A/N: Hey, my loves. I hope this chapter finds you well. It is an attempt to improve my angst writing, and I'm actually kind of fond of it. It's an AU for the episode King Corn.

I also kinda wrote this poem some time last year from Josh's POV that I've wanted to work into a fic since about then, so I'm including that up top.

As always, I welcome any prompts for other moments, or other episodes, that you would like to see altered or expanded from what they were in the show.

I hope you guys like this! Reviews are eternally enjoyed and appreciated.

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I'm on a bus full of strangers, and I'm one of them.

I keep waiting for you to walk in

and tell me to snap out of it,

because no one else knows

to do it.

I am thinking about all the ways

I've said your name.

Shouted across a room,

annoyed,

enamored,

laughing.

And I'm thinking about all the ways

I haven't said it.

I am thinking about all the ways

I've touched you.

A hand on your back,

Helping you up,

carrying you,

you in my lap, your hips inside mine.

And I'm thinking about all the ways

I haven't touched you.

I should tell you that

I wouldn't be here if

it weren't for you.

I would've stayed if you'd stayed

I would've stayed for Christmas,

your holiday,

not mine,

not bothered a man at home

with his family.

I should tell you that

the day you left me

you might've determined the fate

of a nation.

I should tell you that

at 3am last week

I woke up to pace my hotel room.

And when

I passed a mirror,

all I saw was some guy

that missed you.

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It's almost midnight when the crippling silence becomes too much for Josh. His impulse to knock on Donna's door is one he'd indulged during many restless nights on the campaign; he would find an excuse to wake her up (if she'd been sleeping, which oftentimes she wasn't) and he'd barge in to her room to bicker with her about the time for a few minutes before she eventually settled on the bed and told him to 'sit down and watch the news with me, pumpkin patch.' Then she would talk to him about something totally unrelated to the campaign, something like her sister's marriage or how she was thinking of buying a pair of bell bottoms but wasn't sure the trend would last.

Whatever her strange and wonderful mind landed on, it always worked. Within an hour his nerves would be settled, and he could return to his room relaxed, at ease, and a little sad to be leaving her behind.

Tonight, he knows this won't happen.

Things have changed. Maybe she won't let him in at all - and if she does, any conversation they could have will likely be fraught and tense.

But the impulse persists. It is almost painful now, as if it comes from a place that was wounded and hasn't quite healed.

He won't be able to sleep tonight, anyway. Why the hell shouldn't he at least try?

He barrels into the hallway and practically into the door, not allowing himself any time to reconsider. He knocks loudly, in that obnoxious way he always does, that she has described as sounding like someone in desperate need of medical attention, or perhaps a safe house from the mob.

A split second later, the same place the impulse had come from throbs in pain, and he thinks briefly that he might throw up. He darts back into his room before the door has even finished closing from his exit, and stands with his back against the door. This usually calms him. He takes several labored breaths, but is interrupted by a sharp knock. He can practically feel her irritation through the wood.

Knowing there's no escape, he pulls open the door, trying desperately to look casual.

Donna stands halfway between his door and her own, which is propped open with a shoe. Her arms are folded, and he'd been dead on in imagining her peeved expression.

"Joshua." She begins, exerting as much disapproval into these three syllables as is possible.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Did you just ding-dong ditch me?"

"Um." He steps into the hall, and his door closes behind him. He's trapped. "Well, yeah."

"Why?"

"You know what? You are not going to believe this, you're going to find it so funny."

"Am I?" She inquires dangerously, looking as though she has never been less inclined to find something funny in her life.

"Yeah, so, I came out and knocked on your door. And then this thing happened."

"What thing?"

He fumbles for an excuse, but lands on the truth. "I was overcome with terror."

"Really?"

"Really."

Slowly, he sees her mouth tug into half a smile. "You know what? That is really funny."

"Yeah. I know."

"What'd you knock on my door for?"

"I wanted to borrow something."

"What?"

"Um, some dignity?"

She grins fully, and the pain in his chest eases. "Josh."

He notices for the first time what she's wearing. She's in pajamas, but not the usual flannel ones or t-shirt and boxers combination. He's being treated to the rare and elusive sight of Donna Moss in very short shorts and a tank top.

Given, he'd seen her in pretty much every state known to man, save nudity, so he has seen this look before. Usually it is during one of his restless hotel nights that he forces her to share with him, or when he finds himself drunk at her apartment at two in the morning. Once, she had worn this outfit or something similar while staying with him during that rough Christmas, in a last ditch effort to cheer him up. It had worked.

It wasn't that he didn't know that Donna was gorgeous. He was, in fact, painfully aware. But it was times like these, when he is caught offguard by her, that he is forced to stop ignoring it. Most days, they can both rest easy with layers of comfortable cardigans and long skirts between them, but then he sees her like this, with legs that go on for miles - miles and miles of pale calves and thighs and an ass he definitely doesn't stare at when she leaves the room - and it gets one level harder.

Once, when he'd been drunk, she'd been walking back and forth in front of the couch endlessly, or so it had seemed, and he'd blurted, "Your legs are my favorite legs on earth."

To which she had held back a smile and said, "What about yours? They're pretty good for, you know, getting you places."

He'd shrugged. "Close second. If I had to make a choice... You know, about which one of us got legs? I'd be in a wheelchair."

She had, of course, written this stunning quote down and used it to mock him for the next six months.

She must notice him staring, because she says softly, "If you don't stop staring at my legs, you're going to be watching them walk away from you."

His gaze returns to hers, and all he can think to say is, "Your scar hasn't faded that much."

Because it hasn't. It's there, in sharp relief, contrasting starkly with her pale skin. For some reason, its presence surprises him. These past few months, she'd looked invincible.

Her face darkens. "No. It hasn't."

"How's your leg been, on the campaign trail? The buses have to be hard."

She looks at him almost suspiciously, as if he has no grounds to show concern for her. "They are. But I'm okay. It's nothing I can't handle."

"Right."

"It is, still, uh, pretty ugly though." She admits, a tad vainly.

He shrugs, hoping to indicate that he doesn't find a thing about her ugly without coming off like a sleaze, as he had moments ago.

She watches him tentatively. "You'd still take the wheelchair?"

He doesn't need to ask what she's talking about. "In a heartbeat."

She grins uncontrollably for two or three seconds before she manages to tamp it down. "So, what did you want? When you knocked?"

He knows how he looks, these days. He hasn't been so buried in the campaign that he hasn't caught glimpses of himself. He looks strung out and tired, not to mention pale. He's lost weight, which he knows only by his belt holes. He'd dropped nearly every vestige of his boyish charm, because as he is realizing, she was his youth and vitality. He knows that unlike in years past, his presence isn't fun or bombastic. It is smaller and harder. He figures that in the fluorescent hallway, his dress shirt revealing too much of his pointed collarbones, he must look fairly pathetic.

He shrugs helplessly, and shoves his hands in his pockets. Unlike her, he hadn't even thought to undress yet. Once again, the truth wends its way up to his tongue and takes possession. "I miss you."

She doesn't melt, as he thinks she once might've. She frowns. "Come inside. We'll talk." She turns and walks into her room, and he notices the slight limp in her step.

Unsure of himself, he follows her inside, where she sits down on the bed.

As much as she prides herself on being able to handle the grueling campaign trail, by midnight, it usually takes a lot more than a knock on her door to force her into being vertical - even if they're up working, she's usually sitting somewhere with her leg up. She'd made an exception tonight. "You can sit down, if you want."

"Um. Okay." He supposes he could drag a chair over, but it's easier to just sit down beside her, a safe distance between them. He stares at his shoes, still shocked that he'd said out loud that he missed her. It is surreal, because the truth has been crushing him from the inside for months. To have it externalized is strange - terrifying, and yet reassuring. He's not alone with it, anymore.

After a minute he feels her watching him, so he chances a glance up at her. She's smiling, and when he meets her eyes, she chuckles almost involuntarily.

"Sorry."

"What's so funny?"

She laughs again at his expression. "It's just, this is the most uncomfortable we've ever been, on a bed together. But it's the only time it's been kind of appropriate."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, when I worked for you, it was nothing for me to lounge around in your hotel room until two am, or for you to come hang out in mine. Which was weird, because I worked for you."

"It was weird?"

"Josh. What would your reaction have been if you found out that Ginger had been hanging out on Toby's bed with him until the wee hours of the morning?"

He screws up his face at this mental image.

"See?"

"Point taken."

"Good."

"We were different, though."

"Yeah." She agrees sadly. "Yeah, we were."

He resumes his intense scrutiny of his shoes.

"So, you miss me, huh?" She prods, not allowing him to let that one slide. He looks up at her, expecting her to be wearing the same amused look of before, but instead she looks doubtful.

"Nobody on this campaign gets my jokes." He says, instead of a real answer.

"I don't get your jokes either, Josh."

"Sure you do. And when you don't, you tell me that I'm being an idiot. These guys just stand there looking terrified of me."

"Something tells me you haven't exactly been the most amicable presence."

"I've been stressed! I'm leading a fucking campaign, what do they want from me?"

"A little love."

"How did Leo do it?"

"He didn't ask to be loved. He asked for respect. The love came with time."

"How much time?"

"You're a very polarizing person, Josh. People either love you like hell, or hate you like hell. So I'll imagine they've already got some strong feelings about you."

He wants to ask her which way she feels most strongly about him. "They don't get my jokes, Donna."

"You know something? My coworkers don't really get my jokes, either."

"Your humor is a bit of a high wire act."

"I've been trying so hard to be professional, and seasoned, and cool headed, that I've been... I don't know. Not myself, I guess."

"You mean to say you haven't yelled at any fascists in the street lately, or shut down any terminals?"

"I'm afraid not." She gives him a thin lipped smile, and then looks away, as if she regrets opening up to him.

"That's not just why I miss you, you know."

"Oh? Because my humor is really enough to miss, all on its own."

"You made everything easier. You made everything... Brighter."

"Josh..."

"I think I'm in love with you." He admits. It's a truth he's been tossing around in his head for months on end, trying and failing to grow accustomed to the feeling. After Gaza, he'd tried to shove it down, someplace where light couldn't reach. He'd just gotten her back, and damned if he was going to lose her over something as trivial as his own emotions. But evidently he was too successful, because she didn't know, and she left him.

The truth had begun to surface again lately, in the silences he couldn't fill with meetings or phone calls, when he was alone with himself and exhausted. When he looked up and saw a bus full of strangers, and realized that it didn't matter who he was with: if she was there, it'd feel like home.

"I know, Josh." She says softly.

He tries not to recoil in shock. "You... What?"

She emerges from her own reverie and looks at him almost absently. "Oh, sorry. That's probably not what you wanted to hear."

"Well, I mean... It's not what I was expecting."

"You'd probably like something a little grander?"

"I mean, this isn't exactly something I do often." He mutters, mortified to find that for once, he is blushing and she isn't. In fact, she hardly looks affected.

"Sorry." She repeats with a slight shrug.

"How did you... Know?"

"Well, you flew to Germany at a moment's notice. You didn't bother to pack any clothes, or, well... Anything. I mean, my own mother had the presence of mind to pack a few sets of clothes, but not you."

"I was preoccupied."

"You didn't get a hotel room, like Colin and my mom." She notices him twitch irritably at the mention of her ex. "You slept in my hospital room. In a chair. You didn't leave my side."

"I..."

"The third most important man in the country, probably very much needed on the other side of the world, didn't leave my side." She recalls, with a nostalgic warmth. She brings her knees up on to the bed and holds them. "I knew, Josh."

"I don't understand."

"What?"

"Why didn't you say anything?" He asks roughly, unable to keep the accusatory tone out of his voice.

"Because what good would it have done, Josh? You may have loved me, but I had no idea if you'd figured that out yet, and I knew that when you did you'd be scared shitless and you'd run for the hills, and if anything happened one of us would've fucked it up by going too far, or not far enough, or..." She trails off, frustrated that she'd broken her cool demeanor. "I just didn't think it changed anything."

"That's pessimistic as hell, Donna." He tells her, deeply disappointed in her. Of all the things that Donna Moss was, he'd never taken her as devoid of hope. He must've been pretty terrible, all those years, to give her so much doubt.

"Yeah, well." She shrugs, and takes a stiff breath. The heat doesn't leave her cheeks, much to her irritation. "I wasn't exactly in a hopeful place."

"What about you?" He asks suddenly.

"What about me what?"

"Were you ever in love with me?" He's surprised at how evenly he manages to ask this - and more so at how easily he'd confessed his own feelings. He is generally the kind of person who reserves the word "love" for blood relations, good music, and a select few brothers in arms. And the signature of cards he gave Donna. Somehow, "Sincerely," and "Yours," had never quite gotten the job done.

"I think you'll remember a twenty-four year old girl who camped out in your hospital room for a week, Josh."

"I do."

"That girl was in love with you." She says, in a jaded way that places cold disappointment between 'that girl' and herself.

"Is this one?" He asks, because he's intuited by now that she's not the same person.

She looks over at him sharply, as if he asks too much of her. He holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"Sorry." He mumbles.

She bites her lip, and gazes down at the carpet, indistinguishable from the dozens of other floors she'd stared at in the past months. With something like defeat, she says, "I am."

This moment doesn't feel like it's supposed to. There is no sweet wash of victory, nor the crashing impulse to lock lips and make up for years of repressed desire. Instead, he feels relief, a cooling agent that spreads from his chest - the place where the impulse to knock originated - through the rest of his body. For the first time in months, his lungs can expand fully.

"Huh."

"Huh." She echoes absently.

"Why'd you leave? If you love me?"

"Because. I've told you a million times, my job wasn't enough for me-"

"I meant, why'd you leave without telling me how you felt? Hell, without even saying goodbye?" His voice breaks on this last word, and to cover his emotion he stands up off the bed and paces to the far side of the room, where he stares out the darkened window.

She twists to watch him, and purses her lips. "You know the way you've been feeling, these past few months? In love with me, but not knowing if I cared about you at all?"

He feels the ache climbing back into his chest. "Yeah."

She smiles bitterly. "Imagine feeling like that for seven years."

He whips back around to stare at her, appalled. "You couldn't have thought..."

She shrugs listlessly. "I did."

"But you said you knew. You said you knew, after Germany."

"Josh, you have to understand that I was beyond sick of waiting for you to wake up one day and realize that I was valuable." She says this with so much spent pain, so much weariness, that he is forced to understand.

"I always found you valuable." He refutes, taking a step back toward her.

"Some days, maybe." She capitulates tonelessly.

He knows that that isn't enough. "I took you for granted. I know I did. I was so fucking stupid, looking back on it, but it was easy-"

"Don't." She interrupts him, squeezing her eyes shut. "Don't tell me how easy it was for you to think I'd always be at your side, doting on you, helplessly faithful, just... Don't."

"I didn't think that about you."

"Josh..."

"I didn't." He urges. She isn't looking at him, so he climbs onto the opposite edge of the bed, and reaches one hand out tentatively. "I mean, maybe I did some days, and it was stupid of me, but what was easy about it was... What we had was good. And I didn't want to screw it up. Even by thinking about it too much."

She smiles slightly. He does manage to screw a lot of things up by overthinking, she'll grant him that. "It was good for you." She says pointedly.

"Right. And maybe it wasn't so much for you. I guess I just didn't see it." He says brokenly. It is obvious that his self-blame is reaching a tipping point.

She feels suddenly guilty. "No, it... Was. It was good, mostly."

He almost smiles. At least not everything he'd thought about them had been wrong. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"I really do miss you."

"I miss you too." She finally admits. She turns fully to face him, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear almost girlishly. She lowers her eyes. "Nobody gets my jokes, Josh." She repeats, a hint of her trademark pout creeping through.

He grins. "You're an hysterically funny person, Donna."

"Thank you."

"Did you notice how I used 'an' there correctly?"

"Yes."

"You should let loose once in a while with these new guys. Even if they are stiffs, that like the stiff of all stiffs, Bob Russell. They'll like you."

"You think?"

"You're really very likable."

"I've always tried to tell you that."

"I'm finally sold on it."

A silence descends over the plain hotel room, which over the course of the night had changed from one of a million just like it, to, well... One in a million.

The delayed effects of hearing her confess her love for him begin to set in. The wash of victory. And, he becomes acutely aware as they watch each other, cautious but warm, the desire to kiss her. He doesn't really think that he's in love with her, as he'd said. He knows it.

There are a wealth of other things they still need to say to each other. They'll need longer to forgive each other, he knows. He needs to grovel a little more, and she needs to settle into herself more as an independent person. She needs to admit to herself that she's a little bit at fault, too, and then she needs to admit it to him. These things don't happen over night.

But as he watches her, with her faded blush and winter-faded freckles, staring at him with the same wide-open affection in her eyes of that twenty-four year girl... He thinks that maybe some things can happen over night. And a night apart, for two people in love, would surely be a night wasted.

She breaks the tension by saying, "It's been a long night. We should probably go to bed."

"Right." He practically springs off the bed, guilty for where his train of thought had taken him. He avoids eye contact as he takes a few steps toward the door. "I guess, we'll um, talk more later. In the morning, maybe? I know there's more to be-"

"Josh?" She interrupts, voice laced with amusement.

"Mm?"

As she'd wanted to do every time he'd left her hotel room at a similar time of night in the last eight years, she intones softly, "I was hoping you'd stay."

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I thought it'd be interesting to switch up the whole "I love you" thing. I usually write Donna as being surprised and taken aback by his love for her, but I felt like this could be in character too. The whole "it doesn't change anything" felt very real, too. Let me know what you guys think.

Thanks for reading! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!