Work Text:
He called her 6 months after the election. 3 months after the whole fiasco with Jack and a week after he’d gotten a job in New York at a law firm, having renounced politics in its entirety. She wasn’t sure about him but after watching Josh spend an inordinate amount of time chasing Amy Gardner, she felt that she had earned a break. And as she said, he was cute. And now he came with the added advantage of not being a Republican lawyer out to destroy the Bartlet white house.
He called her home phone while on a weekend trip back to the city to meet up with some friends and asked if he could come over. She was tired and irritable and honest to god worn out and after all day of fielding calls from your boss’s girlfriend which was exceptionally awful work even when you weren’t in love with him. So she said yes and he had shown up at her doorstep with Chinese food and a grin.
A month in he starts calling once or twice a week. And she starts looking forward to them. He’s smart and funny and doesn’t make her feel like she had to compete for his attention, which was refreshing to say the least. She doesn’t tell Josh. He suspects that she might be seeing someone but doesn’t ask who, comfortable in the knowledge that it’ll fall apart sooner or later. Because he hasn’t given her permission to have a future with this latest gomer yet. Not that that's ever going to happen. He knows Donna, she’d never leave him.
Almost a year into their second term and he calls every day. Sometimes twice a day if he can swing it at lunch. He tries to come to D.C when he can but really, the town’s lost its charm for him. And she still looks forward to his calls. She thinks she might fall in love if given enough time and enough calls. She starts planning a trip to New York when they finish their first year. Maybe Christmas.
*
Josh has started to get worried. Something has definitely shifted in his relationship with Donna. She doesn’t hover as much as she used to, doesn’t give him that beaming smile first thing in the morning and definitely doesn’t want to banter as much. He doesn’t have Amy to distract him anymore and he really doesn’t like what’s going on. She doesn’t even want to have lunch with him most days, opting instead to go to the park or the Mall to eat. Something definitely has shifted.
Then he asks what her plans are for the holidays and something shifts in her face and he knows that something irrevocable has happened. Either that or he’s lost his ability to read her entirely and should just stop trying. But he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t. Even when Amy waltzes back into his life, he can’t stop trying because she Donna. What is he supposed to do without her?
Then she tells him that she won’t be around for Christmas because she’s going out of town and he frowns up at her face, because she’s never seemed this excited about going to Wisconsin before. And really who can blame her?
But he doesn’t ask. And Christmas Eve rolls around and she isn’t there. She doesn’t even call. He placates himself by thinking that she must be busy with her family, but he knows this is different. Something has happened and someone has displaced Josh Lyman from Donna Moss’s life. He hates this. He resolves to ask her when she comes back. And win her back if he can.
*
Toby hustles into his office on the day after New Year’s to find Josh lying on his couch and decides that it’s time to get rid of the thing once and for all, government property be damned. He’s about to ask Josh what fresh hell the legislative branch has dragged in this time when he speaks of his own accord.
“I think I’m in love with Donna.”
God, Toby really does hate this couch.
*
He surprises her at LaGuardia with a bouquet of roses. They go back to his apartment and spend all of Christmas inside. By the time she gets back on the plane she knows that she can love him. Her feelings for Josh are now a wound she hopes will fade. She thinks it’s better this way, an unrequited love for her boss who works in the White House? Bad, bad idea. But really an unrequited love for a man who could not in a million years ever see her that way? Somehow worse.
Being with Cliff has stopped the constant gaping hunger of loving Josh. Before him Donna had no idea how good it would feel to have someone love you. To not be in a constant state of wishful anticipation. She realizes that for the first time in a long while, she’s happy. She’s happy with her life and although it took clawing her feelings for Josh Lyman out of her life to get her there, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
He also asked her if she would consider living with him. In New York. He knows she loves her job but he thinks she’s capable of so much more than being Josh Lyman’s gatekeeper. And with the White House on her resume she could get hired anywhere she wants. But of course he totally understands if she wants to stay where she is.
She has been toying with the idea of leaving since she got that offer from Casey Reid with a salary bigger than her rent. Since then she’s had to confront the fact that maybe it wasn’t just the fact that she working at the White House that was keeping her chained to her cubicle. She told him she would consider it. By the time she lands in D.C she’s had another idea, one she’d toyed with before but left because it seemed impossible but now, with Cliff by her side and her love for Josh shoved in a box she has buried as deeply as she possibly could, the possibility does not seem so farfetched. She gets home and makes a list, then calls C.J.
*
After Toby has shouted himself hoarse, detailing the things that could happen if it ever got out that the Deputy COS was having an affair with his assistant, Josh is back in his office scrubbing at his hair with his hands. He wonders when Donna will be coming in and what he’s going to say to her. Nothing. Toby made it very clear, as if he didn’t already know, that he cannot act on his feelings as long as she is his assistant.
He wishes he could talk to someone right now. His second realization is that the only person who could put this in perspective is Donna and the irony makes his scrub at his hair again.
He’s still worrying at his hair when she walks into his office. She wishes him a happy new year and he finally looks up at her, and it’s not like he hasn’t noticed how beautiful she is before. He’s her boss, he isn’t blind. But right now, standing in his doorway, backlit by the fluorescent lights of the bullpen and smiling nervously at him, she’s never looked more ethereal. She walks over to his desk with a look on her face he can’t even decipher.
“We need to talk”
*
She gets her acceptance letter from Columbia a month after they talk. She resigns the following week. C.J and Margaret take her and all their friends to a bar to celebrate. Josh arrives late and leaves without saying goodbye. It’s the last time she sees him before she moves to New York.
*
The next time she sees him he’s standing outside her office. It’s been two years since she saw him, a year since her graduation which he didn’t attend and seemingly millennia since she talked to Josh Lyman. She goes out to greet him but before she can get a word in he invites her to New Hampshire. He says he’s found a dark horse candidate. That Matt Santos is the real thing and he wants Donna Moss to be his press secretary.
*
He kisses her for the first time a tense night in November 8 years after he met her and 3 years after he realized he was in love with her. It’s been 2 years since she broke up with Cliff and came to the conclusion that forcing herself to love him was a disservice to both of them and that for better or worse, Josh Lyman cannot, in fact, be clawed out of her. 12 hours later, while she hands him his pants, Donna finds that she doesn’t even want to try.
*
He tells her that he loves her 50 minutes into their flight to Hawaii with 3 weeks and 6 days to spare. For those brief seconds before she kisses Josh Lyman Donna Moss feels time stop entirely.