The meaning of nothing

The dress plunges low, low, down to the small of her back and when he puts his hand there to gently guide her toward the dining hall he is surprised to be touching skin.

"Josh, it's okay," she says, and he realizes he has instinctively pulled his hand away.

"I didn't - " he says, and then he stops, because how is he going to finish that sentence? I didn't expect to touch you? I didn't expect your skin to be so soft? Or, worse, I didn't want you to think - careless words that would mean exactly what they both knew them to mean, and before the minute was over they would be stuck in that cycle of theirs, she wanting him to say it, he desperately trying to avoid saying it.

"Didn't what?" She turns her innocent blue eyes toward him. So not saying anything is clearly not going to work either.

"I didn't expect your back to be there," he says, a note of pleading in his voice.

"You thought I was a disembodied dress?"

Sometimes, he thinks, that would make my life simpler. If there were no body.

"Yes, Donna," he says, impressing her, he hopes, with his newfound ability to laugh at himself. "That's exactly what I thought."

"You crack me up," she says, not cracking up, and then adds in a low voice, perhaps a little drunk already, "A little skin to skin contact is going to kills us?"

"It might."

Here we go, he thinks, and sure enough.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing."

She's stopped walking. He turns his head back to her and sees that the front of the dress has one of those ruched necklines. Ruched? Where did he learn that word?

"Why did you stop walking?"

"Because you always do that."

"Always do what?" Though of course he knows. But maybe the Bambi thing will work for him too.

"You always almost say it."

"Say what?"

He is aware of his quickening pulse. If she puts words to it, the game is over. And in the absence of anything beyond the game, he likes the game.

"Nothing," she says, playing too, refusing the risk too. But she looks into his eyes as she says it, as though she were confident that his nothing meant the same as hers, or perhaps as though she were gambling everything on that one word.

He holds out his arm and she takes it, and he seriously considers dancing with her later.

No exit

They didn't have to say they would never speak of it again. The closeness of the air, the thickness of the silence between them, the haste with which Donna left when they were given the all-clear said it, shouted it, screamed it.

CJ wasn't entirely sure why she had allowed herself and her words to be pulled in this dangerous direction. She was torn between the relief of having voiced the perennially unvoiced and the guilt at Donna shrinking like a wounded animal and the injustice of having been so ill-received when she had, after all, spoken out of concern, affection even, for these two people.

Although, perhaps, thinking about it, affection had not been her chief motivation. Frustration, maybe. Under different circumstances - over coffee on a lazy Sunday, or after a few drinks on a Friday night... But there were no lazy Sundays and when work was finished on Friday nights there was no energy left for anything except the drive home, the removal of clothes and make-up, the closing of eyes and the waiting for sleep, as you wait for an ancient computer to close each program one by one, so that darkness only came - to the screen, to her mind - when patience was almost exhausted.

And perhaps, whatever the circumstances, there were certain things that could never be spoken of, for fear that naming them would call forth their destructive power. And this unspokenness was the air vent that had kept Donna breathing in the hell she had constructed for herself, and with CJ's words the air vent had snapped shut and she was suffocating, and it was at last possible that she might seek escape.

But while she could still breathe Donna would not seek a way out, blind as she was to the desirability or even the possibility of escape. And so hell, to Donna, was other people, one other person, because she had allowed herself to be chained to him at the cost of her freedom.

Hell. No exit. Other people, or another person - always this other person.

Waiting for sleep

She could hear her heart thumping still, almost feel the caffeine coursing through her veins. What hospital coffee lacked in taste and quality it more than made up for with strength.

They'd sent her home; he'd nodded his agreement.

"Get some sleep," they'd said, all of them.

As if.

She wasn't sure if she was unable to sleep as much as she was plainly unwilling, vaguely superstitious that her staying awake was somehow keeping him alive.

She thought about reading but the words danced meaninglessly in front of her strained, puffy eyes. Sure, there were magazines, with photos and bright colors and no need to focus, but the glossy smell made her faintly nauseous and probably always would, carrying with them the recent memory of furiously flicking from page to page in a hospital waiting room, as though that would make time past faster somehow, bring him back to her sooner.

She flung her arms behind her head and waited for sleep, but waited with her eyes open. Come if you must, but don't expect to be welcomed.

"Get some sleep," he'd said, the way you might say "be careful out there", or "look after yourself". Meant, fully meant, and yet fully meaningless.

She buried her face in her pillow, and wondered if she might cry, but the pain, the anxiety, the loneliness, the fear came from a deeper place than tears do.

"Get some sleep," he'd said, and she thought about that. She thought about the tenderness in his eyes, his concern for her in the midst of her own emergency. The way he had lacked the strength to squeeze her hand. Their story did not feel finished. There had to be more. Had to be.

She thought about -

A button and a distraction

Her button was undone.

He wished he hadn't noticed, but there it was, he had, and he could not go back and un-notice it.

Just that one button. Just enough so that he could see the little pink bow on her bra, a chaste Midwestern bra, he liked to imagine, because when would she have time to be anything other than chaste? He'd seen to that.

Someone should probably tell her. But how to do it subtly, subtlety not being his strongest suit at the best of times? How to say the words Donna and button without finding himself saying bra and betraying his wandering, iniquitous thoughts?

Through the crack in his door he saw the solution: Carol. Probably coming to pore over the Lemon Lyman website with Donna. He supposed it was an activity best enjoyed with friends.

"Just the person," he said, breezing - hopefully breezing - past the bullpen.

"Hi," said Carol, uncertainly. "Me?"

"Hi." He still didn't know how he was going to word it. "Could you step into my office?"

"Sure." She followed him, then waited. "Was there -"

"Yes. Listen, I know this is going to sound -"

Sitting at his desk, he looked at Carol and then past her: it was a reflex of which he was no longer conscious, this constant glancing towards the bullpen. He noticed, with a little disappointment, that Donna had already, well, rectified the situation.

"Never mind."

"Okay," said Carol, slowly, as if talking to a dim-witted child.

He heard them laughing, her and Donna. He imagined them exchanging rolled eyes. And he felt a little wounded at his thwarted act of gallantry - of selflesness, even, because although the barely open shirt had been a distracting sight it had certainly not been an unpleasant one, just a glimpse of what could be their future, if only, if he only, if circumstances only, the familiar scenarios running through his mind and always the same conclusion, the same defeated conclusion that the little pink bow on the chaste Midwestern bra was a long way out of his reach, years perhaps, forever perhaps, because surely she would get tired of waiting, if she was in fact waiting, waiting for him, and why shouldn't she, he was, after, all the picture of gallantry.

But. Yeah, yeah. He knew the reality of it.

He put his head down on his desk and counted to ten slowly.

Thanks to Judy Reeves for the writing prompt in her Book of Days, "her button was undone".

All her smiles

He rolled onto his side, propped up his head with his elbow, and took in the sight of her. He had always loved her smile, all the versions of it: flirtatious or deeply contented or even snide. Perhaps his favorite was the one that told him she was humoring him, or perhaps it was the one from that night months ago: no. The no that signalled that do you want another drink was not the right question.

"So," he said now, when he'd watched her for almost longer than was polite. "Where do you want to go?"

"On honeymoon?"

He knew she loved that word, with its promise of sweetness. There's going to be a wedding, he'd said, kissing her neck, and whispering into her ear. And everybody is going to be looking at you and wondering how I ever got you to say yes. She hadn't faltered. They don't know you like I do, she'd replied, and he wondered why he'd allowed something so petty and insignificant as his job to delay this moment; he could have been kissing her like this for nine years.

She always sensed his pensiveness in those moments and pulled back, made him articulate his regrets so that she could reassure him again: We're here now, and that's all that matters. One day she would tell him about the letters she wrote him and then tore into a million pieces, about the enormous tubs of ice cream, about the soggy pillows, but not yet, not until he'd learned she wasn't going anywhere.

"There's a place somewhere called Paris," she said, leaning on her own elbow.

"In Wisconsin, I think."

"There are actually two in Wisconsin."

"Well, you pick one, and that's the one we'll go to."

She punched his arm, not much of a punch, really more of a tickle.

"Oh," he said. "Wait. There's another place called Paris, somewhere, no? Somewhere with a romantic language?"

"And amazing shopping," she said, a little too quickly, he thought.

"We are not going on honeymoon so that you can go shopping," he said.

"Even if I were buying lingerie?" She said it, lingerie, with an almost perfect French accent, as though he weren't enthralled already.

"I guess in that case that might be okay," he said, kissing her nose, her cheek, her hair. Thinking about taking her shopping, thinking about the dresses she would wear, thinking how amazing she would look, thinking about her smile when he would tell her so, realizing that was his favorite one of all.

Thanks to Judy Reeves for her prompt in A writer's book of days: "there's a place somewhere called Paris".

Requiem: post ep

He wanted Donna.

After a day like that one, he wanted to go home to Donna. He wanted to sit on the couch with her and reminisce. He wanted to have her hold him. He wanted to rest his head on her shoulder, or to cry into her chest. Nothing seemed so bad when she was with him; just being with her took the edge off his pain.

But he hadn’t been quick enough with his offer.

He remembered that day on the campaign trail, that day in New Hampshire when he’d said to her, you should be with me. But he hadn’t been quick enough, then, either, quick enough to call her after she left, or quick enough to see beforehand that she wanted a challenge, that she needed to get out, to get some fresh air.

He didn’t want for the two of them to keep missing out because he wasn’t quick enough.

He wanted her. For the passion, for the fun, that stuff, yes. But most of all, most of all, he wanted to go home to her.

He realised now that was what he had been feeling for eight years. That having her there was reassuring, the way home is, or a favourite pair of slippers, or the way your pillow moulds to your head. Home, horrible cliché that it was, might be where the heart is after all.

He didn’t know if he was ready for the grown up stuff. He didn’t know if he even wanted it. But this he did know: home didn’t feel like home without Donna anymore.

Are you in love with Josh?

She opens the diary again, flicks through it with her thumb, snaps it shut, allows no emotion to cross her face.

“No,” she says at last, and when she’s sure she can keep her voice steady she turns and meets the interrogation in Amy’s eyes. “No.”

She feels, oddly, nauseous and ashamed, that she is betraying him through her lack of courage. But she has never heard herself say it, nor has anyone suggested it, not out loud, not with words, not so bluntly, though she knows how to interpret the looks that Carol shoots at her on her way past the bullpen, knows that she and Margaret occasionally gossip, suspects it might in fact be more than occasional. One day, one day, she will say it, very quietly, to herself, and on that day she will have some decisions to make, but that day is not today, and this is not the person, and this is not the place.

“Okay,” says Amy, swigging the very last drops out of a bottle with obviously feigned nonchalance. She shrugs, forces a laugh, as though the question had cost her nothing, as though the barefacedness of the lie did not feel like a punch in the stomach, as though Donna’s very inability to admit so much as a fleeting interest did not confirm every suspicion she has had, every moment when she has felt Josh was less than fully present with her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me ask that.”

“It’s the beer,” says Donna, recovering her I love what you’re wearing tone. “It makes all of us ask all kinds of strange things. Of ourselves and other people.” She feels light-headed now, wants to sit down, to disappear, to be away from all of this, far far away with some ice cream in a dark movie theater maybe, she doesn’t want to think about it and now all of a sudden it’s been forced on her, after all these years of dodging and ducking mostly successfully it’s right there staring at her and she wonders if the color has drained from her face, she wonders how much longer she can sound breezy and unconcerned and not at all jealous.

“I guess you have work to do,” says Amy, and Donna doesn’t argue.

“Yeah. Thanks for letting me know about the Wellingtons.” She watches her go, puts her head down on her desk, and she knows she won’t get any work done tonight, at least not until she can stop feeling as though she is shaking, adrenaline coursing through her, fight and flight both appealing alternatives, appealing and unrealistic, like so much else in her life.