The Thing About Staying
Title: The Thing About Staying
Author: mindness
Rating: Teen
Fandom/Characters: The West Wing - J/D
Spoilers: Post-ep for 7.19: "Transition". (No spoilers for 7.20.) Companion piece to The Staying Thing.
Disclaimer: As ever, nothing even remotely West Wing-related belongs to me.
Notes: I struggled with the decision to write this companion piece; you know what they say about leaving well enough alone. I went ahead with it anyway because, well, I needed something to do. Some stuff may not make much sense unless you have read The Staying Thing.
You're sitting in the airport when he wades hip-deep into the talk. You're thinking how beautiful the scenery is, how you can see your legs and his shoes reflected in the glass of the window, when he jumps right in. You've been expecting it, and he is as hopeless as you've always known he would be.
But you didn't realize it would leave you this breathless, hearing him stumble through the words that you've never been sure he'd say. You didn't realize it would be this intimidating to find yourself with the power to say yes, to say no. To stop or to start.
You turn to him, okays spilling from your lips like wine.
*
It's the sixth day of your Hawaiian vacation, and you're perched on the bed in your hotel room, rubbing post-shower lotion on your legs. It's the first shower since you arrived that you did not share with Josh-- and, consequently, the first time you've properly shaved your legs in a week.
He's standing on the balcony, your cell phone pressed to his ear. You cross the room and bend over your suitcase to retrieve a clean pair of socks, noting that you're scraping the bottom of the clean-laundry barrel. As you straighten, you catch him looking at you, amusement on his face. He gestures that the person on the other end is talking his ear off, and you shake your head in mock-disapproval.
He turns slightly away from you, but not before you catch that smile, the one that you've seen so many times, yet never enough. Prudent or not-- pathetic or not-- you built your past upon it, upon each moment that was graced by his grin or altered by his eyes meeting yours across a desk, a hall, a bed.
You gather your shoes, struggle with a knot in the lace as you battle the urge to walk out onto that balcony, snatch the cell from his fingers, and say what has been lodged in your chest for a decade: "Hi, Mrs. Lyman. This is Donna, and I'm in love with your son."
*
You meet Scotty the same way that you've always met people: by accident, but fully. Josh has gone in search of something to drink, and you're idly browsing the local shops, their wares spread to the wind like open flowers. You finger a brightly patterned scarf, run your fingers over the weave of a sun hat.
"Honeymoon?" Scotty asks from where he sits on a director's chair in front of his open booth.
"No," you say, glancing behind you. "Just a vacation."
He laughs, muted but deep, and tells you about his last vacation with his wife; they went to Michigan in the winter. Before you can stop yourself, you're telling him about Wisconsin winters and how you used to go sledding in the park. He regales you with tales of climbing Hawaiian volcanoes, and you feel yourself go wide-eyed even though you suspect that Scotty is the sort of man to tell tales.
You spy Josh coming toward you, bottles of water in hand. Scotty pauses in his storytelling, throws a glance up the wooden sidewalk. "That's him, huh," he says, and it is not a question.
*
It isn't until the fourth day that you manage to convince Josh to take you to a local restaurant for dinner. You've eaten out all week, but you want something authentic-- and when you walk through the open front door and see the simple worn-wood walls devoid of touristy decoration, you know you've found it.
You decide on the scallops; Josh orders the shrimp, the coward. When he makes a crack about the menu, you amuse yourself by educating him on the finer points of the shrimp. When you tire of that, you talk about Leo.
You're surprised to find that Josh's eyes are clear and wonder if pain and pleasure have the power to negate themselves. By the time the waitress passes by to refill your glasses, you are laughing about blocks of cheese and upside-down maps. You order dessert, even though you are full.
"I miss him," he says over a slice of pineapple cake.
You poke at your haupia with a spoon. "I know," you say, because you do.
*
You're pretty sure, by the second day, that Josh wants to spend your whole vacation in bed. Of course, when you're tangled up in him, when you're sharing your breath with his, when his fingers trace comets down your skin, you're not inclined to argue.
Even now, nestled as you are in the space between his sleeping breaths, you are struggling to imagine a pleasure greater than that of stretching your toes under the covers and feeling his leg against yours.
You remember the awkwardness following your first time together and how it is still there sometimes, like a shadow wedging itself between you once the residual waves of sex have retreated. You think of how he tries to hold you afterward now, and how it took several times before you let him. You remember the exact moment when you started to think of it as making love, and how he didn't flinch when you tossed the phrase out there last night after dinner.
If you lie still enough, you can hear the waves on the beach reminding you of the tropical paradise that exists beyond the walls of the hotel. You shift under the covers and skim your fingers over the cool skin of his arm, and the minute hitch in his breath is louder than the sound of sand retreating into the sea.
*
You spend the first day in bed. You eat there, sleep there, and make love there-- and then you do it all again. You let him watch fifteen minutes of CNN because he is getting fidgety for lack of news; you time him with the bedside clock because you are serious about the fifteen minutes. He protests when you turn it off right in the middle of a piece about the President-Elect, but you are unwavering. You hide the remote underneath the panties in your suitcase and call room service; for dinner, you eat pancakes in bed with your fingers.
You tell him they forgot to send up the silverware, but really, you just like the feel of syrup on your fingers and the smirk on his face when he offers to lick it off.
*
You check in to your hotel, wet and still dripping, and are forced to wait in the lobby while the clerk searches for your reservation. People stare as they walk past-- couples with matching Hawaiian shirts, families in shorts lugging camcorders, employees in spotless uniforms. You fidget uncomfortably and tug at your shirt, which you are sure is hugging your curves in all the right places at the wrong time.
Josh sidles up next to you, his clothes dark with salt water. "Have I mentioned how much I like that shirt?" he asks, and you smack him with the back of your hand.
His fingers graze the small of your back, warming through the damp material.
*
Josh pays for the rental car at the airport and pockets the keys that the agent hands to him. He turns away from the desk with a plastic bag full of brochures.
"Do you have a map?" you ask, looking pointedly at the bag.
"Don't need one," he says.
You know that this spells disaster and politely ask the woman at the desk for several maps of the area, then ask for directions to your hotel.
Josh whines at you, but when you casually ask him which he prefers-- driving cluelessly around the island or finding the hotel and having lots of sex-- he falls silent with record speed. The agent is studiously forcing back a smile, but you have no such reservations and grin at her.
"So," you say cheerfully, "that's a left at the second light?"
*
Josh is standing before the seatbelt lights go off. You know that it will be several minutes before the doors open and the rows ahead of you clear out, but Josh apparently does not. There isn't room for him to stand in place, so he stoops over you, bent almost double.
"Josh," you say.
"I need to stretch my legs."
"It won't make people move any faster."
He ponders this. "Yeah," he admits finally, sitting back down and peering through the window.
You hover over his shoulder and are rewarded with a glimpse of asphalt and a brilliant blue beyond. You are close enough to catch the scent of his clothes, his skin. It is a scent that you know from lying your head on the pillows in his bed, from handling his coats for years, from breathing the air in his apartment. It exists beyond the realm of explanation, one of those things that if you broke it down into its parts-- laundry soap, aftershave, coffee-- it would cease to exist.
He pulls you to him without even knowing it, without turning from the window, and you press your hands against him like magnets. "I can smell the ocean," you say after a moment.
*
The flight is quiet, and his hand is in yours. Your knuckles are wedged against his, your wrists fused together.
In the silence he talks of things that would never be covered in a book about politics, and it strikes you that you have missed this without knowing that it was missing. You used to talk about personal stuff between meetings and memos, but the campaign ate most of that away and left the bones of politics.
You love the politics. You yearn for the personal.
Josh sighs, squeezes your fingers.
*
You're not in the least bit interested in your magazine, but for Josh's sake, you pretend that you are. The delay sets him on-edge, and you don't know whether to be flattered or annoyed. You suppose that depends on whether he's eager for a relaxing, romantic vacation with you or whether he's just being Josh.
You want him to relax because he wants to, not because you've forced him to. So you sit with your magazine, calmly turning pages that you aren't reading, and suggest that he find something with which to amuse himself. You look up minutes later to see him approaching a bank of pay phones. Instead of tracking him down to administer severe punishment, you turn back to your magazine.
But, honestly, how can anyone expect you to get excited about make-up tips when you're teetering on a beginning edge?
*
Shortly after your plane lands in Los Angeles, you are standing in line at a sandwich kiosk, grinning over your cell phone. A photo of Josh wearing a large safari hat glows on the screen; he looks utterly ridiculous.
As the man ahead of you orders a BLT, you forward the photo to Sam's cell, along with a text message. "Josh on vacation. Relaxation pending."
You snap your phone closed and order a sandwich and a salad. Blackmail in Sam's hands may be harmless, but you figure he deserves a little gift for his role in this whole vacation thing.
*
You sleep through most of the flight from D.C. to Los Angeles. Your flight was delayed on the runway, and you are still exhausted from the amalgamation of sleepless campaign nights. You make it through the airline attendants' safety performance, the beverage cart, and a Hawaii-tinted conversation with Josh before drifting off.
You dream of Pele. She looks like you, with hair of golden fire. You are reminded of the part you did not tell Josh-- that Pele is a jealous goddess, that she is vindictive when she doesn't get what she wants. She throws fire and lava at you, and you are not sure if this is part of the myth or just your own mind at work.
You wake with a start, Josh snoring lightly beside you. Your dream slips away, and you cannot remember what it was that Pele wanted and did not get.
*
You're walking toward your departure gate when a man carrying a briefcase bumps into you from behind. Josh steadies you with a hand on your elbow and calls out, warning him to watch where he's going. A woman with a large dry-cleaning bag follows in his wake; you can hear him dictating to her as they fade into the distance.
You look at Josh, and he pulls his hand away.
"You never took me to Hawaii," you say.
"There was never a reason."
"It's what bosses do." You scan the signs hanging above the walkway for your gate number. Almost there.
"I've never known a boss that's done that."
"Me neither," you say pointedly.
"You're not going to punish me for that, are you?" He smirks. "This is supposed to be a week of relaxation and, you know, sex."
"I think a week without your cell phone is punishment enough, don't you?"
"If you want to punish me, you'll have to do a whole lot better than that."
You find your gate and break away from him, holding back a smirk of your own. "Don't tempt me."
Author: mindness
Rating: Teen
Fandom/Characters: The West Wing - J/D
Spoilers: Post-ep for 7.19: "Transition". (No spoilers for 7.20.) Companion piece to The Staying Thing.
Disclaimer: As ever, nothing even remotely West Wing-related belongs to me.
Notes: I struggled with the decision to write this companion piece; you know what they say about leaving well enough alone. I went ahead with it anyway because, well, I needed something to do. Some stuff may not make much sense unless you have read The Staying Thing.
You're sitting in the airport when he wades hip-deep into the talk. You're thinking how beautiful the scenery is, how you can see your legs and his shoes reflected in the glass of the window, when he jumps right in. You've been expecting it, and he is as hopeless as you've always known he would be.
But you didn't realize it would leave you this breathless, hearing him stumble through the words that you've never been sure he'd say. You didn't realize it would be this intimidating to find yourself with the power to say yes, to say no. To stop or to start.
You turn to him, okays spilling from your lips like wine.
*
It's the sixth day of your Hawaiian vacation, and you're perched on the bed in your hotel room, rubbing post-shower lotion on your legs. It's the first shower since you arrived that you did not share with Josh-- and, consequently, the first time you've properly shaved your legs in a week.
He's standing on the balcony, your cell phone pressed to his ear. You cross the room and bend over your suitcase to retrieve a clean pair of socks, noting that you're scraping the bottom of the clean-laundry barrel. As you straighten, you catch him looking at you, amusement on his face. He gestures that the person on the other end is talking his ear off, and you shake your head in mock-disapproval.
He turns slightly away from you, but not before you catch that smile, the one that you've seen so many times, yet never enough. Prudent or not-- pathetic or not-- you built your past upon it, upon each moment that was graced by his grin or altered by his eyes meeting yours across a desk, a hall, a bed.
You gather your shoes, struggle with a knot in the lace as you battle the urge to walk out onto that balcony, snatch the cell from his fingers, and say what has been lodged in your chest for a decade: "Hi, Mrs. Lyman. This is Donna, and I'm in love with your son."
*
You meet Scotty the same way that you've always met people: by accident, but fully. Josh has gone in search of something to drink, and you're idly browsing the local shops, their wares spread to the wind like open flowers. You finger a brightly patterned scarf, run your fingers over the weave of a sun hat.
"Honeymoon?" Scotty asks from where he sits on a director's chair in front of his open booth.
"No," you say, glancing behind you. "Just a vacation."
He laughs, muted but deep, and tells you about his last vacation with his wife; they went to Michigan in the winter. Before you can stop yourself, you're telling him about Wisconsin winters and how you used to go sledding in the park. He regales you with tales of climbing Hawaiian volcanoes, and you feel yourself go wide-eyed even though you suspect that Scotty is the sort of man to tell tales.
You spy Josh coming toward you, bottles of water in hand. Scotty pauses in his storytelling, throws a glance up the wooden sidewalk. "That's him, huh," he says, and it is not a question.
*
It isn't until the fourth day that you manage to convince Josh to take you to a local restaurant for dinner. You've eaten out all week, but you want something authentic-- and when you walk through the open front door and see the simple worn-wood walls devoid of touristy decoration, you know you've found it.
You decide on the scallops; Josh orders the shrimp, the coward. When he makes a crack about the menu, you amuse yourself by educating him on the finer points of the shrimp. When you tire of that, you talk about Leo.
You're surprised to find that Josh's eyes are clear and wonder if pain and pleasure have the power to negate themselves. By the time the waitress passes by to refill your glasses, you are laughing about blocks of cheese and upside-down maps. You order dessert, even though you are full.
"I miss him," he says over a slice of pineapple cake.
You poke at your haupia with a spoon. "I know," you say, because you do.
*
You're pretty sure, by the second day, that Josh wants to spend your whole vacation in bed. Of course, when you're tangled up in him, when you're sharing your breath with his, when his fingers trace comets down your skin, you're not inclined to argue.
Even now, nestled as you are in the space between his sleeping breaths, you are struggling to imagine a pleasure greater than that of stretching your toes under the covers and feeling his leg against yours.
You remember the awkwardness following your first time together and how it is still there sometimes, like a shadow wedging itself between you once the residual waves of sex have retreated. You think of how he tries to hold you afterward now, and how it took several times before you let him. You remember the exact moment when you started to think of it as making love, and how he didn't flinch when you tossed the phrase out there last night after dinner.
If you lie still enough, you can hear the waves on the beach reminding you of the tropical paradise that exists beyond the walls of the hotel. You shift under the covers and skim your fingers over the cool skin of his arm, and the minute hitch in his breath is louder than the sound of sand retreating into the sea.
*
You spend the first day in bed. You eat there, sleep there, and make love there-- and then you do it all again. You let him watch fifteen minutes of CNN because he is getting fidgety for lack of news; you time him with the bedside clock because you are serious about the fifteen minutes. He protests when you turn it off right in the middle of a piece about the President-Elect, but you are unwavering. You hide the remote underneath the panties in your suitcase and call room service; for dinner, you eat pancakes in bed with your fingers.
You tell him they forgot to send up the silverware, but really, you just like the feel of syrup on your fingers and the smirk on his face when he offers to lick it off.
*
You check in to your hotel, wet and still dripping, and are forced to wait in the lobby while the clerk searches for your reservation. People stare as they walk past-- couples with matching Hawaiian shirts, families in shorts lugging camcorders, employees in spotless uniforms. You fidget uncomfortably and tug at your shirt, which you are sure is hugging your curves in all the right places at the wrong time.
Josh sidles up next to you, his clothes dark with salt water. "Have I mentioned how much I like that shirt?" he asks, and you smack him with the back of your hand.
His fingers graze the small of your back, warming through the damp material.
*
Josh pays for the rental car at the airport and pockets the keys that the agent hands to him. He turns away from the desk with a plastic bag full of brochures.
"Do you have a map?" you ask, looking pointedly at the bag.
"Don't need one," he says.
You know that this spells disaster and politely ask the woman at the desk for several maps of the area, then ask for directions to your hotel.
Josh whines at you, but when you casually ask him which he prefers-- driving cluelessly around the island or finding the hotel and having lots of sex-- he falls silent with record speed. The agent is studiously forcing back a smile, but you have no such reservations and grin at her.
"So," you say cheerfully, "that's a left at the second light?"
*
Josh is standing before the seatbelt lights go off. You know that it will be several minutes before the doors open and the rows ahead of you clear out, but Josh apparently does not. There isn't room for him to stand in place, so he stoops over you, bent almost double.
"Josh," you say.
"I need to stretch my legs."
"It won't make people move any faster."
He ponders this. "Yeah," he admits finally, sitting back down and peering through the window.
You hover over his shoulder and are rewarded with a glimpse of asphalt and a brilliant blue beyond. You are close enough to catch the scent of his clothes, his skin. It is a scent that you know from lying your head on the pillows in his bed, from handling his coats for years, from breathing the air in his apartment. It exists beyond the realm of explanation, one of those things that if you broke it down into its parts-- laundry soap, aftershave, coffee-- it would cease to exist.
He pulls you to him without even knowing it, without turning from the window, and you press your hands against him like magnets. "I can smell the ocean," you say after a moment.
*
The flight is quiet, and his hand is in yours. Your knuckles are wedged against his, your wrists fused together.
In the silence he talks of things that would never be covered in a book about politics, and it strikes you that you have missed this without knowing that it was missing. You used to talk about personal stuff between meetings and memos, but the campaign ate most of that away and left the bones of politics.
You love the politics. You yearn for the personal.
Josh sighs, squeezes your fingers.
*
You're not in the least bit interested in your magazine, but for Josh's sake, you pretend that you are. The delay sets him on-edge, and you don't know whether to be flattered or annoyed. You suppose that depends on whether he's eager for a relaxing, romantic vacation with you or whether he's just being Josh.
You want him to relax because he wants to, not because you've forced him to. So you sit with your magazine, calmly turning pages that you aren't reading, and suggest that he find something with which to amuse himself. You look up minutes later to see him approaching a bank of pay phones. Instead of tracking him down to administer severe punishment, you turn back to your magazine.
But, honestly, how can anyone expect you to get excited about make-up tips when you're teetering on a beginning edge?
*
Shortly after your plane lands in Los Angeles, you are standing in line at a sandwich kiosk, grinning over your cell phone. A photo of Josh wearing a large safari hat glows on the screen; he looks utterly ridiculous.
As the man ahead of you orders a BLT, you forward the photo to Sam's cell, along with a text message. "Josh on vacation. Relaxation pending."
You snap your phone closed and order a sandwich and a salad. Blackmail in Sam's hands may be harmless, but you figure he deserves a little gift for his role in this whole vacation thing.
*
You sleep through most of the flight from D.C. to Los Angeles. Your flight was delayed on the runway, and you are still exhausted from the amalgamation of sleepless campaign nights. You make it through the airline attendants' safety performance, the beverage cart, and a Hawaii-tinted conversation with Josh before drifting off.
You dream of Pele. She looks like you, with hair of golden fire. You are reminded of the part you did not tell Josh-- that Pele is a jealous goddess, that she is vindictive when she doesn't get what she wants. She throws fire and lava at you, and you are not sure if this is part of the myth or just your own mind at work.
You wake with a start, Josh snoring lightly beside you. Your dream slips away, and you cannot remember what it was that Pele wanted and did not get.
*
You're walking toward your departure gate when a man carrying a briefcase bumps into you from behind. Josh steadies you with a hand on your elbow and calls out, warning him to watch where he's going. A woman with a large dry-cleaning bag follows in his wake; you can hear him dictating to her as they fade into the distance.
You look at Josh, and he pulls his hand away.
"You never took me to Hawaii," you say.
"There was never a reason."
"It's what bosses do." You scan the signs hanging above the walkway for your gate number. Almost there.
"I've never known a boss that's done that."
"Me neither," you say pointedly.
"You're not going to punish me for that, are you?" He smirks. "This is supposed to be a week of relaxation and, you know, sex."
"I think a week without your cell phone is punishment enough, don't you?"
"If you want to punish me, you'll have to do a whole lot better than that."
You find your gate and break away from him, holding back a smirk of your own. "Don't tempt me."