EPISODE 8.2 – Written by Shan
This Year’s Love
TEASER
INT. JOSH'S APARTMENT
FEBRUARY 14, 12:30 A.M.
“What are you working on?" Donna eyed Josh over her laptop.
"Work." Josh didn't look up from the mountain of paper he had spread out on the dining table.
"I mean what specifically…"
"It'd be easier to tell you what I'm *not* working on," Josh placed another memo on one of the stacks he'd created in the center of the table and picked another one up off the big pile. "The confirmation, the situation on the Hill, point and counterpoint for the so-called Republican retribution over the pardon,
"So exactly which one of those things is all this stuff?" Donna craned her neck, reading one of the memos in the pile.
Josh snorted disgustedly. "This is everything else. This is what I'm doing instead of reading up on foreign policy and peacekeeping mission logistics, which I desperately need to do."
"Why are you --"
"Ginger Snap, you know I find any conversation with you to be beyond stimulating, but the longer we talk, the more I slow down, which means the longer I'm doing this, the less I sleep."
Donna leaned back in the chair and wrinkled her nose. "Ginger Snap's no good. I don't want a snack food term of endearment."
"You're the only woman I've ever known to actually veto a pet name. All fourteen I've tried," Josh said, losing himself in another memo. "Oh, hell, this should have been done last week." He cleared some space and started a new pile.
"As soon as you come up with a keeper, it'll stick," Donna said. She lolled her head back on the chair and stared at an invisible spot on the ceiling. "You know who Ginger Snap might be cute for, though?
Ginger."
"I'll try to remember that for when I start dating her." He felt the glare she fixed on him and slowly lifted his eyes to hers. "Obviously, what I meant was…"
"Let's go to bed."
Josh blinked. *That* was a hairpin turn. "I wish."
"Your wish could be my command, you know," she teased.
"How bored are you?" he laughed.
"But I'd have to insist you stop talking about people you're going to date *after* me."
"Donna, I have work to do, and so do you." He nodded at her laptop.
She pouted at her screen.
Josh knit his brows together. "*Don't you* have work to do?"
Donna shook her head, almost ashamedly. "Being consulted on flatware and doilies doesn't really take up that much of my time."
Josh rubbed his eyes before picking up another memo. "You don't do anything with doilies."
"I make executive doily decisions." She propped her chin in her hand.
"Donna, you've gotta TALK to her."
"I've tried."
"Not hard enough. I mean, obviously she needs help with the…doily part, too. She's out of her league; that much is obvious to everybody, unfortunately. She doesn't know the first thing about picking an agenda. You, however, do. You've got to get in her face about this and refuse to budge until she cracks." He looked up from the latest memo suddenly. "Wait a minute, what the hell have you been doing all this time if not working?"
Donna tucked her chin down. "Surfing."
He placed both palms flat on the table and leaned forward. "What site?"
"Different ones."
"Donna…"
"The bloggers are going crazy over us."
"Oh, God." He leaned back the chair and scrubbed his face with his hands.
"Don't start. This is not just a personal thing, Josh. This could become a liability for the administration. You're telling me you don't give a damn that people are talking about us?"
"Of course I give a damn." He dropped his hands to the table with a thud. "But I also have to give a damn about Baker, and Kazakhstan, and the Republican Senate, and the mess left to clean up after the pardon, and the endless stream of useless temps filing through my office, and trying to find five spare minutes in a day to say *hello* to you, so on the long list of things that I give a damn about, what bloggers who read _People_ think of us is at the very bottom of the list!"
Donna bit her bottom lip, then dropped her eyes back down to her laptop. "Sorry."
Josh folded his forearms over the pile of papers in front of him and breathed out heavily. He stood, pressing a kiss to her temple before picking up his empty coffee mug and heading toward the kitchen. "I understand, Donna. I do. If I had time to think about it, I'm sure it would bother me, too. It's just…God, I don't know how Leo did this for seven years."
Donna was absentmindedly sifting through the papers on the table. "He had Margaret, that's how. Josh…what is all this?"
"My inbox." He came back around the corner with a refill. "I've got to get it farmed out."
"You're sorting out your *own* inbox?" Donna dug deeper into the stack in disbelief. "Josh, this was the kind of stuff we did when you were deputy. Give it to your deputy!"
Josh shook his head. "I need him to focus on finding some solid footing on the Hill. This is gonna be in a 10-round fight for Baker, I can feel it."
"I thought you thought it was a bluff."
"I did," he sighed. "It was. But I think calling them on it just made them mad as hell, so…"
"Now it's really a thing." Donna frowned in disapproval at several memos she'd begun to separate from the stack. "Some of this stuff shouldn't even have been sent to the
"Had one," Josh yawned. "Decided I enjoyed sleeping with her more."
Donna looked up. "That's not funny. Not with the magazine."
"I don't give a damn about the magazine."
"You *think* you don't give a damn about it. But if this thing becomes a living creature, you'll sing a different tune." She shook her head as she started a new pile of paperwork. "I don't know if this is gonna go away on its own."
"It's gonna go away," he yawned. "Are you…what are you doing, are you helping me now?"
Donna moved her laptop out of the way and started sorting at triple Josh's previous speed. "You shouldn't be spending your time on this."
"But…you should?"
"No, I'm helping you. It's something girlfriends do." Josh stared at her with something bordering on amazement. "But you should know in advance that I'm going to expect reciprocity."
"What kind of reciprocity?"
"I'm doing this in exchange for sexual favors."
Josh sat bolt upright. "Sorting faster. Sorting much faster."
Half an hour later, Donna had efficiently organized everything by destination department and dropped it into an accordion file, which was now nestled next to Josh's briefcase. Donna and Josh were burrowed deep into the couch, where he was kissing her for all he was worth, having every intention of making good on his debt.
"Did you mean what you said about Valentine's Day? That you didn't want a big deal made out of it?" Josh asked against her neck.
"Absolutely," Donna panted. "Why?"
"I made dinner reservations at--"
"Cancel them."
"You might want to hear me out before you say that. They're pretty good reservations. You wouldn't *believe* the pull I've got now. And I thought I could get a good table before."
"I don't want next week's _People_ to feature `A Capitol Valentine's Day.' Cancel them."
"This is ridiculous." Josh pulled back to look at her. "All I want is to take my woman to dinner and eat a good steak, why is that so wrong?"
"What are you not doing right now that you should be?"
"You have an IOU for sexual favors, as I recall," Josh bent his head to her neck again.
"That's right, I…do. Oh, God. Oh, God, Josh, I *love* that. Oh, GOD--"
Josh clamped a hand over her mouth. "What the hell is the matter with you? The agent's right on the other side of the door!" He nodded across the room.
"Josh, do you have any idea what the Secret Service witnesses every day? Even if the thing with the picture had never happened, they know I've been sleeping here since November. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out from there. They couldn't care less whether you're getting any or not. If anything, I'd think you'd *want* me to be loud."
"He always gives me these…I don't know, these looks the next morning. It creeps me out. It's like he says, `Good morning, Mr. Lyman,' but you just know he's thinking, `Heard you having loud sex with your girlfriend last night, Mr. Lyman.'"
"You are a lunatic." She slid out from under him.
"Giving me a detail is ludicrous anyway, but having them sit out there and *listen* is just…I don't know, it…it fills me with ire." He sat up on the couch.
"Ire?"
"Ire, I have decided, is what it fills me with."
"Come to bed, crazy man."
"Yeah, I'm gonna have to veto that particular pet name myself."
Donna tugged on his hand. "Hey, I don't think you've found five minutes to say hello to me yet today."
"Hmm," Josh pulled her close and kissed her again. "A situation I will have to remedy immediately."
Donna nodded. "Just one second."
She crossed the room and opened the front door before Josh realized what she was doing.
"Rodney."
The Secret Service agent on duty turned. "Did you need something, Miss Moss?"
"I just wanted to let you know that Mr. Lyman and I are going to be having some rather loud sex in the bedroom. If you heard anything, I didn't want you to think it's someone trying to kill him. Well, it
might be, but…it's only me." She grinned ear-to-ear.
The agent's mouth quirked ever so slightly before he regained total composure. "Understood, Miss Moss."
Josh, who'd been gaping until this point, buried his face in his hands and disappeared from the line of sight of the door.
"He gets a little shy," Donna said in a stage whisper. "Best not to bring it up to him."
"The Secret Service prides itself on practicing the utmost discretion regarding the personal lives of its protectees, ma'am."
Donna smiled sweetly. "Good night, Rodney."
She closed the door to find Josh glaring at her with his hands on his hips.
"We can't have dinner in public, but you can announce to a man with a gun and, I'm pretty sure, a license to kill that we're about to do it."
"Josh, you heard the man. The Secret Service practices the utmost discretion." She took him by the hand and pulled him to the bedroom. "No more stalling. You knew the terms of the deal. Pay up."
Josh couldn't help but smile as he kicked the bedroom door closed behind him.
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