Title: Circumspection
Author: Yana (yanatya at hotmail dot com)
Fandom: The West Wing
Pairing: Josh/Donna
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Mild through S6. Futurefic.
Disclaimer: The West Wing and its characters are not my creations and do not belong to me. I am not making any material profit from this story.
Acknowledgements: To Christine for yet another last minute beta.
Notes: For the 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover inter-fandom fiction project. The song referenced, for those who care, is Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown".

******

He felt her arm trail across his bare chest as he slipped out of her embrace. Still sleeping, she instinctively rolled into the warm patch of bed where he'd just been lying.

At least she won't be cold, he thought, drawing the covers up over her bare shoulders.

He was. He hated having to leave her warm body and warm bed at four-thirty in the morning, but he did have an early meeting, and he'd told her about it before they'd ordered dinner. It was just the inconvenience to him.

But it was the first time he'd left.

The night of their first time together he'd stayed. Of course he'd stayed. It had happened so quickly, and so not like he'd ever thought it would, that afterward nothing could have budged him from her bed, possibly not even her. They'd fallen asleep together and when he'd woken a few hours later, he'd watched her sleep in his arms, in the dark. When she'd awoken near dawn, she'd seemed a little disconcerted to find him there, gazing at her, but she'd recovered.

Their second night, after they'd collapsed together, breathing hard and both still astonished at the power of what lay between them, he'd asked if she minded him staying the night. She'd automatically said no, of course not, and he'd kissed her and they'd curled up together in the middle of the bed to fall asleep. Sometime during the night she'd drifted to her side alone, but other than a slight drop in temperature when she'd rolled away, he hadn't noticed.

The third night he'd asked before they'd eaten dinner, and she'd given him a little quirky smile and reiterated that no, of course she didn't mind. That was the night he decided that they were starting to get the hang of having sex together. The first-time fumbling was gone—even though he knew almost her every thought, he'd known nothing about her body or what she liked, so he'd been paying attention, and it had worked. The morning after had gone well too. She truly seemed to accept having him there, waking him with a blow job that made him explode and then yearn for several more hours sleep to recover.

But he had to be careful, so very careful, of how he went about this thing with her. She didn't want to be his assistant again, didn't want to be his appendage or his protégé or in fact anything that professionally involved him. She wouldn't even discuss her work with him, and while he understood her point, he knew she was sabotaging herself sometimes by not taking his advice.

He respected that, too, because she wanted to make her own mistakes, and because she wasn't the opportunist he was. He'd promised himself he wouldn't say a word, wouldn't save her if she fell, because to do so would, in her eyes, mean he didn't think of her as a grown woman and a professional political operative in her own right.

It was hard to not say anything, though. His instinct to shield her, to protect her, was so much stronger now that she was no longer under his wing. He had to watch himself carefully every moment of their conversation, had to fight the urge every time.

The fourth night, he hadn't asked. He'd just stayed. By luck he'd woken twenty minutes before her alarm and had slipped his hand between her thighs to stroke her awake, then burrowed under the blankets to use his tongue.

This was their fifth night, and it seemed like too soon to be leaving her alone. Looking down at her, he wondered if she was really asleep, but though he studied her carefully, he couldn't tell. He slipped out quietly, locking her door behind him with the key he'd never relinquished.

His own apartment seemed cold and the light unnaturally harsh when he got there. He set about turning up the heat and stripping off his clothes, and by the time he'd stood under a hot shower for twenty minutes, he felt better.

That was one good thing about going home instead of staying the night, he thought. He had a better shower. And now he wasn't barreling in, stressed from fighting the early rush hour traffic between her place and his, throwing on whatever suit was cleanest, and barreling back out again.

He set his coffeemaker on to brew while he dressed and then took a full three minutes to pick out his suit.

He was wrestling with his socks when the clock-radio suddenly burst to life, some vaguely familiar crooner on the easy listening station telling him that he feels like he's winning when he's losing again.

Humming, trying to place the song in his head, he padded out to the kitchen to pour coffee into his old Bartlet for America mug. Maybe he could convince her to come to his place tonight. Except not tonight, because she had her EPA thing and he had enough work to keep him busy into the next millennium. He took a sip of coffee and considered. Tomorrow night? Could he take her out for their two-week anniversary, and would she actually have the night free to go out to dinner with him? In a real restaurant, in public?

Taking his mug with him, he wandered into the living room and started riffling through the pile of mail sitting on his coffee table. So many bills to pay, and no assistant to do it for him anymore.

The problem with dinner was that he didn't know how to approach her, how to ask her for a date properly in a way that sounded confident without being smug, and which didn't involve sending flowers to her office like a lovesick puppy.

She probably wouldn't appreciate flowers from him at work, anyway. Not yet. She'd never said anything, but she got tense when people assumed that they'd always been together. A big signed bouquet from him in her office would scream, "I'm still with Joshua Lyman," to anyone who didn't know better, undermining her attempts to build her own political reputation.

That's how she'd see it, anyway. He drained his coffee mug and stalked back to the kitchen, suddenly annoyed. From his bedroom his radio told him that getting lost in her loving was his first mistake and he went to shut it off.

And then there was the sex. He'd always assumed that once they started, they wouldn't stop for days on end, neglecting everything else to be with each other. It couldn't be like that, of course, because they both had commitments elsewhere, but handling the relationship like a responsible adult meant they'd only spent five nights together in nearly two weeks, all of them at her place.

The other problem with the sex was that she preferred to be on top.

That in itself wasn't technically the issue. He loved her being on top, loved watching her impale herself on his cock so that they both shuddered, loved watching her find the rhythm and movement that pleased her best, loved seeing her sit straight and tall and proud as she rode him, loved the way she collapsed on top of him when she was spent. And, frankly, he wasn't getting any younger, so while certain parts of his body could hold up their end of the bargain for longer, so to speak, he could feel his mortality in his knees and elbows and that tingling on one side of his chest.

He went back to the kitchen and scrawled "physio" on the message pad next to the phone.

No, the problem wasn't their preferred position. The problem was those times when, in the middle of sex, she shut her eyes, threw her head back, and closed herself off from him.

Of course she shouldn't have to make eye contact with him the whole time, even if he was never tempted to shut his own eyes when they were together. And of course she should concentrate on her own orgasm, especially when he didn't yet know exactly what her body needed.

But it didn't seem like either of those things when she did it. It seemed like she was drifting off into her own world, his cock inside her an incidental pleasure that did nothing to ground her in the here and now. Expressions would flit across her face that he'd never seen before and knew nothing about, except that they likely had nothing to do with him.

When she took herself away like that, he didn't react well, though of course she never noticed his troubled expression. It made him want to roll her under him, jolt her out of whatever fantasy she'd put herself in, and force her to watch while he drove himself into her again and again. She was his. His, his, his, in the only way that mattered.

Every time he'd squashed the urge to put her under him that way. Apart from anything else, they were still too new for him to take away her control like that, without warning.

He was committed to treading carefully with her, which implied that if she wanted something, he most often gave it to her. So in the cold light of morning, he didn't know how to explain, calmly and diplomatically, that she could keep her professional life separate if that was what she needed to do, but that she did not have the option of shutting him out anywhere else.

Maybe handcuffs could make his point for him more subtly, but they weren't at the massage-oil-and-toys stage yet either, which was weird anyway because they'd always been so close before, joking, teasing, no boundaries between them. Now it was like they were learning each other for the first time.

His mouth twisted into a sad grin as he scratched the word "physio" off the pad and started looking for the physiotherapist's office number. It was too early to reach anyone, but he could at least leave a message with the answering service.

No, she wouldn't react well to him blatantly staking his claim on her, either physically or with words. She was still ever so slightly reserved around him, and he knew that he was, in a sense, paying for the single past sin she'd never forgiven him—selfishness.

He didn't mind paying his dues to her. She deserved all the attention he could give her, after all the years and everything she'd done for him that he'd appreciated but never completely understood. He was happy to woo her slowly, coax her closer, wear down her reserve a little at a time. It was an old-fashioned approach, but given her track record with men, likely a novel experience.

And for him, this was his chance with the only life partner he'd ever wanted. He wasn't going to let anything slide. Every moment he spent with her heightened his attention to her needs. He was using every political skill he had to be genuine with her while at the same time watching her, watching himself, and analyzing both of them. No false moves, no mistakes. He was more self-aware now than he'd ever been before.

Finally locating both the physiotherapist's number and his appointment book, he dialed and got the answering service. "Yeah. Could you have the office call Joshua Lyman at work around—" he consulted his day's schedule, "three o'clock today? Regarding an appointment for—" he flipped through the pages, "the middle of this month? Thanks."

He hung up and looked down at the pages in his appointment book. It was February already. February. The middle of February. Valentine's Day. Also, their original not-anniversary. He really was an idiot.

He also really had to get going, if he wanted to be in on the pre-breakfast meeting strategy session, which, given the ungodly hour of the morning, he was never suggesting again, ever.

He thought about calling her right away, but remembered the image of her curled up alone in her warm bed, getting some much-deserved sleep. He wouldn't wake her up just because he'd only now realized what month it was.

He added an entry for three-fifteen pm to his appointment book. "Call D re—" He paused, resisted the only urge he'd ever had to draw in a little heart, and finished with "V-day" instead.

He'd have to think of something before then.

-- fin

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