Still Standing

by: Allison

Character(s): Josh, Donna
Pairing(s): Josh/Donna
Category(s): Romance
Rating: TEEN
Summary: Sequel to Great Expectations

"Could you not do that in my office?" Donna whirled around at the sound of her boss's strained voice, suddenly understanding Sam's horrified look.

"Josh," she said unnecessarily. "We weren't -"

"I don't care," he replied flatly. "Just don't do it in here. Sam has an office."

His face darkening at the implication, Sam started, "Josh, you don't -"

"I don't want to hear it," Josh interrupted. "I have enough to worry about right now without my best friend using my office for -"

"Stop it!" Donna practically screamed. Both men looked at her in surprise. "Joshua, there is no good end to that sentence so just quit while you're ahead. Sam, there's nothing you can do here. Go. I'll handle it."

Sam backed up in surprise, but was not at all adverse to her taking charge. "Are you sure I shouldn't..."

"No, I should," she replied. "It's okay, go."

When the door had closed firmly behind him she turned furiously on her boss. "Now. You. What you saw - was nothing. It was a friendly kiss. Nothing else. We were complaining about our mutual unrequited love and then we kissed - you know why?" she asked as the perfect words suddenly came to her. "Because we love each other. Not romantically, but we do. And we're not afraid to let each other know that." She saw each word hit home and knew she was on the right track to - something.

"So that's not unrequited love for each other?" he asked weakly.

She faced him squarely, hands on her hips. "Fulbright Scholar? If it was for each other it wouldn't be unrequited, would it?"

He had to agree that she had a point. He was about to ask, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, who it was that she was in love with, but she kept going.

"And you know what else? I have really no idea where you get off acting like such a jerk about this in the first place! Even if Sam and I were involved, what right would you have to be angry about it? It's not like you ever - " She broke off with a frustrated groan and started pacing around his office.

The abrupt end to her sentence intrigued him, but in typical Josh fashion he was stuck on the least important thing she'd said. "I'm acting like a jerk?" he echoed in disbelief.

She rounded on him sharply. "You better just count your lucky stars I cut you off earlier."

"You don't know what I was going to -"

"... 'without my best friend using my office for' - what? A tawdry fling? A White House sex scandal? A roll in the hay?"

He flinched at the harshness of her words. "Okay, you're pretty close."

Her voice dropped again and she stopped in front of him but several yards away. "I know you wouldn't have been able to forgive yourself if you said anything like that to Sam or about me - and I may not have been able to forgive you, either."

That hung in the air between them for a long, agonizingly silent few moments.

"I wouldn't think of you as somebody's tawdry fling," he said finally, quietly.

She thought for a moment with one eyebrow lifted and when she spoke every word stabbed. "'If you want to have sex you'd better do it during dinner'?"

He closed his eyes against her hurt expression. "I was teasing."

"Were you?"

"I was out of line."

"You were."

"I'm sorry." He opened his eyes finally and looked at her.

She nodded. "Yeah."

"I get the impression you don't believe me."

She considered. "I believe you're sorry that I'm mad at you. I'm not sure you're sorry for the things you said."

He thought hard. Neither moved. "I am." He nodded back at her. "I jumped to conclusions about you and Sam and I acted badly, and I'm sorry."

"That's it?"

"What do you want?" he nearly exploded, remembering belatedly that she was the one who needed to be placated.

"I want to know why you acted that way," she replied coolly.

He stopped. "I was upset."

"Sam's your best friend and I'm your assistant. You like us both. So which one of us isn't good enough?"

"It's not like that," he said, feeling his control slip. "I - I don't know why I - not everything has a reason."

"Everything has a reason," she countered. She sounded angry and sad and disappointed and curious all at the same time. Her eyes pressed him for an answer.

"You don't give me much credit for emotional capacity," he said finally. "You said I like you and Sam? I like you both? But you love each other? I know, I know," he said as he saw her about to protest, "as friends. Donna..." He raked a hand through his hair and looked her sincerely in the eye, fighting his discomfort. "I love you both. Okay? Don't - don't ever doubt that. I love Sam, and I love you. That said," he turned away from her nervously, "that said, I can't explain what made me so angry."

"You can't?" Now she just sounded resigned, and that was somehow worse.

"I -" He looked back at her almost over his shoulder. She was standing in the middle of his office with her arms crossed so tightly over her chest that she was practically hugging herself. Her long hair was pulled back from her face but spilled loosely over her shoulders - that and the simple cardigan she wore made her look particularly young and vulnerable. Her eyes were shining and she was pressing her lips firmly together. The encounter - fighting with him - had been hard on her, he could see that. She looked exactly as she had on New Year's right before she'd started to cry, and he wanted nothing more than to cross the room in two steps and take her in his arms. He also knew that he couldn't do that, not now. He lifted a hand to his mouth, formulating his words carefully.

"Donna," he said, buying time while he thought. One hand flew unbidden to his heart as he spoke. "All I know is that I walked into my office and saw you kiss Sam, and my heart was in my throat. And I know that you and I have not been right together for a while now. Not since long before Christmas. We haven't been the way we used to be. And," that lump returned to his throat, but he pressed his hand to his chest and forced the words out, "I don't know what you need. Once - one time - you told me, and I tried to be there. You know, you -" He got off topic, looking at her and shaking his head in admiration. "You take such good care of me, Donna. But that's because you know what I need."

"I told you, I'm in tune to you," she said, trying to interject some humor and, by extension, some normalcy.

He smiled, but continued undeterred. "What I mean is - obviously, you need something that I'm not giving you." He started to pace again. "What I've been thinking about lately is, why all of a sudden do I feel like I should be the one giving it to you - when we've only ever had a working relationship? And I have - not the whole answer, but part of it." He stopped and faced her from a safe distance. "Part of it - the easiest part - is that we're connected, and we have been for a long time. And anyone else coming into that I feel is intruding - no matter who it is. That said," he couldn't look at her expressionless face anymore and turned away, "for - for whatever reason I want to be the one who's able to provide support, or friendship, or whatever it is that you need right now. But if I can't -" He took a deep breath. "If I can't do that for you, and Sam can, then I want him to take care of you. Because I want you to be getting what you need."

Donna took a long time to process that. "Sam," she said finally, "accepts me, flat out, the way I am. There's nothing at stake with Sam. I know how he feels about me, and I know that won't change." She licked her lips nervously. "I'm not sure how you feel about me. And it seems I'm not the only one," she added with a trace of laughter. "You don't know how you feel about me, either."

He offered her an apologetic, ironic look. She acknowledged it with a nod and continued.

"So it's easy for me to tell Sam what I need, because I know he'll be a friend and there won't be anything weird about it. If I - with us - I think it would change things about our relationship."

"Are you afraid I would brush you off?" he asked gently. "If you asked me to be there for you?"

"You have," she replied quietly.

He closed his eyes again. Sam had probably never told her that he didn't care about what she did in her spare time. "Donna - things have changed with you and me since then," he began, and then he stopped suddenly. His mind flashed back a couple weeks, to Donna's couch in the middle of the night:

'What do you mean, all the things that changed?'
'I don't know what I mean.'

That was what she'd meant. She'd meant that after the shooting, after she'd taken care of him, she'd expected their relationship to change. She had to know that it had changed - didn't she?

He realized he had left her in the middle of a thought. "You know what an insensitive jerk I can be - and I think you also know that I pretend not to be interested in your life as part of that safe boss-assistant thing we've tried to keep under control. But I don't care for you less than Sam does."

She nodded very slowly. He could tell that she was deciding whether to say something. After a moment, she made up her mind. "I said a while ago that I always need you," she said quietly. She spread her hands, putting it all on the table. "Do you want me to? Because I can either be a friend or a burden, but not both."

"You could never be a burden," he whispered almost reverently. "I need you. And I want you to need me." He felt a bit dramatic - under most circumstances he couldn't imagine himself saying these things - but a lot of things that he thought went without saying apparently needed to be said.

"Not just Sam," she said in reply. She sounded a little teary.

He was lost. "Sorry?"

"I don't love just Sam," she clarified. "I love you, too."

"I know," he said in wonder. It came as a surprise to him that he actually did know that. C.J.'s speculations aside - he didn't know whether it was romantic love, but he did really know that Donna loved him. He could feel it in everything she did.

She only looked at him from across the office, but she didn't miss the way his eyes lit up when he said that. "Good," she replied.

As he spoke, he stood in place but very slowly opened his arms. "I'm not Sam, but I'm trying."

She hesitated for only a second before walking into them and burying her face in his shoulder. "I'm sorry I yelled at you," she murmured, her voice sounding even more teary than before.

"I deserved it," he replied, rubbing her back. "As usual."

"I'm going to remember you admitted that."

"And I'm going to regret saying it, I can tell." They both tightened their embrace, wanting to hold on for as long as possible. He tilted his head and kissed her twice on the forehead, then found himself to his wonder admitting, "I don't want to let go of you."

In response her arms tightened even more around him and she whispered, "When you came home from the hospital?"

"Yeah?"

"That's exactly how I felt."

"You never told me," he said, beginning to understand more and more.

"I didn't think it mattered."

"It matters."

She didn't miss the present tense. But reluctantly she pulled away from him, feeling the cold air hit her where his body had been. "It's the middle of the morning," she reminded him, wiping at her eyes.

"Right." He smiled at her. "It's been a rough day already, huh?"

She met his eyes with a smile of her own - a real one, this time. "We can handle it."

"We can," he agreed. "We're survivors."

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

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