3: Sixty-Foot Snakes and Mental Draino

Willow had headed back home to Sunnydale, with promises to bring in the rest of the Scooby Gang and report back. Everybody else was forced to put things on the back-burner whilst they got on with the minor business of running the country. Josh, though, was somewhat distracted.

"Josh, is there something I should know?" Donna asked finally, perching on his desk beside him.

"Huh?"

"Some deeply meaningful, life-changing snake-related incident in your past?"

"Donna-"

"I mean, perhaps, were you stolen from your crib by a boa constrictor? Did your favourite pet rabbit end up a bite-sized reptile snack? 'Cuz obviously, I'm not for one minute entertaining the idea that the great Joshua Lyman might have a phobia."

"I am not afraid of snakes!" he retorted, looking wounded.

"Of course not, of course not. 'Mildly disturbed by', perhaps? 'A tinsy bit wary of'?"

"Donna, I am not afraid of snakes! And I don't think being..." he struggled for a different term, but was forced to used it; "mildly disturbed by a sixty-foot snake is unreasonable!"

"I'm not," she shrugged, swinging her legs. He raised a sceptical eyebrow. "Why should I be? I've fought vampires."

"Yeah, but they're... vampires. And a giant snake is... a giant snake."

"Clearly, that seven-sixty verbal was totally deserved."

"Come on, Donna! Roger Tribby the Agricultural Secretary might turn into a sixty-foot snake at any moment, and you're not at all wigged out by that?"

Donna might have admitted she was, had she not been distracted by Josh's vocabulary. "'Wigged out'?" she queried.

"It's a word," he said defensively.

"Two words, even."

"I got it from Sam."

"I should point out, Josh, that Sam thinks 'nervous hooleilia' is a word."

"Oh, so you jump me when I use two words, but you can do it?"

"I'm not the one with the 'seven-sixty verbal, baby'." She might have prepared a better response than that, had she not been somewhat distracted by Josh using the term 'so you jump me'.

Bad thoughts, Donnatella. Gotta do something about the bad thoughts.

"That's not verbal, it's math," Josh pointed out petulantly. He reconsidered. "Wait, I meant-"

Donna snickered. "You meant you can't count? Well, that explains those budget figures..."

"Donnatella Moss, did you just snicker?"

"No."

"Did too!"

"See, that's exactly the kind of reasoned argument that wins policy debates."

"I win policy debates. I am da man at policy debates!"

"Yes. The only possible explanation being, no one got around to telling your opponents you can't count up to two."

"Donna!"

"Again with the masterful responses. This seems like a good time to negotiate for a raise."

"Well, if we're all gonna get eaten by a giant snake in a month's time, it hardly seems necessary."

"You don't want me to die happy?"

"A raise would be enough to make you die happy?"

Present it to me with the smile with the dimples, and then we're cookin' with gas.

"See what working with you has done to me? I have lost all concept of self-worth. I have been drained of all my expectations. Joshua Lyman, psychological Draino."

"I unblock your brain, thus allowing things to run through it faster?"

"You foam, puff up, and blank my brain of all contents no matter how hard they try to cling on."

"My assistant has a clogged brain. Well, this just explains everything."

"Currently it's clogged with the fact that you have a morbid fear of snakes and can't count up to two."

Josh grinned cutely at her, and recited in a sing-song voice "I think that one would be no fun; I cannot see my way to three; I don't like four, or even more; but two, I do - that's me and you."

It was undoubtedly one of the most pathetic, childish, uninspired, silly attempts at poetry Donna had ever heard.

It kept her smiling for at least eight hours.