.
“Get back to work, Josh, I don’t want to stay here until midnight”. She didn’t sound harsh while saying it. She was smiling softly, and she didn’t even mean it. She was happy to be there. Yes, she was working, but she liked what she was doing, and she was with Josh, her favorite person to spend time with. Misdirection. Margaret or Ginger, or any other assistant for that matter, wouldn’t be that glad to be forced to work until midnight with their bosses. It was a whole different thing for her. But she had to behave like a normal assistant from time to time, to keep up appearances.
They stayed in silence for a couple minutes, then one of Donna’s thoughts decided, apparently against her will, to manifest itself out loud.
“I know by heart an old Italian song, though. I used to listen to it with my mom, and she translated it to me”, she said out of the blue.
“Yeah?”, Josh said. He imagined Donna - how did she look when she was a kid? Or a teenager? He would like to know - singing with her mom, back in Wisconsin, and he was reminded of his own mom, and the nights they spent listening to old records when he was a kid. “Sing it to me”, he added, without even thinking that she would probably never do it.
She let out a small laugh and shook her head. “No. You don’t pay me nearly enough to do that”.
“Oh, c’mon. Just the chorus”. He smiled with the full-dimpled grin that made her weak every time, and he probably knew that.
But not this time, she knew he would tease her forever if she did that, and on top of that, it was a love song. He wouldn’t understand what she was saying, but she would, and it would be embarrassing to basically serenade him in his office. “We can listen to it together if you want, but I am not going to sing”, she conceded.
He nodded briefly and she stood up, making her way to the computer. “What’s the title?”, he asked.
“Il cielo in una stanza”, she answered. “The sky in a room”, she added, translating the title for him. After a few moments, a sweet melody and a woman’s voice spread trough the entire office. Donna started humming slowly to the song, her mind racing through the memories of their childhood and the afternoons spent dancing and laughing with her mom. “I used to dance to this with my mom”, she said while a wide smile appeared on her face. “We would pretend to be living in one of Fellini’s movies from the ‘60s”.
She looked beautiful. She always did, but this time it was slightly different. She had the kind of beauty that belongs to someone who is reliving the perfect bliss of a far away memory. He knew that she was far away from home and that she missed her family. He never told her - maybe he should do it, one day - how much he admired how brave she had been when she left Wisconsin and went to New Hampshire, all by herself, without knowing if she would make it or not. And she did it. He didn’t believe in God, but somehow he thanked him everyday that back in 1998 she decided to answer the phone on his desk and not on somebody else’s.
He stood up and moved closer to her. He didn’t know what possessed him to do it, but he extended his hand to Donna, a tentative smile on his face. “Dance with me”, he said simply.
It was an odd request. Sure, they had danced together before, they had danced at eight inaugural balls not many months before. But this time it was different, it was not a social occasion, it was just them, in Josh’s office, this time they didn’t need a reason to dance together. Nonetheless, it felt natural for Donna to put her arms around his neck, as he put his around her waist. They weren’t so much dancing as they were swaying, a little bit embarrassed by the proximity between them at first, but then comfortably.
Quando sei qui con me
Questa stanza non ha più pareti
Ma alberi
Alberi infiniti
“What does it say?”, Josh asked, curious to know what the words he was hearing meant. Donna started translating for him. She couldn’t look at him directly in the eyes, so she leaned closer to whisper in his ear. “When you’re here with me, this room no longer has walls, but trees, infinite trees”.
Quando sei qui vicino a me
Questo soffitto viola
No, non esiste più
“When you’re here near me, this purple ceiling doesn’t exist anymore”.
Io vedo il cielo sopra noi
Che restiamo qui
Abbandonati
Come se non ci fosse più
Niente, più niente al mondo
“I see the sky above us as we stay here, abandoned, as if there’s nothing else in the world”. Josh couldn’t help but think that it was true. It felt like they were in another dimension, they were not boss and assistant anymore, they were free to be themselves, without any walls or obstacles between them. He hoped that one day he could look at Donna and see the same look of pure bliss that he had seen on her today when she was thinking about herself and her mom dancing to that song, but this time she would think about them dancing in the office.
Donna was thinking about how that song, a song that she had listened to a thousand times, was now exposing to her, with a clarity and a precision that were almost disarming, how she felt being with Josh in that exact moment.
They were both thinking the same thing: that the song was speaking for them, telling things that they were not able to tell each other yet.
They will admit it to each other, someday.