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Josh and Donna have been fuelling the White House (and D.C.) rumour mill since the President first took office. Hell, there had been endless gossip and speculation about them on the campaign too, so C.J. takes everything she hears about them with a pinch of salt.
And she’s heard a lot: Josh and Donna are having a clandestine affair; Donna is pregnant with Josh’s illegitimate love child; Josh and Donna have been secretly married for years now; Josh and Donna are in love…
That last one, C.J. thinks, might actually be true, but someone should try telling them that. Anyway, the point is she hears so much inane gossip about the Deputy Chief of Staff and his assistant that, every time she hears something new, she’ll assuredly deny it, confident enough in the knowledge that they aren’t actually stupid enough to act on their feelings.
So when C.J. hears chattering about the Inaugural Balls and Josh and Donna she doesn’t think twice about it. It isn’t until she overhears a group of interns discussing it on her way back from Senior Staff the next day that she thinks this particular rumour might have some credence.
“Don’t you think they just have a spark?” One of them asks dreamily while the others nod in agreement.
C.J. narrows her eyes as she passes them, trying to control the simmering unease at the thought of Josh and Donna having anything other than a professional working relationship between them. (She’s not naive to actually believe this for a second but, as Press Secretary, she does need to maintain some level of plausible deniability.)
She corners Danny Concannon after the morning’s press briefing, smiling sweetly as she asks him to hang back for a follow-up comment.
Danny practically skips alongside her as he follows her to her office, a shit-eating grin on his face that she’s long associated with him knowing something she doesn’t.
“Out with it,” C.J. demands the moment the door has closed behind them, whirls around to give Danny her most intimidating do not fuck with me right now look.
He raises his hands placatingly, that stupid smile still on his face. “Listen, I was sworn to secrecy.” There’s laughter in his voice, his eyes sparkling gleefully and C.J. wonders what she’d been doing the night of Inauguration that had been so important she’d apparently missed something this big happening between Josh and Donna.
It’s not as if they’ve ever been subtle, sending each other longing glances across the bullpen, his hand lingering on her back far longer than it has any right too, flowers being sent on non-anniversaries, their banter so natural and playful to anyone else it seems like flirting. Even on the campaign it wasn’t unusual to find them huddled together at the back of the bus, heads ducked as they’d whisper and giggle, staying up well into the night while everyone else wisely used this time to get some much needed sleep.
C.J. rounds on Danny, glad she wore her heels today as she towers over him even more than usual.
“Don’t forget I can make your life a living hell.”
He holds her gaze for approximately four seconds before giving up with a huff and a full body shrug. Drops into the seat across from her desk, waits for her to sit down too before speaking.
“Well, Donna was upset, you see?” Danny begins earnestly. “And when Donna’s upset —“ He clears his throat, doesn’t need to finish his sentence for C.J. to know where he’s going with it. “Anyway, once Josh figured out the quote hadn’t come from Donna…”
And, while that had been an immense relief to hear that Donna had just been taking the fall for her jackass boyfriend and hadn’t actually said anything to the press herself, C.J. can now only listen in abject horror as Danny describes Josh gathering up the guys - whoever that entails - and piling them into a cab, how Donna’s buzzer was broken so Josh just had to yell up to her window and, when that hadn’t worked, had thrown snowballs to get her attention. Donna coming down without a coat, Josh immediately offering his to her, and Danny hadn’t heard parts of their conversation but it had looked pretty intimate and there was definitely a spark.
In short, a scene from a goddamn rom-com.
“Okay.” C.J. pinches the bridge of her nose and breathes deeply. “Is there anything else I should know?”
Danny gapes at her and she’s pleased to see he looks somewhat terrified.
“She sat on his lap in the cab,” he blurts out helplessly. “But we weren’t all gonna fit otherwise,” he defends. “And we were playing bad cop.”
“I am going to kill him.”
She lets Danny go with her best death glare and a warning that if a word of this ever gets published he’ll find himself writing puff pieces on the other side of the country.
And then she goes to find Josh.
Josh who is currently leaning against his assistant’s desk, looking down at her with a fond grin as she wrinkles her nose at him before throwing her head back in laughter. And, really — could they be any less subtle? It’s hardly a miracle that the only two people who don’t know Josh and Donna have feelings for each other are Josh and Donna.
Then Josh brings his hand up to gently graze her shoulder and Donna’s blushing as she bites back a soft smile and C.J. really needs to intervene before they spark anymore rumours.
So she marches over, ignoring Josh’s yelped protests as she grabs his elbow and drags him into his office.
“Ow, C.J., what the —“
But she doesn’t let him finish, folds her arms across her chest as she stares him down.
Josh, apparently, still hasn’t figured out why she’s here, honest to god pouting as he rubs his arm and lowers himself into the chair behind his desk, and he doesn’t look like he’s in any rush to question her. So C.J. arches an eyebrow, towering over him from where she stands in front of his desk, and says: “Snowballs. Really?”
Josh gapes at her, wide-eyed and surprised. She can practically see the gears in his mind turn as he tries to formulate a response, finds herself mildly surprised when he sets his jaw, squares his shoulder and returns her gaze.
This is fine, she thinks, keeping her eyes locked with his as she sits down. There’s a reason she came to Josh instead of Donna, and seventy percent of that reason is that Josh is much easier to break with a hard stare; he has a terrible poker face and is much more likely to give in to her demands than Donna, who could give a masterclass in nuanced facial expressions and steely eyes.
The other thirty percent of her reasoning is that, in this situation, Josh was definitely the stupider of the two.
Like clockwork, Josh makes it another eleven seconds before cracking.
“She was upset, C.J.,” he cries, voice rising in pitch. “And she was worried about her job, and she didn’t think anyone would want her there.” His voice softens, his shoulders slumping as he looks up at her with sad, somber eyes. “Donna didn’t give the quote, C.J.. She wouldn’t — It wasn’t her.”
“I know.”
He snorts derisively, a petulant look on his face as he says, “you didn’t sound so certain when I tried to tell you that the first hundred times.”
“Josh.” There’s a warning in her voice, something in her voice telling him he’s in no position to be taking the high road right now. Because, as much as she feels bad for him - for Donna, too - he really can just be a monumental idiot sometimes.
Josh’s face falls, his shoulders deflating as he drops back into his seat, earnestly says, “look, Donna felt bad and I wanted her to be there so I went to pick her up. The snowballs were just —“ He drops his gaze, shrugs helplessly. “They were just snowballs.”
And he looks so despondent, so pathetic, just plain heartbroken, that C.J. thinks the kindest thing she could do for him right now would be to let him off the hook.
So she nods once, smiling softly.
“Okay.”
Josh meets her gaze once more, eyes wide and hopeful. “Okay?” he repeats, a hint of disbelief in his voice.
“You know what I’m gonna say, right?” She teases with a grin (and a look in her eye that says don’t fuck with me).
“C.J.,” he groans, clearly embarrassed, leaning forward to drop his head in his hands.
“If anything happens—“
“Nothing’s going to happen,” he assures her, voice muffled by his hands.
“If anything happens, I’m your first call.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Josh waves her off with a roll of his eyes and an over-exaggerated shrug, but C.J. doesn’t miss the flicker of uncertainty on his face or the way his gaze darts to the door as though he’s expecting Donna to walk through it at any moment.
“You know, Josh,” C.J. begins as she pushes herself out her seat and makes her way to the door, “if you two ever did figures this thing between you out,” she motions vaguely with her hands, “it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
And it’s true. While it would probably cause a major headache for the administration, not to mention the negative attention it would be likely to attract from Republicans and the media alike, they’ve made it this far. They’ve made it through re-election, through various scandals and incidents — Josh was shot, for Christ sake. If he wants to pursue a romantic relationship with the woman he loves he should be able to do it without judgement or consequences. Besides, it’s not as if C.J. hasn’t had a contingency in place for this exact situation since three weeks into Donna joining the campaign.
She turns back in time to see Josh’s face flushing redder than she’s ever seen, a mortified look on his face as he starts pulling random files towards himself in order to avoid meeting her gaze.
C.J. shakes her head fondly at him as she opens the door. “Just think about it. Besides, the interns think you have a spark,” She teases with a grin, pausing in the doorway to turn back to him once more, a faux menacing look on her face that Josh, too busy staring thoughtfully - and somewhat melancholically- into the distance, fails to notice.
This doesn’t stop her from calling first call! emphatically over her shoulder as she passes Donna’s suspiciously empty desk and heads back to her office.
.
Donna returns from her lunch break to find Josh leaning against his doorway, hands shoved in his pocket, staring into space with a contemplative frown on his face.
“Hey,” she greets him as she dumps her purse and coat at her desk, reboots her computer. “Did you need something?”
He doesn’t respond, hasn’t even seemed to realise she’s there, so she shrugs him off, chalks it up to him being in one of his weird moods and sits down at her desk.
It’s been an odd day, Donna thinks with a frown as she watches Josh out the corner of her eye. First, it had been the stares and whispers as she’d grabbed a coffee and a muffin from the mess that morning. This had been followed by Will Bailey surreptitiously avoiding eye contact with her when she’d run into him coming out of Toby’s office. She’d chalked this down to Will being his usual awkward self until Katie Witt from the press corps flashed her a knowing smile not even ten minutes later. And to top it all off, Margaret had sauntered up to Donna’s desk sometime late morning, assured her that she’d have her back no matter what, and left her with a pat on the shoulder and a theatrical wink.
Then C.J. had appeared just before lunch, all but marching a bewildered looking Josh into his office. Which, while not unusual, has certainly done nothing to ease Donna’s steadily increasing feeling of worry and paranoia, especially since whatever they spoke about has left Josh more distracted and dazed than she’s seen him in a while.
“Hey, Donna?” Josh says after another minute of staring into space. He clears his throat, pushes himself off the doorframe. “Come here a second.”
In the time it takes her to save the file she’s literally just opened and follow him to his office, he’s already sitting behind his desk, hand scrubbing over his face and through his hair.
“Is everything okay?” Donna asks quietly, hands clasped together as she worries her bottom lip between her teeth.
Josh’s head snaps up, his eyes finding hers, and she’s immediately reassured by the warmth she sees in them.
“Everything’s fine, Donna,” he says softly. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Okay,” she laughs weakly, reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Just because everyone’s been acting really weird today and Margaret said something this morning that made me think —“
“People think we have a spark,” Josh interrupts breathlessly, and judging by his wide eyes and pink cheeks, he hadn’t meant to announce this so suddenly.
“A spark?” Donna repeats, can feel herself blushing as she tries to appear calm and unaffected.
Josh won’t meet her eyes now, gesturing vaguely with his hands as he tries to explain. “Word got out about Inauguration. You know — the snowballs—“ he hesitates, lowers his voice, “the cab… And now, for whatever reason, people are saying we have a spark.”
“What? That’s ridiculous.” Donna protests, with as much vehemence as she can muster. And it certainly doesn’t help that she’s now picturing the look on his face when he told her she looked amazing, remembering sitting on his lap in the cab, his hands firm on her waist, his breath hot on her neck.
Josh turns back to her, jaw clenching as he looks her up and down before meeting her gaze with an intensity that goes straight to her core. And Donna, frozen on the spot, her blood rushing her in ears, her breath caught in her throat, can’t look away.
Not when he’s openly and unabashedly looking at her the way she’s wanted him to for years, the way she’s only seen glimmers of before he realises she’s caught him staring and schools his features into something more friendly.
“Close the door.” Josh’s voice is low and gravelly, his eyes fixed on hers as he slowly makes his way around his desk.
Donna can feel his gaze, his words, his proximity all the way to her toes and it’s driving her crazy. She closes the door.
“Wh-what are you doing?” She stammer softly, voice no more than a whisper as she watches him approach her. Her heart is pounding in her chest and her legs feel like jelly and then Josh stops in front of her, frames her face with trembling hands, and she swears she forgets how to breathe.
“Proving a point,” Josh murmurs, leaning in to brush his lips gently over hers. Donna gasps softly, clutching at his forearms as he presses his lips to hers again, firmer this time. “See? No spark.”
“Right,” she agrees, somewhat breathlessly, eyes still closed.
“Right.”
And then he’s kissing her again, his lips moving against hers as his tongue runs along her lower lip, one hand moving to her hair while the other slides down to her waist.
Donna kisses him back — of course she kisses him back. Her arms come up to wrap firmly around his neck as she deepens the kiss and then Josh groans and she thinks she might be whimpering but she really doesn’t care because Josh is kissing her in his office and she’s been dreaming about it for so long that she can’t think about anything else.
Then someone’s knocking on the door and they both jump apart like they’ve been burned.
Donna takes in Josh’s rumpled suit, his swollen lips, his disheveled hair. She can feel herself flushing as she imagines what she must look like. It doesn’t help that he’s still looking at her with half-lidded eyes and a clenched jaw. Again, she’s not doing much better as she draws her bottom lip between her teeth and looks him up and down.
“Josh?” Toby calls from outside, knocking once more.
“Two minutes,” Josh yells, voice unnaturally high. Toby grumbles something they can’t quite make out but he doesn’t knock again.
“No spark,” Donna mutters, despite the tingling on her lips and the fluttering in her stomach.
Josh nods, lets out a shaky exhale.
“No spark,” he agrees, equally unconvincing. He passes her on his way to the door, brushes his hand against hers.
And then he leaves her alone in his office to recover from what may have been the greatest kiss of her life and to figure out what the hell she’s supposed to do now.
It’s surprisingly easy to go back to how things were before. Although, Donna supposes that’s because working in the White House leaves them too busy have time to agonise over whether or not the mind-blowing kiss they shared in his office meant something. Okay, so she’s found some time to think about it. But, in her defence, it’s not exactly the easiest thing to forget about. Not when she’s been imagining what it would be like to kiss him for the past five years.
But he’d had meetings all day and she’d been helping Bonnie with something over at the OEOB and they hadn’t had a chance to discuss it.
Not to say that she isn’t left slightly disappointed when she comes in to say goodnight and he just lets her go with an awkward smile and one of his classic lingering gazes.
She feels his eyes on her the whole way down the corridor and knows, without a doubt, that he felt it too. That this thing between them, whatever it is, is inevitable.
.
Josh is screwed. Unbelievably, monumentally screwed.
And it’s not because he might be in love with assistant; he’s been quietly stewing over that for years now. Nor is it because C.J. finally called him out over said feelings because, really, he’s been anticipating that conversation for a while. Not that he had ever expected it to end with C.J. implying he should act on his feelings.
No — Josh is screwed because, unplanned and unprovoked, he kissed Donna Moss in his office this afternoon.
He hadn’t been planning on kissing her, had only called her to his office to — to what? He hadn’t exactly been planning to bring up the rumours that have been flying around about them either, and he definitely hadn’t been planning to bring up the goddamn spark, whatever that means.
(He knows exactly what it means — at least, he can only assume it refers to the feeling he gets whenever their gazes linger or their hands brush or the few times they’ve hugged.)
And then Donna had looked at him, eyes wide and questioning, her hair falling loosely around her shoulders, and he’d suddenly been desperate to know if she felt it too.
Of course, he never got the chance to find out because Toby came looking for him and Donna had to go over to the OEOB for a couple of hours and Leo had a thing he needed help with. And then, because Josh is an idiot, he let her go home without bringing it up, the mixture of hurt and disappointment on her face still etched in his mind.
Cut to: Josh standing outside Donna’s building for the second time in less than a week. Her buzzer is still broken and he’s seconds away from making a handful of snowballs (it worked once, didn’t it?) when one of her neighbors exits the building and Josh is able to slip through the door behind him.
After practically sprinting up the stairs — and needing a couple of minutes to catch his breath, it takes him a further thirty or so seconds to work up the nerve to actually knock.
Donna doesn’t seem surprised to see him.
That’s the first thing he notices. The second is how goddamn adorable she looks, his heart clenching as his eyes travel from her sock-clad feet, up to her flannel pyjama trousers, and a ratty Bartlet for America sweatshirt that he thinks might actually be his from the first campaign, gaze settling on her face, scrubbed clean and her hair pulled back into a messy bun. He thinks she might be blushing under his gaze, bottom lip drawn in as she steps back to let him in.
“I was wrong,” Josh blurts out, slightly breathless as he follows her into the living room.
Donna tilts her head, lips quirking up at the side despite her obvious confusion.
“Probably.” She folds her arms across her chest. “About what?”
“The — you know? The spark,” he almost whispers, voice hushed and urgent.
“Oh. That.”
“Yeah.”
Donna lowers her arms, ducking her head slightly as she looks at him with soft, hopeful eyes, voice cautiously optimistic as she asks, “so, you think there was a spark?”
“Yeah,” Josh nods once, crosses the room until he is standing close enough to her that he can bring one hand up to gently trace her jaw, his voice gruff and filled with emotion as he continues. “I think there was a spark long before I kissed you. I think there’s been a spark since the day you tricked me into hiring you in Nashua. And I think I’ve loved you for years now and I’m tired of hiding it.”
Donna’s face breaks out into a slightly dazed grin. She brings one hand to cover his where it rests against her cheek, turns her head slightly to kiss his palm.
“You can be incredibly sweet sometimes,” she tells him softly, blinking back tears. “And I agree with everything you just said.”
Josh’s heart lurches in his chest, as though he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. “You do?”
Donna nods, smiling softly as she hooks her arms around his neck. “I love you, Josh. I have for a long time now.”
And, while he still can’t quite believe it, this doesn’t stop him from pulling her flush against him with an awed laugh, and slanting his mouth over hers.
This time she’s ready for it, her hands tangling in his hair as she deepens the kiss, nails lightly scratching at his scalp and Josh can’t help the groan that escapes, his own hands sliding up her sweater to rest on the smooth skin of her back.
“Wait.” He pulls back, forehead resting against hers as he gets his breath back. “I have to make a call.”
“What? Josh, what are you —“
But he already has his phone out, is pulling Donna down to sit beside him on the sofa. Smiles softly at the way she tucks into his side after he throws his arm around her shoulder.
“Hey, C.J.,” Josh says, a shit-eating grin on his face while Donna buries her face against his chest to stifle her laughter when she realises what he is doing.
“Josh,” C.J. greets through the speakerphone. “What’s up?”
He nudges Donna, who bites back a grin of her own and says, “Hi, C.J.”
“What did you two do?” She groans, but they can hear the smile in her voice.
“So,” Josh begins gleefully, and he swears his cheeks are starting to hurt from smiling so much. “It turns out Donna has had an embarrassingly massive crush on me for years now.” Donna rolls her eyes affectionately, lightly swatting at his chest. He catches her hand and tangles their fingers together, laughing softly as he brings their joined hands to his mouth, presses a gentle kiss to her palm. “And, if you can believe it, I’ve had an even bigger crush on her for just as long.”
“I can believe it,” C.J. assures them. She goes on, something about strategies and press releases, but Josh can’t focus on anything other than the look of absolute awe and adoration Donna is giving him, how right it feels to be sitting her like this with her in his arms, knowing that she loves him as much as he loves her.
“C.J.,” he interrupts, “let’s just meet tomorrow morning.”
“First thing,” she makes them promise, Josh halfheartedly agreeing just to appease her before he ends the call and tosses his phone in the direction of his coat.
“You know,” Donna says after a moment of comfortable silence, pushing herself onto her knees, her hands coming up to rest on his shoulders as she manoeuvres herself so she is sitting in his lap, knees bracketing his hips. “As far as big grand romantic gestures go, that speech was really something.”
“Oh, really?” Josh’s lips quirk up at the side, his hands moving automatically to her hips. “You had many of those?”
“Well,” she says, leaning down to kiss him softly. “Just last week some doofus threw snowballs at my window.”
“That sounds incredibly romantic,” he murmurs, somewhat distracted by her lips peppering kisses along his jaw and down his neck. “He must really like you.”
Donna pulls back to look at him, thumbs tenderly tracing his dimples as her hands frame his face. “Not as much as I like him,” she whispers fondly, her expression soft and loving.
She kisses his nose sweetly and he falls for her all over again.
Sliding his hands into her hair, Josh gently tugs her down until her chest is pressed against his, their faces centimetres apart. “I promise you that’s not true,” he tells her, kisses the corner of her mouth.
Donna smiles, her eyes fluttering closed as he nuzzles his nose against her cheek.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one,” she murmurs fondly.
Then she is kissing him lovingly, her hands sliding down to his shirt buttons, and they don’t talk after that.