A/N: I finally write something from Harvey's perspective. Richard Siken helps.
The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell.
Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time.
Your hand on Donna's back. Don't think about it.
Smile, and don't remember that Mike said goodbye to you a long time ago, and you didn't believe him then like you do now.
Weddings and funerals always push you over the edge. At Marcus's wedding, you were drawn tight, hand clenched around a flute of champagne that, quite honestly, wasn't the right temperature.
You gave a toast then.
(Best man.)
Donna smells like jasmine. "You can relax, you know."
You're going to spend six months wanting to kiss her, and then, in six years, maybe she'll kiss you again and you'll say you're not ready. You do not like to think about this, either—about self-reflecting. That's for her to do. She always knows the things about you don't admit, and she says them out loud when the moment is somewhere trapped between reality and whatever else there is.
You could relax, if you were anyone else. Instead you smile, because Mike is going to be happy. Mike is going to be happy, without you. Donna should be happy without you, but something about the two of you never seems to work in opposite directions.
"Go out dancing a lot, Miss Paulsen?"
She laughs. It's soft and throaty and just for a second, since everyone is leaving, you think kiss her, but you don't. "Only with strange men," Donna says.
It is thirteen years now, isn't it? Thirteen years or thereabouts. She is your exact date, she is everything that let you dream that Paula was the right one.
Breach of ethics?
You never cared about that. You are the exception; you are all man and very little heart. Ethics weren't made to protect people like you.
The tip of Donna's thumb is resting on your collar. The lighting in this place is setting her hair on fire.
You are not a poet.
"You'll see him again," Donna promises. Donna is crowned with conviction, always.
Crowned. (You are not a poet.)
(Twelve—
—thirteen
Years.)
Mike's laugh rings out a cross the room. He and Rachel get to escape. It's what you all hope for, in a way, at least those of you who still have space to grow, hearts that take an interest beyond the narrow scape of the biggest city in the world.
With a turn of your shoulder, Donna spins out, all calla-lily skirt and familiar eyes, and you pull her back in, closer than before.
"I know," you say.
"But it hurts," Donna said. She says it so you don't have to.
The lights turn low. There is gin on the tip of your tongue. You smell jasmine in her hair and when you lean down to kiss her, it is because you want to. Donna tastes like gin, too, and everything else you remember, every time.
You are not a poet.
It doesn't work like that.