DISCLAIMERS are all in the first part of If The Stars Still Silently Bless
You. Spoilers up through Disaster Relief.
A/N: If this were to have a subtitle, it would be named The Story That Almost Gave Me Gray Hair. (tm Elizabeth, my extraordinary beta-reader.) Speaking of her, thanks for limiting the gray hairs. Oh, yeah, and thanks for the editing, too. ;)
This is dedicated to all of you students who have to eat yucky cafeteria food. Don't touch the Salisbury steak. Trust me.
ANOTHER START
CJ and I are lying on our backs on my living room floor, drunk.
CJ's the first to say something after a long time. "I just yelled at the President."
"I told my boss to suck it up today," I add. Then I find myself giggling. "Suck it up. Get it?"
She turns to me and smiles, or maybe it's a grimace. "They're cutting back on Josh's job. Leo doesn't like us anymore," I continue.
"Well, I'm about to get fired." She looks at her mug for a long time. "I'm drunk," she decides.
"At least it doesn't hurt anymore. My heart hurted. I mean, hurt."
"Mine, too." And then she sits upright, sloshing beer all over herself. "You know what my favorite thing to do is? Dance. We can dance, and then we'll feel better."
"I don't dance."
"I won a competition in the tenth grade, baby. I could be the leader of any dancing group. You know, I just do the Jackal, and people laugh. Toby even laughs." She stands and begins shaking her hips to her own music.
I stand, too and nearly trip over Danielle's damn cats. Why do they have to be so underfoot all the time? And more importantly, why do they have to live with us?
"Dance with me, Donna," CJ says, finally putting her beer down and turning on my CD player. Danielle really likes Miles Davis, and a soothing jazz tune soon fills the air. She begins to shake her hips again, and the rhythm does not fit her movements.
I dance, reluctantly, and then let myself surrender to the music. It really does feel better.
After one of the tracks finishes, CJ sits down on my couch, looking exhausted. "Oh, Donna. Are we dancing because we're drunk or because the President has MS?"
I turn off the music and sit down next to her. "We're dancing because we've survived an assasination attempt, a kidnapping, coming clean about a disease, and the fact that I expect we don't have much longer to enjoy ourselves in the White House."
She nods just as the phone rings.
"Hang on." I roll my eyes and trip over Beady, who's taking turns staring at me and his food bowl with the biggest eyes I've ever seen. "Weren't you just fed?" Good Lord, here I am, talking to my roommate's cat.
The phone rings again and it's making my head hurt. "Donna Moss," I say in what I hope is a professional voice.
"Donna, it's Isabella Lyman," comes an urgent voice. "I've been trying to call Joshua at work, and at home, and I can't find him. He's been missing for several hours."
Why is Josh's mother calling me? And how did she get my number?
"Well, I'm sure he's around, I just--" and then it hits me. Josh is missing. Talk about sobering up fast. "Um, let me go look for him."
"I wouldn't burden you with that, dear. I just wanted to see if he was with you. He speaks so highly of you, and I wanted to figure out where he's been. You see, I saw the article in the paper, and I'm very concerned."
I'm vaguely aware of heat rising to my face. Josh speaks highly of me to his mother? I try not to grin like an idiot.
"Well, I'll find him and have Josh call you," I say.
"Thanks, dear. Let me know as soon as you can."
We hang up and I dial his cell phone number.
No answer.
"What's going on in there?" CJ yells.
"We can't find Josh."
"You can't find Josh? Where'd you put him?" And then she laughs as if this is the funniest thing she's ever heard.
I wonder back into my living room and sit down on the couch. "His mother just called and she's frantic."
The news that Josh is missing is enough to permeate CJ's semi-pickled brain.
"Do you have any idea where he might be?"
"I have suspicions. CJ, what if he's having a PTSD attack? What if he's--"
"Go, Donna. Wherever you might think he is. Go. I'll be fine. I'll walk."
"Okay."
I dart outside and drive towards the Capitol Building. I know technically I shouldn't be driving, but I can feel myself slowly sobering up. Besides, there are more important things right now. When I get out of the car, I walk to the bench outside of the Senate. He's right where I thought he might be. "Hey, Josh," I say, slowly walking towards him, "you're not PTSD-ing on me, are you?"
"Huh?" he says, eyebrows raised and looking too damn cute with all the dimples. "You can't really say PTSD-ing. It's not a verb."
I choose this moment to sit down next to him on the bench. "Doesn't really matter. You know, you really scared us, disappearing like that. Your mother saw the papers. She got worried when she couldn't reach you."
He mumbles something unintelligably.
"What?"
"I said I'm thinking about quitting."
"No, you're not."
"I am too. Leo's mad at me, the President's mad at me. Leo cut down on my job and hired Angela to take my place. It's only a matter of time before we have to step down anyway. I'd suggest you leave. Find yourself a better job. Go back to college."
"Okay, Josh. First of all, the Senator would have left the party anyway."
"How do you know?" Suddenly he looks like a child, raising his chin and pouting at me defiantly. I have an urge to take this child and hold him close to me, but that's beyond the point.
"Well, I think he was cooking for awhile. Just because someone torks you off it doesn't mean you just leave the party. If we changed political affiliation everytime someone torked us off, we'd be so conservative we'd be forcing women to have the baby even when they'd be hurt and wreaking havoc on the EPA." I take a deep breath. "Second of all, I can't leave you, Josh. I won't leave you. That would be something like betrayal."
He smiles a little, but then goes right back to looking depressed. "Yeah, but Leo obviously thought I did something wrong."
This presents a dilemma. Margaret had come to me earlier this morning to tell me she'd heard Abbey yell at Leo, blaming him for Zoey's kidnapping. Ever since then, he'd been on a rampage, yelling at Margaret, blaming the senior staff for everything that went wrong, you get the picture. The one problem? I'd promised Margaret I wouldn't tell anyone. After all, she wasn't supposed to know.
"What's with the silence?" Josh asks, startling me out of my reverie.
"Nothing." "Something's wrong."
"No, it's not."
He sighs and I look out at the surrounding scenery. Washington D.C. is truly beautiful this time of year. I decide to keep my promise to Margaret for now. "Leo's been... acting strange ever since Zoey was kidnapped," I begin, lamely.
"Yeah."
I'm not sure what pushes me forward, but somehow what I've just said isn't enough. "Um, we're all under a tremendous amount of pressure, Josh. I mean, God, you've done so well with the tax negotiations. The President's sick, and we've all been trying to hold it in for a long time." Tears well up in my eyes, against my will. "Leo's like that, too. I mean, I really think he needs a friend. We're so used to him being our boss we forget he's human." I laugh a little, and the tears fall. "Maybe you could just be a friend,"
Josh looks at me, as if he doesn't know what to do with his over-emotional assistant who's just lost it. "You know something, don't you?"
God. I hope I'm not blushing. Why is it that he can read me so well? "Yes,"I admit. "But I can't tell you."
"Okay."
"I just-- thanks for letting me cry."
"You feel better?"
"Well, no, not really, because it's cold outside, and it makes my nose run."
And then he laughs. It's not a short, bitter laugh, but a true, warm one. I haven't heard him laugh like this--God, since before Rosslyn.
"What did I do?" I ask. "You're laughing. Warmly."
"You can be really funny sometimes. It's all, you understand, accidental humor."
"Oh, gee, thanks," I retort. "So all this time I've been trying to make you laugh it's been for nothing?"
"Well, I wouldn't go that far," he says, standing up and motioning for me to take his arm.
"You know if anyone we know sees us like this they're gonna--"
"Let them look," he whispers.
"Call your mother," I whisper back as we head out to the car.
****
The next day in the mess hall, Margaret comes up to me with her usual gossip. "The President talked to Leo last night," she says, eyes shining. "I can tell. Leo-- well, he's scaring me." She slides in across from me at a table. "He sent me flowers."
"Did he really?" I ask, shocked. "Did someone possess him?" I don't really want to tell her I have a sneaking suspicion Bartlet was not the person who spoke to Leo last night. My heart swells with pride for Josh.
"No, it was an apology." She leans in closer to me. "Donna, I'm going to tell you something."
"What?"
"You can't tell anyone, because I don't know for sure."
"Spit it out."
She writes it down on her napkin. "I think Leo might be drinking again." Then she tears it up and looks at me.
"I've been scared of that," I whisper.
"Me, too."
"What can we do, though?"
"I'll drop hints," she says in her business-like tone.
"Okay."
She gets up, and stands over me for a minute. "Thanks, Donna."
"Okay."
When she leaves I find I can only pick at my food.
****
"Joshua? Eat your food." When I come back upstairs, I barge into Josh's office, only to become irritated at the fact that my boss isn't eating, either.
"I can't eat."
"What's wrong?"
"Negotiations on the tax bill isn't going well. Leo's in his office right now, deciding with the President and Angela if I'm allowed to have my job back. I can't eat."
"We can't have the deputy chief of staff waste away in hunger when he gets his job back, can we?"
"You try to eat this. They call this Salisbury steak. It's like, I dunno... Playschool food. With salt. That's what this tastes like. It's medium rare, too."
He makes a face, and I try not laugh at my boss's candid opinion of food that hasn't been burned.
"What are you talking about, Joshua?"
"I don't know." He sighs, and comes around to the front of the desk. He uses his fork to dump the meat into the wastebasket.
"Joshua! There are starving children in the Middle East!"
"There are starving children all over the world," he says darkly.
My heart plummets. Did I say something wrong? I make a mental note to myself that the next time I accept a job, I will not work for someone with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, even if he does have dimples. "Josh, I'm--"
"It's okay," he says, shaking his head.
"Did you call your mother?"
"Yeah."
"Good."
Suddenly Leo knocks on the door. God, he seems moody again."Josh, we've come to a decision. We've decided to give you full duties again. Angela will have Mandy's job. She'll be our political mind."
He slams the door shut behind himself and my heart slams down to the region of my shoes. If Margaret is right, and Leo is retreating back into drinking again, then eventually I'm going to have to tell someone.
"Congratulations, Josh!" I smile.
"Thanks. Um, don't you have a job to do?"
"Yeah." I scamper out of the office, feeling relieved for the first time in weeks. We still have a long way to go, but this is a start.
A/N: If this were to have a subtitle, it would be named The Story That Almost Gave Me Gray Hair. (tm Elizabeth, my extraordinary beta-reader.) Speaking of her, thanks for limiting the gray hairs. Oh, yeah, and thanks for the editing, too. ;)
This is dedicated to all of you students who have to eat yucky cafeteria food. Don't touch the Salisbury steak. Trust me.
ANOTHER START
CJ and I are lying on our backs on my living room floor, drunk.
CJ's the first to say something after a long time. "I just yelled at the President."
"I told my boss to suck it up today," I add. Then I find myself giggling. "Suck it up. Get it?"
She turns to me and smiles, or maybe it's a grimace. "They're cutting back on Josh's job. Leo doesn't like us anymore," I continue.
"Well, I'm about to get fired." She looks at her mug for a long time. "I'm drunk," she decides.
"At least it doesn't hurt anymore. My heart hurted. I mean, hurt."
"Mine, too." And then she sits upright, sloshing beer all over herself. "You know what my favorite thing to do is? Dance. We can dance, and then we'll feel better."
"I don't dance."
"I won a competition in the tenth grade, baby. I could be the leader of any dancing group. You know, I just do the Jackal, and people laugh. Toby even laughs." She stands and begins shaking her hips to her own music.
I stand, too and nearly trip over Danielle's damn cats. Why do they have to be so underfoot all the time? And more importantly, why do they have to live with us?
"Dance with me, Donna," CJ says, finally putting her beer down and turning on my CD player. Danielle really likes Miles Davis, and a soothing jazz tune soon fills the air. She begins to shake her hips again, and the rhythm does not fit her movements.
I dance, reluctantly, and then let myself surrender to the music. It really does feel better.
After one of the tracks finishes, CJ sits down on my couch, looking exhausted. "Oh, Donna. Are we dancing because we're drunk or because the President has MS?"
I turn off the music and sit down next to her. "We're dancing because we've survived an assasination attempt, a kidnapping, coming clean about a disease, and the fact that I expect we don't have much longer to enjoy ourselves in the White House."
She nods just as the phone rings.
"Hang on." I roll my eyes and trip over Beady, who's taking turns staring at me and his food bowl with the biggest eyes I've ever seen. "Weren't you just fed?" Good Lord, here I am, talking to my roommate's cat.
The phone rings again and it's making my head hurt. "Donna Moss," I say in what I hope is a professional voice.
"Donna, it's Isabella Lyman," comes an urgent voice. "I've been trying to call Joshua at work, and at home, and I can't find him. He's been missing for several hours."
Why is Josh's mother calling me? And how did she get my number?
"Well, I'm sure he's around, I just--" and then it hits me. Josh is missing. Talk about sobering up fast. "Um, let me go look for him."
"I wouldn't burden you with that, dear. I just wanted to see if he was with you. He speaks so highly of you, and I wanted to figure out where he's been. You see, I saw the article in the paper, and I'm very concerned."
I'm vaguely aware of heat rising to my face. Josh speaks highly of me to his mother? I try not to grin like an idiot.
"Well, I'll find him and have Josh call you," I say.
"Thanks, dear. Let me know as soon as you can."
We hang up and I dial his cell phone number.
No answer.
"What's going on in there?" CJ yells.
"We can't find Josh."
"You can't find Josh? Where'd you put him?" And then she laughs as if this is the funniest thing she's ever heard.
I wonder back into my living room and sit down on the couch. "His mother just called and she's frantic."
The news that Josh is missing is enough to permeate CJ's semi-pickled brain.
"Do you have any idea where he might be?"
"I have suspicions. CJ, what if he's having a PTSD attack? What if he's--"
"Go, Donna. Wherever you might think he is. Go. I'll be fine. I'll walk."
"Okay."
I dart outside and drive towards the Capitol Building. I know technically I shouldn't be driving, but I can feel myself slowly sobering up. Besides, there are more important things right now. When I get out of the car, I walk to the bench outside of the Senate. He's right where I thought he might be. "Hey, Josh," I say, slowly walking towards him, "you're not PTSD-ing on me, are you?"
"Huh?" he says, eyebrows raised and looking too damn cute with all the dimples. "You can't really say PTSD-ing. It's not a verb."
I choose this moment to sit down next to him on the bench. "Doesn't really matter. You know, you really scared us, disappearing like that. Your mother saw the papers. She got worried when she couldn't reach you."
He mumbles something unintelligably.
"What?"
"I said I'm thinking about quitting."
"No, you're not."
"I am too. Leo's mad at me, the President's mad at me. Leo cut down on my job and hired Angela to take my place. It's only a matter of time before we have to step down anyway. I'd suggest you leave. Find yourself a better job. Go back to college."
"Okay, Josh. First of all, the Senator would have left the party anyway."
"How do you know?" Suddenly he looks like a child, raising his chin and pouting at me defiantly. I have an urge to take this child and hold him close to me, but that's beyond the point.
"Well, I think he was cooking for awhile. Just because someone torks you off it doesn't mean you just leave the party. If we changed political affiliation everytime someone torked us off, we'd be so conservative we'd be forcing women to have the baby even when they'd be hurt and wreaking havoc on the EPA." I take a deep breath. "Second of all, I can't leave you, Josh. I won't leave you. That would be something like betrayal."
He smiles a little, but then goes right back to looking depressed. "Yeah, but Leo obviously thought I did something wrong."
This presents a dilemma. Margaret had come to me earlier this morning to tell me she'd heard Abbey yell at Leo, blaming him for Zoey's kidnapping. Ever since then, he'd been on a rampage, yelling at Margaret, blaming the senior staff for everything that went wrong, you get the picture. The one problem? I'd promised Margaret I wouldn't tell anyone. After all, she wasn't supposed to know.
"What's with the silence?" Josh asks, startling me out of my reverie.
"Nothing." "Something's wrong."
"No, it's not."
He sighs and I look out at the surrounding scenery. Washington D.C. is truly beautiful this time of year. I decide to keep my promise to Margaret for now. "Leo's been... acting strange ever since Zoey was kidnapped," I begin, lamely.
"Yeah."
I'm not sure what pushes me forward, but somehow what I've just said isn't enough. "Um, we're all under a tremendous amount of pressure, Josh. I mean, God, you've done so well with the tax negotiations. The President's sick, and we've all been trying to hold it in for a long time." Tears well up in my eyes, against my will. "Leo's like that, too. I mean, I really think he needs a friend. We're so used to him being our boss we forget he's human." I laugh a little, and the tears fall. "Maybe you could just be a friend,"
Josh looks at me, as if he doesn't know what to do with his over-emotional assistant who's just lost it. "You know something, don't you?"
God. I hope I'm not blushing. Why is it that he can read me so well? "Yes,"I admit. "But I can't tell you."
"Okay."
"I just-- thanks for letting me cry."
"You feel better?"
"Well, no, not really, because it's cold outside, and it makes my nose run."
And then he laughs. It's not a short, bitter laugh, but a true, warm one. I haven't heard him laugh like this--God, since before Rosslyn.
"What did I do?" I ask. "You're laughing. Warmly."
"You can be really funny sometimes. It's all, you understand, accidental humor."
"Oh, gee, thanks," I retort. "So all this time I've been trying to make you laugh it's been for nothing?"
"Well, I wouldn't go that far," he says, standing up and motioning for me to take his arm.
"You know if anyone we know sees us like this they're gonna--"
"Let them look," he whispers.
"Call your mother," I whisper back as we head out to the car.
****
The next day in the mess hall, Margaret comes up to me with her usual gossip. "The President talked to Leo last night," she says, eyes shining. "I can tell. Leo-- well, he's scaring me." She slides in across from me at a table. "He sent me flowers."
"Did he really?" I ask, shocked. "Did someone possess him?" I don't really want to tell her I have a sneaking suspicion Bartlet was not the person who spoke to Leo last night. My heart swells with pride for Josh.
"No, it was an apology." She leans in closer to me. "Donna, I'm going to tell you something."
"What?"
"You can't tell anyone, because I don't know for sure."
"Spit it out."
She writes it down on her napkin. "I think Leo might be drinking again." Then she tears it up and looks at me.
"I've been scared of that," I whisper.
"Me, too."
"What can we do, though?"
"I'll drop hints," she says in her business-like tone.
"Okay."
She gets up, and stands over me for a minute. "Thanks, Donna."
"Okay."
When she leaves I find I can only pick at my food.
****
"Joshua? Eat your food." When I come back upstairs, I barge into Josh's office, only to become irritated at the fact that my boss isn't eating, either.
"I can't eat."
"What's wrong?"
"Negotiations on the tax bill isn't going well. Leo's in his office right now, deciding with the President and Angela if I'm allowed to have my job back. I can't eat."
"We can't have the deputy chief of staff waste away in hunger when he gets his job back, can we?"
"You try to eat this. They call this Salisbury steak. It's like, I dunno... Playschool food. With salt. That's what this tastes like. It's medium rare, too."
He makes a face, and I try not laugh at my boss's candid opinion of food that hasn't been burned.
"What are you talking about, Joshua?"
"I don't know." He sighs, and comes around to the front of the desk. He uses his fork to dump the meat into the wastebasket.
"Joshua! There are starving children in the Middle East!"
"There are starving children all over the world," he says darkly.
My heart plummets. Did I say something wrong? I make a mental note to myself that the next time I accept a job, I will not work for someone with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, even if he does have dimples. "Josh, I'm--"
"It's okay," he says, shaking his head.
"Did you call your mother?"
"Yeah."
"Good."
Suddenly Leo knocks on the door. God, he seems moody again."Josh, we've come to a decision. We've decided to give you full duties again. Angela will have Mandy's job. She'll be our political mind."
He slams the door shut behind himself and my heart slams down to the region of my shoes. If Margaret is right, and Leo is retreating back into drinking again, then eventually I'm going to have to tell someone.
"Congratulations, Josh!" I smile.
"Thanks. Um, don't you have a job to do?"
"Yeah." I scamper out of the office, feeling relieved for the first time in weeks. We still have a long way to go, but this is a start.