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"Hey," he says into the phone and imagines the crackling static of a connection almost lost, an accent to the distance between here and there.
"Hi," Donna replies quietly. She sounds tired. Josh can tell. She's tired and he's tired. They're both tired from too many long days that blend into nights into weeks and years, the continuation of hard work and battles constantly fought and only sometimes won.
For once it's Donna who's away, running interference with Sam and Advance before they head up to Iowa for the weekend. Josh knows he'll see her on Thursday when they all fly out there on Air Force One, but he's left the porch light on in his heart regardless. Just in case she decides to walk through his office door.
"Did you need something?" she asks and he realizes he's been staring down the barrel of his phone, counting the time between each of her breaths. He's been drinking, even though he won't admit it, even though he's sure she already knows it. It's just that he's been doing a lot of thinking in the last several hours and he doesn't like where his mind is headed. He figures he needs to slow the process, or at least muddle his thoughts enough that they become less cohesive. Donna has a few airplane bottles of alcohol in her middle left drawer ("It's the only way I can deal with you," she teases), so he steals some vodka and washes it down with whatever mixer he can find in Toby's mini-fridge (he wouldn't dare touch Toby's alcohol, but figures everything else is fair game). Vodka and ginger-ale, the drink of champions and world leaders who choose to stay at the office long past the whistle, not-pining over their assistant. Because that isn't what this is, pining. Josh is just confused. And tired. And lonely. And Donna is always there, and he likes her, because she's funny and kind and remembers things like the name of Margaret's mother's dog; because she eats his food and always smells good while she's doing it. Because her smile lights up the room almost as bright as her laugh and he finds himself missing her constantly when she's away like this, the lack of her presence eating away at his concentration until it's 11 p.m. and he hasn't made a dent in his work for the day, because his head is full of wondering where she is and what she's doing, who she's with, every other thought consumed with Donna, Donna, Donna.
"Josh?"
"Yeah, I - sorry," he sighs, running a hand through his hair. What is he doing? It's late. She might have been sleeping. He should be sleeping.
"I can't find the… thing. You know, for the meeting tomorrow," he adds lamely.
"You're going to have to be more specific." She sounds slightly annoyed, but he can sense the amusement that bubbles below the surface in spite of herself.
"Yeah." There is no thing for the meeting tomorrow, he's making it up and she knows it, so instead he asks, "How's Iowa?"
"Busy," she says, "but good. Everything should be set up by the time the President gets here. And I managed to get you a meeting with the mayor in spite of the cows."
"You shouldn't refer to the Republicans that way, Donna."
She ignores him. "It’s a thing. A fair. I don't know. They're very big on cows here, Josh. They're also big on corn. Did you realize you had sent me - lucky me - to the heart of the Corn Belt? Nearly 20% of the country's corn was produced here last year. We've probably eaten their corn at some point. Even you."
He laughs, because of course that's the sort of tidbit that her brain would latch on to - Donna Moss: trivia master. He remembers when he first met her, she would spit out inane facts as if they were political currency, a way to legitimize herself in a room that he knew often felt above her head. He always thought that was silly, because even though Donna never finished college, she possessed an intelligence that betrayed her farm girl innocence and often left him wondering after where she came from, this woman who stole away into his office and started roofing around the contents of his files before starting on his heart.
"Cows are… good,” Josh says. “Cows are… do we have an official stance on cows? They make milk. You can tell the mayor we're pro-milk in the Bartlet White House. Or I am, at least. Pro-milk. Tastes good with Oreos."
He hears a puff of air come through the receiver and can sense her grin before she replies. He blushes, because he realizes he's rambling, but he's tired and slightly intoxicated and missing her so keenly that he doesn't know how to deal with it. It's never felt like this before and he wants to make it stop. Except he never wants it to stop.
"Josh," she says softly. He can tell she's admonishing him, though not unkindly. "You should go home. Go to bed."
"Yeah," he agrees. "I guess… see you in two days?" He's wrapping the phone cord around his finger, he notices, and feels like an idiot. "But who's counting, right?"
There's a moment of silence where he wonders if she hung up, but then her voice comes quietly through the speaker, whispering goodnight, and he misses her in a way that sometimes feels pathetic, but mostly just feels like love. It's the way that a person gets under your skin, burrows into your heart and makes it their home. Donna has been hanging picture frames on the walls for years now, changing the locks on all the doors and he's letting her pick out curtains, letting her rearrange the furniture, they're buying a dog and she's planting a garden that travels through his bloodstream into the tips of his toes and encompasses everything, because she's Donna, and there's a thousand miles between them, but all he wants is to hear her voice.
She's the only thing that’s beginning to matter, politics be damned.