Work Text:
This has been the week from hell. Truly.
Nothing specific is jumping out at her when she thinks about it. Josh has been…well, he's always Josh, but he hasn't been especially Josh recently; he's even managed to come home before 7 almost every day. With it being the beginning of March, things have been mostly quiet on the First Lady's end. Both Miranda and Peter are down for the count with a cold they picked up from school, so Helen's schedule’s light, and there's no pressing legislative fights at the moment so Donna's schedule's been light, so that means that she's had to spend the rest of her time fighting off reporters whose only concerns seem to be anything but Helen's political moves.
Guiding Helen into her own role as First Lady has been a process: baby steps turned into actual strides as she learned her platform and grew into it. Of course, Donna understands that the priorities of Vogue or Vanity Fair readers probably aren't the intricacies of the East Wing's politics, but it would be nice to talk to reporters about something other than designers or Helen's hair routine.
And then on top of trying to spin politics to people who probably won't care, no matter her efforts, she's been on an emotional roller coaster lately. Just this morning, she bumped her hand on the corner of her desk, and when she turned to cradle her hand her elbow caught the lamp of her desk: the white-hot rage that coiled through her took her by complete surprise. She was able to calm herself down by utilizing the deep breathing she learned in therapy after Gaza, but even that only did so much.
After lunch she heads to the bathroom and idly wonders what her issue is, and that questions is quickly answered for her when she pulls her pants down and sees the beginnings of a murder scene. Of course it’s that time of the month; she whips out her phone and heads to the calendar and…yep, 28 days exactly. She curses herself; normally she’s on top of her cycle, but February brought a huge fight in the Senate, and her schedule took a complete heel turn once that finished—hence her day of placating fashion journalists—so she completely lost track of the dates.
Once she cleans up and changes her underwear to the spare pair in her desk drawer, she settles at her desk again and opens her email as she unconsciously flips her other drawer open. While she reads her first political business-related email of the day her fingers root around for the bottle of ibuprofen that resides in there, only…she furrows her brow as her hand comes up empty, and she pulls back to properly look through her drawer.
Clutter coats the bottom, but…no bottle. She checks her other drawer…no bottle. Her purse…no bottle. Her coat…no bottle. As she runs out of possible places her anxiety grows: she’s feeling the first twinges of cramps now, and without any sort of pain medication they’re absolutely unbearable. She's suddenly reminded that…she took the last of the pills a few weeks ago when she twisted her ankle walking into the building. She remembers this because she distinctly remembers thinking oh no, I'll have to pick more up on the way home, but that was before Josh had shown up to her office later that night looking particularly delicious and stopping at the nearest Walgreens was suddenly much, much lower on her list of priorities.
Donna presses the button for the intercom. "Hey, Penelope?"
"Yes, Miss Moss?" she buzzes back, and normally Donna doesn’t mind the formality, but right now she just needs a few pills and thirty minutes.
"Do you have any sort of pain reliever?"
"Pain reliever?"
"Yeah. You know…Tylenol? Aleve? Advil?" she rattles, her hand coming up to caress her abdomen. "I'm all out, and uh…"
"Oh. Yeah, it's—let me check." The intercom cuts out, and Donna leans on the arm stretched out to the button, a particularly strong cramp rising up through the aches. "No, Ms. Moss, I don’t have any out here."
Fuck. "Thanks, Penelope." She pulls her hand away from the button and curls up, resting her forehead on her desk and wrapping her arms around her stomach. Should she make Penelope go get her something? When she was Josh’s assistant, she would have absolutely gone out and gotten Josh pain relievers: then again, she was also in love with Josh, so maybe she isn’t the greatest assistant litmus test.
Suddenly the cramps take a more vicious turn, and the pain becomes rounder, deeper. Pain quakes through her, and she hisses sharply. Just as she’s about to reach out for the intercom to ask Penelope to get her anything, her door is opened and Helen Santos comes walking in.
"Mrs. Santos," she greets weakly, pushing herself to a standing position with wobbly knees.
"Donna?" she says quickly, rushing forward. "Are you okay? Sit down," she fusses, waving her hands and flitting around. "You’re pale, what’s going on?"
"
Donna curls forward again. "Nothing out of the ordinary," she grits, "It’s fine."
Helen blinks at her. "Donna Moss." The use of her full name startles her out of her misery long enough to look up. "I am many things, but gullible is not one of them."
"I didn’t mean to imply—"
"What is going on?" The authority in her voice shocks Donna again.
"Well, it’s…" Donna’s not quite sure how detailed she should go.
"Is it stomach pains?"
The cramps start migrating to her lower back, too, and Donna’s resolve finally breaks. "It’s cramps." She hisses again as a particularly strong cramp wracks through her body. "I ran out of ibuprofen a few weeks ago and forgot to get more."
"Are they like this every month?" Helen isn’t able to mask the shock in her voice.
"Normally, I can control them with meds, but…"
"Okay. You can’t get any work done like this—"
"Ma’am—"
"—And now you’ve called me ma’am," Helen continues, though she can’t stop the small smirk. "That’s two strikes. Go home, you’re done for the day."
"What?" Donna can’t believe her ears.
"Go home. Go get some meds, heat up some soup, take it easy."
"They’re just cramps, ma’—Helen, I promise I can push through them until my lunch when I’ll have time to—"
"Enough." Helen puts a hand up. "You haven’t taken any time off since Inauguration, I think you’re okay to take an afternoon off. Besides," she snorts, her head swiveling to Donna’s calendar for the day, which is stunningly blank. "I don’t think there’s much going on here right now anyway."
"I—thank you," she says, stunned.
"Do you need me to get Josh?"
Maybe her cramps are worse than she thought, because it feels like every other sentence out of her boss’s mouth is knocking her sideways. "Get Josh?"
"I mean…do you need help getting home?"
"Oh! No, no no no, I can do it just fine," she says quickly. She loves Josh, of course; it’s just that Josh can get a little panicky about her health. When it’s something like period cramps that look bad, he’ll go ballistic, and Ballistic Josh is not a version of Josh that Donna feels capable of handling right now. "I can get home by myself."
Helen squints at her. "Are you sure?"
Donna almost rolls her eyes, because Helen and Josh aren’t related but right there was all Josh. "Yes, I’m sure."
"Okay. I have some business to take care of, but I’m going to come back here in half an hour and if I still see you here, you’re fired," Helen grins.
Donna mock-salutes, and Helen exits her office. She immediately slumps back down, taking a minute to regather her strength. Before she calls a cab to take her home (she refuses to let Josh’s detail cart her around—she likes her freedom, damn it), she dials Josh’s office number.
"Josh Lyman’s office," Margaret answers on the other line.
"Hey Margaret," Donna says. "Is Josh in?"
"He’s in the Sit Room right now, but I can take a message for you?"
Josh told her to call his personal line if she can’t get ahold of him via Margaret, but this is just silly, honestly, so, "Yeah, sure. Let him know I don’t feel great and I’m heading home for the day. Marching orders."
She hears Margaret chuckle on the other end. "Will do. Anything else?"
"Nah. Everything okay?"
"I don’t think it’s anything important," Margaret says dismissively. "I think it’s just a general briefing or something."
"Well, that’s good. Alright, I’m going to go, I have a countdown clock over my head." Margaret laughs, and says goodbye before hanging up. Donna cradles the phone, and then it takes her another 5 minutes before she can muster up the energy to start gathering her things.
She feels like she’s forcing her way through water. The simple act of getting up, putting on her coat, and walking outside into the cab feels like climbing a mountain, but she manages. The entire cab ride is spent fighting down newly-developed nausea: she hasn’t thrown up from her cramps since high school, so this isn’t new, but it is the first period she’s gotten since then where she hasn’t had ibuprofen.
The cab pulls up at the curb, and as she pays she can feel herself hurtling towards the point of no return. She toddles up the front walk and inside, and it’s by the grace of God that she’s able to run to the bathroom in time.
Throwing up saps the rest of her energy. She sits against the wall opposite the toilet and lets herself wallow in her misery for a second. She can see the bottle of pills on the counter, right next to their toothbrushes, but she doesn’t think she has the energy to grab it.
By now she’s trembling slightly, both from the pain and from exhaustion; Donna had forgotten how taxing it is. Finally, after quite a few minutes of psyching herself up, she pulls herself up from the ground (with a considerable amount of help from the towel rack) and rinses her mouth out. She dumps out two pills and takes a drink from the tap to wash them down.
She’s able to shuffle pathetically into their room, and she pulls on pajamas and slides under the covers and pulls them up to her ears. All she can do now is wait, so she curls up and burrows down into Josh’s pillow. His scent clings to the pillowcase, and she inhales it now, his shampoo allowing her to imagine him curling up behind her and holding her the way he does when she wakes up from a nightmare.
Donna starts to doze lightly, and slowly the cramps start to ease up. Just as she’s about to fall asleep she hears the front door open, and quick footsteps through the apartment before their door opens.
"Donna?" he calls quietly, and she grunts in response. The door opens more and Josh’s head peeks around the door. "Donna?" he asks again, coming inside fully and shutting the door behind him. "Baby, what’s wrong?"
She’d normally razz him about the pet name, but she’s warm and sleepy so instead she lets it go. "Cramps," she says plainly.
Josh sits on the edge of the bed and runs a hand through her hair. "Cramps? Like…" he gesticulates towards her abdomen, and she snorts and nods. "Are they usually this bad? That you have to go home?"
"Not really," she yawns. "I ran out of ibuprofen at work and forgot to get more. Helen was concerned so she sent me home."
"Why didn’t you call me?" he asks, and the hand running over her scalp isn’t helping her stay awake.
"It’s not a big deal."
"It is a big deal!" Josh says exasperatedly, and Donna finally laughs.
"It really isn’t, Josh. Promise." She snuggles deeper into his pillow. "Don’t you have work to do?"
"Nothing pressing right now that I can’t come home to check on my sickly girlfriend," Josh says with a smirk, and she rolls her eyes at that. "Are you sure you’re alright?" he asks again, quieter.
"Yeah."
"Do you want me to come home?"
"Are you serious? Josh, I’ll be fine," she stresses. "Don’t worry about it."
"You’re sleeping on my side of the bed," he points out, and yeah, maybe she mentioned to him that she used to sleep wearing one of his stolen sweaters when she was sick, but that’s different.
"That’s different."
"Is it?"
"Josh—"
"Donna, can you please let me take care of you?"
His sincerity catches her off-guard, and her last barrier of selflessness falls. "Okay," she whispers. "Can you keep doing that?"
"Okay." He keeps rubbing her hair, and her eyes droop.
***
Donna wakes up a little later, groggy and still cramping a little. She sits up and rubs her eyes and stretches with a groan, her back popping. Her groan must have alerted Josh because the door opens and he comes in, now dressed in jeans and a sweater. "How are you?"
"Better," she says, and gets out of bed to fold into his arms. He holds her tightly and presses a kiss to her temple. "Kinda hungry."
"After you fell asleep, I went out and grabbed some subs from that deli you like."
"Jim’s?" she says hopefully, because there really isn’t anything quite like a good sub from Jim’s.
"You know it."
She squeals. "Yes!"
"I also got you a bottle of ibuprofen. I stuck it in your briefcase." He definitely deserves a kiss for that, so she does. "Let me get them."
The thought of not touching Josh in some capacity makes her feel ill, but she decides that she’s allowed to be clingy today. She pulls away from him to use the bathroom and take some more ibuprofen, and when she returns to the living room she sees the subs set out on the living room table with CNN on.
Donna settles into the couch, and before sitting down Josh drapes a blanket over her shoulders. "You’re wearing a tank top," is all he says when she looks at him for an explanation, and if she wasn’t feeling under the weather she would reward him for being so sweet. Josh changes the channel to an older movie playing on AMC. They eat in companionable silence, the sound of cheesy gunshots and swooning women drifting over them.
"You know," Josh says, licking grease off of his fingers obscenely, "I think that I would’ve been a cowboy."
"A cowboy?"
"Yeah. I'm a rugged outdoorsman as you know," he says, puffing out his chest as he scooches forward on the couch to stand up and collect her plate. "So I could probably fare in the wild West."
"You're ridiculous," she scoffs fondly. "Are you forgetting that time on the re-election campaign where we went to a rodeo in San Antonio, and you tried to feed that horse—"
"It hated me!" he cries from the sink. "It sensed my fear of its large, muscular body and attacked."
Donna has to bite her lip to keep her smile in check. "A cowboy wouldn't have been bitten by a horse."
"Bitten at by a horse, Donnatella. I was not horse feed that day!" he crows triumphantly, lifting the knife he's washing above his head like a sword. A laugh finally bursts from her, and she leans back into the couch as she cackles. When she's finally able to calm down, she looks up to see Josh leaning against the doorframe, wiping his hands with the dish towel and smiling softly at her.
"What?"
"You're beautiful."
A flush starts to dot her cheeks. "Stop."
"It's true. I love that I get to finally watch you when you're the most beautiful."
"Which is when?"
"Want me to list the times?"
"Chronologically, please."
He sticks his tongue out at her before pushing off the frame to make his way towards the couch. He throws the towel over his shoulder and starts ticking his fingers off. "When you wake up in the morning. When you're putting your earrings in. When you pass me coffee creamer. When we part in the lobby at work in the morning." By now, Donna can't help the tears welling up in her eyes. Josh gets to the couch and sits on the cushion at her feet. "When you schedule meetings with me during busy weeks to make sure I eat lunch. When you're asked to advise the president. When you see a problem and put your nose to the grindstone to solve it. When you come to get me after a long day. When I come to your office and see you sitting behind that desk where you've always belonged." She's crying now, the sincerity in Josh's eyes warming her chest. "When I come home and you've decided to make dinner. When you dance with me in the kitchen. When you get dressed up for a gala. When you're in pajamas with morning breath and bedhead." She sniffles out a watery chuckle. "When you're sleeping. When you're awake. When you're in lingerie and when you're naked and all the times in between." Josh loses steam then, and Donna swipes tears from her cheeks. He looks up from his hands where he had been counting, and his eyes are so unbelievably soft she feels like she's intruding. "When you're home on the couch, feeling bloated and gross, laughing at my jokes."
She throws herself into his lap and lets him hold her to his chest as she cries into his shoulder. "Josh…" she wavers, and he sweeps a hand up and down her spine as he shushes her. She adjusts herself so that instead of straddling his lap she's sitting across it, her arms thrown up around his neck and her head tucked under his chin.
"I love you," he whispers, pulling back to kiss her forehead lightly. "I'm sorry you were in pain today."
"It's fine," she murmurs. "They haven't been that bad since high school."
"I thought your birth control helped with those?" he asks hesitantly.
"It usually does." She shrugs as best as she can. "I feel fine now."
"I almost forgot! I also got you this," he says, and he leans over to grab the drugstore plastic bag from the floor next to the couch where she presumes he dropped it earlier. There's some rustling before he pops up with a bar of chocolate. "I did some googling while you were napping, and some studies have alluded to chocolate helping with period cramps." She kisses his jaw in thanks and grabs at the package to open it. "Even if that isn't true, we still have chocolate, so that's a win in my book."
"Josh…" she hums, overwhelmed at the love and attention he's shown her today. "Thank you."
"Of course." He squeezes her to him as she sits up to feed him a square of chocolate. "Can we put CNN back on? I want to catch the end of the evening news."
"You're beautiful and you're asking me to put CNN on?" Josh wonders as he reaches for the remote. "Can't ask for much more than that."
She smiles around a square of chocolate, nestling into Josh's shoulder as the anchor starts telling them about the newest legislation being cooked up on the Hill.