Author's Note: Hi, guys! This is a post Season 6 finale fic. I wanted to try and make this story a little more … "realistic", than what I presume will happen with Harvey and Donna in the series. I want these characters to actually think through what it is they want and I want them to actually talk things through like freaking Grown Ups. I hope that that doesn't sound too boring! Anyway, this will be in two parts. I hope you enjoy it!
More: Part 1 - Harvey
"I want something more. And I've never said that out loud, but I can't pretend that's not true anymore."
Tears, hurt, desperation. Eyes fixed on each other.
"What do you mean more?" he had asked quietly, the words slipping involuntarily from his lips as though by some magnetic pull, even though he was scared shitless of her answer.
"I don't know," she had half whispered, eyes narrowed in contemplation and tears leaking gently from her eyelids. "I guess I'm going to have to figure that out."
And in the same moment, their gazes broke from each other, their pain too much to share.
x x x
Harvey was left to pour himself a shaky glass of Scotch after she left, his office feeling suddenly emptier than ever without her. Suffocatingly empty.
He felt as though she was leaving him all over again.
He couldn't quite get a grasp on his thoughts, a worrying echo of his panic attacks from all those months ago. Weightlessness except for a concentrated heaviness in his chest threatening to overwhelm him, but he kept a grip on it. After all, she wasn't actually leaving him.
At least, not yet.
But he felt the sickening inevitability of it, one that he had almost been waiting for ever since she had come back to him. Because the truth of it was that they had not actually dealt with what had driven them apart in the first place. It had more or less been swept under the rug. And sure, that had made sense at the beginning. They had been focused on saving Mike from prison, and then getting Mike out of prison.
But now … there was none of that to distract them. Now everything unspoken between them had plenty of room to well up and ruin it all.
Then again, he didn't even know if that was the issue. In fact, it seemed that it wasn't. It seemed that this was more career orientated. She wanted more than being a secretary? Was that it?
It wasn't a comforting thought. Whichever way he looked at it, she was telling him that she wanted more than what he was offering her, whether it be career-wise or relationship-wise.
His head was still reeling and he poured a second glass.
Thoughts slipped confusedly in and out of his mind, but one idea kept intruding unsettlingly. It was the deep knowledge that when he had asked her what she had meant, he had been fully prepared for her to tell him that she wanted more with him, romantically speaking.
A response that, oddly, he thought he would have found far less stressful than the threat-like response she had provided instead. Less stressful because in the moment, within his frozen and terrified state, there had also been a giddy sweeping sensation of this is it, this is the moment.
He had known then that had she asked for more with him, he would have given it to her.
x x x
"Things have been different since she came back," he told Dr Agard quietly.
Mike's success with the bar now secured, Harvey could no longer ignore the gnawing feeling in his chest along with the echoing memory of "I want something more" running through the back of his mind over and over again with the fierce determination of the Small World song. And so, for the first time in months, he went to see Dr Agard again.
After opening with, "I think Donna's going to leave me again," he had caught her up on the bullet points of the last several months (which had taken much longer than he had intended, especially when it came to recounting his reunion with his mother) and had finally reached the reason he was here.
"In what way?"
He was feeling odd. Simultaneously discomfited and relieved to be speaking to her again. Usually, of course, it was Donna he turned to when he felt the most distressed. But when it came to his feelings for Donna, he needed another outlet.
"We've been … closer, I think," he said, and then frowned slightly at himself. "Well, maybe not closer. I'm not sure. At the beginning, we definitely weren't, and I felt as though she was going to leave me again at any moment."
"But she didn't."
"No."
"Did you ever ask her about that?"
The squirming feeling in his stomach reminded him of how much he didn't enjoy therapy.
"No."
"Why not?"
He tossed her an annoyed look. He didn't know why she always insisted on asking questions she already knew the answers to. It only prolonged the process, as far as he was concerned. Donna would have gotten to the point ages ago.
"Because," he said impetuously.
She returned his irritation.
"We're not going to go through this all over again, are we?" she demanded. "You're here to talk, so you need to talk."
He let out a frustrated breath through his teeth.
"I didn't want to mess with anything," he said, still faintly vexed. "Why ask questions I don't want the answers to?"
"So, you assumed the answer would be that she was intending on leaving you again?"
"She only came back to help me with Mike."
"Except she's still with you?"
"Yes," he said quietly. "And it's since then that we've been closer again. It felt as though she was back for good."
"And you didn't want to, what? Put ideas in her head?"
It took him a few moments to be able to admit, "Sort of."
She raised her eyebrows at him. He rolled his eyes in response and then expanded by saying, "I just didn't want to bring up past hurts again, you know. We were healing and finding a new dynamic."
"And what dynamic is that?"
This also took some time to respond to, mainly because it was sort of the whole point of his coming here and yet it was the most difficult for him to say out loud.
"Well," he finally said slowly, "like I said, to me it seems as though we've been getting closer, somehow. It's not quite like it used to be, but at the same time, it's … I don't know, I can't find the words." He shook his head in exasperation and looked to her for help. However, she seemed to choose this moment not to say anything. The fact was, he did have the words, but he was struggling to form them.
With a heavy sigh, he said, "I think I've been a bit less … resistant … to becoming closer to her."
"Less resistant or less afraid?"
He bit his lip, chewing on the words jumbling on the tip of his tongue.
"I guess a bit of both. I'm still … so scared of losing her. I mean, that's why I'm here now. But on the other hand, for the past few months, I've been feeling almost … ready. Ready to try something, despite how frightening it is."
His chest felt constricted with this admission.
Dr Agard was saying nothing.
But, despite the clumsiness of his confession, now that it was out there, he suddenly felt the rush of words and feelings crash from his lips like the release of a dam.
"I almost feel like ever since she left me, every moment since then I've actually been working on getting to a point where I can give her what she wants. I want to be what she needs me to be, because she's always been there for me. And everything you and I talked about, the way things are with Donna and me now, seeing my mom, it feels to me like these past few months I've been on this path towards being the kind of man who could possibly be in a relationship with her."
The words were flying out, soaring gratefully out into the universe, free from years of confinement.
"Because, I guess, going back to what started all of this … when I told her I loved her, of course I meant that I'm in love with her."
He hadn't expected that last part, somehow, and it shut him up, leaving a ringing silence.
"Wow," said Dr Agard.
Harvey buried his head in his hands, feeling suddenly overwhelmed.
"I don't suppose she knows any of this?"
"No," he said into his palms, the word getting caught in the sticky moisture that was currently covering them. He forced himself to look up.
"The thing is, I'm still on that road. I don't know if I'm quite there yet."
"So, tell me what's happening now."
He explained briefly about The Donna and then, with difficulty, recounted the conversation they had had in his office a few nights back.
There was a pause as she seemed to think things over, and then she unexpectedly gave a little sigh.
"What?" he asked, anxiety flooding his chest.
She was studying him with a confusing expression on her face. It seemed somehow both pleased and saddened.
"I think, Harvey, that you really don't need to be here," she said gently.
He blinked at her in surprise.
"You've grown a tremendous amount since I last saw you. Now, I'm not saying you have everything under control, and we'll get to that in a minute, but I do think that you have learned what you came to me to learn. And I really think that, even though you came to me now, it's only because you feel unable to talk to Donna about this out of habit, more or less."
He was hanging on to her every word, still as the night.
"Which leads me to my final insight that I want to share. I think you know perfectly well that the only answer to this is to sit down and have a proper honest conversation with Donna, something that I think you are willing to do, if you can only control your fear. Which is essential, because the truth of the matter is that your fear is distracting you from the real problem here. Which is not that Donna wants to leave you again – something you don't even know to be the case - but that she is going through a very difficult time and she needs you to be there for her."
He swallowed.
"She told you about this because she needs your support, Harvey, just like when she supported you when you went to see your mother, when Jessica left, when you almost turned yourself in for Mike. She is asking for your help. What I'm trying to say, to be rather frank, is that this is about Donna, not about you. And if you really do want to reach the end of this road, and get to a point where you can be in a relationship with her, then you had better learn to support her rather than forever only focusing on protecting yourself."
The silence that followed this was the longest yet, because it had made him feel decidedly shitty about himself, and he was controlling the impulse to take this out on her. But he finally managed to clear his head enough to know that it was true. That once again, the problem was that, essentially, he was being selfish. And Donna didn't deserve that.
"All right," he muttered.
"And lastly, she needs to be the one you turn to, Harvey. Even when – no – especially when whatever it is you're grappling with is to do with her."
Then he looked at her properly.
"Thank you," he said and she gave him a small smile, one that was, despite everything, filled with affection. He returned it.
Because they both knew that this was goodbye.
x x x
He knocked lightly on Donna's door and waited, feeling apprehensive to say the least.
When she opened it, he could see that she had been crying. It wasn't wildly obvious. Her eyes weren't swollen or bloodshot, and there was no splodged makeup. But there was just something in the exhaustion and slight emptiness in her eyes that he recognised from the few horrifying times he had seen her cry. It made his heart drop like a stone.
He hitched a smile onto his lips with difficulty.
She looked startled to see him and her eyebrows creased downwards.
He held up the pizza from her favourite pizzeria and a bottle of unnecessarily expensive wine that was obviously far superior to his chosen cuisine, and said, "Girl talk?"
To his relief, her eyes suddenly cleared and she laughed, one of his favourite sounds. Also a sound he didn't hear nearly enough. She smirked a lot, but rarely laughed.
She let him in, which in truth surprised him a little. After the disastrous Incident the last time they had shared a meal at her apartment, they had been extremely careful about getting too relaxed with each other in such a private setting. He had expected to have to argue his way onto her couch. He supposed she was a little too distracted at this point, which was something of a relief.
He wanted to try his utmost, primarily, to be a good friend to her, and he hadn't wanted to start that off by making her uncomfortable. He was focusing most of his energy on controlling his fear. He was going to be the friend, the partner, she deserved, no matter how uncomfortable this conversation was going to get for him.
He owed her that.
Wine was poured, the pizza box opened ("Mm, gorgonzola," she said in delight. "Only on your half," he retorted, "so pay attention to your slices.").
Then he took a breath and delivered his carefully rehearsed line:
"Listen. The reason I'm here is because I know you're having a hard time right now and, if you want to, I'm here to talk about it with you."
She looked tremendously surprised and swallowed her mouthful of pizza.
"Really?" she asked, her smirk back in place. "You actually came for girl talk?"
He rolled his eyes. Then he sighed and forced himself to bypass the opening she was giving him to use humour as a defensive tactic.
"No," he said softly. "I came for an honest conversation."
The teasing look in her eyes faded and she looked suddenly nervous.
"About what?" she asked, her voice uncharacteristically unsteady.
Carefully refusing to break eye contact, he murmured, "About whatever you want."
She blinked at him. He could see that she had her doubts, to say the least.
"I mean it, Donna. Anything."
x x x
TBC
Author's Note: Thanks for reading! I'd really love to hear what you think, especially since trying to make Harvey more mature and keep him in character was a real struggle for me. Part 2 will be from Donna's perspective and will be up in the next couple of days.
