They both paused, swords raised and poised for another strike, but bodies held loosely, almost casually.

"You do that very well," the older man told Sark.

"This? You mean the sword play?"

"Yes. It's very impressive. Most men your age would have aimed for my jugular and not even noticed that I was dangerously close to slicing their gullets open."

"Most men my age haven't trained with the masters," Sark gloated.

"Indeed," Bond replied dryly. "I see you're also very modest about your skills."

"When you’re the best, you don't need to be modest," Sark said laughingly, lunging once again.

~End~

"It's just such a rush, ya know? Wham, bam, there's a dead demon at your feet and there's all this leftover… energy," Faith said, grinning wolfishly. "And it's just dying to be used in the most erotic ways."

"The act of sex is often used to relieve stress, pain, and any number of other physical conditions."

Faith's grin widened. "Yeah. So… how about it? Interested in helping a slayer burn off some excess adrenalin?"

Inara raised an eyebrow inquiringly. "I don't come cheaply."

Faith kissed her long and hard. "Baby, after I do you, you'll be asking to pay me."

~End~

"You're very… talented," Sloane commented with a gratified sigh as Dawn slithered up his body. "But I must wonder –"

"Why?" Dawn shrugged. "My sister, she's the slayer."

"Yes, I know. Which makes your willingness to engage in such relations as this even more interesting."

"She fights the good fight, slays the big bads. Me? I'm nothing special. Just her annoying little sister. But I figured… if I can't /be/ good, well, I might as well /feel/ good," she told him, running her hands down his wizened chest.

Sloane groaned as she reached even lower. "Ah. I'm beginning to see."

~End~

She used to sing all the time. Stevie Wonder, Michael Buble, Faith Hill. Songs filled with love and longing, hope and inspiration. Songs that made Donna smile, that made the grueling days on the campaign trail feel just a little bit lighter.

Donna hasn't heard her sing since the funeral, since she sang that heartbreaking rendition of Amazing Grace. She wonders if she sings in private now, or if she even sings at all anymore. If Donna had to guess, she'd say that all the music in Annabeth's heart died that day with Leo.

Until one day, she overhears the soft, yet emotional strains of Someone to Watch Over Me drifting through the halls of the White House. And she knows that maybe, just maybe, Annabeth's heart is finally healing.

~End~

It was Josh's idea to begin with.

He had mentioned how much he wanted to watch her with someone else. He'd meant another woman – Annabeth, Helen, CJ -- but when she had suggested another man, he hadn't been entirely opposed to the idea.

So when Bram came into the office to tell them the good news bout HR260, she hugged him. Tight. Then she kissed him. And when Josh made that little aroused moaning noise, she pushed her tongue into Bram's mouth and squeezed his ass.

Things moved quickly from there. Clothes were removed, mouths meshed, hands groped and stroked and fondled. And now they were here - a tangled, sweaty, satisfied mass of limbs on the floor of the Chief of Staff's office.

And Donna had to admit that maybe Josh had some good ideas after all

~End~

"Donna. Finally -- Someone there who's answering their phone," Toby grumbled briskly as soon as Donna answered her phone. "Where the hell is Josh? I know he's probable ten kinds of crazy right about now, but I've been calling his phone every five minutes and he hasn't been answering the damn thing --"

Donna's heart sank. Toby. She hadn't called Toby.

She'd called CJ, hoping that CJ would notify everyone else. But she'd forgotten that CJ couldn't call Toby. That no one at the White House could. And the only person who might have reminded her to call him was standing outside an empty hospital room, too full of grief to do much more than process the most basic of information.

She bowed her head, and concentrated on not crying as she broke the news. "Toby... Leo died."

She heard a sharp intake of breath, then a very soft and gruff, "He… died?"

"It was another heart attack. Annabeth found him," she said quietly.

There was silence for a few moments and then, "Josh?"

"He's taking it pretty hard. I'm taking him back to the hotel now," she told him.

"I… God. Yeah." There was another moment of silence. "Listen, I know none of you are supposed to contact me, but if you could—"

"I'll call you," she promised. "As soon as the arrangements are made. And I'll talk to CJ and make sure your name is on the list. Leo would've… he would have wanted you there. You, CJ, Josh, Sam. You were his family. And he would have wanted you there."

"Thank you, Donna." She heard what sounded suspiciously like a sniffle on the other end of the phone. "And tell Josh… tell him Leo would have been proud. Win or lose, he would have been proud."

She bit her lip and nodded, even though he couldn't see her. "I know. I will."

~End~

~~~~~
"Josh… that was… that was… oh my god, that was incredible!"

"Yes!"

"Don't gloat."

"But my woman just had the best orgasm of her life, all thanks to me. I think I've earned the right to gloat."

"Possibly, but that still doesn't make it attractive."

"Face it, Donna, you always find me… mmmmph! What was that for?"

"Always finding you attractive."

"You wanted to shut me up, didn't you?"

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Sarcasm is so unattractive on you."

"But, Josh, I thought you always found me attractive?"

"Touche."

"So where exactly did you learn to do that?"

"You want to do it again?"

"Really? So soon?"

"Well, I'm not 25 anymore, but I could try."

"Or you could…you know."

"You know? I… oh! Donna! After we've…? Ewww! No. No, no, no, no."

"You're such a baby. I can shower first, if that will help."

"A shower? Maybe. Can I help?"

"Help?"

"With the hair washing and stuff."

"Will you scrub my back?"

"I'll scrub any part you want."

"Let's go."

"Um, Donna?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

"Getting up to take a shower."

"You were serious?"

"You weren't?"

"But… now?"

"Yes."

"But I thought we were going to bask in the afterglow or… something."

"You've been hanging around Sam too much."

"I have not! All I said was… Oh god. I have."

"I think it's sweet."

"Ugh. Sweet. That's almost as bad as sounding like Sam."

"It is not. I like it."

Disclaimer: Sorkins, not mine.
Notes: Intopolitics was having a long, boring, blah day and asked for amusement. I offered to write her a smut ficlet. It didn't quite get smutty, but..

"Josh… that was… that was… oh my god, that was incredible!"

"Yes!"

"Don't gloat."

"But my woman just had the best orgasm of her life, all thanks to me. I think I've earned the right to gloat."

"Possibly, but that still doesn't make it attractive."

"Face it, Donna, you always find me… mmmmph! What was that for?"

"Always finding you attractive."

"You wanted to shut me up, didn't you?"

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Sarcasm is so unattractive on you."

"But, Josh, I thought you always found me attractive?"

"Touche."

"So where exactly did you learn to do that?"

"You want to do it again?"

"Really? So soon?"

"Well, I'm not 25 anymore, but I could try."

"Or you could…you know."

"You know? I… oh! Donna! After we've…? Ewww! No. No, no, no, no."

"You're such a baby. I can shower first, if that will help."

"A shower? Maybe. Can I help?"

"Help?"

"With the hair washing and stuff."

"Will you scrub my back?"

"I'll scrub any part you want."

"Let's go."

"Um, Donna?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

"Getting up to take a shower."

"You were serious?"

"You weren't?"

"But… now?"

"Yes."

"But I thought we were going to bask in the afterglow or… something."

"You've been hanging around Sam too much."

"I have not! All I said was… Oh god. I have."

"I think it's sweet."

"Ugh. Sweet. That's almost as bad as sounding like Sam."

"It is not. I like it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Then… mmmph! What was /that/ one for?"

"Because you're sweet. And because apparently your body doesn't know you're not 25 anymore."

"Hey, look at that. So Donna, you want to try that thing again? Mmmmph. I'll take that as a yes."

"Pencils."

"What?"

"We need pencils."

"So order some."

"The White House only uses certain vendors but their pencils are all low quality and break easily. We need better pencils."

"So go buy some somewhere else. I have work to do."

"Pencils are part of your work. If we bought better quality pencils, we wouldn't need to buy such quantities and we wouldn't need to rely on Canadian lumber."

"You're insane, you know that?"

"It's why you love me."

"That and many other reasons."

"You're mocking now, aren't you?"

"Yes. Go back to work, Pippi. I have stuff to do."

~End~

"Hey, are you ok?" Dylan called out, as Lucy came careening past him down the stairs. "You look like –"

"I'm fine," she snapped, hurrying past him.

"Ok, but…"

She ignored him and kept on going, whizzing past a startled Suzanne in her hurry to get somewhere a little more private.

"Oh my God, you're crying. What happened? Did they not like the idea? I should have kept my mouth shut."

"He liked the sketch fine. Better than fine. Fantastic. Loved it!" she snapped as she swiped angrily at the tears in her eyes.

"Seriously, what happened? Why are you crying?" Suzanne asked, worried.

"I am not crying! I'm English and the English do not cry!" she exclaimed as she slammed into the first available dressing room and collapsed in a heap on the couch.

Suzanne followed, holding the ever-present clipboard against her as a shield. She stood silently next to the couch, moving only to pass Lucy and tissue now and again as she continued sobbing into a pillow.

"What was I thinking?" she asked between sniffling. "I knew what he was like and I dated him anyhow, and now I'm crying all over my boss –" She stopped suddenly and stared up at Suzanne. "Oh my god. I cried all over my boss. I am so embarrassed." She buried her face in the pillow again, her tears starting anew.

Suzanne shrugged and sank down on the couch next to her, awkwardly patting her shoulder. "Maybe it's not as bad as you think."

"Not as bad?! I blubbered all over my boss and then hit him, for God's sake, directly after pitching him the unfunniest skit ever. And then I let my other boss… all in front of the guy I'm supposed to be mentoring and…I'm never going to live this down. Never."

"Ok, that does sound bad. But it could've been worse. You could have had the entire cast witness it. Or your work-place crush. Or worse, Carl could write a tell-all book about what happened between you two," Suzanne suggested.

Shocked, Lucy raised her head and stared at the other woman for several long seconds before bursting out into laughter. "That's so not funny and yet…"

"I managed to make you laugh," Suzanne finished, smiling indulgently at her.

"Yes, you did." She swiped at the last bit of wetness clinging to her cheeks. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Since I saw Danny upstairs, I can only assume that everyone's back now?" Lucy asked.

Suzanne nodded. "Yeah, they arrived a few minutes before you came hurtling downstairs."

"Ok. I guess it's time to get to work then."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure. The show must go on, right?" She grinned before standing up and helping Suzanne to her feet. "Eat 'em up, Suzanne."

"Eat 'em up, Lucy."

And, laughing, both women got back to work.

~End~

"It ain't nothing but a family thing."

He'd read that somewhere. Or maybe he'd seen it in a movie. He wasn't really sure. Things tended to get fuzzy sometimes and he had trouble keeping the facts straight.

Had he really drank the last third of the scotch or had Sophie dumped it when he wasn't looking? Was the situation with the Princess of Nambia real or was it a con that he had set up? Was he really doing good or was he merely doing what was good for him?

Anyhow, it didn't really matter where he'd heard it. The point was, it was true.

His grandfather had been a drunk. His father, too. And while he'd like to think he wasn't … well, the evidence and reactions of his team seemed to say otherwise.

Was this the fate his son would have suffered, too? He didn't know that either.

When Eliot is twelve, Miss Christiano asks him to stay behind after class. Boldly approaching her desk, he demands to know what the problem is. She smiles and says there isn't one, she is simply intrigued by the untraditional spelling of his name and wonders if his parents named him after the poet.

Eliot shakes his head. He doesn't know.

That's when she hands him a book. "I thought you might enjoy this."

He grunts a thank you and, as soon as he's out of her sight, dumps the book in the nearest trash.

Eliot has no patience for poems.

~~~

When Eliot is fifteen, the smug jock who sits next to him in English class mocks him for his name. The words are barely out of the boy's mouth before Eliot is rising from his desk, his chair toppling to the floor with a great clatter. He stands over the boy menacingly.

"I. Am. Not. A. Pansy-Ass. Poet," he grinds out, each word echoing loudly in the silent classroom.

The boy recoils, suddenly scared. The teacher calls the principal. Eliot is excused for the rest of the day.

No one dares mess with him for the rest of the term.

~~~

When Eliot is eighteen, he meets Piper. Five years his senior, a graduate student at some prestigious university, Piper is both rich and snobbish, a spoiled little girl. Her disdain for the uncouth horse wrangler is clear, but Eliot doesn't mind. He likes a challenge, and her reaction to him does nothing to deter his pursuit.

Eliot is nothing if not persistent.

Eventually, he even manages to woo her to his bed.

It's on their last night together that she places a book on his bedside table.

"Read it," she advises. "I think you'll like it."

She's right. He does.

~~~

Eventually, Eliot filches the poet's other books from various libraries and bookstores until he has a full collection, the first collection of anything he's ever owned.

Now, Eliot can recite all the words from memory, the poetry flowing like music from his lips.

… I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

~End~

"I thought I might find you here," Josh said as he jogged down the last few steps to the landing.

Donna looked up from her perch on the lower staircase and smiled wryly at him. "The last refuge of a weary campaigner."

"Don't I know it," he said as he took a seat one step above her.

"What's going on with Goodwin?" she asked, concern in her voice.

He shrugged, not quite sure what to say. "Nothing. For the moment."

"But?"

"But if we don't start showing more results or getting money in place in the right places..." He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "I don't know."

"You'll figure it out."

"You think?"

"Yes."

"At least somebody thinks so." He held out one of the two glasses he'd brought with him. "Champagne?"

She took the glass and smiled gratefully. "Thanks."

"Sorry it's not cake."

"It's ok," she told him, awkwardly holding up the empty cake plate that sat next to her.

"Oh." Yawning, he stretched his legs out before him and rolled his shoulders, trying to release some of the tension that had built up over the last several weeks. "So..."

"So..." she repeated.

"What exactly is buttercream anyhow?" he asked, cocking his head at her.

"Buttercream?"

"At least three people told me how exquisite it was on the wedding cake."

She eyed him curiously. "How can a man who understands the intricacies of whiz and hoagies not know what buttercream is?"

"Because apparently it has little to do with electoral math," he said, a crooked smile appearing.

"It's frosting, traditionally made with butter and confectioners sugar," she answered. When he just looked at her open-mouthed, she added, "What? I'm an intelligent woman, I know things."

"So you keep telling me," he said, taking a sip of his champagne. "Intelligent and… attractive, was it?"

She glanced sideways at him then returned her attention to her champagne. "So you were listening."

"I always listen," he told her softly.

"Josh…"

"No, I know," he said, looking away and sighing softly. "It doesn't always seem that way, in fact, it hardly ever seems that way, but..." He stopped, and stole a look at her. "Anyhow, thanks."

Her expression softened. "For?"

"Trying to distract me before."

She was about to reply when a CJ's voice hailed him from above. "Josh? We've got a bit of a situation that needs diffusing, do you know... Oh."

He tilted his head back to look at her, then looked back at Donna.

"Go" Donna said. "We'll talk later."

"Yeah," he said, as he headed upstairs. "Later."

~End~

He'd have been better off with a comic book shop, Hardison thought as he bounded back down the stairs and out to the patio to take over his disc jockeying gig. Comic books didn't give you any trouble. Comic books didn't give you soft gooey looks when you told them they looked good. And comic books wouldn't kick your ass when they figured out how much time you spent thinking about what they'd be like in bed.

Of course, comic books didn't look as good as Parker did either. Damn, but that girl was fine! A little crazy, far too skinny, but still fine. The sad thing was, she didn't even realize it. It was like she'd been told she was a shapeless, skinny girl for so long that she forgot that she was… well, a woman now.

Hardison hadn't missed it, though. He'd noticed, and he kept on noticing. And that was the problem, because he was pretty sure she was sleeping with Eliot.

Ok, not pretty sure, more like kind of sure. There had been looks, mostly on Eliot's part, but looks nonetheless. Looks that led him to believe that maybe there was more than a workplace relationship going on between those two.

There was no way he wanted to get in the middle of that. It was a bad idea to get between Eliot and a woman. Or Eliot and anything. The man knew how to use a weapon. The man also knew how to use his hands. No, he really didn't want to get involved in anything that got between Eliot and something he considered his.

But still… he couldn't keep his mind off how Parker'd looked in that god-awful bridesmaid dress.

So when she sauntered up to him later and told him that she'd pretended she was meeting him in the mob boss' study to have sex, he wondered how the hell he was supposed to react. Especially when she shot that grin of hers at him. Was it just Parker being Parker or was it something else? And if it was something else -

No, he wasn't going to go there. That was definitely not a safe line of thinking. No, not at all.

That didn't stop him from wondering, though.

~End~

"Was that CJ I just saw on my way in?" Andy asked as she pushed the door shut with her foot.

He nodded. "She wanted to learn how to cook a chicken."

A small wave of jealousy washed through her. "And you?"

"I already know how to cook a chicken," he answered, gesturing to the container in her hand. "What's that?"

"Pie."

His lips quirked into a small smile. "Berry?"

"Apple."

"Tart and sweet," he surmised, his hands reaching out to span her waist.

She leaned into his touch, unable to resist him. "Yes."

"Much like a certain redhead I know."

His fingers were making small circles against her hips, and the light touch made it difficult for her to breathe. "Possibly."

"Definitely," he muttered, his lips touching hers.

~End~

Her back was to him and she was staring out the frost-covered window when he came in to drop off some notes for Josh.

"He'll be back in a few minutes," she said, without turning around.

Charlie looked over his shoulder at the bullpen and then back at Donna. "How did you do that?"

Spinning around in the chair, she blinked innocently and asked, "Do what?"

"How did you know I was here? You were facing the window and I'm sure I didn't make any noise," he said, frowning at her.

"I just sensed someone was there," she said.

"Then how come you didn't think I was Josh?"

She sniffed, her nose wrinkling up in an adorably cute way. "I smelled your cologne."

Charlie looked at her suspiciously. "My cologne?"

Donna nodded. "Josh doesn't wear cologne, just aftershave, and it's a completely different kind of scent."

"That's one hell of a nose you have."

She shrugged. "I guess. My mom always said I had an over-developed olfactory sense."

Charlie shook his head. "I'm sure she did." He handed her the memos he was carrying. "These are from the President. He wants to talk to Josh about them as soon as he's back from the Hill."

Donna took them and then glanced at her watch. "Ok. But he's going to need a few more minutes to deal with CJ about the farming and agriculture thing first. I'll send him over as soon as they're done."

"Ok," Charlie muttered, leaving the office. He stopped when he heard CJ's voice from the lobby. He caught the words 'jackass' and 'pineapple' and then Josh's belligerent answer about too-tall press secretaries.

Poking his head back into Josh's office, he stared at Donna. "You did it again!" he marveled. "How did you know he was back already and with CJ?"

"Easy. She was looking for him earlier. I told her he was due back around two. And knowing CJ…"

"She decided to lie in wait." He gave Donna an evaluating look. "You're a devious woman, Donna Moss."

"I know."

~End~