Joshua's POV

All my life, I have been conducting a fruitless search for my soul mate.

It's been tough. Okay, I'll admit it - I'm so damned ambitious that finding my soul mate has not been on the forefront of my agenda. But I have been keeping my eyes open. My mother's constant nagging has kept me aware of this quest, even while I've been buried in my career.

Most of my relationships have been work related, as I don't have the time or the inclination to look around in the real world.

All of my past relationships have been disasters. Whenever I began a new one, I convinced myself that this one would be the real thing. I always felt that Cupid had aimed well.. And I tried my best to make it work, to the point of keeping a relationship going well beyond its natural death. I tried to force these pointless sexual romps into something more, because I felt once I found that special someone, my life would be complete. All my past anguish and angst would be just that - in the past. My soul mate and I would live together happily ever after - just like in fairy tales.

Turns out that all this time my soul mate was right before my eyes. I just didn't realize it.

In the very beginning, during the campaign, our relationship was stiff and awkward. Boss and staffer. It took awhile to learn about each other, to learn the rhythms and rhymes of what made each other tick, to work smoothly together.

Once we were in the White House, our relationship grew slowly, with many missteps. There were too many distractions, disasters, and mishaps, coupled with the relentless flow of work.

Ours was a rocky relationship, exasperated by events, which caused us to question each other's integrity. Yet, we followed our consciences and did what we felt was the right thing. These actions slowly built trust and loyalty between us, a difficult bond to forge.

Then came the mentoring, the careful guidance of a career, the imparting of a lifetime of knowledge to someone you truly want to succeed. Because you believe in their ability to succeed. Friendship was a natural outgrowth of the mentoring.

Funny, even when you are together 15 - 20 hours a day, working, eating, traveling, it is difficult to build a personal relationship. You know, the kind where you know each other's likes and dislikes, where you can communicate with each other by just a look. Especially when co-workers all vying for attention constantly surround you. You have little time alone together, and when you do it's work related. But in a way this helped us, we got to see behind each other's public personas. We saw each other without the rose colored glasses of love that distort the beginning of most relationships. We caught a glimpse of each other's souls.

When it finally dawned on me, I went into immediate denial. It was so wrong, on so many levels, for so many reasons.

Yet, I kept thinking about it; dissecting my thoughts, analyzing the situation, thinking what-if, running the scenarios, trying to see if indeed we could have a future together. Watching, waiting for a sign. Wondering how I could send a signal, innocent enough so as to not be caught if it wasn't welcome, blatant enough to be caught if it was being sought.

I constantly pondered my predicament, instead of concentrating on work. My mind was a million miles away during meetings. My work was affected, I started making mistakes. Well, more mistakes than usual.

Then, late one night in the West Wing, while beating myself up over my latest screw up, we bumped into one another, and began to discuss my problems. In the process of helping me overcome my guilt over my failures, we opened up to each other in a way we never had before, and the rest is history.