Rain pounds on the windows, and for a moment she wonders if she's misheard the knock on her door. Her roommate isn't home, and she hopes that she did imagine the sound. After the day she's had, she doesn't want to see anyone.

She hasn't cried yet, and isn't sure she will. Hearing about the President was such a shock that she doesn't think she's absorbed it yet. The one time it seemed even marginally real all day was the moment Josh realized she knew. The look on his face alone brought her close to tears.

But, as she sits on her couch, wrapped in an afghan, she hears the sound again, louder this time, and accompanied by a too-familiar voice calling out, "Donna, open the door."

She doesn't move. She's upset with him; maybe she's upset with everyone, but he's an easy target for her anger. Knowing that he laughed at her over that stupid satellite days ago still stings.

"Donna, please...please, will you open the door?"

She's been in love with him for months; when she realized it, she acted desperately to find a way to keep him from knowing. Throwing him on Joey Lucas didn't work, and it's been touch-and-go since then. Maybe that's why she's angry at him. Every emotion she's felt toward him has been magnified ten times for months.

She's not sure what's going to happen if she opens the door. She squashes that thought. He's probably drunk, anyway.

"I know you're home, I know--"

"What is it?" She's risen from the couch and opened the door, interrupting him. "What do you want?"

His eyes stop her from continuing. Rimmed red, swollen, haunted...

Now she's afraid. He has the same wildness in his eyes that he did the night of the Christmas gala. She brings her tone down to a whisper: "Josh...?"

I see us
inside of each other

Toby called him at eleven-thirty. He was sitting at his desk, head in his hands. The phone rang, and for a moment he almost called out to Donna, before he remembered that he had sent her home. He picked up the phone.

The anger that had quelled since three weeks ago -- when the President and Leo had sat him down and told him that the President had a degenerative disease -- rose up again with furor. "She was hit by a drunk driver," Toby had explained plainly. "I don't know...I don't know much else."

He had thanked Toby for calling and hung up the phone. His mind had begun to swim, which frightened him; he hadn't trusted his mind completely for a while. He did the only thing he knew to do; he put on his coat and drove to Donna's apartment in the rain.

And now, as they stand in her doorway, he realizes that he must look a wreck. She had opened the door with an angry face, but now she was looking at him with utter fright coloring her expression.

"Josh...?" she prompts again.

"Can I come inside?" he asks, feeling unwelcome. He's been mean to her the last few days. When she found out that he'd used her satellite mistake as entertainment, she hadn't talked to him for a day and a half. Things always had run deep with them.

"Yeah," she says, not taking her eyes from his face. "Josh, what's happened?"

"Sit down," he orders. "Don't...just sit down, okay?"

She nods wordlessly. She probably knows already, he decides. Working together, existing together for these past years has changed them, made them more alike. Maybe they always have been. If he thinks, if he looks, he can admit that -- on the inside -- they are very much alike.

I feel my unconscious merge with yours
and I hear a voice say
"what's his is hers"

He tells her, and she's glad that he insisted she sit down.

"When?" is all she can bring herself to stammer. "How?"

"I don't know much," he replies wearily, peeling off his coat and throwing it over the back of the couch. "Toby called me. She was hit by a drunk driver. She was bringing back--"

"Her new car," she finishes. "It's all she talked about at lunch."

He sits beside her on the couch, his head dropping into his hands. "I just can't even..."

She can feel the tears coming, and closes her eyes to will them back. Mrs. Landingham is dead? The President has MS? It seems as if she must have been dreaming for a week. Now she just had to wake up...

"It's May," she hears Josh say quietly beside her.

She opens her eyes and looks over at him. He's staring at the floor.

Suddenly, he laughs softly. "You know what?"

"No. What?"

"Everything shitty happens to us in May. Maybe we should take out special insurance, just for May. What do you think?"

"Oh, Josh," she murmurs, feeling her heart break. She's learned a long time ago that part of being very connected to someone -- like she is to Josh -- was sharing their emotions.

"A year in six days," he whispers. "Mrs. Landingham dies, and all that I can think about is the fact that when we go to the funeral, it very well could have been me in that casket." He stands, running a hand down his face from temples to jaw.

"No, no," she whispers, and it's her turn to cover her face with her hands.

The tears start to fall; she can't help it. His pain is hers, too, and has been for a long time.

I'm falling into you
this dream could come true
and it feels so good
falling into you

"It could have been," he repeats, not watching her as she denies it.

"You're not dead, Josh," she says quietly as she stands, turning to him and suddenly wrapping her arms tightly around him.

"I could have been." Her face is buried in his neck, and he can feel the dampness of her tears against his skin.

"You're alive," she whispers against his ear, her cheek pressed tightly to his as they embrace.

He pulls back to look at her face, searching her eyes. "Yes," he replies, his voice low and husky.

And then his lips are on hers, and she's kissing him back firmly, her tongue tangling frantically with his. He pulls back suddenly, breathing hard. "I'm not dead," he whispered frantically, reaching up to wind strands of her hair around his fingers before kissing her again.

Her fingers are like sparks as they move across the nape of his neck, tracing the line of his jaw and the bump of his Adam's apple. He moves his lips to the spot on her neck just below her ear; she gasps as he nips lightly at it, and he does it again.

Her hands move to unbutton his shirt, sliding each button carefully through the hole. She runs her fingers lightly over his chest as she parts the shirt, reaching inside to trace the line of his scar. He sucks in a breath, burying his face in her hair, kissing her temple.

He loves her; he's loved her since late one night after the shooting, when she was staying at his condo to take care of him. He'd looked over at her, and in that instant, he had known. He hadn't dared say anything to anyone about it.

I was afraid
to let you in here
now I have learned
love can be made in fear

She hears his sharp intake of breath as she touches the scar, and for an instant she thinks she's done something wrong. This is new and terrifying ground for them; something that, if she's honest with herself, was inevitable.

It's still frightening. She's feeling vulnerable, and if he hurts her or rejects her while she's in this state, she doesn't know if she'll be able to forgive him. But there isn't any going back, so she slides the shirt off his shoulders, untucking it from his pants, and watches it fall to the floor.

He stares at her for a moment, then pulls her back into his arms and kisses her again, stealing her breath. He breaks away slightly, his face still close enough to her that she can feel his breath on her cheek. He leans in again to press a kiss to her cheek, then her temple, then her forehead, before joining their mouths again, frantically.

It's as if he's just discovered that he really did make it through the shooting, and he needs to prove to himself that he really is alive. She feels dead inside after all this -- if this will make him realize that he's not dead, maybe she'll feel alive again, too.

She's still afraid -- not of him or what they're doing, but of everyone else and what will happen tomorrow -- but there's nothing she can do but let herself go.

the walls begin to tumble down
and I can't even
see the ground

They stop talking, a feat he was certain they'd never achieve. They haven't said a word since he murmured his own affirmation of life, and he doubts that they will. Talking would lead to thinking, which would in turn lead to decision-making. They both need each other tonight too much to let logic stop them.

He leads her to her room, his heartbeat picking up and racing lightly. It's been a while (quite a while, in fact), and his body is ready much faster than he anticipated it would be. He watches as she runs her hands lightly up and down his arms, breathing deeply as he backs up until the back of his knees hit the edge of her bed. He reaches up to pull her T-shirt over her head. She's kicking her jeans down off her legs until they puddle at her feet. She steps out of them, moving to sit behind him on the bed.

Reaching over to stroke her hair gently, he breaks the silence he vowed he wouldn't. But he has to ask; it's important. "What did you do?" he rasps, his eyes enraptured by the sight of his fingertips tracing the lines of her breasts.

"What did I do about what?"

"What did you do when Toby told you?" he clarifies, leaning down to kiss and nibble at her collarbone.

"I asked him if the President was in pain," she replies, her hands moving to his belt buckle.

He moves her hands, quickly undoing his belt and pants and letting them fall to the ground beside the bed. "You're a better person than I am," he whispers in her ear. "Do you know that?"

"Yes," she whispers, watching his slight nod.

"You're not a bad person, Josh," she says moments later, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair.

"I hope not," he replies, sitting on the edge of her bed. "I wonder sometimes."

"I don't wonder," she breathes softly, sitting beside him and taking his hand. "If you were a bad person, you wouldn't be here right now. You wouldn't care enough to hurt as much as this."

He laughs shortly, not because it's funny, but because it's true. "It hurts," he agrees.

"I know," she replies. "I hurt, too." She lifts her hand to place a cool palm against his cheek, turning his face so that he's looking at her. "Can you make it stop hurting?"

He swallows. "I can try."

"Please," she whispers, leaning in and pressing her lips to his throat.

That's all it takes. His hands are on her, his mouth pressed to her skin. The wall that had cracked crumbles and falls, and there's nothing between them but the pain that they so desperately want to disappear.

falling like a leaf
falling like a star
finding a belief
falling where you are

When she first started on the Bartlet campaign, she often wondered if it would all come down to this. Not the President having a disease; not the matter-of-fact and honest Mrs. Landingham dying; but if something would go wrong and end all of it. At that time, as the twenty-five-year old who was still very much a little girl, the idea terrified her. She'd have nowhere else to go but home, and her house in Madison wasn't a very welcoming place.

She had to stop and think before she could feel secure in the risky business of politics. CJ had once explained to her that the key was finding something to believe in and sticking to it. She watched Josh work beside her, feverishly attempting to get the Governor elected. He explained things to her when she asked, and through listening to him, she realized that she'd believed in the same fundamental things that he did for a very long time.

Now that the unthinkable really has happened, she's strangely calm. She has a place; she's learned Josh Lyman's character and temperament inside out, and she thinks she may just be indispensable to him. Even before he showed up outside her door tonight -- even before all of this began happening -- she was almost certain she'd go with him, wherever he ended up should the administration fall.

Now that she's in bed with him, now that she's learning him in a different way, she's a little more unsure of her place in the grand scheme of things. This night is going to end one of two ways: they're either going to accept this as the culmination of something that's been building since the campaign and continue it, or they're going to chalk it up to emotions and pain and never talk about it again.

If it's number two, things are going to eventually go back to the way they were before. But if it's number one, what then? They could both lose their jobs.

She stops thinking. His hands are sliding down her bare back, down to her thighs. She's under him on her bed, closing her eyes as he moves his fingers to touch her lightly. His caress becomes surer and firmer as he slides his fingers across her, finding her clit and gently rolling it between his thumb and his forefinger. Her hips come off the bed, and she moans loudly.

"Josh," she whispers, her voice husky and deep.

He presses his lips to hers, sliding a finger inside her as she moves her hips against his hand, pressing against him. "Josh," she rasps again, her breath hitching in her throat as he slides another finger inside, probing gently. He finds the spot with relative ease, kissing the dip in her collarbone as she makes an incoherent noise and begins to rock her hips in time with his fingers. She comes quickly, surprising herself, coating his fingers and crying out his name.

catch me
don't let me drop
love me
don't ever stop

He flips her over before pushing inside her, and she looks surprised. He supposes that she expected him to move over her and to push into her until he was satisfied. He remembers, though, from a conversation that ended up being a little embarrassing, that she likes being on top. He also remembers that she's on the Pill; he's seen them in her medicine cabinet before on mornings after he collapsed on her couch, drunk and exhausted.

She begins moving against him, and he can't keep himself from thrusting up to meet her. She makes a noise that sounds like a combination of pleasure and pain, and he looks up at her with concern. She just looks at him, though, lacing her fingers through his as she begins to rock slowly, back and forth. It feels amazing; he's afraid he isn't going to last very long.

He groans as he sits up a little, the change of angle pushing him impossibly deep. She leans forward so that with every motion, her breasts brush his chest. He releases one of her hands to push her hair out of her face; he leans in to kiss her, a hot, open-mouthed kiss with tangling tongues and gasping breaths. She pulls back, leaning her forehead against his.

Still lifting and rolling her hips, she takes one of his hands in hers and guides it between her legs, pressing his fingers against her clit. She sighs softly as he pinches it quickly, then rolls it. "Josh," she whispers, then moans as she begins to contract around him.

The rippling sensation pulls him even further inside her, and he leans forward to bury his head in the crook of her neck as he comes, hard. For a moment, everything goes black, and he's not sure it's ever going to stop. He thinks he calls out her name; he's sure that he can feel her slow down and stop moving just as he's coming down.

Exhausted, they don't even move before falling asleep. It's instantaneous, and they're both quiet and still before they even know it.

so close your eyes
and let me kiss you
and while you sleep
I will miss you

She doesn't wake right away, but notices soon after he rises that he's left the bed. Even in the dim, diffused light of the room, she can see his shadowed frame as he gathers his clothes from the floor. He dresses quickly with his back to her, and she quickly closes her eyes before he turns to her.

She almost opens her eyes as she feels him hovering next to her, but wins the battle to keep them shut. It's agony to lay unmoving as he leans down and presses a kiss to her forehead. But she does, feeling tears well up in her eyes as he runs his fingers through her hair before he leaves.

He leaves the door open as he walks to the living room, and light filters through her haze. Her muscles are relaxed, her whole body languid as she slowly rolls onto her back. She can hear him rustling around in the living room, probably gathering his shirt and tie and putting them on.

The tears don't come until she hears him shut the apartment door behind him, and she realizes that this wasn't the culmination of years of tension after all; it was just a one night thing, and he didn't even say goodbye.

I'm falling into you
this dream could come true
and it feels so good
falling into you

He dreams all night of long, lithe legs wrapped around his waist; he dreams of her mouth against him, of her hair falling all around her shoulders. He's not sure where he is when he wakes up the next morning; he half expects to feel the pressure of someone using him as a human pillow, half expects to see blonde hair feathered across his chest. But instead, he's alone in his own bed, in his own apartment, with painfully clear memories of exactly what he's done.

There's going to be a trial; this much he's sure of. And before last night, all he would have had to admit to was a crush on his assistant. Now, he'll not only have to admit to an indecent relationship with an employee, but he'll also have to reveal that he has feelings for her.

He can't have feelings for her. This has to be a one-time thing. Finding a way to have a relationship outside of work with Donna would be difficult, and all of the options would be unacceptable. Either he'd have to resign and lose the position and prestige he's coveted all his life, or she'd have to resign. He's certain he couldn't handle the job without Donna. It wouldn't be the same.

He rolls out of bed, his muscles protesting. Some of them are a more than a little out of practice, and they definitely were used last night. He's sore all over, especially on his left side. He feels twenty years older than he is as he limps to the bathroom and stands under the cool spray of the shower.

They can't talk about this; he knows that much for certain. He'll have to pretend that last night didn't happen. He'll have to be cold and distant. He knows that he's going to come home from work tonight feeling like a complete jackass, and it'll be justified. He can't stand to see her hurting, and the fact that it's going to be him hurting her is almost more than he can take.

falling like a leaf
falling like a star
finding a belief
falling where you are

She calls in sick the day after; she thinks that maybe it was the coward's way out, but she doesn't care. She thinks that she's probably disappointing Toby; he told her so she could be there for Josh, help him during the MS revelation. But she can't be there for Josh. She can't even face Josh. And she especially can't face Mrs. Landingham's empty desk.

The next day, she goes to work, but Josh is nowhere to be found. Margaret's face is weary as she tells Donna that he'll be in meetings all day, that Leo told her to relay the message that Josh most likely wouldn't be in the office at all. She and Margaret make plans to attend the funeral the next day with Carol, and then she spends the rest of the day filing and trying not to think about anything but busy work.

She doesn't see him the next morning, either. She and Margaret and Carol drive to the cathedral in Carol's car, sitting in silence all the way. They sit near the front, in the area designated for White House employees. CJ comes to sit in front of them a few moments later, and then she sees the President walk in with Abby, Leo and Charlie trailing behind. Charlie moves to sit closer to CJ; she frowns in confusion for a moment before she remembers that he's reading during the service.

He walks in a few moments later with Sam and Toby, sitting in front of CJ. She's got a perfect view of the side of his face, but she wills herself to look straight ahead. During the service, she catches a glimpse of him leaning his head forward slightly, and her eyes snap toward him. The look on his face is haunting, and she knows that he's thinking the same thing he is: it could have been him.

He's a pallbearer, and at the close of the service she watches him rise with Sam, Toby, Charlie, and two men she only vaguely recognizes. He looks straight ahead as he hoists the casket with the other men. She's almost certain that she's the only one who notices the muscle working in his jaw as he moves in sync with the other five, carrying Mrs. Landingham's body out of the cathedral.

She finds the courage to speak to him for the first time later that afternoon. She clears her throat to speak before she walks into his office. Hurrying in, she stops in front of his desk, saying some trivial things about how nice the service was and where she'd be for the afternoon. He agrees softly, concentrating on some paperwork. She waits for him to look up and acknowledge her again. When he doesn't, she presses on.

"Josh, can this really be how it works?" she asks quickly, cursing her voice for rasping and cracking as she talks. She's talking about everything, but especially about them, about what's changed between them, even if she can't admit it outright. She rephrases slightly. "We have no idea if he's gonna run again...he's in a room with Leo making a decision?"

She wishes she could take back the next words the second they come out of her mouth. "Two people in a matter of minutes? Is this how it works?" Well, if that wasn't transparent, she wasn't sure what was.

He pauses, giving her the quickest of glances before turning away and resuming whatever work he was doing. He sighs before finally answering, a hint of double meaning in his words.

"It's how it works today."

falling into you
falling into you
falling into you...

END