This has always been my favorite part.

The part, you know, after.  The part when the pace has slowed down, when it's just the two of us enjoying each other's company.  It's quiet here and it's intimate, and I like it very much indeed.

Josh, of course, prefers the other part.  He's all about the excitement and the frantic pace and, you know, reaching the climax.

Well, there's an unfortunate choice of words.  I swear, I'm making everything sound sexual these days.  Must be the celibacy.  I'm all too aware of the fact that Josh's body is off limits for the next six weeks.

Especially now.  Since Senator Stackhouse's filibuster ended, most of the staff has gone home.  I know there are a few people out there in the bullpen, and I think Toby may still be in the building, but in here it's like a separate world.  In here, it's just Josh and me in a darkened office, sharing a beer.

I've been watching Josh finish his email to his mother.  This seems to be my week to obsess over his hands.  Last week his chest fascinated me; but under the Great Celibacy Act of 2001, I can't get a good enough look at that area, so I've moved on.  Josh has amazing hands.  I'm watching how his fingers move over the keyboard, and it's calling up all sorts of pleasant memories about how those fingers moved over my body a few weeks ago.

The next six weeks are beginning to seem unbearable.

Damn me and my bright ideas anyway.

I've finished off the last of the beer, but holding onto the bottle at least gives me something to do with my hands.  Also my mouth, though I don't realize that until Josh points it out to me in his characteristically subtle fashion.

"Geez, Donna, would you stop doing that?" he asks.  He's swung his chair around to face me, and he's giving me this ravenous look.

"Doing what?"

"The way you're fondling that beer bottle.  Under the present circumstances, it's way too suggestive."

"What are you talking about?"

The poor boy looks like he's about to break out into a sweat.

"The way you're -- you're running your tongue over the bottle top.  It gives a man ideas, Donna.  Ideas that unfortunately you will let me do nothing about."

I set the bottle down rather swiftly.  "I didn't -- I wasn't--"  I'm blushing again.  Josh takes an inordinate amount of pleasure in making me blush these days.

"You did," he says, "and you were, and it's very--"

"Don't say it."

"Cute."  Not the word he was going for originally, I'm thinking.  "It's very cute," he finishes.

Okay, so what word was he going for originally?  "And?" I ask.

"If you must know, I found it erotic."

"You're finding everything erotic these days."

"And sadly my whatever-you-are won't let me do one single thing about that."

I have to raise an eyebrow at that.  "I never said there was nothing you can do about it, Josh.  After all, what you may do alone in the privacy of your own home--"

"Donnatella Moss!"

I shrug.  "I'm just saying there are varying degrees of celibacy."

"Are there?"  He's smiling too much, like he's suddenly figured out a loophole in a Republican-sponsored bill.  I sense I may have waded in over my head here.

"So I've been told," I reply.  I can hear my voice all breathless, like I've been running too hard.  Or kissing him too long.  Or, in this case, going without kissing him too long.

He stands up and leans over my chair.  His hands -- those incredibly expressive hands -- are firmly planted on the armrests.  He's very carefully not touching me.

Damn.

I could stand a little illegal touching right about now.

"Do you have any particular suggestions?" he asks.

"You mean, other than the one I previously--"

"Donna!"

"Well, at least that doesn't involve any illegal touching."

"Do you have any idea how sick I am of that phrase?"

"I'm not thrilled with this situation either, Josh, but we agreed--"

"It's been two weeks."

"And before that, it was three years."

"Exactly.  We have three years of lost time to make up."  He leans in closer.  His mouth is practically touching mine.

"CJ would kill us," I point out.

"CJ is on her way to Napa," he replies.

"True.  The Enforcer has left the building."

"Who knows when we'll have another opportunity like this?"

"Not for the next six weeks, I'm sure.  But still--"

"What?" he asks.

"There's the original concern.  If someone found out--"

"The entire press corps is off writing about Senator Stackhouse.  We are definitely flying under their radar tonight."

"However--"

Josh groans and lets go of the chair.  "I knew there'd be a 'however,'" he says.

"You've got a plane to catch," I point out.

"Not for eight hours."

"A person can do a lot in eight hours," I point out.

"Two people can do twice as much."

"But, you know, there is still the matter of our bet," I say.

"So if it weren't for the bet, you'd be willing--"

"More than willing.  'Eager' would not be too strong a word."

"So we call off the bet.  For the weekend."

"And as of Monday," I say, "we go back to the bet.  Also to the celibacy."

"I would consider that a fair compromise.  For now."

"One night," I say.  "That is all I'm agreeing to."  I can talk myself into this if I try really hard.  Or, you know, if I try at all.  "You'll be gone the rest of the weekend."

"If my plane gets back early enough on Sunday--"

I stand up.  Given how close we are already, Josh really doesn't have any choice except to grab hold of me if we're going to avoid falling over in a heap.

"Josh?"

"Yes?"

"Do you want to waste time talking about your flight schedule, or do you want to make out?"

He smirks, of course, because he's an arrogant bastard and he knows how much I want him.

"Well, you know, I could take the flight that--"

"So what you're saying here is that you don't want to have sex tonight?"

"That is absolutely not what I'm saying."

"Because if you want to just keep talking about your flight schedule--"

He pulls me closer, which I didn't really think was possible, and then he kisses me.  A deep, long, slow kiss.

I'm thinking that the banter portion of the evening is pretty much over. 

*** 

"Drive faster."

"Donna, I appreciate the sentiment, but I'd like to avoid any major collisions."

"I'm just saying that you're under kind of a tight schedule here.  And I'm betting you haven't even packed yet."

"Who needs to pack?"

"Oh, now I get it. I see through your devious plan.  You're using the promise of sex to get me through the front door.  Once I'm there, I'll discover that all you really want from me is my ability to pack your suitcase.  I sense I'm being used.  My mother warned me about men like you."

"It's just one suitcase, Donna, and there will be sex."

"So you say.  But we're down to seven hours, and I have yet to see any action."

"In the office--"

"One kiss, Josh."  I hold up a hand to stop his protest.  "A very nice kiss, to be sure.  However, one kiss does not constitute significant action.  Especially when you consider that tonight has to tide us over for six weeks."

"But we have seven hours at our disposal."

"Five."

"Seven."

"Five, Josh.  You need thirty minutes to pack, at least an hour to get to the airport, thirty minutes or more to check in at the gate.  In fact, five is a generous estimate.  More likely four and a half--"

The car accelerates with amazing speed.

"Okay, Josh?  When I suggested driving faster, I still meant that you should observe the speed limit."

He looks over at me for a moment with that look -- you know, the one that says he's starving and I'm the main course.

"Well, fine," I say.  I can't help but notice that I'm grinning like an idiot.  "If that's the way you feel about it, go ahead.  Break the speed limit.  Just don't blame me if you get a ticket." 

*** 

Not capable of coherent speech at the moment.  I'm--

Well, that was--

We were--

Josh was--

Incredible.

I think I make some sort of noise.  It resembles a sigh, I think.  A very contented sigh.

This, of course, makes Josh laugh.  Normally, I would have to kill him for that, but I let him live for two reasons.  One, he just proved that he's extremely inventive.  Not to mention flexible.  And, two, my head is resting on his chest and the vibration from his laughter is actually kind of a turn-on.

So I let him off with a warning.  "You're blowing the mood here, Joshua."

He's running his hand over my hair, a gesture which feels incredibly good.  "Yes, but I think you just purred there, Donnatella.  You actually purred."

"Must be the influence of Bast."

"Who?"

"The Egyptian cat goddess CJ's trying to appease.  Long story."

"Why is CJ trying to appease an Egyptian cat goddess, and will this knowledge help us when she finds out why I got a speeding ticket?"

"We have two hours left, it really is a long story, and you got that ticket because you were speeding."

"I got that ticket because you, Ms. We-Only-Have-Five-Hours, were enticing me to commit illegal acts."

"Enticing?  All I did was point out that we are dealing with an inflexible deadline."  I stop talking and plant a kiss right on the spot where his neck and his shoulder meet.  I love that spot.

"You were giving me looks.  Looks that promised sex.  I call that enticing."

"I'm so glad you had the good sense to not tell that to Officer Wills."

"And then you with the conversation," he complains.  "What were you trying to do -- get the guy's life story?"

"No, Josh, I was trying to save you $150 and a possibly embarrassing item in the papers by establishing a connection with the nice police officer.  It would have worked too if you hadn't started complaining about how you just wanted the man to give you a ticket so we could get home."

"Oh.  That's what you were doing.  That was sweet."  He takes a minute to kiss his way through various sensitive spots on my body -- he starts at my shoulders and works his way down to my hip before I stop him.

"I still think this sounds like a singularly pointless baseball game you're going to," I say.

"It's not.  Mike Piazza--"

"Is going to call you 'dude.'  So I've heard."

"It's a big deal."

"Bigger than staying in this bed all weekend and having your way with me?"

"Tough call."

I push him away because he is simply too ridiculous to be allowed to have sex.

"Six weeks, Josh.  We will not have another opportunity to do this for six whole weeks."

"I'll take an early flight on Sunday."

"A very early flight.  The red eye, even."

"I can just throw a toothbrush and a pair of pajamas in my duffel bag.  That gives us an extra half hour right there."

He goes back to kissing that place on my hip, slowly moving down a little and then to the right.  Once again, I find myself incapable of speech.

"Okay," Josh says.  "Now that sounded more like a moan than like purring."

"If you're going to criticize--"

"That wasn't criticism.  That was commentary.  Appreciative commentary."

"Josh?"

"Yes?"

"Could we cut out the commentary and get back to specifics?"

He's very agreeable tonight, Josh is.  We spend another hour or so on the specifics.

I swear he purrs once or twice too. 

*** 

So here's an idea," Josh says.  He's throwing things haphazardly into his duffel bag.  "Instead of my taking the red eye back to DC tomorrow, you could fly to LaGuardia and meet me there.  The drive would only take a couple of hours."

I'm confused, but that could be because I'm exhausted.  Also that I'm obsessing over his chest while I can still get a good look at it.  "What drive?" I ask.

"To Connecticut," he says, very carefully not looking at me.

Connecticut?

Oh.

Things do move rather swiftly where Josh is concerned.

"Do you think that's a good idea?" I ask.

He's still fascinated with his packing and avoiding my gaze.  "I think it's an excellent idea, or I wouldn't have suggested it."  Then he looks at me, and I might have to start purring again.  "This isn't -- it's not some cheap affair, Donna.  I want to tell somebody.  Hell, I want to tell everybody; but since that's not possible, we'll start with my mother."

"What exactly will we tell her?"

"That we're in love, for a start."

"She knows that already."

He does that thing where he's puzzled and his forehead gets all wrinkly and you can see these little lines at the corners of his eyes.  "She what?"

"Your mother knows we love each other.  In fact, she told me.  In the hospital."  I have to stop for a minute because thinking back to that day can still upset me.  It's all I can do, in fact, to keep from launching myself out of bed and grabbing on to him just to make sure he's really here.  I shrug, because it seems like a casual sort of thing to do.  "Your mother said it's been fairly obvious for a couple of years now."

"It has?  If it was so damn obvious, why couldn't she have told me sooner and saved us, you know, two years of not having sex?"

"Strangely enough, I asked her pretty much the same thing.  Well, I may have yelled."

"You yelled at my mother?"

"Yes, but she didn't take it personally.  I mean, I was yelling at everybody that night.  I still can't believe the stuff I said to the First Lady."

"The -- Okay, why were you yelling at people?"  He comes over and sits on the edge of the bed beside me.

"You were dying, Josh.  That's what -- At one point, the doctors said we shouldn't get our hopes up.  I knew they meant -- Anyway, obviously you didn't die and everything's fine, so--"

And then I do what I haven't done, exactly what I've wanted to do since that night.  I throw myself into his arms and sob for several minutes.

"Have I ever told you that you're amazing?" Josh asks in this very soft voice.

"I didn't do anything, Josh.  I just sat there and waited for fourteen hours.  And yelled at the doctors.  And the First Lady.  Also your mother."

"You did all that, plus you kept me going for the next three months when I wanted to give up from the pain and the physical therapy.  Plus at Christmas -- I wouldn't have made it then without you."

This is suddenly much too intense for me.  This is suddenly dealing with stuff I want to forget about, so I go for the joke.  "Yes, I'm quite indispensable.  I shudder to think how you'll manage when I quit."

"So do I," he says in this serious voice.

Between the gravity of the conversation and the resultant kissing, it's several minutes before either of us speaks again.  "I'm not going," Josh says.

"What?"

"Baseball game or you.  I know which one's more important."

"Josh, you've been looking forward to this game for weeks."

"Yes, but I've been looking forward to a weekend like this for years."

For an arrogant bastard, he can be remarkably sweet sometimes.

"Still.  You're going to your pointless baseball game," I tell him.  "And you'll have a good time and Mike Piazza will call you 'dude' and then you'll fly to New York and I'll meet you and we'll drive to Connecticut to tell your mother something she already knows."

He gives me one of his rare smiles -- the kind with no hint of a smirk and plenty of dimple.  "And then we'll come back here and it will still be Sunday and we can have lots of sex."

"You're a ridiculous man, Josh," I tell him.

"Strangely enough, that's what my fiancée says."

"Your what?" I ask.  I think my voice just went up about three octaves.

"Oh yeah," he says.  "Didn't I tell you?  I finally decided what it is you are to me now."

Oh.

Well, okay.

At least now we have something to tell his mother that she doesn't already know.

THE END

03.20.01