Work Text:
She goes through the steps of her nighttime routine. She puts her pajamas on, she washes her face, and she brushes her teeth. Little check marks tick the boxes in her mental list. She wanders over to the thermostat and turns it up, just a little bit, just enough.
Her cell phone is plugged in, charging on the bedside in case somebody calls her in the middle of the night. It happens more often than people think. The bed is perfectly made, the blankets pulled tight as she grabs the edges, turning down the sheets before sliding between them.
She debates between the TV and her book, tapping her fingers against her thigh as she weighs the pros and cons. The book wins out by a thin margin, so she sets the remote down beside her and picks up the paperback instead.
She only gets five pages in before she’s interrupted.
Her cell phone buzzes on the table.
It’s a peace offering. It’s an olive branch. It’s—
“—so stupid,” he mumbles to himself as he gets out of his car.
It’s a fourteen-dollar bottle of champagne he grabs from the backseat.
The late December chill bites into his bare hands but he can barely even feel it as he crosses the street. It’s the day after Christmas—or Boxing Day, as Donna would call it, followed by a brief history on the origin of holiday—and it’s freezing. Gloves probably would have been a smart thing to bring, maybe a scarf too, but he wasn’t thinking about that.
No, he was thinking about a fourteen-dollar bottle of champagne. One he hopes will be enough.
Josh stands on the sidewalk in front of Donna’s apartment building, staring up at her window from the concrete. The lights are on, which he supposes is good, but it just makes his heart beat even faster. He tightens his grip around the neck of the bottle, digs his nails into the scarred palm of his free hand.
He’s been here before—many times—but tonight he’s visited by the memory of snowballs and tuxedos and a cramped cab ride with her on his lap. He thinks briefly of throwing snowballs again, knowing the buzzer is likely still broken, but he decides against it. Partially because—well, because there’s barely any snow on the ground, but mostly because he doesn’t want to ruin the memory.
This is not a night of celebration and fun and whisking her away in a ballgown. No, this is a night of hard truths and introspection and maybe—maybe forgiveness. If she deems him worthy. If she’s done being mad at him.
If he’s done being mad at her. He’s not sure he is.
She’s working for the enemy now, after all. Bingo Bob Russell and Will Bailey—of all fucking people—are her new bosses, and Josh really can’t sit and think about that for too long without seeing red. So, he takes a deep breath, shakes his head, and strides up to the front door.
(And yeah, maybe they’re not the enemy, not really, because—well, because Matt Santos hasn’t even said yes yet, and without him Josh doesn’t have a horse in this race. And sure, Russell is still a democrat, but only in the loosest of terms. He’s more of a wet paper bag that waves in whatever direction the wind is blowing, but at least he’s not a republican, and Josh has to hang on to that with both hands.)
The buzzer is, predictably, broken, but the front door is propped open with a rock. He’s told her not to do that a million times, but in all fairness it’s not always her. He hasn’t even really been here in six or seven months now, maybe she has new neighbors who don’t care about neighborhood safety. He’ll have to ask.
Josh kicks the rock away as he lets himself inside.
He thought that crossing the threshold would be the toughest part, that once he started walking, once he was inside, it would be easier. He thought the familiarity of the building would be comforting, the memorized route down the hall and up two flights of stairs a catalyst instead of a deterrent. He thought he could pretend that this was like any other night, or feign enough confidence to at least knock on her door.
By the time he hits the third-floor landing, he realizes he was wrong. So, very wrong.
Josh pauses at the end of the hallway, frozen in place. He tries to remember how to breathe.
It’s harder for him around this time of year—the breathing, the focusing, the not-panicking. Sometimes it comes in waves, and sometimes all at once, the memories of a Christmas Eve not too long ago. Of shattered glass and shattered minds, and blood dripping on hardwood floors and hospital waiting rooms, and seven stitches in his hand and his hand in hers the whole drive home. It’s shootings and sirens and surviving; it’s living and living alone.
It's the first Christmas Day without her in five years, and the silent vow made in a cold and empty apartment to fix this. To fix them. Even if he doesn’t know how.
He counts backwards from ten—twenty, thirty—squeezing his eyes shut and feeling the oxygen rush into his lungs, scar tissue be damned. In the hallway of her apartment building, Josh remembers how to breathe.
He focuses on her door, the third one on the left, down at the end of the hall. Fifteen steps, maybe twenty. It’s an ocean of scuffed hardwood and bland white walls between them. Josh looks down at his hands, a reminder of his past faded into the crease of one palm, and a gateway to his future in the other.
An ending. A beginning. A gamble.
It’s a fourteen-dollar bottle of champagne. One he had to go to three different stores to find.
Because the thing is—this isn’t just any bottle of champagne. No, Josh Lyman is a man of grand gestures, for he is a man of occasion. See, this bottle—this terrible, cheap bottle of champagne—is special. This bottle has meaning. The name is forgettable, and the label isn’t particularly unique, but Josh doesn’t think he could forget this bottle if he tried.
It’s the same champagne they drank seven years ago, just the two of them, sprawled out on the floor of a hotel room in Nashua. Election night, 1998. It was the drink of victors.
“To a grueling campaign,” she toasted him, tapping their paper cups together. “And the perfect ending.”
“Ending?” he asked, biting back a grin. “Donna, this is just the beginning.”
“For you, maybe.”
“What are you talking about?”
She shrugged. “My contract with Bartlet for America expired at midnight.”
“You’re not coming with us to the White House?”
“I don’t remember being offered a job.”
“Donna,” he laughed. “If you think I’m not bringing you with me, you’re crazy.”
“Really?” she beamed. “You wanna keep working with me?”
“For as long as you’ll have me,” he grinned.
“Four more years is a long time.”
“Eight’s even longer,” he told her. “But I can’t do any of this without you.”
He meant it then, and he still means it now. He can’t do this without her. He’s forgotten how.
And even though it’s seven years later instead of eight, he still brought the bottle of champagne they agreed they’d drink together on the President’s last day in office, when their White House journey had come to an end. Because even if Bartlet still has another year in the Oval, Josh might not be there to see the end of it, and Donna’s already gone. Because he can feel the book closing on this part of their relationship, but he doesn’t want the story to end. He only wants to turn the page.
Even if he barely knows what he wants to find in the next chapter. Even if he has no idea how to ask for that. Even if he can’t hide her behind the title of assistant anymore—she’s still, first and foremost, his friend.
And yes, maybe the lines between all of it have been blurred for them since the day they met, but he doesn’t care. He can’t lose her—not again.
Josh takes the first step towards her door. Then another.
He thinks about another bottle of champagne as he walks down the hall, a bottle buried between the Paeonia japonica and the bamboo. Another drink shared as a beginning and an ending, between another couple can’t seem to figure out what they are to each other.
You should dig it up, it’s a good idea, he told Charlie, on the night of Zoey’s graduation. This was before everything went wrong, before the nightmare scenario happened. This was when it was all just about two kids in love—and too stubborn to admit it.
He tries not to draw too many direct parallels between their situations.
I’m done. I gave it a shot, she said no. She said it clearly.
For more reasons than one.
But he’d be a hypocrite, he thinks, if he didn’t at least try and follow his own advice.
No, I mean as a friend. You give it to her as a graduation present.
As a friend. He clings to those words like a lifeline, like the safety net that he hopes will catch him if things go wrong. He needs her, in any capacity she’ll have him, even if it’s only as a friend. As a friend, as a friend, as a friend, he repeats it over and over in his head.
You give it to her at one of the parties tonight. That way she goes off without thinking you’re mad at her.
I am mad at her.
Ain’t that the fucking truth.
Yeah, but it’s not really her fault, and she’s going away for a while. Anyways…
“…I don’t know what I’m talking about,” he finishes the thought out loud, whispered under his breath.
He doesn’t know when he started talking to himself so much, but he’d bet all the money in his savings account it correlates to the day Donna left.
Josh finds himself standing in front of her door, staring at the paint chipped numbers resting in the center. The floorboards squeak under his shoes, as if even the wood knows he’s standing on a precipice. One more step, no looking back.
As soon as she opens that door, it’ll all play out.
He’ll knock on the door, and she’ll answer, probably already in sweats or pajamas with her hair tied up and her face scrubbed clean. She’ll be surprised at first to see him there, but she’ll invite him inside anyway. He’ll drape his coat on the armchair that nobody sits in, and he’ll leave his shoes by the door with hers, and she’ll smile softly at the familiarity of it all.
He’ll recite the speech he has planned in his head, and she’ll listen, and they’ll both make apologies that are a little rushed but still genuine. They’ll pop open the champagne and drink it while sitting on her couch, talking about tomorrow and the next day and the next, and she’ll tell him about her new office, and he’ll tell her about his trip to Houston.
They’ll drift closer as the night goes on, ending up curled around each other in the middle of the couch, passing the bottle back and forth as they finish it off. His arm will be wrapped around her shoulders, and her hand will be resting on his knee.
And maybe, when the end of the night comes, she’ll drag him off the couch and lead him down the hall to her bedroom, the both of them climbing under the covers together like they have so many nights before. She’ll turn off the lights and he’ll wrap himself around her, and he’ll have the best night of sleep he’s had in weeks, and in the morning, he’ll wake up to her smiling at him from across the pillows.
Or maybe something different will happen, something new entirely, something that’s never happened before—that never could happen before, not when he was her boss and she was his assistant but neither of those titles mean anything anymore so… anything’s possible, he supposes. Anything at all.
Josh rolls his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and slowly—oh, so slowly, raises his fist.
He knocks on the door.
In the ten seconds between his knock and the door opening, he rethinks every move he made today, from getting out of bed in the morning to getting out of his car five minutes ago. He rethinks the gesture, the time, the place, the champagne—he rethinks his outfit, thinking maybe he should have worn the blue tie instead of the black. She likes the blue tie better, always has.
There are a million and a half thoughts that run through Josh’s head in that ten second span, some of them relevant, none of them helpful, but even with everything swimming through his head in this moment, there is nothing—nothing that could prepare him for what lies behind that door.
“Hey,” a woman greets him with a tentative smile, confusion evident in her eyes. “Can I help you?”
“Uh,” Josh blinks, because—who the hell is this? “Sorry, I—” he looks at the numbers on the door, then looks around the hallway. No, this is the right apartment. “I’m looking for Donna?”
“Donna Moss?” the woman asks—as if it could possibly be anyone else.
“Yeah, Donna Moss,” he answers slowly. “The woman who lives here.”
“Not anymore.”
That’s when the world stops spinning for Josh Lyman.
(It’ll take him about a year to get it started again.)
“I’m sorry?” he asks, a line etched deep between his furrowed brows.
“She doesn’t live here anymore,” the woman answers. “I do.”
Josh opens his mouth, then closes it. Then opens it again.
“Donna… doesn’t live here anymore?”
The woman nods.
“She left.”
It’s like a gut punch to the stomach, the way all the air in his lungs suddenly vanishes. There’s something foreign yet familiar to her words, and Josh doesn’t know how to process them. He’s never known how to process that, not when it comes to Donna.
But Donna leaves.
It’s a thing she does, and a thing he tries to forget.
“Uh, okay,” he says, swallowing around the lump forming in his throat. “Sorry to bother you.”
He turns to leave, to walk away, when the woman calls out after him.
“I can tell her you stopped by—”
“Don’t bother,” he spits back with a little more venom than he intended.
Donna left. Again. And she didn’t even bother to tell him. She left her job, she left her apartment, she left him—she left his life. Totally and utterly, practically overnight.
He wonders, distantly, if her phone number even still works, or if she cut everyone off completely. Everyone, or just him? Does it matter?
Josh can feel the sting of fresh tears starting to form behind his eyes as he flies down the stairs two at a time, swinging around the banister as he clears the first-floor landing.
Donna is gone. He doesn’t know where she went or why, other than maybe to get away from him, and if he thought he was mad at her before, then he’s furious at her now. He grinds his teeth together as he holds the tears at bay, throwing open the front door to her building.
(The thing, in moments like this, is that people don’t think clearly when they’re having emotional reactions. It’s a simple face of the human experience. And the thing about Josh, in this particular situation, is that he’s having—for lack of a better term—an emotional reaction. Meltdown might be a better term, or a frenzy perhaps. Doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that, if he was thinking clearly, and maybe asked a few more questions to the random twitchy chick standing in Donna’s doorway, Josh could maybe connect the dots on his own. He might realize that Donna’s new job is on a campaign and all campaigns start in New Hampshire. Not DC.)
He curses as the first gust of winter air hits his cheeks, his vision going blurry with unshed tears.
A disappointment. A loss. A little too late.
It’s a bottle of champagne dropped on the sidewalk, the glass breaking against the concrete and the bubbles spilling everywhere, but Josh doesn’t look back, just looks both ways before crossing the street.
He shoves himself in his car and slams the door behind him, hitting the steering wheel a few times before he stops seeing red, before he calms down enough to drive. He takes the fastest route home and double parks outside his building, not caring about anything else as he crosses the threshold into his home, and cries.
She goes through the steps of her nighttime routine.
She puts her pajamas on, an old pair of sweatpants she stole from Josh and a t-shirt from the first campaign. She washes her face, using her cleanser sparingly, trying to make the most out of the travel sized bottle. She brushes her teeth while staring at herself in the mirror, the shower curtain behind her and the sink in front of her are both foreign.
Little check marks tick the boxes in her mental list. Toiletries on the bathroom counter, suitcase half packed at all times, an outfit for tomorrow draped over the lone chair. She wanders over to the thermostat and turns it up, just a little bit, just enough to make this empty hotel room in Nashua not feel so cold.
Her cell phone is plugged in, charging on the bedside in case somebody calls her in the middle of the night. It happens more often than people think, though she doubts it’ll happen quite as much now. Yes, the campaign will probably have any number of midnight fiascos, but at least this time she won’t have a boss that calls her when he’s drunk at two in the morning and can’t find his keys. She doesn’t have any friends up here that might do that either; up here she has no one.
Donna tries not to think too much about it.
The bed is perfectly made, all stiff lines and tucked corners with absolutely no room for any kind of personality. The blankets are pulled tight as she grabs the edges, turning down the scratchy sheets before sliding between them, curling in on herself as she fights the cold.
She debates between the TV and her book, tapping her fingers against her thigh as she weighs the pros and cons. It might be better to watch the local news for a little while, to get a sense of how aware the locals are about the primaries before she starts her first official day at headquarters tomorrow. Then again, this might be the only night off she has for the next ten months, so maybe the news can wait until tomorrow.
The book wins out by a thin margin, so she sets the remote down beside her and picks up the paperback instead. It’s some romance novel she picked up at the airport, the kind she used to like reading before her world revolved around her job.
It’s good, or it might be if she could focus on it for more than a minute at a time, but every time she runs her thumb over the pages she can’t help but think of another book, of a hardcover book about skiing that’s sitting in storage, and when she thinks about that book she thinks about him.
The one thing she’s not allowing herself to think about these days. It’s too much, and it’s too hard, and she can’t get wrapped up in him. Not again.
So, she focuses back on her book and attempts to lose herself in the characters with terrible names in their middle of nowhere small town America setting, but she only gets five pages in before she’s interrupted.
Her cell phone buzzes on the table.
She grabs it quickly—a little too quickly—but her heart drops almost as quick as it jumped, because it’s just a text from Will Bailey—of all fucking people—about the schedule for tomorrow.
She shuts her phone and puts it back on the table before she can think any more about it, before she does something stupid like presses number one on her speed dial or deletes that number entirely. It wouldn’t matter, she muses, because she has it memorized. She’s always had his phone number memorized. Ever since the first day she started working for him.
She doesn’t even know the area code to Will Bailey’s phone number. She doesn’t think she wants to.
But the ten digits that give her a direct line to Josh Lyman—those she’ll never forget. She’ll know them for as long as she lives, and as she pulls the blankets up to her chin and rolls over in bed, she wonders if maybe she’ll ever get to use them again.
Someday, maybe when there’s less water under that particular bridge. Maybe when he’s not mad at her anymore. Maybe she’s not mad at him.
Maybe someday she’ll call him, or he’ll call her, and they’ll find the time and the space and the strength to talk about the ocean that now lies between them. Maybe one day they’ll even move past it—together.
But someday is not today, so she closes her eyes and dreams of a better tomorrow, of one day next week, next month, next year when things are better. She sleeps, and she dreams, and she wakes up in the morning disappointed he’s not right there next to her. She runs her hand over the empty sheets and the untouched pillow, and she tries very hard not to cry about Josh on the first day of her new life.
But the bed is always going to be too big without him.
And as she drags herself out from under the covers, she wonders if he even realizes that she’s gone.