Author's Note: Hey guys! I really should be updating my continuing stories, I know! I have partially written chapters of basically everything, and I'm chipping away at them. Thank god for detailed notes to myself. But I was watching some Season One episodes this week for Ten Thousand Miles and I was struck over the head by this plot bunny when I watched Josh trying to con Donna into caddying for him during "Lord John Marbury." This one's a little bit different in style and tone than most of my stuff, trying to capture a little bit of the outrageous flirtation they had going in the first season. It is not necessarily to be taken seriously. Hope you enjoy!
….
"Golf sits in the beautiful junction between perfection and frustration." -Colleen Ferrary Bader
It was a beautiful day outside. Donna tipped her head back and closed her eyes to let the sun pour down on her skin, imagining she could feel her pores soaking up Vitamin D despite the scrupulous coating of sunscreen she'd applied. A few fat clouds scudded across the blue sky, chased by the same breeze that lifted the ends of her hair and played gently with her clothes. She took a deep breath and smiled. It was so good to get outdoors every once in awhile.
"Donna!"
She kept her eyes closed and took another deep breath. It was so peaceful out here, the carefully manicured grass crisp and soft under her feet, the sound of birds-
"DONNA!"
Opening her eyes, she turned to glare at Josh. "What?" she demanded. "Can't you see I was having a moment?"
Josh puffed up to her, looking sweaty and out of sorts. "You're supposed to be my caddy!" he reminded her, his voice perilously close to a whine.
"Yes," she agreed complacently. "That's why I'm out here with you on one of my rare and precious days off work, instead of out apartment hunting like I should be."
"So you agree that you're caddying for me today," he pressed suspiciously.
"Uh-huh," she nodded.
"Then why," he demanded, "in the name of all that's holy, am I carrying the bag?" He gave her a glare that was more piteous than menacing, still trying to balance the bag on his shoulder.
"Because it's heavy!" she reminded him. "And you wouldn't get a golf cart."
"Real golfers don't use golf carts!" Josh scoffed, dropping the bag so he could gesture with both hands. "You don't get to know a golf course if you don't walk it with your own feet."
"Real golfers don't have a handicap of 26 either, yet here we are," Donna shot back, raising both her eyebrows at him.
"Hey!" he yelped. "You're not supposed to be looking at the score cards!" She gave him an unrepentant shrug and kept walking, swinging her arms loosely. "And stop walking, we've got to wait up for the others."
Donna looked over her shoulder. "I thought they were behind us and just walking slower."
"Senator Richards sent his assistant back to get a golf cart," Josh muttered. "He's got a bunion or something. They're gonna catch up."
"Wait, so they're going to have a golf cart and we aren't?" Donna demanded. "That's not fair."
"Actually I was thinking that I should ride with the Senators in the cart, and all the caddies can walk behind. That way we can talk without being interrupted." He was grinning now, full dimples.
Donna was less amused. "Oh sure, I'm certain that the Senators will be very impressed with your manliness as you make your twenty-six year old female assistant walk behind the cart with your golf clubs. I think you should walk with the clubs and I should ride in the cart, to prove your virility. Besides, they like me better."
"Virility?" Josh squawked, the pitch of his voice rising sharply. Donna smirked at him. "Nobody, and I mean nobody, Donnatella Moss, has any cause to be questioning my virility! Just ask-" He cut himself off abruptly as both of them considered how well that sort of inquiry would go over with Mandy Hampton. "No," he decided. "But you can take it as settled fact."
"If you say so," Donna replied, tongue firmly in her cheek. "But you know how easily rumors get started. Better not to chance it. Anyway, I think we're almost to the sixth hole."
He sighed, hefting the bag again. "All I know is that we'd better get a deal on Appropriations after all this, because I'm not going to be able to walk for the next two days. I don't even like golf, and we're only six holes in, and I've got the world's worst caddy here."
She pouted at him. "That's not a very nice thing to say. I could be out apartment hunting."
"Yeah, and you'd be approximately as much use to me there as you are right now," he pointed out as they arrived at the sixth tee. "Do you even know what a caddy is supposed to be doing?"
"Of course I do, I looked it up," Donna informed him. "I offer you moral support and make insightful commentary about the course and the game, and keep an independent record of the score."
"And?" Josh prompted, giving the bag of clubs a little shake.
"And carry supplies," she finished brightly, producing a golf ball and tee from her pocket. She handed them to him. "There you go. And I think there's a water feature on this hole. You should probably stay away from it."
"Thank you, Jack Nicklaus." Josh muttered. Whatever else he might have wanted to say was curtailed when the golf cart carrying the two senators and their two aides arrived on the tee. If Josh'd had his druthers, they'd have spent most of their time sitting in the cart and hashing out the appropriations package, but the legislators obviously had other priorities. Unfortunately, those priorities required Josh to hit the ball a few times.
Ten minutes later, Josh and Donna stood together on the edge of a shallow pond, looking down into the clear water. "You know," Donna began, "I clearly remember telling you-"
"Don't even start with me, I mean it," he warned, pulling on his hair as he stared at the wavy form of his ball, just out of reach without wading.
She reached out and smoothed his hair down, almost without thinking about it, then handed him another ball. "Just look at it this way, you'll get an even bigger head start next time you play, right?"
Josh's bad mood was not improved any by the fact that when he finally did hop on the cart to have words with the senators, Donna immediately made the best of her walking tour by introducing herself to one of the aides, who had also been dragooned into caddying. He was probably about Donna's age, tall and with a full head of hair, and with the sort of muscular build that suggested he could walk the course easily while carrying both a bag of clubs and Donna. Just the sort of gomer who could be relied upon to turn Donna's head. By the tenth hole, the two were chatting like old friends, comparing favorite music and restaurants, and being more than a little distracting while Josh was trying to golf. Nobody else seemed to mind, but the legislators were probably just hard of hearing. And maybe senile as well.
When several of Josh's pointed glares failed to stop the whispered flirtation, he resorted to more drastic measures. This involved putting Donna on the golf cart and trotting along behind it himself while still trying to carry on bits and pieces of a conversation. That worked for about two holes, during which time Donna got to see several dozen grandchild pictures instead of the muscled arms of Gomer-boy. She also somehow managed to sweet-talk Richards into reconsidering two points of the HHS budget, a surprising added bonus that Josh knew he was going to be hearing about for weeks at the office. She might have gotten even more, but Josh could barely catch his breath to play by the time they reached the thirteenth green. He really needed to start jogging again.
"I think you should let me hit the ball," Donna murmured as she chased Josh into the rough once again, following another misdirected drive. "I think I could do it. I've been watching you and I have a system."
He glared at her. "You haven't been watching anything but Senator Patterson's aide for the past five holes," he muttered back. "I think while you've been enjoying Tee-time for the Lovelorn, you've forgotten what a caddy does again."
Again with the pouting. Sometimes when Donna stuck her lower lip out like that, he wanted to… nope. He was very, very busy golfing right now, and he was completely unmoved by any pouting. "Come on, Josh, this is boring!" she insisted. "There's eighteen holes and you've massacred twelve and a half of them already. Would it really make things any worse to let me have a turn?"
"Donna, Donna, Donna," he began, giving the ball a mighty whack that turned up a hockey-puck-sized divot, but at least put the ball close to the green, "golf is a game where the strategy extends far beyond the score. Would the senators be in such an expansive mood right now if they weren't cleaning my clock at this completely meaningless excuse for a sport?"
"Ah, so you're being this terrible on purpose," Donna guessed, nodding wisely. "That's a relief. But I still think you should let me take a shot," she reiterated as he lined up another swing. "Gabe's promised to help me correct my stance." Josh whiffed entirely, mostly because he'd whipped his head up to glare at her.
Donna grinned at him and sauntered away, satisfied with a job well done. Josh was getting frustrated with the game and starting to forget what he was out here to do. Now that he was recentered on the task at hand, he ought to do just fine with talking the senators around, even if his score was terrible. Getting him to make that face was just an extra added bonus. Gabe was nice, but he was only twenty-four and very, very green. If he survived another five years in Washington, he might be worth looking at, but Donna was interested in more mature, savvier men, men who already knew exactly where they were going. Like… nope. Like any number of mature, savvy nameless men who were surely out there, just waiting to be discovered. She picked up the clubs and began dragging them along towards the green after Josh.
Josh was especially obnoxious to her for the next three holes, which Donna thought was quite unfair since she'd only been trying to help him out. He wouldn't even help her load the clubs onto the cart, leaving her with no choice but to flutter her eyes at Gabe until he picked them up for her. "I should just strap the clubs to your back," Josh muttered to her as they reached the seventeenth tee. "Maybe it would slow you down a little from the pursuit of douchebag politicos."
Donna gave him a smack on the arm, maybe just a little harder than she'd intended. "Be nice," she hissed. Nobody was quite close enough to hear them, but it was still a stupid thing to say. "And try not to whiff again, it's embarrassing."
"It's the club that's the problem!" Josh insisted as they walked up to the teeing box. He handed it over to her, head-first. "It's got grass and stuff on it. You're the caddy, polish me up."
"What, right out here in public?" she asked innocently, taking the club by the handle. While he sputtered and stared, she gave the driver a quick swipe with the towel and scraped a little dirt out with a spare tee. "There you go, all better." Josh completely whiffed another shot.
Even if Josh's golf game was well beyond saving, his other skills were still in good shape, especially the one for turning around reluctant senators on important bills. By the eighteenth hole, Josh had his victory in the bag, and was calling Sam to tell him how things needed to be lined up with the legislative liaison's office. He still wasn't finished by the time the senators took their first drives, and just waved Donna off when she tried to coax him towards the box.
"Why don't you take the shot for him?" Senator Patterson joked. "I'm sure you could only be an improvement." By this point the game had long since denigrated into a contest between the senators anyway.
Needing no further encouragement, Donna pulled the driver from Josh's bag and teed up. It had been quite awhile since she'd last played, but some things you didn't really forget. With a satisfying thock sound, she sent the ball flying down the fairway. A helpful breeze caught it in the air, nudging it past the dogleg and making her look pretty impressive when the ball landed neatly on the edge of the putting green.
Josh, who'd turned around at the noise, stared at her as though she'd suddenly grown another head. "How did you do that?" he demanded, ignoring both Sam's confusion on the phone and the laughter of the senators.
There was no way on earth that Donna would admit she'd been on the golf team for three years in high school to avoid gym class, or that this was a one-in-a-thousand lucky shot she'd be hard-pressed to ever replicate. Instead, she tossed her hair and grinned at him. "I told you to let me have a turn," she reminded him. "I have a system." Pushing the golf bag into his hands, she bounded off down the fairway after her ball. She knew he'd be right behind her.