Title: Expenses
Author: ScullyAsTrinity
Rating: PG
Category: Angst/Romance
Summary: Post Memorial Day; fairly cheesy piece about waking up. Josh/Donna.
Dedication: To my New York girls Aiah and Dani, just because they're awesome.
[---]
Josh was not there when she awoke, and there was nothing to remind her that he had ever been there.
Reaching her now alien hands up to her face, she felt an unfamiliar weight on the right hand. Looking at it, she found an unfamiliar golden glint there. A small ring, encrusted with diamonds took up residence on her ring finger.
She quirked an eyebrow. It was rare that she ever wore jewelry, aside from her small earrings and the occasional pendant necklace.
Now, she was unsure of herself. Had she possibly done something incredibly irrational and spontaneous with Colin? Had he proposed to her and had she forgotten that she had said yes? Calming herself, she realized that the ring took up residence on her right hand, not her left.
Reaching over for her glass of water, she knocked an errant paper to the floor. It wafted slowly, as if in slow motion and landed under the bed. Donna took a long sip of the water and pressed the bedside button that requested the nurse. Moments later, the woman came scuttling, expecting something much more than a request to retrieve the paper that had lilted to the floor.
After the paper had been placed delicately back on the bedside cart, Donna a moment to examine the piece of jewelry on her finger.
Thin, it was incredibly thin. The band felt as if it was barely there, but it was. Gold, wrapped intricately around another strand of the same, intertwined. The diamonds that sat atop the piece were tiny, cut so minutely that it made her wonder how they were cut at all. The light from the overhead light glinted off the shiny rock and glinted back into her eye, making her look away.
The diamond in the middle was tinted pink and caught her attention. Donna's inquisitive side led her to examine it more precisely. Sure, she was sure that she had not purchased it. She was absolutely positive that it was not sent to her as a gift.
Absently, her left hand reached over to the table and picked up the piece of paper that had fallen.
'Donna-
I would be with you here now had it not been for the dire situation back home. Leo needed me, and I heeded his call and I feel like a soldier abandoning his troop. I feel I have betrayed you in some way, but felt the need to commit my words to paper to be sure that you would read them if I could not to be there to speak them.
In an attempt to do that I'll allow my misplaced eloquence to lead my brain here...
Look what you've done to me. I'm fixed on this, what shouldn't be. But here it is, I put it out there, I suppose. As you can guess from the ring on your hand-'
The next park was scratched out, but instead of attempting to decipher it, she skipped it and kept reading.
'See? I'm terrible at this but I couldn't leave things as they were. I suppose I'm a coward for running, and I suppose I'm a coward for staying with you and saying nothing... nothing, well, speaking nothing of the volumes I feel for you.
The ring-'
Scratched out again. Donna smiled a bit and skipped the blotting of ink.
'On your hand you'll find a ring, and hopefully find this message soon after. I won't tell you the things I feel for you. I won't tell you how my head swims when you smile at me or how my skin tingles whenever you touch me. I won't tell you how I've never felt this before because I'm a guy and I'm not supposed to say things such as that.
I'm not going to write those words that I so want you to hear because they're worthless on paper. I need to say them to you, when your eyes are on mine, and I'm sure that no number of red lights can keep us apart.
I just knew that if I didn't give this to you now, that if you didn't have it-'
Donna could hear Josh mumbling in his head as she stared down at the black ink, and the indecipherable words he had felt the need to destroy.
'If you didn't have the ring, I'd never have the courage to speak up and ask you if you wanted it. It's just a ring, if you want it to be. Donna, it's whatever you want it to be because I'll take anything and everything you want to give me but-'
His penmanship became lighter.
'If you knew how long I've had this ring in my possession, had this ring waiting for you, I'd scare you away, somewhere... and that scares me.'
He had changed pens there, she could tell from the huge blot in the middle of the paper and the distinction between the two types of grooves in the paper. He traced over the last 't' to be sure it was legible and had continued.
'I'm too frightened that I walk too fast for you. I'm too frightened that-'
He had started his sentence and stopped abruptly, had started a new one.
'I know that you know that I love my job, I love my job more than anything in my life at the moment, with the exception- No, you know how dedicated to my job I am, and you know how I can be and you still put up with me. You're there when I'm there and you're gone when I'm gone. And, I don't think you particularly care about being seen with me in public, even with my receding hairline, which says volumes.'
She smiled, cringed at the pain, and refused to swat at the tear that traced down her cheek, tickling.
'I mean, I don't particularly care-'
Another incomplete sentence.
'Alright, I've lost what grasp on words that I had. I waited until your surgery was through, made sure you were alright, slipped that ring on your finger and received my sixteenth call from Toby/CJ/Leo telling me that I was needed. Before you condemn them (or not) they send all of their love, and wish they could be there. CJ wanted me to tell you to disregard what she said in her office, because it was all backwards. But I digress.
Donnatella, take this as you want it, but all you have to do is say the word and-'
'They all think that it's- They all say- Nevermind. Take this as you want it. I just want you to know that I had to come home and had I not been, I would have bee there to see you wake up and mumble as I tried to tell you all of these things in person.
Oh, and pardon the cliches and grammatical errors and screw ups because when I'm speaking, or writing more accurately, from the heart, I tend to screw up beyond all reason.
Josh'
She wouldn't' pretend that it was the most exquisite piece of jewelry that she owned. She wouldn't pretend that it was the most expensive piece of jewelry she owned.
But as she slipped it off of her finger she realized that it was the only piece that she ever really wished she had. She'd wait for him to put it in it's proper place, but for the time being, she took it off and placed in the bedside table.
She could wait.