The Cold

She thinks she saw a smile, just the hint of one at the corners of his mouth, but is that supposed to be some kind of consolation?

Even worse, was it sympathy? I'm sorry you got it so wrong?

But she's been replaying the kiss all day and it did not seem then that she had got it wrong. It was unmistakably desire that she read in his eyes. It was unmistakably desire that she tasted, desire not born of a moment of random lust but the kind that builds and builds over years, a decade almost, desire and tenderness and the sense that this is what everything has been leading to, like the climax on the penultimate page of a novel. Unreasonable sense, misleading sense, deluded sense, not sense at all, she now realizes.

She wonders how she will face him tomorrow.

She left everything out there on the table, everything, not just a key in an envelope. Her heart. Her dreams. Her aspirations, so inexorably bound up in him.

And now - rejection. Shame. Deep, deep embarrassment. She thought she knew what that felt like - but silly incidents with old underwear pale into insignificance now. Because this is not just mortification - this is pain at its sharpest and deepest. She's made herself vulnerable, opened herself up, shown her cards instead of clutching them to her heart like she's attempted to all these years. And the result? Just this sense of being repeatedly kicked in the stomach. And her whole body aching for him.

What lies before me? is what she'd think if she were at all able to be coherent when she p0urs herself the last glass of room-service wine, not quite chilled enough to be pleasant even in the best of circumstances, even if, say, they were drinking it lying together on the bed, afterwards,  laughing at their years of playing cat and mouse. What lies before me? Another day of putting up a front. The mask goes back on. Keep calm and carry on, that's what the British say, but she doesn't see how she can walk this one back. Everything else can be explained away - you look amazing is something you can say to your sister - but not this. This is the first time she has been absolutely clear. And it will be the last.

Unless there's magic...

She's pretty sure the magic came and went today. She drains her glass, buries her face in the pillow, and allows the pain to flood her face.

She shivers.

She's cold. So cold.

Making breakfast for a stranger

She realizes with a start that she doesn't know what he eats for breakfast. Not fruit, obviously, but could be be one of those strange people who eat cereal dry and drink milk on the side? Or pop tarts? Maybe pop tarts? Instant and fast-food-like. That sounds about right. Nothing would surprise her, really, which is odd, because she thought he had stopped surprising her years ago, that she could anticipate not only his every move but his every need, his every... desire. Well, yes. Anyway.

Suddenly open before her is this brave new world of trivial discoveries, the everdayness of being together before the make-up goes on, no masks, no job titles, just two people with their quirks and foibles and she knows there must be plenty of those yet to unearth. Does he put his socks on before or after his pants? Brush his teeth before or after breakfast? (Neither? She shudders.) How many times does he hit snooze before he rolls out of bed?

She knows about the coffee, of course, cream and three sugars, the key to early-onset diabetes. Maybe she could start making it for him after all, gradually reduce the sugar intake. Would he even notice?

She watches as he stumbles out of the shower room, hair still dripping onto his face, blushes with the embarrassment of catching herself thinking girlish thoughts about how hot he is, how she's so glad they finally did it, how all the other girls would be so jealous and my goodness did they have reason to be.

"You made me coffee?" He's incredulous. "You mean all this time all I needed to do to get you to bring me coffee was kiss you?"

She takes a breath, prepares to protest that she seems to remember something more than just kissing, something that may well have gotten them both fired back then. But she does not get a chance to say any of it because his lips are on hers, and she notes approvingly that he does brush his teeth first thing after all.

"I'll make you breakfast too, if you're really lucky."

He shakes his head at her domesticity. "Breakfast is not something you make, Donna. Breakfast is something you grab on the way to the office."

She smiles: she knew this about him all along, of course she did. Perhaps the real surprise is to find that deep down in her reptilian brain stem she has always absolutely known him. The newness of waking up with him, of walking hand in hand through the cold dark DC mornings, rosy-faced and shaking off the snow as they walk into Starbucks for their blueberry muffins: that is extraordinary enough.

Thanks to Sarah Solway for the "Making breakfast for a stranger" prompt...

I don't know what this is...

He sits for a while, stunned and speechless like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, unable to think about education policy or whatever it was that he was debating when she came into the room, all showered and fresh-smelling and fiddling with her earrings, as though getting dressed in his apartment were something she had been doing for decades.

I don't know what this is, is what she'd said, and part of him, if only he could muster up the energy, wants to run after her and say I know, Donna, this is what that cheesy song is about, you know the one, some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this...

But he has never been so unsure of himself or so unable to think straight through sheer exhaustion and so he sits, stunned, with the dim, unformulated notion that if this were an episode of that sitcom she used to make him watch, the one with Matthew Perry because she thinks he's dreamy, this would be one of those lame, slightly cheating episodes where the character ponders his life while scenes from his past tumble through his mind and across the screen.

He thinks back, in no defined order, memories merging into one another, not about the hospital scenes, not even about Amy or Joey or Cliff or Jack or Colin - okay, perhaps he thinks about them long enough to wonder why there have been so many - but he thinks mainly about those small moments, the everyday acts of intimacy, like sharing popcorn when they watched Dial M for Murder, and the President saying something about him having a daughter, and when he took his place back at Donna's side he caught himself wishing for daughters with sharp minds and long blonde hair and alabaster skin, alabaster is what she calls it, right? Whatever it's called it's beautiful skin, every inch of her beautiful, every inch of her, so beautiful, and Donna, he thinks through the sleepless fog enveloping his brain, Donna I've always known what this was, but I was scared... The thing with guys like me is we scare easily...

She will be half way to work by now and still he sits, stunned and speechless. And still scared. Because he does know. He has always known. He just hasn't always known that he knew.

And now his brain hurts again. All he really does know is he does not want to screw this up. All he really does know is he loves the way it feels... What is with all these cheesy songs all of a sudden? Get a grip, he tells himself, you have a country to run. But the song keeps coming, all I know is it feels like forever... and that does nothing to alleviate his fear.

Forever is with her, he knows that, he has always known that, even if, etcetera, but forever is big and scary and he does not know if he can do it at all and he has a country to run and he has not slept for five months and what has he done with his Blackberry?

The Good Guys

"Honey," he calls as he opens the door, "I'm home."

Every day it makes her smile; who knew they would become this kind of couple, live lives of such convention? Who knew that this is what she craved with him all along?

"You're home early," she says, kissing him. Because she can.

"I thought I'd be home for dinner for once." Later, admittedly, than most people have dinner. But most people are not running the country.

"I was thinking Chinese take out tonight."

He pulls a face. "Isn't home cooked food supposed to be one of the advantages of marriage?"

"I think it depends who you marry, cupcake. If your wife is also a devoted mother and Chief of Staff to the First Lady, then what can you do..." She waves a lettuce at him. "But if you'd prefer salad..."

"I'm good with take out," he says, responding to the threat. She is not at all controlling. "Did you TiVo the Good Guys?"

She wouldn't have dared not to. It's not really her kind of thing, but it's only fair. She made him sit through When Harry Met Sally enough times back in the day, hoping (vainly) that he would get the hint: A man and a woman can't be friends, the sex part always gets in the way...

Besides, the Good Guys is pretty funny, and if she tilts her head and squints the Dan guy looks a little like an older, fatter Josh with bad manners.

"Have I so far ever let you down?"

"Well, there was the whole Indonesian translator thing..."

She sighs. He really needs to let that go, learn to keep in mind all the things she does right. "Besides that one time?"

"Also, you did leave me in the middle of a crisis."

"Okay." Time for the pouting to make a comeback. "If you want me to delete the Good Guys..."

"On the other hand," he says quickly, "agreeing to marry me kind of made up for leaving me."

She snatches the remote back. "Thought so. Kung Po chicken?"

But she's lost him already. He's raising two fingers, pointing out of the window and making shooting noises.

Ladies and gentleman, she thinks, my husband. The biggest political brain in Washington.

"It's not a toy," he thunders, "it's an orange gun!"

She laughs at him. She does that more often than he would like her to. "You need to work on your Southern accent, but other than that, it's almost perfect."

"I'm still lacking a major accessory, though."

She wondered how long it would take before he mentioned this. Every single damn day since the first showing of the preview. Weeks, it feels like. "How many times are you going to insist on having this argument? It's the mustache or me. You choose."

"Well." He smiles, and she thinks what a shame it would be if anything were to hide those dimples. "I would not have to wait nine years for a mustache."

This does not amuse her. Not in the least. She stands with her hands on her hips and waits for a suitable apology. "Excuse me. Who was doing the waiting?"

"You, my love," he says obligingly. He really, really wants to get to watch this TV program. She knows, because she's seen the countdown app on his iPhone. She has long resigned herself to this latest obsession. "You did all the hard work."

He leans in to charm her but she pulls away."You know what I think? I think a mustache would make the whole kissing thing very uncomfortable."

"Well," he says carefully. "That is certainly a consideration." He wraps his arms around her from behind, smells her hair. Because he can.

"I would think so," she smiles, but does not let him get any ideas. This not controlling people thing is more complex than it might at first appear.

He resigns himself to the inevitable. "Okay. No mustache."

"Good. You're still a hero without one," she says, and lets him kiss her, loses herself in the moment, as she always does. Because she can.

"Can't promise you I won't get fat, though," he says when they pull away.

"That's okay. I'd still take you over Dan Stark any day."

Noel

She shuffles in her chair, thinks it's about time someone spoke to someone about getting this carpet cleaned.

"I'm sorry," he says, and she wonders if he will be this gentle with Josh tomorrow. "I know this can seem intrusive. But I have to ask. Get the complete picture."

She looks up at him, remembers what her mother used to tell her about making eye contact, that if you don't it can seem like a lie even if you're telling the truth.

"No," she says.

"Nothing at all?"

She shrugs, hopes it looks sufficiently casual, forgets for a moment that she is not dealing with her second grade teacher. Or the paper boy. "I'd say we're friends, as well as colleagues."

"Just friends?"

Inside her the familiar little ball of frustration makes its presence felt, like a singer clearing her throat before a rendition of Handel's Messiah. She twists her hands, wraps them around each other. "Yes."

"But you were the one who first mentioned to Leo McGarry that Josh should see me?"

"Yes."

He looks at her and waits. He knows there is more. His eyes, more than his qualifications, tell her he is not so easily thrown off course. Do his eyes tell her that? Maybe she just imagines it. Who knows what you can really guess from someone's eyes. Sometimes in Josh's eyes she sees what looks like tenderness for her, sometimes even what looks like love, and she's clearly wrong about that. So, there you go.

But still, she has the distinct impression he is not fooled.

Inside her the ball of frustration threatens to start an avalanche. She takes a sip of water, looks into his eyes again.

"We've worked together closely for a while now. I know him. He's not... well, not himself."

"Okay," he says, and again he waits. She's not used to people waiting for her to speak. In her line of work it's deliver the words now and quickly while walking very fast down a narrow corridor, and if you miss your window, well tough, you gotta be quick in this game.

"I just - "

She takes a deep breath, another sip of water.

"I just worry about him."

"Okay," he says again. "And Rosslyn?"

"Yeah." Carol will know whom to contact about the carpet. Right after this meeting she will ask her.

"You weren't there."

She cradles her face in her hands and bites her lip furiously. She will not cry. If it's the last dignifed thing she ever does she will not cry in this meeting. She has cried enough tears over Rosslyn, over Josh, over the thought of his being all alone when -

"It's okay," he says again, so softly she almost misses it. "Donna," he says, when she doesn't move. "Look at me."

She raises her head. He says the words slowly, so that each one has the chance to register in that sleepless brain of hers.

"Do you think your being there would have changed anything?"

She pours herself more water and does not state the obvious.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a bullet for someone else?"

She shakes her head, but it's not an answer to his question, not really. You don't understand, is what she's thinking. It's not a question of hard. It would be instinct.

"Do you have any idea of the guilt he'd be suffering from if you had done?"

"Still. I should have been there," she whispers after drinking the glass slowly, sip by sip. "And at the hospital. I should have been there from the word go."

"It sounds to me like you were an amazing support to him."

"It was nothing," she said. "I was just doing what comes naturally. It's what you do when you..." Damn it, she thinks. He nearly got me.

"Donna," he says. "Look at me."

When she meets his gaze he speaks as if to a deaf child who is just learning to lip read.

"It. Wasn't. Your. Fault."

The constriction in her chest eases and she breathes more deeply that she has in weeks.

"I promise I'll do my best with him," he says. "It might take a while. But he'll get there."

She knows they're done; he closes the file and sits back. When she reaches the door he calls her name.

"There's really nothing else you want to tell me?"

"No," she says again, and forces a smile. She's not ready to hear herself say it. First let's get Josh back on his feet.

One thing at a time.

Where she likes to sit

She likes to go there sometimes, to close her eyes and remember that chilly night, the nearness of him, the way he had almost put his arm around her. She listens to the fountain, and it sounds to her like him, like the kind of heroic love that saves you from your own mistakes; almost like a knight in shining armor, were she given to such clichés.

She never takes enough layers of clothing because that would be betraying the memory, she wants the cold to bite her like it did back then, she wants it to be exactly as it was, when she thought things could not be any more difficult or complicated, back then, in what she now knows to be the good old days, haunted as they were by the ghost of what so nearly was, of what she so often hoped for.

Oh, if she'd only known.

She sits, curled up against the cold, chin resting on her knees, arms wrapped around her legs, she sits and she thinks about him and she wonders again if she made the wrong decision. On the list of pros and cons it had all seemed so right, but Christmas and New Year and their non-anniversary had come and gone, and of course Valentine's Day but she'd made a point of not noticing that, and he hadn't called and she was tired of missing him, tired of her whole body aching for him, tired of fighting against herself for feeling those things.

You'll know, she'd told herself, if you leave, you'll know. And if you know, then you can move on. Get on with life. Bury the ghost of non-anniversaries past.

Except, of course, that you can't bury a ghost, can you.

She sighs from deep within and the tears come, unbidden and unwelcome. On those rare occasions when she's honest with herself she knows that this is why she loves this fountain, this fountain which weeps on her behalf, incessantly, with all the energy she wishes she could summon. But tonight the fountain isn't enough; her heart is heavier than usual. No reason, no anniversary, no trigger that she can easily identify. Some days are just like this: they are the days when before she drifts off to fitful, restless sleep she wraps herself in his Harvard sweater, the sweater that smells more of her than him now but if she really concentrates and imagines herself to be back in his office she can still remember: coffee and that aftershave she loves, the one she sometimes, on the bad days, sneaks into the drugstore and squirts just once, to stop herself forgetting.

As if she ever could. Or would. Or wanted to.

She opens her eyes to wipe them and just beyond the weeping fountain there's a blur that looks like him, but all blurs do, she knows that by now, knows that from all those moments like this when she's held her breath and reminded herself that it can't be him. Only this time the shape walks like him and it's wearing the coat he once wrapped around her and then he's close enough that even through the tears and the darkness there's no denying it.

"It's freezing out here," he says, and he takes his coat off, her hero all over again. Drapes it round her shoulders before sitting down next to her.

"What are you doing here?" she says eventually.

"I like this place," he says, and there is tenderness and love and kindness and concern in his eyes, she knows that from his tone of voice, but she can't bring herself to look at him. "I come here to think."

"What about?" She hears herself say, as though she had not lost the right to ask. He doesn't answer. He doesn't answer, and they listen to the fountain, and the tears come again, how she wishes she weren't so powerless to stop them. She forces herself to look at him and she falls in love with his coffee-colored eyes all over again and despite the coat she shivers. "What about, Josh?"

"You," he says, looking straight at her, his eyes holding hers. "You."

And he gently wipes her tears away and he holds her, warm and tight and tender and strong, as she'd longed for him to hold her back then, as she longs for him to hold her always.

Thanks to Sarah Salway at www.sarahsalway.blogspot.com for the "where I like to sit" prompt.

Impact winter: risking everything

"If you don't risk anything, you risk more." - Erica Jung

She knows the theory; who doesn't. But it's not as if leaving this job is risking anything.

It's risking everything.

Risking her identity. Who is she without this? This is where she rebuilt her life; her foundation. Take the foundation away, and what are you left with?

Exactly.

Risking her self-confidence. She can do this blindfolded and standing on her head and in all the other clichéd ways. Hell, she can even do it on no sleep and unlike the blindfold and the headstand she has actually tried that so she'd know. Any other job: the headaches that come with change and learning something new, the tears of frustration in locked bathroom cubicles when she's not instantly capable of excellence. Been years since she tried it, but she doesn't remember it being much fun.

And then there's risking him. She's risking them, this thing they have, whatever it is, this thing she loves and hates and smiles about before she cries herself to sleep, this thing she keeps coming back to and hopes one day to define, but only if there's a happy ending: there's risk in that too. Risk in everything.

She's risking hurting him, and she wishes more than anything that she didn't have to, but she sees no other way out. No exit. Hell is other people.

He is not hell, of course he's not. He, with his arrogance and his insensitivity, his inability to take initiative in resolving this mess, is not hell, no way. He, with his dimples and his fluffy hair and his passion for justice and his longing to see this nation be all it can be, he, will his vulnerability and his soft heart, is not heaven, she would never say that, because she's too sophisticated and grown up now for that teenage talk, that cheesiness. But.

She's risking losing everything, but she has to risk him, or she loses herself, or loses her love for him, are the two synonymous these days, she can't remember not loving him, she can't remember not dreaming about him, she can 't remember why she didn't do this sooner, this risking everything, because with every day it's become more impossible and she should have done it years ago, shoud've said she couldn't work for him because she loved him and she was sorry but he was going to have to choose, assistant or girlfriend, but she hadn't risked it, not yet, because what if?

But she was risking it now, because she just couldn't not anymore, risking everything to have a chance of gaining him, who was her reason for living, her reason for surviving, her reason for keeping going despite the nightmares that smelled of burning rubber and hospitals and the frustration of not having him kiss her.

She was risking it now, risking her everything, to gain him, her more than everything.

Thanks to creativewritingprompts.com for the, erm, creative writing prompt.