(no subject)

[helsinkibaby]

My keyboard is broken. I was cleaning (I swear, you'd be better if you were dirty) and something dropped from a height onto the keyboard, taking the covering caps of the T and Y letters. So here I am, typing away, trying to hit the empty sprockets at just the right pressure... is a pain in the ass. HelsinkiDaddy is going to bring into the office tomorrow to see if the boffins there can repair. Never knew how much I used those keys.

And just when I get my muse back... granted, was for One Tree Hill, but still...

In other fic stuff, for the donnaficathon

Title: Need
Written for: natlski
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Josh/Donna, Sam/Donna
Requirements: Pairings - Josh/Donna; Sam/Donna; Theme, Josh is receiving death threats which escalate to obvious attempts on his life and perhaps a kidnapping. angst is always good; Restriction, no graphic descriptions of sex
Spoilers: Everything up to the end of season five to be safe.
Summary: There aren’t many people for whom Sam would race across the country for



There aren’t many people for whom Sam Seaborn would drop everything and race clear across the country in the middle of the night.

Donna Moss is one of them; in fact, she’s pretty much at the top of the list.

So when, in the wee small hours of the morning, his phone rings, and it’s her at the other end, telling him what’s happened, in a voice that’s shaking and tear-filled, ending with a very quiet, very tremulous, “I need you here,” he finds himself on the next flight to D.C.

Once upon a time, he introduced Donna to Scott Holcombe as one of his best friends.

She wasn’t always, just like he didn’t always consider her the phenomenal woman he now knows her to be.

At first, she was some blonde ingénue that wandered around the Bartlet for America offices, Josh’s ID around her neck, a perpetually worried look on her face, as if she felt she didn’t deserve to be there and was going to be found out at any second.

Of course, when he’d found out her qualifications – or rather lack thereof – he’d wondered if Josh had taken leave of his senses, wondered what exactly his reasons for hiring Donna were. Let’s face it, Sam had thought, if he were dating Mandy Hampton, he too might be ensorcelled by a girl who looked like Donna, something that Josh had scathingly denied. “She’s my assistant,” he’d told Sam, in a voice that he normally reserved for intransigent Republicans. “Not some boiler room girl… and anyone who says otherwise can go to hell.”

In that long cold winter trekking across the fifty states, plenty of people would have enjoyed the warmer climes extolled by Josh, and judging from the gossip Sam heard, his friend would have sent just as many people there.

Not Sam though. And not just because Josh was his friend, with a really bad poker face, who couldn’t lie to Sam if his life depended on it.

But because he got to know Donna. Donna who was organised and efficient, who organised Josh’s office in a couple of days, was able to find everything and anything that they needed. Donna who dealt with everyone with a smile and a kind word, Donna who never lost heart, who never made it seem like she wanted to be anywhere else in the world. Donna who did the work of three people, and kept Josh in line and made it all look effortless.

So effortless that they didn’t realise how much work she did until she left. Josh was unbearable for the few weeks that she was gone, and when she came back, it was a major cause for celebration among the campaign staff, Leo even being heard to mutter that if they had to hog-tie her to a chair to stop her leaving again, then by God, they were going to do it.

They hadn’t had to though, and when the election was won, and it decided who among the campaign staff were being offered jobs, Donna’s name was one of the first on the list.

At first, she was just Donna, his friend’s assistant.

He’s not sure when she became Donna, his friend.

He knows though, when she became more than his friend.

It was a night like this, a night that came after an endless day, a day when fear seemed to take the place of blood in their veins, a day that Josh spent in surgery, a day when sleep was very far away. He’d been in and out of the hospital, had gone back to the office, appeared on all the morning shows, dissecting the events at Rosslyn, all the while checking his pager between interviews, hoping for updates, at the same time hoping that they wouldn’t come. Unlike him though, she’d stayed there for every minute of the surgery, staring unseeing into space, her face never losing the stricken look that had settled on it the second Toby had uttered those three simple words.

“Josh was hit.”

Her reply had been just as simple, almost childlike – “Hit with what?” – and Sam had felt his heart break for her.

That’s when he’d known for sure what he’d suspected for months; that Donna was in love with Josh.

He knew she loved him, and he knew that Josh would want him to take care of her, so when he was out of surgery, when he was awake, had spoken to the President and Leo, he’d taken her home. He’d had to physically drag her out of the hospital, but she’d begun to doze in the car on the way back to her place, and, ever the gentleman, he’d walked her inside, right to the front door of her apartment.

He hadn’t intended to go inside, but she’d pointed out, and rightly so, that she had severe doubts as to his ability to make it back to his place without falling asleep at the wheel. She’d offered him her couch, and he’d accepted. He sat down on it, discovered that Josh was right, it was surprisingly comfortable, and he’d been surprised when she’d sat down beside him.

“I just need a minute,” she’d told him wanly. “Let me get the energy to walk to my room.”

He hadn’t replied, just tilted his head back against the cushions, closed his eyes, and dropped off to sleep straight away.

It was only when the soft sound of her cries woke him up, and he looked down at her to see her still asleep, pressed up against him, that he realised she hadn’t gone to bed, had fallen asleep right there in his arms.

He intended to wake her up, to hold her in his arms and tell her that everything was going to be all right.

His lips on hers came as quite as surprise, and he really has no idea how their clothes melted away, how they ended up making love right then and there.

He does remember that it was pretty damn spectacular, but that afterwards, as she lay still pressed up against him, the two of them covered by the throw from the back of the couch, huddled together like orphans of the storm, she told him that this could only ever be a one-off.

He agreed, and it meant it.

It just didn’t work out that way.

Because he was the one she came to when she was worried about Josh that Christmas, when she was the first one to notice how close to the edge she was. Sam didn’t believe her at first, didn’t want to believe her, but when he looked closely, he knew she was right. And that day, when he blew up at the President in the Oval Office, he realised just how bad things were, and he went to her apartment that night, to talk. Just to talk.

They talked, but they did a lot more than talk, and that time at least, they made it to the bedroom. In the morning, they agreed that it could never happen again.

And it didn’t.

Until he found out about his father. She was the only one who managed to talk some sense into him, ended up hugging him in his office. He told her that there were some things you were sure about, like latitude and longitude, and she thought that he meant his father.

Part of him did.

But a great part meant her, because she was the one constant in his life, the one thing that he was always sure of.

That night, when he lay beside her in her bed, watching her shoulders rise and fall in sleep, he realised just how much she’d come to mean to him. Realised that while he may have dated Mallory, and slept with Laurie, and flirted with Ainsley, it was Donna that he was in love with.

He didn’t tell her that though. Because she was his friend, and she was in love with Josh, and he cared about them both too much to get in the middle of that.

So he went on about his day to day life as the President’s Deputy Communications Director, told himself that she was just his friend.

She was the first one he told about running for Congress, and when he saw her smile, saw the way she was looking at him, it didn’t seem so scary, seemed like it could be a good thing.

She came over the night before he left, cooked him dinner, sat on his couch with him, watched some old movie that he paid no attention to. Nothing happened that night, he just held her, held her hand.

But when he thinks of Donna, that’s his favourite memory.

It’s the memory that’s on his mind as he sits on the plane, wills it to go faster. He can’t help but be reminded of that night so long ago, that night where it all began between them.

He’d been scared that night, just like he’s scared now, just like he’s been scared ever since Donna called him last month, told him that Josh was getting death threats. It wasn’t that unusual; Josh had been getting death threats ever since the President was first elected. They all had. But ever since May 2002, they’d all taken these things a lot more seriously, and Sam knew that if Donna was telling him this, then these death threats weren’t the usual crackpots who were pissed off at them.

These were serious.

They were all coming from the same person, someone with a grudge against Josh. A week after they’d started, Josh had been given Secret Service protection, something which he’d railed against, and that had been when Donna had called Sam, to get him to talk some sense into Josh.

He’d obliged, and he thinks Josh listened to him, took his advice. At least he’d stopped bitching about it, and Donna had called Sam, telling him she owed him one.

He’d told her to keep him up to date, and she had, which is how he knew that the death threats were becoming more frequent, increasing in number and intensity.

Sam had been absolutely sure that the Secret Service would be able to protect him.

Then his phone had rung in the middle of the night, and he’d heard Donna’s voice at the other end, telling him about that Josh had been shot, that he was in the hospital, that she needed him.

He thought he was making the journey for her, but it’s only when he walks into the waiting room – and it’s the same waiting room as years ago – that he realises that he was wrong.

He needs her just as badly as she needs him.

So he holds her, heedless of the watching eyes, and he whispers in her ear, tells her that everything is going to be all right.

He just hopes that it will be.