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He gets home around four, which is highly unusual.
The past two days have been a blur, between meeting with the republican leadership over the healthcare bill negotiations and being called down to the Situation Room more times than he can count. He’s lucky he has Sam to work out most of the details in the negotiations and not some half-brained politician the transition team managed to dump on his doorstep.
It’s a good thing his staff has faith in Sam too, because when Josh and the President are sequestered in the Situation Room for hours at a time, he knows that things are running smoothly upstairs. That’s what it’s been like for the past fifty-something hours—Josh mostly trapped in the basement dealing with Kazakhstan troop movements and hoping that the rest of his team can keep it all together without him.
(And tomorrow, when he goes back to the office at a normal hour, he’ll find that they did mostly fine on their own, with only a few bumps and bruises he and Sam will have to smooth over with party leaderships.)
Two nights he’s spent mostly awake, floating between the Situation Room, his office, and the Oval, trying to stay prepared for whatever intel might come their way—and whatever the President might do with it. He’s Santos’s right hand man, and though he may have flinched at that kind of power before, he’s learned to take it in stride in the few months they’ve held office. Donna says it looks good on him.
So, he’s been awake for over two full days, barring the two-hour naps he managed to sneak in on his office couch less than a handful of times between strategy sessions. The healthcare bill negotiations ended last night around eleven, and the situation in Kazakhstan resolved at around one this afternoon. Dead on his feet, Josh insisted on staying to do some of the paperwork that came with the end of both of those accomplishments, but when the President eventually found him half asleep with his head on his desk—he called it a day and ordered his Chief of Staff to go home.
Josh found it odd to be watching the streets pass by from the backseat of his detail’s car while the sun was still up. That almost never happens, especially not around this time of year when the sun sets at six.
After dropping his backpack just inside the door to the apartment, Josh immediately collapses face down on the couch. It’s much softer than the one in his office, and the throw pillow under his head smells like his girlfriend’s perfume. Home. This is home.
He dozes for ten, maybe twenty minutes before his Blackberry starts vibrating in his pocket. Josh groans against the couch cushions as he pulls out the small device, squinting at the phone and then relaxing when he sees her name.
From: Donnatella
Rumor mill says u went home?
Before he can reply, another one comes in.
Kazakhstan?
Josh rolls onto his back and blinks at the screen a few times before typing out his reply.
Stable for now. President ordered me home.
He drops his phone on his chest and closes his eyes for another few minutes before he gets another message.
From: Donnatella
Eat something and then get some sleep. You need to rest.
His stomach growls in response and he has to think hard to remember when his last meal was. Josh pushes himself off the cushions and pads over to the kitchen, stripping his tie and his suit jacket along the way and throwing them over the back of the couch.
In the fridge he finds cold pizza and that’s good enough for him. He pulls out a slice and takes a healthy bite before picking his phone up and typing out a simple OK in response to Donna’s message. He rubs at his eyes as he munches on the pizza, trying to fight his drowsiness for a little while longer.
After eating, Josh drags himself to the bathroom and stands under the hot shower for a long time. The muscles of his shoulders start to relax, and the heat is helping with the dull migraine he’s had since yesterday. He gets out and runs a towel over his hair before throwing on a pair of sweatpants and a t shirt and collapsing on his bed.
There’s another text on his phone.
From: Donnatella
Be home late. Love you.
He has just enough energy to type back Love you too before falling into a heavy sleep.
By the time Donna gets home, all she wants to do is crawl into bed next to her boyfriend. So, she ditches her blazer and power skirt for a threadbare Bartlet for America ’98 t-shirt and does exactly that.
Josh is passed out on his side facing away from her which—is unusual for him. He’s such a light sleeper he almost always rolls over to face her when he hears her come in the room or feels the dip in the mattress when she slides in the bed. Even when he’s only half conscious he still manages to fling an arm out over her middle and draw her closer.
He must be exhausted if he doesn’t stir at all tonight.
Donna slides under the covers and leans over his shoulder to get a good look at his face. The wrinkles on his forehead are fading with each passing breath and the worry line that’s been rooted between his brows for the last week seems to have disappeared entirely. He’s borderline drooling with his mouth hanging open, but Donna can’t help but smile at the way his whole body finally seems relaxed.
She slides up behind him and wraps her arms around his middle, kissing his shoulder, then his neck before resting her cheek against the cotton of his t-shirt between his shoulder blades. She nuzzles against the warmth of his back, regretting it the second he starts to shift.
“Donna?” he says quietly, his voice all scratchy with sleep.
“Hey,” she whispers with a smile, unable to control her grin. They’ve been together for months now, but she still finds herself overwhelmed with love for this man at the most random of times. She doesn’t think it’ll ever stop.
Josh moves to roll over, but Donna just holds on to him tighter.
“No, don’t move,” she tells him, splaying her hand across his chest. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“S’okay,” he mumbles back, picking up her hand and placing a feather light kiss to the back of it. “Glad you’re home.”
Donna smiles. “Go back to sleep, baby,” she whispers, placing tiny kisses to the back of his neck.
Josh squirms a little, settling back into her embrace before letting out a long breath. He threads their fingers together and leaves them resting against his chest as he drifts back to sleep a minute later.
Donna curls her legs up right behind his own, pressing their bodies together from head to toe. She buries her face in the back of his shirt once again, and it doesn’t take her long after that to fall asleep too.
“You’re watching me.”
Josh grins from where he leans against the doorframe. It’s been three days since his executive ordered bed rest, and his mood has completely turned around. Today is the first Saturday off they’ve had together in about a month, and sleeping in late and finding the other half of the bed empty was not exactly how he envisioned starting his weekend.
His annoyance turned to affection once he wandered out to the kitchen and found Donna scribbling something down in a notebook, her hair up in a messy bun and a highlighter between her teeth. The Georgetown student database is open on her laptop, and there are discarded papers covering half the table.
“Yeah,” he smiles, taking two steps forwards and bending down to kiss her on the cheek. “I do that sometimes.”
“You do that a lot of the time,” she muses, capping her highlighter and leaning back in her chair so he can wrap his arms around her shoulders and bury his face in her neck.
“Can you blame me?” he mumbles against her skin.
There’s a lot to be said about her going back to school, mostly that it’s brave and admirable and all those other things—but there’s something incredibly sexy about it too. Josh has never been one to hide this fact, letting it be well known that Donna plus academia is something straight out of a fantasy to him. She has no idea why watching her write a paper turns him on, but it does, and she’s not one to question it.
And because she’s Donna, she knows exactly where his next thought is going, so she heads him off by patting him on the cheek and leaning forward out of his embrace. “I have to do this,” she tells him, “but there’s coffee on the counter if you want some. Should still be warm.”
“Okay,” he says easily, taking the hint. He lets his fingers drag across her shoulders as he walks past her and towards the coffee pot.
Donna goes back to taking notes on this article she found and pays him no attention as he pours himself a cup. She’s only vaguely aware when he sits down at the table too, mug in one hand and a bowl of cereal in the other. For a while they sit in comfortable silence, Donna reading and highlighting while Josh munches on his breakfast. It’s not a bad Saturday morning, all things considered, until—
“You’re still watching me.”
She can feel his eyes trained on her (has been feeling it for the past several minutes), but her teasing smirk is quickly wiped away when she looks up and finds him frowning.
“What?” she asks gently, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Do I have pen on my face or something?”
“You know that feeling when…” he trails off, then shifts in his seat. “No. Wait. You know when you’re reading a good book, and it’s a good book, and it’s—okay, nope. That’s not gonna work either.”
Donna props an elbow on the table, resting her cheek on a closed fist. She slowly drags his cereal bowl towards her, taking a spoonful for herself while he tries to figure out how to use words.
“You know when you find something new that you really like, but you never knew that you liked it so much because you’d never done it before,” he tries again. “And now you’ve figured out that you like it, but you don’t know if other people will like you for liking it and that makes you wanna not like it, but you can’t stop thinking about it, and—I don’t know. Lemme start over”
“What the hell are we talking about right now?” Donna mutters around a mouthful of Cheerios.
Josh takes a steadying breath, and then tries to explain himself. “Remember the other night? When you came home, and I was already asleep?”
Donna nods. “What about it?”
“It was… nice,” he says quietly, blushing.
“What was?” she asks, stealing another bite of his cereal.
“The…” he waves his hand around, his blush deepening “…sleeping.”
“Well yeah,” she snorts, “you were awake for almost forty-five hours straight, I bet you slept like a rock.”
“No—well, yeah I did, but that’s not what I meant,” he says dejectedly, shaking his head and staring down at the table.
Something shifts then. She relaxes her features, and her eyes go soft when she realizes he’s trying (and failing) to tell her something important. Biting back her teasing quip, she sits up a little straighter and pulls her chair a little closer to him.
Donna drops the spoon back in the bowl and reaches out to hold his hand. “Josh,” she says gently, getting him to look up at her and her soft smile, “just tell me.”
Josh sighs. “I’ve never…” he hesitates, wincing as the words leave his mouth, “been the little spoon before.”
Donna blinks once, then twice. “…never?”
“No.”
“Like… never?”
“Donna.”
“How have you never—”
“I’m the man, Donna!” he nervously shrugs, cringing inwardly at his own internalized misogyny. “We’re… expected to be the big spoon.”
“Yeah, but not all the time,” she says easily enough.
And maybe it’s the way his shoulders drop, or the way his brow jumps up innocently, or the way he seems to be holding his breath before he asks his next question—but it hits her. Thinking about his ex-girlfriends is something she tries very hard not to do but trying to picture Mandy or Amy holding him the way she did the other night almost makes her laugh.
“…no?”
The scared look on his face makes her laughter die in her throat. Vulnerability has never been easy for him, but right now she’s holding his heart in her hands and he’s begging her not to drop it.
Of course he’s never been the little spoon—she realizes with a blinding clarity—he’s never been with anyone who would choose to be that soft with him. Josh loves with a ferocity that most people take for granted, He gives way more of himself than he ever gets in return, and he loves so much, so hard, all of the time—that it’s moments like this that make Donna think maybe…
Maybe it never worked out with anyone else because Josh needs someone who will love him back. Just a little. Someone to show him that it’s okay to stop giving himself away all the time. To show him that sometimes it’s okay to just take.
And maybe Donna can finally be that person for him. Maybe (hopefully) she can be that person for a long, long time.
“No,” she says with a soft smile, reaching up to cup his cheek. “Not if you don’t want to be.”
Josh leans into her touch. “…really?”
“Yes,” she says with a hint of a laugh, the pure love she feels for this man bubbling up in her chest.
He smiles at her, dimples popping up under her thumb before he turns his head to kiss the palm of her hand. His eyes are shining in the window light from the mid-morning sun, and his bedhead is still firmly in place with his hair sticking up in every direction.
Donna—not wanting to turn their perfectly nice morning into a display of tears—lets the moment settle and tries shifting directions. She raises one eyebrow and shoots him an impish grin.
“You wanna do it again, don’t you?”
“I really kinda do,” he says lightly, his smile more relaxed.
Donna leans back in her chair and lets out a breathy laugh. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, babe,” she muses, uncapping her highlighter and twirling it around in her hand, “tonight you can be the little spoon.”
Josh sits back in his own chair, dragging his breakfast back towards him with an almost shy smile. His cheeks are still tinged pink, but she can see the excitement in his eyes.
He goes back to eating her cereal, and Donna goes back to her homework, stealing glances at her stupid precious boyfriend and not even trying to hide her grin.
Donna walks out of the bathroom, teeth brushed and face washed, and finds Josh half sitting up in bed waiting for her. She shuts off the light and climbs under the covers, and he slides down to lay next to her.
She stares at him for a minute, waiting to see what he’ll do, and then—he does exactly what she does almost every night.
Which is just grabbing her arm and rolling over, so it’s draped across his waist.
Donna giggles into his back as she scoots closer, pressing her body up against his. She drops a few kisses on the back of his neck, and he sighs in content, shifting to somehow get even closer to her.
She holds him tight, squeezing him once before her hands start rubbing soothing circles on his chest, her nails scratching lightly in mindless patterns. They lie like that for a little while, both happy just to relax in the darkness together. He’s close to sleep when she breaks their silence.
“Josh?”
He hums in acknowledgement.
“You know… you can tell me stuff.”
His brow furrows. “What?”
She shrugs against him, her voice quiet. “If you like something, or don’t like something—you can tell me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I’m not gonna—” Judge you? Tease you? She can’t find the right words to get her point across. “I don’t know. I just want you to be happy.”
“I am happy,” he tells her honestly. “I have you.”
Donna shrugs again. “Sometimes just having someone isn’t enough.”
Josh laces their fingers together, bringing her hand up to his mouth. “For me it is,” he whispers before pressing a kiss to her knuckles. He tucks their joined hands against his chest, right where she can feel his steady heartbeat.
She can’t help but smile softly against his back. “Anyways. I just meant you don’t have to be nervous to tell me stuff like this. That’s all.”
“Okay, baby,” he says softly, squeezing her hand once in a silent thank you.
Donna snuggles into him even more and she can feel the tension leaving his shoulders as he starts to drift into unconsciousness. She likes holding him like this, she’s decided, and she’d let him fall asleep in her arms every night for the rest of her life if it meant he’d happy.
He does so much for her, every day, and if she can make him feel even half as happy as he makes her—well, it still won’t be enough, but that won’t stop her from trying.
Maybe he really does need someone to love him just a little bit back.
And maybe Donna loves him just a whole lot more than that.