"Josh, chill."
"Did you just tell me to chill?"
"It would appear so."
"Is it somehow not clear that I'm your boss?"
"Congressman's recommendation ..."
"Oh."
"... with which I heartily concur."
~~~~~
"You told me to chill," Josh complained as soon as Donna answered her cell phone.
"That was two days ago. You're still harping on that?" she asked incredulously.
"Yes, because it's been two days since I've seen you. And two days since you told me to chill."
"I did. And now I'm telling you again. Chill, Josh. Leo was great, and the Santoses are� well, let's just say they aren't freaking out about the photo anymore."
"What would you say they are freaking out about?" he asked, his voice just slightly higher than usual.
"Nothing," she told him emphatically, trying to keep him from getting himself all worked up. "The Congressman is enjoying his usual good humor. And his wife is no longer glaring."
"She was glaring at you?"
Donna could hear the indignation in his voice and rushed to reassure him. "Not just me. She was glaring at all of us. It wasn't personal."
"That's the problem, Donna. It is personal. She's going to be in the public eye a lot more than this once they're in the White House. She needs to stop glaring and look like the consummate political wife she is."
"I know," Donna said firmly. "I talked with her this afternoon. It'll be taken care of."
"It better be" Josh grumbled. "We've got less than two months. I can't have the candidate's wife be the biggest liability in this election. So if you could find some way to mention --"
"Yes, Joshua, I will mention to her again that from now on she should be more conscious of her attire," Donna said.
"Hey, that reminds me, what kind of underwear are /you/ wearing right now?"
"Oh no, we are not doing this. I'm in the middle of their kitchen, Josh!"
"So? It's not like you object to kitchens, especially if the stopover before St. Louis was any indication."
Blushing at the memory, she turned to face the cabinets and lowered her voice. "I'm not telling you about my underwear."
"And yet� just the fact that you're whispering tells me that you are. Or will be very shortly."
She raised her voice to its normal volume, loud enough for Josh to get the hint, but still quiet enough not to attract attention from anyone in the other room. "I am not whispering."
"But you will be again, right?"
She stole a glance towards the dining room and then turned back to the cabinets, knowing he wouldn't let the subject go until she told him. "Fine," she said in a hushed voice. "They're blue. And silky."
"Thong?"
"Bikini. And how is it that I can /hear/ the leer in your voice?"
"It's a talent," he admitted smugly.
She rolled her eyes. Only Josh would consider that something to brag about. "Josh? Shut up."
"Shutting up now." There was momentary pause. "So I, uh, talked to Toby the other day."
"You did?" she asked, surprised. Glancing behind her again, she was gratified to realize that no one was paying the least attention to her phone call. "When?"
"During the California thing. And then after," he admitted quietly. "I don't know. There was a thing with CJ and then -- I wanted to talk to him. About Santos. And there was �."
He stopped and Donna frowned. "What, Josh?"
"Nothing," he answered quietly, and Donna knew he was trying not to make such a big deal about the visit. "Just� He's going through this whole thing alone and nobody calls. Or visits."
"CJ wants to."
"You've talked to CJ?" he squeaked out.
She smiled despite the seriousness of their conversation. "Yes, Josh, I do occasionally talk to CJ."
"I'm just surprised. Except for that one afternoon, she never talks to me."
"That's because you're usually complaining about how she's ruining your campaign. When I talk to her, it's about girl stuff."
Josh snorted. "So if I called to ask her about the latest Christian Dior, she'd give me more than two minutes of her time?"
"I'm impressed you even realize the importance of Christian Dior in a woman's life. But no, I don't recommend it. I think she'd fall over laughing if you did that," Donna observed dryly.
"Your point?"
"My point is that if you wanted to talk to her about something besides policy� like, let's say, a certain mutual friend� she might appreciate your call."
"Ok," he replied. "So� blue and silky, huh?"
"Josh!"
"What? I'm just asking."
"And I'm telling you � again � that I'm in the middle of their kitchen!" she hissed.
"So leave the kitchen. Don't they have any spare bedrooms over there?"
"Yes, and they're all currently housing Secret Service and miscellaneous staff," Donna reminded him.
"Donna! It's been /two/ days!" Josh whined.
"We're leaving tonight. I'll be back in DC before you know it."
"But you're not in DC /now/."
"Why Joshua, how absolutely brilliant you are to deduce that," she said dryly.
"Come home," he demanded.
Donna laughed at the petulance in his voice. "Should I point out that I'm actually here at your request?"
There was absolute silence for a minute, and then Josh's voice, trying for indifference and failing miserably. "I'm gonna go do a thing where I'm actually, you know, working now. And forget that my girlfriend could care less about seeing me or having sex again."
"Your girlfriend is very interested in both of those things. She's just a much more patient person and willing to wait another few hours."
"Patient and sadistic."
"I know. You poor baby," Donna said, smiling. "But don't worry, I'll make it up to you soon."
"Yeah?"
"Yes. When I get back to DC."
"Ahkay."
She smiled again and clicked her phone shut, counting the hours until they were wheels up and headed home.
~~~~~
"The President needs to fly down to Texas, stand next to the Congressman, and make the announcement next week."
"It's not going to happen."
"It's going to come out before the election anyway, C.J. You can't keep this kind of information quiet. The only question is: do you want the President to be a part of the story or not. Think about it. I'm around."
~~~~~
"I have ice cream," Donna announced, walking into the apartment and dumping a plastic grocery bag on the couch.
Josh looked up from the campaign memo he was reading to glance at her, then the bag, and then back at her again. "I thought you were heading to Kentucky," he said, squinting at her in confusion.
"I was. I decided I needed a stopover in DC," she explained, leaning over the back of the couch to give him a quick kiss.
"And the ice cream?" Josh asked, still baffled by her presence.
She grinned. "For celebration."
He tossed the memo onto the couch and rubbed at his forehead. Apparently, hours of reading endless memos about healthcare and education could addle one's brain. He'd have to remember to tell Lou that the next time she shoved a stack of them at him just as he was leaving the office at eleven o'clock at night. "Can we start this conversation over again?"
Smiling, Donna slid around the couch and perched on his lap. "Sources confirmed that an outstanding politician from the Santos campaign managed to move the molecular laboratory announcement to Austin today."
Snagging an arm around her waist, he pulled her closer, enjoying the feel of her after a full day apart. "Oh yeah?"
"Yes. So I decided to come congratulate him in person."
"That was a good idea," he said, finally catching on to her plan. Or most of it, at least. "But since you're here, and /not/ in Kentucky, maybe we could celebrate with something a little more exciting than ice cream."
"We're going to do that too," Donna replied with a grin of her own. Pulling away from him, she headed out of the room, grocery bag in hand.
Josh stared after her in amazement for a split second, then eagerly bounded up from the couch and followed her.
He found her in the bathroom, the ice cream carton sitting on the counter next to the sink. Donna was already in the process of stripping, her clothes landing haphazardly on the bathroom floor, so Josh leaned against the door jamb with his arms folded, and appreciated the view.
When she was finally naked, he stepped forward, laying his hand against her neck and pulling her in for a deep kiss. It was several minutes before he breathlessly broke away from her and raised an eyebrow. "So�. Ice cream?"
"Caramel Sutra," she said, moving away from him and stepping into the tub.
"My favorite." He pulled his sweater off and pushed his jeans down to his ankles. "Although, you could have gotten some girly thing like Mango Sorbet and it would have been my favorite tonight."
She chuckled and tugged at his hand until he joined her within the confines of the tub and shower. "I know."
"But lucky for me, I have a girlfriend who knows what I like," he said, smirking and leaning over to grab the carton from the counter. He pried the lid off and then studied the melting mass, wondering how best to get the ice cream from there to Donna's body.
He finally settled for scooping up a glob of it up with his fingers. Looking up at Donna, a slow smile spread across his face. This was going to be fun.
Still watching her face, he slid his fingers across one of her breasts, coating her nipple with ice cream. Her eyes widened when his cold hand made contact and she let out a little squeak. He chuckled softly and snaked an arm around her waist, keeping her upright and close, so she couldn't squirm away.
"Josh� That's not fair. It's cold," she protested weakly.
"You bought me ice cream, Donna. For celebration. It's entirely fair," he answered as he lowered his head and replaced his fingers with his mouth, covering the tender nipple and licking away all the cold. He raised his head. "Better?"
"Oh god, yes! More," she groaned, pushing his head back towards her breast.
He resisted and grinned at her. "More ice cream? But, Donna, you always tell me I eat too much��
She cut him off with a hard kiss. "Just shut up and�"
Her voice trailed off as he dutifully complied with her request, scooping up more of the frozen confection and applying it to her other nipple, swirling it around the hardened bud until she was gasping with need. Then he bent his head and proceeded to offer the same attention to this breast as he had the first one.
He continued to lick at her skin until he was sure there was no ice cream left and that all he was tasting was pure Donna.
"Is that what you had in mind?" he asked with a smirk, when he raised his head again. "Maybe I should check other parts of you � you do seem a little cold. I could warm you up."
She made a strangled little noise and Josh couldn't tell if she wanted to kill him for such a bad joke or was just impatient. He decided to go with the latter and reached over to grab more ice cream.
This time, he didn't coat her skin with it. Instead, he licked at his own fingers, watching her eyes follow his every move with a deep heated passion.
Josh smiled at her. "You like that?"
She parted her lips, but all that came out was a breathy gasp as he separated her thighs and plunged his still cool fingers inside of her, stroking and teasing the hot, wet flesh there.
"I think you do," Josh whispered into her ear. "I think this is exactly what you were hoping I would do."
He knelt down in front of her and located her clit with his mouth, tenderly licking it a few times. With a little yelp of surprise, she clamped her thighs around his head, causing him to wince and wonder if she was trying to tell him no or more. He was pretty sure she was enjoying his attention though, so he flicked his tongue against her one more time, testing her reaction. She gasped his name and pushed her pelvis towards his face. Yup. She was definitely enjoying it.
Encouraged, he licked her some more, alternating between hard purposeful strokes and feather-light touches that made her squirm and fidget above him.
Grinning against her sex, he steadied her with a firm grasp on her hip and licked at her again. She whimpered and he knew that she was close. Abandoning the attention he'd been giving her with his tongue, he moved closer and sucked on her clit, making her cry out. He sucked harder, his fingers plunging deeper inside her, and he felt her shudder as she came, her muscles clenching around his fingers.
It wasn't enough. He continued his attentions, pushing her towards another orgasm, his mouth and fingers teasing and coaxing her sensitive flesh. Within minutes, he was rewarded by her sobbing his name as she climaxed again.
He slumped back, leaning against the rounded side of the tub and stretching his legs out before him. Donna sank to her knees in front of him, looking amazingly beautiful. Beautiful and refreshed. He had no idea how she managed it, but the night -- ok, it was far from young -- but they still had a few hours yet. He planned on using them wisely, if she wasn't too tired from the previous half hour's exertions.
"You're not too tired yet, are you?" he asked lazily, smiling at her and reaching for her hand so he could pull her against him.
"No," she answered slowly, with a wide, mischievous grin. Evading his grasp, she reached over and grabbed the ice cream carton from the counter.
He barely had a moment to enjoy the view of her lovely dangling breasts before she was leaning towards him again and smearing the cold gooey substance down his chest, across his stomach and around his cock. He yelped.
"Donna!"
"What?" she asked innocently. "You had your fun. Now it's my turn."
And then her mouth was covering the melting ice cream and he forgot all about the uncomfortable cold. She swirled her tongue over his nipples and then slowly slid down his chest to his stomach, dipping delicately into his navel before moving even lower. Her mouth was hot and wet as it engulfed his aching cock and� omygod, she was doing that thing with her tongue and her hand� where were her fingers? Didn't matter. She was�
"Donna� you can't�aghhh� I'm gonna� it's� oh godddddd�"
It was too late. As much as he tried to forestall the inevitable, he couldn't control his body's reaction. He came in a hot rush, his hips jerking away from the porcelain tub as he pulsed between her lips. Embarrassed, he began to babble an apology, but she cut him off, sliding up his body to give him a long, lingering kiss.
"I don't deserve you. Brains, beauty, and a willingness to do� that."
She giggled and leaned against his sticky chest. "Just accept it and move on."
"Done. Moving on."
"Good."
He lifted a hand to stroke her hair and he realized that some of the ice cream had clumped the strands together in a gooey, tangled mass. "We're a mess."
"Well, that's why we're in the bathtub."
"Yeah?"
Donna chuckled. "Yeah."
He shifted her away from him and stood up, offering his hand to help her up as well. Then he turned and flicked on the shower. As the warm water streamed over their bodies, he pulled her back into his arms. "Guess we'll just have to concentrate on cleaning each other up then, won't we?"
Donna laughed. "I guess so."
~~~~~
"I want you to lead a couple of reporters toward those documents about Vinick and San Andreo."
"I thought you didn't want our fingerprints on it."
"Just drop hints. Ask leading questions. Do it off the record."
"That's going to get out. You were the one who didn't want to--"
"Once the President bear hugs Vinick, the game is over."
"Does the Congressman know about this?"
"Just ... go."
~~~~~
Donna nodded dumbly at Rebecca, then quickly made her way out of the press room and towards the bank of elevators.
Sixth column, front page.
They already had the story.
Before she'd even said a word.
She breathed a sigh of relief and slumped against the wall, waiting for the elevator.
Josh had been wrong to tell her to leak the story, but he'd ordered her to do it anyhow, against the Congressman's order and her own better judgment. Thank god she hadn't actually said anything -- a press statement from the campaign would have made them all look bad.
Josh knew it, too. Which was why he'd ordered the campaign to go dark in the first place, she thought in frustration. He knew it was a bad idea. But his judgment lately had been erratic and this wasn't the first time he'd let something like this get to him. It was understandable, given all the things he'd been coping with � the media buys, the message, Helen Santos, CJ, Goodwin� It wasn't surprising that he was acting the way he was -- there was only so much one man could take. He'd been dealing with all of this for weeks, since Ellie's wedding. Since /before/ then.
Oh god. Ellie's wedding. She tried pushing thoughts of that evening out of her mind, but it was too late.
He'd suggested a wedding. /Their/ wedding. Whether for gifts or a party or an actual desire to be married to her, she wasn't sure. They'd both played it off, making light of his suggestion, pretending it had been a joke. But did she want to joke about marrying Josh, turn the idea of it into something so unimportant and inconsequential?
The answer, if she was honest, was no. She wanted that with him. Maybe not the thousand guests or the horribly formal reception that Ellie'd had, but a wedding. A marriage.
She needed to talk to Josh about that, tell him that that's what she wanted -- in person, not on the phone during a few stolen moments.
But they'd been on a non-stop rollercoaster since he'd said it, barely squeezing in a few hours for sleep or sex before one of both of them jetted off to separate cities. And she hadn't been able to find the right time to ask him about it.
Besides, how exactly did one go about asking a question like that? "Good morning, here's the latest news from Reuters, and by the way, did you really mean it when you mentioned that we should get married?"
It wouldn't work. Not with Josh. He'd stutter whatever he thought she wanted to hear or pretend he hadn't heard her at all.
The elevator dinged, jarring her out of her thoughts. Right. Focus. She had a job to do, and right now that meant telling Josh that the press had the story, not fixating on his impromptu, possibly facetious, proposal.
Stepping into the elevator, she punched the button for their floor. Her gaze drifted idly around the cold metallic interior until finally settling on the numbers flashing by -- 2, 3, 4...
He was waiting for her when the doors slid open. Gazing anxiously at her, he asked, "Did you leak it?"
"Not exactly," she hedged, heading down the hallway to one of the campaign suites, where they would have a little more privacy.
He followed close on her heels, turning her to face him as soon as the door closed. "Then what exactly did happen?" he asked, his forehead crinkling.
"They already had it," she informed him. "'Sixth column, front page' was about as good as we would have gotten if I'd managed to give them a quote saying anything new."
She watched as he squinted off into the distance, thinking. Probably coming up with ways they could use this new bit of information to their advantage, she surmised. Frowning, her voice unintentionally low and anxious, she asked, "Josh? Is this really how you want to handle this? Making statements about a tragedy as if it was political currency?"
"It /is/ political currency," he told her, his eyes snapping back to her face and his voice rising with each word. "And if we don't do anything to get the edge on Vinick now -- before he holds hands with the President in California and starts acting like he's the answer to everyone's prayers instead of the reason they need them -- then it's game over."
Her frown deepened. "This isn't how we should be handling this," she insisted. "You were right the first time: We should stay dark. Keep our hands clean. Let the press do the dirty work."
His eyebrows knit together. "And yet it was less than an hour ago that I told you to leak it and you didn't say anything."
"I did," she said firmly. His eyes flicked to hers and she could see a mixture of annoyance and contrition there. "You conveniently overrode my objections and ordered me to do it anyhow." There was a moment of quiet and then she added, "You need to stop playing into their hands, Josh."
"I'm not!" he protested, but she could hear the doubt in his voice.
"You are," she admonished softly. "This story was the political equivalent to a game of Chicken, and it was only by the grace of god that you won."
Her statement was met with silence and she reached out a hand, stroking his arm and feeling the bunched muscles beneath his shirt. She had won; he knew she was right and his silence proved it. But that didn't matter. He was tense. Too tense. Sliding her hand down to his, she linked their fingers together and offered him a small smile. "C'mon. We need to let everyone else know. And then we're going to catch up on our sleep. Every news outlet in the country is going to be talking non-stop about this story tomorrow and we're going need to all hands on deck."
He cocked his head at her, a slow smile spreading across his face. "When did you get so smart?"
"I've always been this smart," she said, grinning, secure in the knowledge that he already knew it. "You're just seeing it in action."
~~~~~