Work Text:
i.
Sometimes she has nightmares about Rosslyn. There's one where she's in the crowd outside the Newseum when the shots ring out. She can't reach him in time. That's the one she's been having lately. It leaves her reaching for him.
Donna all but moved into his apartment the moment he was released from the hospital. It's not her job, she knows, but she'll do it. Of course she will.
She has one bag of work clothes that she puts away in the guest room; her shampoo and conditioner sits in his shower, her toothbrush next to his by the sink. She didn't bring casual clothes. This wasn't supposed to be casual. She wears his old t-shirts and a new pack of boxers she found in a drawer as pajamas.
She's been sleeping in his bed since the nurse took the hospital bed back. It's closer, when he has a nightmare. When he needs something. It's better that way. He doesn't have to call out in the middle of the night and hope that he wakes her.
And when she has a nightmare, she just turns her head to find him breathing steadily.
She doesn't tell anyone about her dreams. They all have enough to worry about. But she wakes up in the mornings with her hand still resting on his chest.
In the light of day, they never talk about the nights.
Donna changes his bandages, she goes to work, she makes sure he takes his pills on time, she lets him sign the right papers, she takes him to doctor’s appointments. She makes dinner, or sometimes Josh does. They watch a movie. Or two. He isn't allowed to watch the news. Josh tells her they're going to run out of movies soon and she just laughs. They don't drink. They change for bed in separate rooms and go to bed sober and laughing. They know what they're doing.
In the morning, she gets up quietly, missing the warmth of his body. Donna takes a shower in his bathroom, then waits to go to work until he's had his own shower. She leaves him in front of the open window, telling him to get some sun and to remember to eat lunch. It's the same every day. Just the slightest variations—like yesterday his cardiologist explained to them the intricacies of the healing process only to finish by explaining when he would be allowed to have sex again. It's been the highlight of her week.
It's not the first time someone has assumed they're together, and it won't be the last. Sometimes she thinks she can see a future of this. Where they get up each morning and come home each night together. Where Josh is allowed to go outside, and watch the news, and do his job.
It's a future where he is allowed to touch her the way she wants without creating a sex scandal for the administration. It's a pipe dream.
ii.
A car backfires on the street one night, sending Josh into the worst panic attack he's had in years. She doesn't know what to do. She's been there herself, but she's never had to help anyone else through it.
“Just breathe,” she whispers, her voice tight. “Breathe with me. It's going to be okay.” She takes his hand and holds it so that he can feel the rise and fall of her chest. He leans into her touch.
They sit like that until his breathing evens out and the color returns to his skin.
“I'm sorry,” he says after, his deep brown eyes looking into hers. And Donna wonders what he thinks he has to apologize for.
She puts on his clothes in the bathroom. She can hear him moving slowly around the apartment through the door.
Every day she gets up and takes care of him. She does both of their jobs, won't let him do his. And then she comes home and takes care of him. It's exhausting. It's painful. She wouldn't have it any other way.
She looks in the mirror at a reflection she barely recognizes. Dead pale, dark circles. Her lips raw from a nervous habit she's never been able to break. As she watches herself, she sees her eyes fill up with tears.
She forces the tears back, wipes away the strays. She splashes cold water on her face, then pulls her hair out of the collar of her t-shirt and opens the door.
Josh is already in bed. She lays down next to him and settles into his side, her hand in place against his sternum.
She can't have him. But she can have this. These little moments that no one can touch or take from them.
iii.
The first day she lets him back in the office is a half-day.
He doesn't do much, doesn't take any meetings. He spends a good deal of time leaning against the partition in front of her desk, trying to convince her to give him more leeway. Breathing room , he calls it.
“I feel like I’m suffocating like this,” he says.
“You'll feel like you're suffocating if you have a heart attack because you over-stressed yourself,” she retorts.
“ Jesus , woman,” he says under his breath as he walks back to his office. Donna just rolls her eyes.
Most of the top White House staff go out to the Hawk and Dove that night to celebrate—what they're celebrating she's not exactly sure.
Josh is exhausted from his five hour work day. She can tell. So she makes a rule: Even as he returns to work, he will not be permitted to overwork himself. In any way. This determination can be made at her discretion, or anyone of the Senior Staff.
Her rules are most often made up on the spot, when he tries to test a boundary. In this case, overworking himself means insisting on going out for drinks when he's nearly asleep on his feet.
Exhaustion doesn't stop him from complaining about her suffocating him, but it does make him lean into her as they walk to the car. The complaining continues, unabated, in his low, tired voice.
“Josh?” she says after five minutes of grumbling. “Shut the hell up.”
It's not that she means to be mean. It's just that she's been doing everything. Everything. And not complaining at all.
Sometimes it feels like she's suffocating, too.
iv.
She goes home at the beginning of December. Back to her own apartment. Josh doesn't need her anymore.
Her roommate has long since given up trying to figure out the situation. “Welcome back,” she says. “I'm moving to New York at the start of the year. I got that morning show job I told you about.”
Donna can't bring herself to show any emotion at this information. She's been too tired for too long. She's going to have to move. But right now all she wants to do is lay in her own bed and cry herself to sleep and stay there for about three years. She should probably wash her sheets. She should probably think about looking at apartments.
She doesn't do either of those things.
“Okay,” she says. And then she goes to her room, puts on a t-shirt she borrowed from him, and sobs for the first time since this all started.
He doesn't need her anymore.
“Are you excited to finally be leaving?” he'd asked as she left this morning. “You get to go back to your own life. Don't have to put up with me all the time… You must be thrilled.”
He just wants her to be happy. She has to remember that.
“Something like that,” she'd said without looking at him. It was nothing like that.
She likes her life. But she liked her life there, too. What it could have been. The ability to reach for her whenever she needed. His living, breathing, solid presence every night. Watching movies, cooking dinner, making him laugh, waking up tangled in each other each morning. Her toothbrush next to his. A space that no one else could touch.
She falls asleep eventually, her tears drying on her face. But when she wakes up from a nightmare, the first she's had in a while, he's not there to reach for.