Title: Glimpses of Everything and Nothing - Part 3/7
Author: Finn AUS
Rating: PG-13 (swearing) - turns a little saucy in future parts so be warned!
Spoiler Info: Vaguely placed somewhere in Season Seven
Disclaimer: WB, NBC, Aaron Sorkin are the masterminds, John Wells is the minor-mind who had the good fortune to co-produce. I have no money, and even less with the US conversion rate so really not worth it.
Archiving permission: Awesome, please let me know so I can go look!
Summary: After a Republican makes suggestions about Donna and Josh's relationship in an attempt to derail the campaign, it forces them both to face the real truth.
Author Note: A gold medal in the luge (cause that looks really hard and scary and so is my writing and grammar) to Caz, the beta of all beta's!
Feedback: Love it, crave it, need it, beg it!
Neither one could speak for fear of where this could go - fear of how far it had already gone. For a full five minutes both Donna and Josh stared silently into the distance, hoping, praying for an interruption. Finally, Donna cleared her throat.
‘How about Donna Moss and Joshua Lyman-’ she began
‘Donna?’ he asked softly.
‘-have great respect for each other, and regard themselves as close personal friends, but deny absolutely that there has ever been inappropriate conduct between them, or that they were engaged in a clandestine relationship during the time they worked at the White House’ she finished.
‘Donna.’ Slowly, Josh turned to face her, finally summoning the courage to look her in the eye.
‘What?’ she gave a frustrated sigh as she rose from her seat to retrieve her long forgotten coffee.
‘Are we going to talk about this?’ he asked, afraid of either answer.
‘About what?’ she was stalling and they both knew it.
‘About what was said tonight?’
‘No.’ Donna looked up from her coffee, shocked to find him staring at her intently.
‘Why not?’ he asked, slightly offended at her immediate dismissal. He stood up, moving away from the table slightly, and now they almost faced each other from opposite ends of the room.
‘You’re not ready to,’ she answered determinedly, stirring her tepid coffee to disguise the fact that her hands were shaking.
‘Excuse me?’ His voice rose significantly, pitching upwards in indignation.
‘Josh, you’re barely ready to accept the fact that I’m back in your life. You’re hardly ready to discuss the nature of our… relationship.’ She bowed her head and therefore missed the hurt expression that flashed across his face.
‘I just discussed the nature of our relationship in front of an entire room of campaign employees!’ Josh blustered, throwing his hands into the air. ‘I just had a discussion with Bruno Gianelli about the nature of our relationship!’
‘Exactly! You discussed it with everyone but me!’ she shot back, putting her coffee down on the boardroom table. ‘This is what you do, Josh, I get glimpses of everything and nothing with you.’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ he yelled, starting to walk towards her.
‘The grand gestures and then the cold shoulder is what I’m talking about!’ Donna yelled back. ‘You turn up at my door and fling snowballs at my window. You drop your entire workload and jump on a plane to Germany. Then I get relegated to finding your luggage or even better, the silent treatment!’ Donna stormed at him, months of anger rising to the surface.
‘Things were different then,’ he returned, throwing his hands out once more, before shoving them back into his pockets.
‘No, they weren’t! I’m still getting the on-off treatment from you! You tell me you miss me every day and then you ignore me! Well, I’m sick of it! Nothing has changed and you’re not ready to discuss anything!’
‘Donna…’ He raised a hand, trying to back off, to halt this discussion and steer it onto safer ground.
‘-nine years!’ she interrupted. Shaking with fury and frustration, Donna stared at him, her piercing blue eyes telling him everything, begging to be understood.
‘Nine years, what?’ he asked, confused by the rapid change in subject.
‘Nothing,’ she replied crossly, folding her arms in defiance as she turned away from him. But something about her angry glare made him want an answer, made him feel he deserved an answer so he circled around to face her.
‘No, damn it, tell me!’
‘I spent nine years being in love with you!’ She felt the tears well in her eyes but pushed through, refusing to let him see her cry. ‘I can’t and I won’t do that to myself again!’
So there it was, everything they hadn’t been brave enough to say before. Seeing Donna’s eyes were glistening with tears made Josh curse himself inwardly. He hated that he had caused that, and wanted nothing more right at that moment than to comfort her, tell her he was sorry, that he would fix this – but there were other things he needed to tell her first. He took a deep breath.
‘I know,’ he whispered.
‘Wha…What?’ she asked, incredulously.
‘I knew that,’ he repeated.
‘Then … why didn’t you say something?’ Donna was shaken. She felt as if she’d been slapped and she stepped back from him, almost as if to protect herself.
‘Because I couldn’t do anything about it,’ he said, matter of factly.
‘You mean you let me think…I schlepped around after you and put up with you mocking every man I ever dated. You used to call me from your girlfriends apartments because you wanted a chat and the whole time you KNEW HOW I FELT?’ Feelings of outrage and betrayal tore through Donna leaving her feeling bruised and raw.
‘We worked at the White House!’ Josh yelled, his anger rising to meet hers.
‘You don’t think I knew that? You think I was some …some deluded little assistant, with a crush on her boss? Can you…do you? ...You let me torture myself for nine years, Josh!’
‘I didn’t know what to do! What should I have done Donna?’
‘You could have told me!’ she shouted.
‘I couldn’t!’ he snapped back. A moment passed, and he sighed, leaning back against the table, feeling as though he needed physical support to continue. ‘Because if I’d told you then, it would have been real. Not saying anything, well, it kept it at bay.’ Frustrated, he raked his hand through his hair before continuing. ‘If I didn’t acknowledge it, it wasn’t there, and I wasn’t lying every day,’ he murmured, defeatedly.
A silence, heavy with revelation, descended for immeasurably long moments. Donna drew a breath and for the first time in, well, a long time, looked Josh directly in the eye.
‘Why would you have been lying every day?’ she asked softly, aware that she was standing on a precipice and that this moment could change everything.
‘Sorry?’
‘Why would you have been lying by telling me you knew how I felt?’ she persisted, gently. Josh sighed heavily, knowing they were finally here, at the point where misdirection and avoidance were useless, that only the truth would suffice. He shifted his weight, and eased himself away from the table, so they were standing inches from one another.
‘I would have been lying because I felt the same way. Because every morning, I managed to get up and convince myself you weren’t interested in me like that. Even when people were trying to tell me how you felt because they thought I was too blind or too stupid to notice,’ he shrugged. ‘I convinced myself of that, every day for nine years. It was easier than…’ he shook his head, rubbing his eyes wearily, not wanting to see her reaction.
Donna had no answer for a moment, nothing with which to counter Josh’s admission. Millions of thoughts ran through her mind, memories from the past, comments she had misinterpreted, feelings she had denied. In this one discussion, everything had been laid bare and now standing in this otherwise empty room with Josh not daring to look at her, Donna finally felt the pieces slide into place.
‘Easier than what, Josh?’ Her voice was little more than a whisper – her breathing quickened and she felt as though she really needed to sit down. Instead, she put a hand on the table to steady herself, waiting for him to answer her.
‘Easier than dealing with what might have…’ Still looking at the carpet, he started again. ‘One of the reasons I didn’t want to tell you how I felt was that I was scared.’ Josh began fidgeting nervously and suddenly Donna remembered the look in his eyes she’d sometimes noticed on those rare occasions she’d caught him looking at her. She’d seen it before – outside her apartment one snowy night, at the hospital in Germany, that afternoon in his office when he turned her away - but she’d never quite understood it. ‘Scared of everything that it would bring. What would have happened if I’d told you I had … feelings… for you, and you’d admitted to me that you felt the same? I don’t think I would have been able to resist you.’
Donna was stunned - she was sure her mouth must be hanging open. After all those years telling herself she mustn’t have those kinds of feelings for Josh, that he didn’t feel anything for her beyond friendship – he was telling her he’d struggled to keep his hands off of her? ‘What if we had had a relationship? Imagine the field day the press would have had with that. Donna, I ran through a thousand nightmare scenarios in my mind and I decided not telling you was the best thing I could do, to protect you.’ Josh looked at her earnestly, hoping she would understand the truth.
‘Josh,’ Donna half-smiled to herself and shook her head. ‘I hate to be the one to break it to you but the press is about to have a field day. It’s really sweet that you’d want to protect me, but I’m okay at protecting myself.’ She smiled at him, at long last reassuring him that she was all right, that his efforts on her behalf were understood.
‘I’d noticed.’ He grinned at her, a little uncertainly. ‘You really think we can spin this?’
‘Aspects of it, yeah, but other suggestions will be a little harder to defuse.’ Smiling, she avoided specifying what exactly she was concerned about – they both knew.
‘What did you say before?’ he asked, slowly switching gears.
‘About what?’ she reached for her notes.
‘The statement you wanted to use?’
‘Oh…um… Donna Moss and Joshua Lyman have been close friends and colleagues for many years.’ She tucked a stray blonde strand behind her ear, a more focused expression settling on her face. ‘They have great respect for each other, and regard themselves as close personal friends, but deny absolutely that there has ever been inappropriate conduct between them, or that they were engaged in a clandestine relationship during the time they worked at the White House.’
‘That’s good I guess,’ he replied. Donna glanced wearily at her watch and sighed.
‘I think we have to take this to the Congressman. It’s now … 2.30 in the morning and I don’t think it will help the situation if we’re all sleep deprived when issuing a rebuttal statement.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ he nodded, fatigue finally catching up with him. They both collected their various files, an easy silence falling between them.
Walking towards the closed door, Josh placed his hand gently on her arm. ‘Donna, we’re okay aren’t we?’
The expression in his eyes was intense, but there was a smile playing about the corner of his mouth that was irresistible, and she couldn’t help but smile back. ‘We’re getting there.’
Continue on to Part 4
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