Title: The Breakup Song
Date Completed: October 25, 2005
Author: Jennie
Email: jllamb1118@aol.com
Website: Dimples and Distinctive Penmanship Style
Pairing: Josh/Donna
Spoilers: a late post-ep for The Ticket; also slight spoilers for 20 Hours in L.A.
Rating: Teen (explicit language, liquor)
Disclaimer: I don't own these people or this universe. Aaron Sorkin does. (I'd love to work out a time-share arrangement on Josh, though.)
Author's Notes: This just popped into my head this morning and I'm not sure that it isn't just bad, song, crack!fic. Thanks, though, to Tinhutlady for a quick beta.
Summary: Josh gets drunk and listens to country music after his disastrous meeting with Donna.
Warning: This could potentially rate high on the cheese meter, or the angst meter, depending on what mood you're in. At any rate... it's a song fic, so be ware!

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The key turned in the lock and Josh stumbled in the door. He felt his back pack slide off his arm and land on the floor with a soft thud.

In what seemed like slow motion, he moved toward the kitchen and reached up into the back of the cabinet to the left and above the sink. There it was. The bottle of scotch he kept just for times like this.

He went and got a juice glass out of the top rack of the dishwasher, rinsed it out in the sink, and carried it with the scotch into the living room. All still in slow motion.

He thought he should be alarmed that he was moving so slow, especially at 5:00 in the afternoon -- when he realized it. Josh Lyman was a man who never moved in slow motion. His speedometer always ran at full tilt. Just like it had all day today... even during that disaster of a meeting this afternoon.

After a moment of panic, he remembered he was drunk. Who knew Ronna kept a flask of good scotch in the over-night bag she had stashed under her desk? He was floored when she handed it him. He'd been staring at the retreating back of the other participant of that disastrous meeting at the time. In the hour since then, he'd polished off the full flask, realized he was shit-faced, and headed home early.

Note to self: buy Ronna some more scotch.

He set the glass and the bottle on the end table and moved over to the CD rack.

He knew it was in there somewhere. His breakup song. He'd never really liked country music, but he'd heard it on the radio the day after he'd backed out of his date with Grace Edelstein for the sophomore dance and she'd told him to go to hell.

He'd pulled it out two or three times in college too. Funny, though, he'd never listened to it when Mandy and he had called it quits, or for the couple of times after he'd sent Amy packing.

The last time he'd listened to it, she'd been there with him. They got in from a late night flight from California and she was trying to cheer him up after finding Al Kiefer in Joey Lucas' hotel room. He'd said some things about her on Air Force One that he'd quickly regretted.

He'd insisted on listening to the song. It was tradition, he'd said. He'd been drunk then too. She'd only been tipsy, from the beer stash they'd raided with Charlie on the plane.

She'd grabbed the CD case from his hands, broken down with laughter, and called him a sap and a dork. Then she pointed out that Joey and he had never been a couple, so they hadn't really broken up. But she'd danced and sang with him in there in the living room to the same song over and over again for the rest of the night.

He put the disk in the player and settled on the couch, poured himself a glass of scotch, and remembered how beautiful and young she'd looked that night so long ago when he'd spun her around the room. Then he remembered that she'd looked older, but even more beautiful to him, just that afternoon in that disastrous meeting.

Tears rolled off his cheeks and into the glass of scotch as he sat and listened to smooth voice of Charlie Rich...

Hey, did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world?
And if you did was she crying, cryin'?
Hey, if you happen to see the most beautiful girl, that walked out on me
Tell her I'm sorry, tell her I need my baby
Oh, won't you tell her, that I love her.

I woke up this morning, and realized what I had done
I stood alone in the cold gray dawn
And I knew I'd lost my morning sun
I lost my head and I said some things
Now come the heartaches that the morning brings
I know I'm wrong and I couldn't see
I let my world slip away from me.

Hey, did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world?
And if you did was she crying, cryin'?
Hey, if you happen to see the most beautiful girl, that walked out on me
Tell her I'm sorry, tell her I need my baby
Oh, won't you tell her, that I love her.

If she could see him now, he imagined that she'd call him a sap and a dork, and again point out to him that when two people had never been a couple, they really couldn't break up.

Somehow, that didn't make him feel any better.