Everything Will Change (Brand New Colony)
i.
i'll be the grapes fermented, bottled and served with the table set
in my finest suit like a perfect gentleman.
By the time they walk out of the movie theatre on E, it's 5 PM and the January sky has turned a deep hue of navy blue. Her breath comes in steamy puffs in the cold air and blurs the outlines of her face, her features look softer, and her eyes sparkle like Christmas lights in a shop window.
Charlie bids them farewell with two earnest handshakes, and he watches the young man retreat, his back straight, his walk so full of purpose, and something like envy sears inside him. He turns to Kate with a hesitating half-smile.
She sighs, wrapping a strand of hair around her gloved fingers and not meeting his eyes. "Are we still on for tonight?"
"The balls?"
She nods, or half-nods, half-shrugs. He finds her adorable when she's like this, not at all the tough, stubborn GI-Jane-type he fell in love with, but just as insecure and awkward about whatever it is they're doing as he is. "I kind of don't feel like going," she admits, softy. The steam of her breath rises between them, and he wants to curl up in her arms and be assured that they can do this, that between the awkwardness and the sheer terror of being hurt that both of them carry inside them, they can step up to what it is they've found, so wholly unexpectedly, with each other.
"Me too," he says, and throws chances to the wind. "Do you want to have dinner tonight? My place? We can…"
"… have the talk?" She asks, forcing a grim smile. "I'd rather go to the balls after all."
"Listen," he says, catching the small of her back as she turns away from him, turning her towards him and looking her straight in the eyes. "I'm not about to break up with you. I'm not about to hurt you. Can you please just accept that? I don't have to move to Oregon- I meant it when I said that I didn't have to move it all if it meant that you and me would be… that it wouldn't work. And we can have this conversation now, or we can do it over dinner, in my apartment, where it's warm and we don't have twenty million strangers to share a very narrow sidewalk with."
She smiles, eyes downcast. "You don't have to be my knight in shining armor."
"I'm not," he assures, stroking her hands and pulling her close. "I'm scared of horses."
--
i'll be the fire escape that's bolted to the ancient brick
where you will sit and contemplate your day.
It's the first night of their new life, their life together, and it feels, well. Forced. They're dancing around each other, cautious and overly polite, he's attentive and caring, and she's witty and sparkling, and between the two of them, it feels like they're bad actors playing mediocre scripted roles. She's smiling too much and talking too much, and he's cooked too much food; it's way too warm and sunny for mid-January, and he's honestly terrified they're going to run out of things to say to say to each other.
She says she's tired, cites jet lag and a post-White-House-crash, and disappears into the shower as he cleans up the kitchen of the condo they rented for the first couple of weeks. He's wiping the counter when he hears the tapping of bare footsteps on cold marble, and he hesitates, straining his ears to figure out her next move. She bypasses the kitchen, turns towards the bedroom. He forces himself to finish wiping the counter and turn on the dishwasher before he follows her. She's sprawled on the bed at a strange angle, her head dangling loosely from the edge at the foot of the -of their- bed, a tired smile playing on her face as she smiles up at him in checkered pajama bottoms and a silky top.
"Scoot," he says, softly, and she moves over to let him lie next to her, arranging his body in the same way so that their noses are almost touching, blood slowly rushing to their heads.
"Hey, you know, the shower head in this place is fantastic, just the right kind of pressure, not too much- we should get one of those when find a proper place, and-"
He reaches out a finger and places it on her lips. She makes to speak, but he shakes his head, his eyes roaming over hers, feasting on every inch of her face, so beautiful with wet hair and no makeup. "Does it feel like we're trying a little too hard?"
There's a pause, and then she bursts out laughing, nodding furiously. He joins in, and they both lie there, giggling about the sheer ridiculousness of it all, laughing at their incredibly good fortune. When they've calmed down, he reaches over and finds her hand.
"When I said I wanted us to talk," he says, quietly but firmly, "I didn't mean all the time."
She smiles at that. "In that case…" And she kisses him, and neither of them says anything for quite some time.
--
i'll be the water wings that save you if you start drowning in
an open tab when your judgement's on the brink.
There are moments when, she cannot help herself. She's terrified. Terrified that this is too much, too many good things happening at once, terrified of Leo's legacy still looming in the office that will never feel like Josh's to her, terrified of the shadows under his eyes that never seem to recede, not even when they spend entire Sundays in bed, terrified that Karen Cahill's venomous column about the two blondes in the East Wing that have outwitted the Constitutional power tree will turn out to spell trouble. It doesn't help that she senses that Josh is just as scared as she is, and the fact that he's desperately trying to hide it from her just makes it worse.
On the second Friday of the Santos Administration, she meets him in the parking lot. The January snow falls around them like something out of a fairy tale, and before he has a chance to say anything, she's opened her arms and wrapped them around his. He freezes for a second, but when she makes no move to kiss him, to turn this hug into a more, he buries his head in her shoulder and allows her to stroke his head as his grip around her relaxes.
"It's okay," she whispers, as the darkness around them deepens, and the falling snow swallows the city noise. It feels like they're trapped inside a snow globe, just them, the calmly falling flakes and the lit-up Washington monument behind them. It feels good. Safe. And she wishes she could keep it that way, that they could stay like this forever, drawing strength for the grueling days to come from the warmth and the permanence of each other's bodies.
Josh raises his head, studies her, and she knows it's a trick of the light, but he looks younger, more relaxed. Happier. "I love you."
He's said it before, they both did, in Hawaii and after, but in light of the past ten years, the novelty hasn't quite worn off, and she feels her stomach contract, painfully and wonderfully, at the way he's looking at her- like he really and truly means it, with every fiber of his being.
"I love you too." She answers, like it's the easiest thing in the world, and as their lips meet, she realizes that no matter how terrified they both are, in each other, they've found the one power strong enough to keep their demons at bay.
--
i'll be the phonograph that plays your favorite albums back
as you're lying there, drifting off to sleep
It's one of her ticks, of course, one of the things you get in exchange for life "out there", as she calls it, both in her mind and with others- she doesn't like going to sleep.
It's not sleeping she minds, and it's not like she has to take anything, but she does make sure she's so exhausted that when she does go to bed, she literally hits the pillow, and there is no tossing and turning, no moment to think about consciously going to sleep. She used to work late, stopped drinking coffee at noon, she's go run two miles after work, and another two in the middle of the night if she had to.
Here's the problem. Will snores. And he likes to have late-night conversations. After sex, or even without sex, he likes to talk. Tell stories, share ideas, he likes to lose his hands in her hair and talk, in a half-whisper, taking comfort in the half-darkness and the other's body, and, in his case, drifting into sleep in the middle of a sentence. And she gets it, the intimacy, the opening up, it's all very symbolic and romantic and lovely, the only problem is that she ends up focusing so much on what he's saying, mulls it over in her mind long after he's drifted away, that she ends up not sleeping at all.
One night, at four in the morning, he pads into the kitchen where she's been running on the treadmill for twenty minutes, praying for exhaustion. She explains her predicament, and he laughs ruefully and apologizes profusely.
The next night, they lie in silence, but she can tell that he's bursting to say something, and that somehow puts even more pressure on her.
"Oh, talk," she snaps, and considers sleeping pills.
"I just wanted to tell you about this guy I talked to on the subway today," he starts, and his voice, soft and captivating, suddenly has a soothing quality to it. She tries to focus not on her tense muscles, but on the cadence, the rhythm of his voice, the soft ups and downs.
Turns out he was telling her a bedtime story. All she needed to do was listen.
--
i'll be the platform shoes; undo what heredity's done to you:
you won't have to strain to look into my eyes.
"Okay, seriously, WHAT?"
She's done something wrong, clearly, and she had no idea what and the way he's sighing and looking plaintive and doing the breakfast dishes is completely infuriating.
"Danny. Look at me. What have I done to you?"
He calmly places the plate in his hand in the dishwasher and wipes his hands on a towel. "What have you done to me?" He repeats, slowly. He shakes his head. "Nothing, CJ. Don't even worry about it."
"Okay, you know what? I won't." She spits out the words. "If you're want to be passive-aggressive and, quite frankly, totally ridiculous instead of manning up and telling me what in the name of everything holy I've done now, go ahead. Be. My. Guest. I'm taking a shower."
She's halfway down the hall when he calls out. "Wait."
She turns. He's standing in the kitchen doorway, still holding the towel in one hand. "It feels like you're not here," he says, quietly, eyes downcast.
"What are you talking about?"
"It feels like… like you don't even want to be here."
This is closing in on her. Overwhelming instinct is telling her to snap, "I don't have time for this" and run as quickly as she can into the other direction, but she can't do that. She wills herself to walk in his direction, close the space between him.
"I want to be here," she says, quietly, her eyes searching his. "Danny, seriously. Look at me." He does, unwillingly raises his eyes to meet hers. "I want to be here," she repeats. She knows it's true. This isn't getting any easier, but still, life without him has become totally unimaginable, and she knows, she knows that there are more moments than she cares to admit where his calm presence, his infuriating wonderfulness, is the only thing holding her together.
"I'm doing my best," she says, imploring. "I'm not very good at not being good at something, but I'm working on it, I swear to god I am, and hey! I'm cooking and taking walks on the beach and sharing with you, and there was that time last week when I didn't read the paper all day long, and Danny, you have to, have to give me some credit for trying."
He smiles, opening his mouth but she senses there's an "I'm sorry" hanging on his lips and she keeps talking. "Don't apologize. Just… you said you were going to train me. You're not going to give up on me before I hit my full potential, are you?"
He shakes his head with a smile. "I'm not bailing."
"Felt like you might be for a second."
"Not when you're just getting better," he promises. "You're stuck with me for a bit longer, I'm afraid."
--
i'll be your winter coat, buttoned and zipped straight to the throat
with the collar up so you won't catch a cold
He wonders if the new job is straining her, maybe just a little bit. He wonders if she knows hat sleep deprivation doesn't suit her, he wonders if she knows that she looks older, tired, and that it suits her- she's never been more beautiful than when she looks up at him from a stack of briefing memos as he stumbles into what has quickly become their living room around midnight. He wonders if she'll ever be his Donna again, the Donna he fell in love with without realizing or admitting it; and then he wonders if it would be a very bad thing if that brazen twenty something had left her for good.
On a Sunday in February, after spending most of the weekend in the office or in bed, they take a long walk through wet, wintry Georgetown, and, gradually, beyond. They talk enough, but not too much, and shyly hold hands as she steers them towards the Mall.
The grass is wet with sleet, the ground frozen under their feet, the air cold and unpleasant and the sky a dismal gray, but still, it's magical, even if the monuments are disappearing in the fog, the fountains off and the whole place depressingly empty. He wraps his arms around her and finds a tiny patch of bare skin between the collar of her jacket and her knit scarf that he places his lips upon gently, and she shivers under his touch and crowds a little closer towards him.
They're not the old Josh and Donna anymore, they're too quiet, too weighed down with responsibility and maybe a little too sad, a little too hurt, to be those two again. But it's okay. It's a cold, wet day in February, but they're together and her hair smells as intoxicating as it always did, something like cookie dough and something infinitely sweeter, and they're together, and as far as he's concerned, that's fine. More than fine.
ii.
i want to take you far from the cynics in this town
and kiss you on the mouth
we'll cut our bodies free, from the tethers of this scene
start a brand new colony
This isn't working. They both sense it, he feels, because it's been a month since the inauguration and he's with the DCCC and hates it, and she's in the White House and feels conservative and obsolete whenever she briefs Josh and President Santos, and somehow, they end up taking it out on each other.
He doesn't want this. He doesn't want them to be hurting each other, but what he wants even less is what they're doing now, not even bothering to hurt, just sadly and silently growing apart as the days grow warmer and wetter, and February comes to a close.
He suggests going away for a few days, and they drive up to Cape Cod, where his oldest sister has a house. She's sleepy and sweet during the drive, and once they get there, it's the way it should be- they take long walks on the stormy beach and fall asleep in each other's arms, naked bodied entangled and smelling of sea salt and the other's body.
--
She's sure this is the greatest idea she's ever had, ever, including every political power play, and it's that certainity, more than anything else, that makes her act. She's finally getting the hang of this, and it's the triumph of this discovery that makes her drive to their local Whole Foods and buy a picnic, sushi and cornbread, a bag of snap peas and a bottle of expensive champagne from the liquor store next door, before picking him up from the Middle School in South Central where he volunteers as a English teacher a couple of mornings a week. "CJ, what the hell…?" He asks when she doesn't drive home, but instead turns south, away from the sea and towards the mountains. She shakes her head with a grin and asks him about his day, and he gratefully talks, with mingled wonder and frustration about the small miracles he can accomplish and the many things he can't change.
She listens and asks questions –and argues, so he won't suspect anything- and soon enough, they end up in the San Jacinto Mountains. She finds a roadside parking lot with picnic tables and a spectacular view of the mountains and the valley, and pulls over, and he arches an eyebrow at her. "Are we going hiking?"
"We could," she says, non-chalantly. "I read about this place in the paper this morning, and thought we should go. There's food in the back."
They sit on one of the picnic tables and eat in silence, breathing in the incredibly clean air, the quiet. She's ready to burst at this point, and feels that if she doesn't say it soon, she never will. Taking her cue from the sun about to move behind one of the peeks, she cocks her head at him with a smile and takes a deep breath.
"Danny?"
"Yeah?"
"Will you marry me?"
--
"We could go away for the weekend," Donna says quietly, draining pasta in a colander over their kitchen sink.
"Huh?" Josh looks up from the bottle of red wine he's uncorking in confusion.
"I said," Donna repeats, dumping the spaghetti back in their pot and adding a creamy mixture that has been bubbling away happily for the past ten minutes, "we could go away for the weekend." She cracks two eggs over the pot and adds them to the pasta and the cream, mixing heavily and never taking her eyes off the food in front of her.
"What- this weekend?" Josh reaches for two glasses from their cabinet and tries to catch her eye.
She stirs furiously, adding half a cup of grated Parmesan. "Yeah."
"That's a little short notice," he says, sounding almost nettled.
"I guess."
"No, I mean I'd like to, but it's a little short notice. I'd need to reschedule stuff, and we've got the G8 coming up-"
"I understand." Furiously grating pepper over the pot. "It was just an idea."
"I'd like to," he repeats, "we should go some other time- like after the summit."
"Yeah." She takes two plates from the kitchen cabinet, spoons Spaghetti Carbonara on each and sets them down on the kitchen table, still refusing to look at him as she feels her stomach turn over.
"We can go some other time."
"I'm not hungry," Donna gasps, and bolts from the kitchen.
iii.
where everything will change,
we'll give ourselves new names
identities erased
They're supposed to meet for drinks after a work, "a proper date," he'd said, "we never really had one of those," and she sits there waiting for him to show up, thinking of how ridiculous this is, that they, both of them, are making this much of an effort to salvage a weird pseudo-relationship neither of them had really wanted in the first place.
Because she hadn't wanted it. Right? Hopeless romantic that she was, she hadn't wanted another guy like him, awkward and boyish and power-dating, who saw her only as fodder for his wonder woman fantasies and who made her laugh and feel like a girl, damn him. True, she had been the one to make the first actual move. True, it was her who found herself asking him to stay in DC so they could give this, this "them", a chance. But that had been the part of her that got married once at twenty-one and once at twenty-nine. In other words, not a part of herself she cared to listen to when given the choice.
"Excuse me. Kate Harper, right?" An achingly handsome man with broad shoulders and a slight Southern accent smiles at her from the barstool beside her. "Jack Brenner. I'm at Central Command, we've met a few times?"
"Oh, yeah, of course," she allows herself to smile back, moves in his direction, and when he compliments her, she lets him. Out of the corner of her eye, she seems to see Will come into the crowded bar, and, seeing her in conversation, he leaves again. Not even ready to put up a fight for her. Kate sighs, and shifts her posture more fully towards Jack Brenner.
--
Happiness, he finds, comes in bursts and jolts on a glorious morning in March, mixed with the incongruous incredulity of what is happening, of what is happening to him. He's getting married to the woman he has loved for longer than cares to admit to anyone, anyone accept Katie, anyway, who knows anyway and isn't telling. And it's happening. Today.
She proposed –a victory, a quiet one, but still, he chooses to take pride in the fact that she was the one who proposed, and he supposes it's going to be like this for the rest of their lives, the rest of their lives, taking turns at lurching each other forward to new and wonderful dimensions of their togetherness- and from there, it was, it seemed, just a couple of phone calls and a few arrangements to be made to this fair morning. When he asked her if she wanted to wait, she laughed and shrugged and said, "What, do you want me to change my mind?" and he didn't bother answering.
And now she's walking towards him, wearing an off-white dress and a smile so radiant he wants to see nothing else on her face from this day forward, on glorious morning in March on the beach in front of their house.
They decided to forgo the traditional vows, him claiming that he wanted her to vocalize what she truly thought about him at least once –that earned him a slap on the back of a head- and her saying that the traditional vows made her think of her father's marriages, and leaving it at that. Now that the day is actually here, he feels like he doesn't need to hear a thing from her, but still, she takes a deep breath and looks him square in the face.
"You bought me a fish once. Gail. And… and ever since that day you've been around, and even when you weren't physically, it always felt like you were, teasing me and testing me and arguing with me, and Danny, you have no idea how much that helped me, looking at that fish and arguing with you in my head, on crazy days back in the White House. Even when you weren't there, it felt like you were. And then you came back and took my breath away and I didn't know what to do with it, and sometimes I still don't today. But the remarkable thing about you is that you never gave up on me. And I'm so grateful for that and I promise you, on this day and in this place, that I'll never, ever give up on you or give up on us. You…" she smiles. "It feels like you take all the crazy half-dreams I never really had and make them come true. So thank you, for that. And I love you."
--
The night of CJ's wedding, he loops his arms around Donna's body and dances with her to a soft bossa nova crooning by the light of a hundred fairy lights strung over the Cregg-Concannnon porch. He feels her body stiffen under his touch at first, as though she feels this gesture of couple-ness is somehow awkward and inappropriate, but as his thumbs draw circle after circle on her back, she relaxes and arranges herself more comfortably into his arms, one hand curled loosely in his hair.
They're both thinking it, how surreal, and yet how perfectly normal, this moment is. That CJ and Danny, CJ and Danny for crying out loud, got married today, and here they are, dancing in the soft sand of the Santa Monica beach, Josh's hands as real as the grains of sand stuck between her nose, Donna's soft touch mingling with the soft evening breeze.
"You tired?" He whispers into her ear.
She shakes her head. "Keep dancing," she mumbles. Donna's head begins to spin, the fairy lights blur and the faces of the people around her, CJ's family and Danny's sisters, Molly Ziegler dancing in her father's arms, the Bartlet's calmly waltzing in a corner, all of it seems to spin around her and the only thing keeping her upright, the linchpin of her universe, are her and Josh, dancing, dancing, dancing…
iv.
the sun will hit the ground
under our bare feet
in this brand new colony
He moves into his new house on the waterfront on a rainy evening. He's been told all days here are rainy, but at least it's comparably warm, for March, or so he's told by his newly-assembled campaign staff which seems to consist of two of the Laurens from the White House and their assorted college buddies.
The next morning, he wakes early and pads through the still mostly- empty house barefoot, past boxes that need unpacking and rooms that need furniture, into his pristine new kitchen. The house is newly redone and still smells of wood and plaster, a good smell, and when he throws open the kitchen window and is rewarded with a gust of warm, wet spring air, he feels much less out of place than he might in a small town on the Pacific he barely knows and wants to become Congressman of.
She'd love it here. She'd love the rainy beaches, the forests that smell of wet earth and wood; she'd love the unpretentious people and the good, strong coffee; and he realizes that the decision to forgo an apartment in Eugene for this huge, beautiful house on the beach was motivated almost entirely by her taste.
Will sighs as he sips his coffee, standing on his new porch during a dry spell in his pajamas, and wondering where they went wrong.
--
CJ bids the last guests –her oldest brother- a loving but impatient farewell and turns to find her newly official husband. He's sitting on the beach, two glasses of champagne beside him, and when she catches his eye from the porch, he pats the sand next to him with that smile that she loves.
"Hey." She sits down next to him, digging her toes in the sand. "Husband."
He laughs. "Weird?"
"Absolutely."
He raises his glass and she copies him, they clink glasses. "To the future."
"For better, for worse." They laugh softly as she leans against him.
The sand is warm beneath her feet, the sky above them a gorgeous indigo, stars twinkling and the sea crashing softly against the beach.
For the life of her, CJ can't think of a better beginning for the rest of her life.
--
Josh throws her a critical look the next morning as she plays with her pancakes, only sips her coffee. She looks tired, he notices, still tired and somehow spent.
"Are you okay?" He wonders if she's hung over, but he doesn't remember her drinking well, anything, last night, now that he thinks about it.
"I'm a little woozy," she admits, blinking up at him. "Can we go for a walk?" She leads him out on the beach, squinting against the bright sunlight, holding is hand and staring at the horizon, although she's waiting for a ship from faraway.
"Donna, seriously, if you feel sick or something-"
"Josh." She interrupts. "Look at me." He turns to her with a knitted brow and just has time to discover a most peculiar look on her face, teetering between hope, joy and something not as easily identifiable, before she looks down.
"Donna, what?"
She looks up at him as she pushes a stray strand of blonde hair out of her face. "I'm pregnant."
everything will change…
everything will change…
fin