Josh smiles uncomfortably, fights the adrenaline rising in his throat, and rues the day he ever agreed to accompany Donna Moss, guilt tripper extraordinaire, home for a visit.
A visit to her strait-laced, tremendously Midwestern parents.
And grandparents.
And siblings.
Siblings and grandparents and parents who are passing around a ring box, recently abstracted from his backpack, and making approving noises, while Josh squirms and Donna looks…
Well, her face isn't saying much of anything right now, and if that's not speaking he doesn't know what is.
It starts like this; the campaign is going to be in Wisconsin for less than twelve hours. Donna hasn't been home in months, so she gets Presidential dispensation to head there early and spend some quality time with her parents, and because Josh is being annoying and Donna's mother is apparently worried he's not eating enough, he gets sent along for the ride.
The thing is, he likes Donna's parents, her mom especially. Francesca Moss (née Ricci) is as warm and loving a woman as he's ever met, and their first, brief meeting during the original campaign had led to her taking a motherly degree of interest in his life. She'd known, probably through Donna, that he'd lost his father and otherwise had a very small family, and being one of six children herself had decided swiftly that that was wholly unacceptable.
She calls Josh once a month to ask him how he's eating, how his mother is, and if there's any interesting facts about Donna's love life Donna isn't sharing. Aware of his priorites, Josh has spent three years answering the first question with total dishonesty, the second with enthusiasm, and the third with a degree of obfuscation a United States Congressperson would be proud of. Every Christmastime he expertly dodges an invitation to bring his mother to the Moss Family Gathering. After their first year in the White House, Donna's birthday care package gets mailed to the office, two days early and twice as large, and they discover that her mother's sent two of everything, one for her daughter and one for Josh, right down to the singing birthday cards.
So when Donna comes to Josh and says, "My mother wants to see you; you're coming home with me next week," what's he to do but agree, and invest in a good bottle of wine?
Donna's brother picks them up at the airport.
Vincent, born Vicenzo Desperado Moss, the eldest of three, is a generally cool guy.
"I changed my name when I got married," he tells Josh, as they load the suitcases into the trunk. "So it's not on my driver's license anymore, thank god."
They all chat comfortably on the drive to the Moss homestead. Donna had been raised in a condo, in one of those housing developments with a communal playground and a big shelter near the main road for the kids to wait for their school buses, but after the last Moss sibling had graduated high school Francesca and Nathan had decided to move to a quieter area.
There are many things Josh doesn't really understand about big, close-knit families, and one of those things is family outings.
When he'd been little they'd had them, of course, him and his parents and Joanie, but they'd always been unusual things, treats, like a concert or going to the zoo. They hadn't gone in for this thing the Mosses do, all driving to the downtown area and just wandering.
Josh has split off from the others for just a little while, when something catches his eye in a storefront.
It's a ring, and the sight of it collapses his heart, because it's the ring, the ring he's always wished he could use to get down on one knee and ask Donna Moss to marry him.
Not literally, of course. The ring had belonged to his paternal grandmother, and it had been stolen from their house in Westport, in the late eighties, never to be recovered. It was a square-cut garnet, in an antique silver filigree setting, modest and beautiful, and exactly the kind of thing Donna would love. This one is a dead ringer, though the filigree is a little different and the design doesn't show as well without a decades-old patina.
With a furtive look up and down the street, he ducks into the store.
He hadn't forgotten about it, but it also hadn't occurred to him that the presence of a little black velvet box might mean he shouldn't let people go digging through his backpack.
On their little shopping trip, he'd bought more than an engagement ring, he'd also picked up some tasty cookies, currently being consumed by the extended Moss clan, and a book for Donna's nephew Reed, which he left in his bag.
"It's in the big pocket," he calls, and the seven-year-old nods and speed into the other room to find his new treasure.
"You don't actually have to spoil my nephews," Donna reminds him, grinning into her glass of wine and observing him as he bounces the youngest Moss, Reed's brother Dylan.
"Someone does," is Josh's only reply, because he's not about to explain that spoiling her sister's kids is the stealthiest way he can think of to repay her family's extreme hospitality. His family had never been effusive the way hers is, and it makes him uncomfortable as much as it makes him feel welcome. In DC people don't just do stuff for you, it's always tit-for-tat, exchange of favors, a careful balancing act. Growing up in Connecticut, where there was admittedly much less political maneuvering, there had been more of a culture of insularity. He's always had friends, visited their families, but never before has one of those families insisted on absorbing him, wholesale.
It's all made more awkward by the sense he has that he's deceiving them. Vincent in particular seems to think that Josh is some kind of fellow big brother to Donna, driving off her boyfriends out of protectiveness, teaching her how to get around in the world. If he were ever to find out the true nature of Josh's feelings for her, well, he might not be nearly as welcome as he is now.
Or, on the other hand, they might be thrilled. That's the other dig; he likes Donna's family a lot, loves seeing her with them, likes helping her run to store for her mother or babysit the newborn. They seem to like him just fine, too. And he wishes he could talk to Donna, tell her how he feels, instead of spending years spinning the kind of fantasies that lead to a man buying an engagement ring for a woman he's never even kissed. He wants to be part of her family, wants her to be part of his.
And even if she turns out to want that, too, far from certain, it's years away.
"Wow," Reed says, loudly, from the other room. "Uncle Josh, who's the pretty ring for?"
So we return to the start of our story. Pictured: Josh Lyman, hard-nosed political operative, holding a baby, sitting next to his assistant, the women with whom he's been in love with for years. The assistant, Donna Moss, likewise in love with her boss, the only person in the room who knows that her boss and sometime best friend has been seeing Amy Gardner, not pictured. Arranged around the room: Nathan Moss, Donna's father; Angeline and Carl Moss, Nathan's aging parents; Vincent and Annabeth Moss, Donna's brother and sister-in-law; Gabriella Moss-Cohen, mother of seven-year-old Reed and six-month-old Dylan Moss-Cohen. Just off-stage, Francesca Moss, wife of Nathan and mother of Vincent, Donna, and Gabriella.
Enter Reed, clutching a copy of The Golden Compass in one hand and an open black velvet ring box in the other.
And...action.
"Reed!" Gabriella exclaims, red-cheeked, "It's not nice to snoop!"
"It was by my book!" Reed complains, but he hands it back to Josh anyway, sullen.
Donna neatly intercepts it, apparently unfazed by her sister's ongoing lecture on the subject of taking other people's things, and examines it with wide blue eyes.
Josh can't seem to breathe. Two Ivy-League degrees and nearly two decades in the capitol of the free world have failed to prepare him for this moment, the one where he watches the woman he loves examine the engagement ring chosen with her in mind, give him a small, forced smile, and say, "This is beautiful, Josh. Amy's going to love it."
His stomach grows cold and wobbly, his throat constricts. Paralysis sets in as the ring passes into Annabeth's hands, and she turns it this way and that under the light from the lamp beside her chair, throwing claret-red sparkles up onto her face, the wall. "Amy?" she asks, interested, and it's Donna who answers.
"Amy Gardner. Josh's girlfriend."
"Well, she's a lucky woman," Donna's grandmother says, approvingly, and Josh feels his whole face growing hot as he watches with wide, horrified eyes. How does one come back from this, he wonders, trapped in the ever-more-quickly spinning maelstrom of his panic. How does a guy, a guy who's shit at talking about his feelings and knows it, how does he ever manage to win over a woman who thinks he was all lined up to marry someone else, someone she hates? How does he convince her that ring was never for Amy? How does he ever win over the family of that amazing woman?
Donna's still answering questions about his relationship with Amy, talking up her accomplishments and generally putting a fairytale-esque spin on the whole thing, all in the plastic voice she uses to talk to the aides of particularly irritating Senators, the voice she's told him she patterned off of Ainsley Hayes'. She's not happy, he can tell, but she's always been a much better actor than him.
That voice is an impetus, though. It helps to know she's not happy, because as hideous as it'll be to complicate this situation more, he can at least assure her the ring isn't for Amy. That's got to be worth something. He manages to get a breath, sits up a little. Donna half-turns to him, looking frozen. "That's...it's...I'm not with Amy anymore," Josh tells her, and his expression must be truly something because she doesn't go straight for triumph, as she had when he'd broken up with Mandy, she goes straight for concern. "Oh, God, Josh," she says, "I'm sorry, I didn't know."
Oh, but this isn't any better, because now her whole damn family is looking at him with undisguised pity because now he's the guy who got dumped before he could even manage to propose. The weight of the sleeping baby gives him something to focus on as he gets his breathing back under control, and wishes fervently that he'd remembered to get his damn prescription filled. He's not good at this, at being the object of such obvious, unnecessary sympathy, and even as he bounces tiny Dylan, he can feel their eyes on him.
Of course he'd have a fucking panic attack in front of all these people, at a time like this. That's just how his life goes.
Enter Francessa Moss, mother of three, grandmother of two, inveterate meddler and world-class cookie-baker.
"Oh, my," Francesca says, just behind the loveseat where Josh is still battling with his own adrenaline and Donna has just received the ring box, passed quietly and shame-facedly back around the room. She goes on, breathless and joyful, "Donnatella, is that—Joshua, did you—?"
This is officially outside of enough, and Josh's hands are definitely shaking as he stands, carefully sets down the baby, and walks out of the room, straight out the front door, in fact, into the cold evening.
His stomach is cramping as he settles himself, cross-legged, his back pressed the picket fence that delineates the front yard of the Moss' property, and starts counting his breaths. It's not doing much for the whole-body tremors, but those may be due in part to the cold, and his brain is clearing, if slowly. Clearing enough for him to be thankful he hadn't started hearing sirens, or hyperventilating, or weeping. Enough for him to maybe start thinking of ways to deal with this situation, ways that wouldn't end in abject humiliation or the abrupt and permanent loss of Donna's friendship.
Then again, maybe not that much.
He'd first realized he was in love with Donna during the aftermath of the PTSD nightmare, when he just couldn't seem to stop saying terrible fucking things to her, couldn't seem to stop hurting her, and then couldn't bring himself to apologize. That had piled on to his old survivor's guilt, the anger, the self-hatred he'd carried all his life, and the more his emotions spiraled out of control, the more monstrously he behaved. When Donna had gone to Leo, when he learned that she'd essentially turned him in, he'd been relieved, because if she'd done that, if she'd tried to help him after everything, then she must have forgiven him. She must have understood.
In the weeks of therapy that followed, he'd realized that Donna was hugely important to him, more important than he'd ever allowed himself to acknowledge. Knowing that she had seen his weakness, felt its backlash, and still cared about him, that was a light that had allowed him to drag himself out of the hole.
"Josh," she says softly, and his heart just about stops.
"Jesus Christ, Donna!" he yelps, opening his eyes to find her crouched beside him, too close. "Make a noise or something."
She doesn't dignify that with a response, just drapes his coat around his shoulders. "You can't get sick," she admonishes him, and it's so normal, so comforting. Donnatella Moss, control freak extraordinaire. "You have to meet with the Governor's people tomorrow."
"I'm from New England," he reminds her, still a little shaky. "I'm not gonna drop dead."
"Mmmhm."
They sit in silence for a bit, Donna pulling her knees up to her chest and looking up at the night sky. "I didn't realize you and Amy had broken up," she says, quietly.
"It was a while ago," he sighs, leaning his head back against the fence.
"You're still carrying the ring around?" Donna asks, and she leans into him, a little bit, like she's trying to comfort him by stealth.
He can't help the little puff of laughter. "No," he says. "I wasn't going to ask Amy to marry me, Donna."
That perks her right up and she turns to him, suddenly bright-eyed and curious. "So why do you have an engagement ring?" she asks, no longer sounding sensitive and careful.
"What makes you so sure it's an engagement ring?" Josh shoots back, letting himself banter a little.
"Please," Donna waves him away, "A guy like you? You don't just give women jewelry. Everything has to mean something with you. I know you, Joshua, you're the guy who bought me a history of alpine skiing instead of skis."
She has a point. She always does, and he wonders, not for the first time, why she's still working for him.
"You're right," he admits. "It's an engagement ring."
She hums in satisfaction, pulls something out of her pocket to fiddle with.
It's the ring box.
Josh's heart kicks into high gear again, and he's suddenly getting an idea. It feels like a great one, although he's admittedly had a glass of wine and a panic attack in the last hour.
Donna's snapping the thing open again, watching how the moonlight plays on the faceted surface. "My uh, my dad proposed to my mom with his mother's ring," Josh begins to explain, trying to keep his voice casual. "She wore it every day, until someone broke into our house and took a bunch of stuff. Dad ended up getting her a new ring for their anniversary, but it wasn't the same.
"My grandmother's ring, it was just like that one you're holding," he tells her. "With the garnet and the silver and stuff. When I was little my mom always told me, if I found a girl I wanted to marry, she'd give me the ring to pass on to her, but..."
"But it got stolen," Donna finishes, softly.
"Yeah." Josh sighs. "I saw that in the store window and I figured, where else was I going to find almost an exact replica? So I bought it."
"So it's not for anyone yet." It's not just him, he's sure of it. She sounds relieved. Donna's head lolls on his shoulder, her unbound hair spilling silver over the wool of his coat.
"I didn't say that."
Well, she's not relaxed anymore, and maybe it's not totally fair, but the adrenaline is pumping again, and he's kind of enjoying the feeling of her, tensed, not totally sure what's about to come.
"I bought it for you."
Josh Lyman is generally pretty good at denying himself things that he wants. Trauma-inducingly good, even, but he doesn't stop himself from trying to look at Donna's face, insofar as she's lit up by the weak glow of the moon and the light from the kitchen window.
For a moment she's frozen, still staring at the ring box in her hands, and then she's a flurry of movement, smacking his arms, his shoulders, wherever she can conveniently reach. He dodges what might have been a slap to the face, and manages to catch her hands. "Donna—" he tries, but she frowns at him fiercely.
"That's not a funny joke, Josh," she says. "It's sweet that you bought the ring because of your grandmother, you don't have ruin it by being a jerk."
"I'm not!" he says, then winces. "Well, I mean, I kinda am, but I'm not lying."
That takes a moment to compute as well, and Donna's face grows impressively blank and stern. "So help me, Joshua, if that's your idea of a marriage proposal..."
She is, he thinks giddily, exactly like his mother. Even the faint tilt of her left eyebrow, imperious and demanding, could be copied right off Riva Lyman's face. "No," he answers, hoarsely. "Just...I'm just saying."
Her face relaxes, her whole body sort of sags, and she sighs, looking down at the ring. "Donnatella," Josh says, and he's not intending to sound so soft and reverent, "This is my idea of a proposal. Will you marry me?"
He has to take the ring box in order to take her hand, and he's only just got his fingers around hers when hers convulse. "Josh," she says, sounding tearful and strangled, "If you're not serious, I'm going to..."
"I'm serious, Donnatella," he assures her. And then, just for good measure, he kisses her.
"Leo's gonna kill us," Donna says, when they finally break apart. "And CJ. We are dead people walking."
Josh takes another deep breath, sets his forehead against Donna's. "We can handle Leo," he asserts, a little bit of his usual cockiness filtering back into his voice. "CJ I'm not so sure about."
Donna snorts. "I'll handle CJ," she says, and then, "Yes, by the way."
"What?"
"Yes," she repeats, slowly, like he's being stupid in some way. "My answer is yes, Josh."
There's another couple second when he's too distracted by the shine in her eyes to understand what she's driving at, but then he gets it, and an incredible warm feeling washes through his chest. The ring is, by now, extremely cold against his fingertips when he plucks it out of its cushion, and Donna wrinkles her nose as he slips it on her bare left finger, where it settles perfectly. The box, now empty, shuts with a satisfying snap, and he tucks it into the pocket of his coat.
"You have to tell the President," Donna warns him, leaning in to kiss him again, for the second time ever.
Josh snorts. "You have to tell CJ," he says, tugging her into his lap. "I'm pretty sure I win."