*Updated 18.02.19*
Author's Notes:
Apologies to those who read this in it's latter stages. Let's just say I was far too tired and shouldn't have posted it!
I'd also like to blame PurpleCadet, Le Fantomette, and my mother, for making me watch 8B ;-). I had sworn off of it, and succeeded, but tbh everybody is right, and maybe Suits is finally back on track. I reserve judgement for now, but now this man is swimming in my head again after the last ep. I'd like to thank Gabriel Macht for making those moments without words for the man in the glass tower….so damn palpable. Sorry it's so small. At this point I want to only add to the story, rather than overwrite it. #growth (Might have to check this for mistakes tomorrow morning, so if it's trash reread in the eve and it'll be edited)
For Harvey and Donna, who can't seem to be without the other for long…
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All the Stars Are Closer (8.14 Episode Add-On)
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Love, let's talk about love
Is it anything and everything you hoped for?
Or do the feeling haunt you?
I know the feeling haunt you
This maybe the night that my dreams might let me know
All the stars are closer, all the stars are closer, all the stars are closer
This maybe the night that my dreams might let me know
All the stars are closer, all the stars are closer, all the stars are closer
'All the Stars' By Kendrick Lamar Feat. SZA
. . ...
He's worked it out now,
Why Donna hadn't picked up the other night. Why she's been arriving late, lately and then swanning out of the office before he even has time to blink his eyes above that arch towards seven o'clock.
He may have even noticed the glow she's had. Hell, she's always looked like an angel, but now her ripe absence bolsters that luminescence so much that in the times that he does eventually see her it's highlighting the difference in her threefold. It's only in the most recent months, as the changes had unfolded for them all, that he allows himself to fully breathe in the fact that her red hair is like a beacon to him, beckoning him out of the darker places in his mind. But the feeling is so jagged and disjointed now that it's taken time for him to become comfortable with this truth, only to find her emotionally retreating from him, a growing fog separating them by an ever growing distance that is only now starting to take the distinguished shape of a particular man. A man that must have existed in a blind spot somewhere in the back, so much so that even though he hadn't known, per se, or hadn't really managed to put the pieces together in his conscious mind until now, he had felt it before this point. Since meeting her at the elevator, all of those half thoughts, missing pieces and that little streak of doubt that lay buried beneath the surface like little ticks, have begun to morph and knit together into one clean strand of understanding.
A thread, that he's finally forced to pick at.
It appears that she's finally moved on from him, in every way that they had ever once been connected.
And now,
He feels as close to completely alone.
He replays the night's events in his mind. Confronted with that guy, appearing out of nowhere. Watching her leave with a man that wasn't him. After he had called her. After he had tried to talk about them, finally. To open up to her about the things occupying his mind. Add to that the look in her eyes, pure insult to injury, as if she just knew that the further away she gets, the more likely he is to blindly hold onto her.
It's always been that way. Push. Pull. Two fused as one.
He had internally coiled at their forced three-way introduction, feeling the sharp burn at the fact that she had been keeping something from him just like he had done to her, only to be confronted with the sight of it in the same moment. It burned twice as hard now though, the idea that she couldn't wait any longer. That she was filling the void between them. Replacing him with someone else. With every step away and one towards.
He's not even going to think about the fact that he and Thomas Kessler are different kinds of men. He's never had insecurities about the way he looks, nor what he gives off or even what he's lacked over the years and he is not about to start now. But he wonders, at this point, if he was only able to be like that because she had been there to bolster his ego in regular intervals, supporting him for so long that he couldn't even tell when she was doing it until she had left him the second time, deliberately, leaving him feeling ripped from the womb.
But maybe it wasn't that at all; and maybe he just felt proud to have her ride shotgun beside him, a still calm breath against his tumultuous storms and every one of his many battles.
He knows this, though: without her, he's starting to feel transparent, especially with no 'Mike' to hide behind in her absence. His problems have become his and his firm's alone. She gives assistance only when he commands it but seldom now, is it ever born out of her own impulse, and after a month or two it's beginning to leave a white hot sear on his heart, beyond the expectations of work.
Sure, he has support, in a way. In Louis. In Robert. Hell, even Samantha is lending a hand. She'd even agreed to drinks with him tonight. And that's something at least. He is not completely devoid of company, yet.
So, as he sits there, with a dullness in his eyes, aching slightly from the night's events, his seemingly new partner in crime beside him, her humour dry and her conversation angles sarcastically cautious as they sharpen or deflect his responses, it is there in the casual sparring that he is able to realise a truth that time can no longer lie down for.
This wasn't ever about work. This wasn't about feeling betrayed, in the end.
This was about Donna. And him. And everything about his life that had been about just them. Effectively, their life together, in whatever it had and hadn't been.
And he can't seem to work out where it all went sideways, really, given the last few years of rather bumpy road. But for the first time in his life he isn't defensive about the nature of it. He could try to plot the course, but in the end, all routes lead back to her and that one night that was engraved in his mind so long ago.
He had fucked up. And more recently, he had played every single part of his reaction to her kissing him with a devastating intention. One that had threatened to end them completely.
He had finally pushed her away, and now...he's stuck. No beacon. No way out. Just...floating on an endless sea of unsureness.
It makes him all the more grateful for Samantha Wheeler, in this unexpected moment of tonight. He had stolen a calming breath at her appearance shortly after Donna's departure. And so he had offered up drinks, needing someone to buffer the awkward interaction that he had just been party to. And with them both born in the same neck of town, that hard edge acquired from a harder life - one that they had both emerged victorious from, minus the aching wounds of similar childhood traumas - all of it makes her somehow not just a familiar, but also similar to his previous counterpart as well.
As if, a little bit of Mike Ross could be found in even the most unlikely of people.
He'd never admit it to anyone, but...she feels safe. Sure, she's attractive, if a little far from his usual type, but it's beyond sexual impulse for him nowadays. Having shared in a number of his and Donna's interactions over the last few months that she's been with the firm...she seems to get it all without saying much about them. And for a women that he's been at professional loggerheads with since she stepped through the door, it catches at him with a tenderness that she is the only other person besides Mike Ross who could stand by the sidelines of his very personal situation with a quiet understanding and little to no real judgement.
"You mind if I ask you something?"
Clearly he spoke too soon...
His eyes flick to the blonde beside him, and it's like she's been reading his mind. Either that, or his silence just reeks of her and the lawyer is fishing for the topic of his love life with just the right amount of bait.
"I feel like if I resist, you're just gonna pick at it anyway." He counters with a shrewd defensiveness. He feels a beat, his lips sliding into a knowing smile that threatens his resolve, when he finally does glance at her waiting expression.
Of course, a person like Mike Ross, would also be just as cunning as the boy wonder...
She looks at him pointedly, and then looks away, her right eyebrow twitching, as if being caught handing him the truth peeking out between her settling entertainment.
She draws a quick breath, and he can almost see the question coming. "What's with you and...Donna?" She asks. He can hear the intrigue, the wondering in her voice, as well as the acknowledgement that it is indeed a very heavily loaded question.
"You mean, you haven't heard the rumours?" He throws, dryly, with a tiredness. It seems that everybody knows about the infamous Harvey Specter and Donna Paulsen. Thick as thieves turned into a rather complicated combo. More recently, known for fighting. For public outbursts. For airing their dirty laundry in courtrooms, and libraries and lobbies galore.
"Oh, come on," She reels. "We both know that rumours reek of intent, but they're not the real truth." She clarifies, her voice reaming towards a full stop of justification for all parties in a way that raises her approach far above many others' past attempts at broaching this particularly inflammatory subject.
She is also astute, and he expects no less really. She's whip smart and a pain in the ass just like the kid had been. It figures she'd be able to level with him. He understands more and more why Robert uses her like a weapon. The platinum revolver...
"Rather hear it from the horse's mouth, huh?" He plays, despite the freshness of her words, his jaw is still twitching with the snap of a cat's tail, because the fight is never really over in his mind, and sparring with her is just too much fun. Especially after she's got him pegged. He can't quite put his finger on why he doesn't find it as irritating as when it's other people identifying his character. Maybe he respects her too much to judge her approach. Maybe once you remove the covers, and the mask of professionalism slides onto the floor, they are just too similar to be a threat to one another anymore. Like a sister he never had.
Or maybe he's just getting old...
"Depends," She shrugs, something non-committal, taking a swig of her beer.
"On?" He queries, arching an eyebrow.
"On...whether you're gonna give me some heart-covering bullshit," She lashes. "Or just...get right to it with an actual answer?" She offers.
"Is there any instant in which you don't just 'get right to it', Samantha?" He throws at her, his similarly dark eyes flashing with intrigue.
She counters his slightly flirtatious deflection of her question with a neat shrug. "Nope. Never." She says in her own self satisfied way, until she notices how the silence gives him the room to retreat, and then she comes back with a quick press. "Well?" She insists.
He sighs, his hands cradling the square framed whiskey glass in front of him. Liquid dinners for only the best of winners. His eyes flick out to the bar-side, the red and blue glow of the light casting against the many shelves of upmarket liquor that beckon him to enter further into that poisonously addictive din.
"Donna and I are…." He descends into thought once more, falling into habits of old as he struggles with the idea at hand. He swallows against the silence in his mind, as it twangs with suspended aching. "To tell you the truth, I...don't even know anymore." He admits, sighing heavily.
"Okay." She nods, her eyes narrowing. "Answer me this, then. What were you?" She asks, staring at him intently.
He thinks on the loaded question, a twisted smirk falling on his features. "We were...young. Idealistic. She was...full of rules and I was full of ambition." He says. "We worked." He shrugs, taking another sip of his drink. "We weren't anything in particular, but we worked regardless...and we stayed like that for a...long time."
"Is this a blink into the poetic inner world of Harvey Specter, that I'm only now getting to witness?" She jokes, smiling at him with relish and vibrant sliver of humour in her eyes.
He cranes a look at her then, something broaching on irritation at her thorough entertainment of his reply. He sobers, thinking once again on the question. "Nothing's going on with us." He resolves deftly. "Not anymore." He says, a seriousness painting his slightly flushed face.
"Right." She says, her head bobbing with the musings of someone trying to piece it all together. "So...let me get this straight...you...what? Slept together...once? Maybe you even...fell in love with her, but you were too chicken shit scared to ever act on it...I mean...why would you, you can just cover the need with something less substantial in the vain hope that she'll always be there." She says, half to herself. "And so you thought everything was crystal clear between you. But then you found out that it's..not...and that is the real problem." She offers
He chuckles to himself. Nail. Almost. Hit. "Something like that." He smirks, defeated. Add a few times he denied those feelings and then add another hundred or so more…
"I know that she kissed you when you were with someone." She divulges, her tone careful and considerate. "That little rumour is just flying around the office." She divulges. "And you gave it up for her." She adds, stealing a glance behind her lengthy swig.
Check. Mate. Give or take a job and a half a million dollar stake in his firm...
So people are still talking about them. Figures.
He frowns then. He thought she was good, but she's really been paying attention to them. His eyes narrow, his poker face sliding back on. He's pretty sure she can see through it, but that doesn't mean that he's not going to at least attempt to hide it.
"And who told you that?" He enquires, his tone level. It's his weakest defence.
"Like you said. Rumours." She replies, just as poker faced.
He chuckles drily to himself, shaking his head before looking away from her, her gaze too on point for the even bolder moment of silence between them.
"Look, I get it, Harvey." She adds, filling the space. "You work together. She was your right hand woman for over a decade, maybe more, and she's probably holding every secret that you've ever had, and a dozen or so more like it. I get it, I do, but..."
The woman falls into silence then, her words hanging on a proverbial cliff.
In the past, he's welcomed the silent moments. The end of a tirade on the kind of guy that he is. On what he' s done wrong, and where he had put a foot wrong. Maybe it's the night. Maybe it's the gut punch, but for the first time in his life and for whatever reason he's actually interested in the rest of her sentence.
And now he knows he's getting old...
"But 'what'?" He asks.
She squares a look at him then, a tiredness that gets covered with the lucidity of her clarification. "Let me put it this way...for a guy like you..."
"Oh, you're referring to the powerful and handsome thing again?" He interjects, smirking with a faked smugness that doesn't quite reach his eyes as he points vaguely to himself.
She ignores him, continuing. "It just seems tragic...to me...the idea of you pining after a woman that you could have in a heartbeat."
It's the kindest of sucker punches. But no less earth shattering to his perfect little mess of a world.
It hurts hard and slow, the simplicity of her reasoning. That he could have a woman like Donna Paulsen without ever having to suffer for it. He's never been sure of the possibility of such a thing. Not without an exposed heart and a wounded reputation. It's what keeps him up at night, in between the dreams of her. Of them. Of their unending. Of what could have been but wasn't. And what he still wants but clearly doesn't have.
"You know what's tragic? The fact that I'm having this conversation with you..." He says staunchly, covering the raw feeling within him.
She watches him with a pin sharpy acuity then. "Fine...be defensive...by all means, stretch that out. God knows it's probably not the first time you've done that." She offers with gussy, unfazed by his sudden roughness. "But I feel like...I know you, Harvey, or at the very least I understand you now...and….for a man who's sitting up there in that glass tower, alone, instead of with the woman that I've watched him look at in a way that I only wish I could have man look at me like, I just...I have a hard time understanding what's really stopping you?"
It's a question that he's ignored for longer than he would care to admit.
"What do you care?" He offers, hitting the accusation of her words right back at her.
She double takes, only in the look that flits through her gaze. She backs down slightly. "Maybe I'm just a sucker for a happy ending," She muses defensively, picking up her beer once more.
He mashes his lips together. It's a fine response. Blunt. Yet wholly honest. Laced with hope and just the right amount of intrigue to pull at that thread...
"She's seeing someone, now. One of Louis's clients." He admits, his head bowing as he cradles his glass once more, swivelling his hips just a touch as he stretches out the bottom of his spine.
"And before that?" She presses.
His world slows down for a second enough to gather his surroundings, dragging his past behind him.
He thinks on Paula Agard. And Scottie and Zoe and just about every beautiful woman that hasn't been her.
No woman could hold a candle to her. Scottie included. No matter how much he has loved people that aren't her, she has silently demanded so much more from him, emotionally, than any other women in his life, including his mother. And despite that, he's spent a lifetime giving her everything except that one thing...himself.
Thirteen years later, and look at where it has gotten him. The one night stands, the relationships, the arrogance and the greys have all fallen away, and yet she is still the one thing, the one person to remain.
He smiles to himself then. Mike would be so proud of him. And he would definitely be a little impressed at his new sparring partner.
But it's a truth that he can't hide any longer.
There is a warmth in him then, spreading far beyond the reach that the amber liquid has taken hold of. He leans towards her slightly, something candid about the information that he is about to give.
"I guess the real truth is...she kissed me. I felt something, I denied it and I...ran." He says simply, allowing the flow of thought to reach his lips. "I blamed her, and I hurt her, and now I...can't see a way back from that."
He notices a gap before her response, unusual for a person with such lightning verbal reflexes. He had expected her to catch him in victory. She had won after all. Had gotten what she came for.
But when he looks at his coworker, he notices her in her own kind of self-centred understanding.
Maybe this conversation extends beyond handing him the truth about his own love life and lack thereof.
They are alike, after all. Two more peas in a pod.
"People like us...we always run from something." She breathes, taking a swig of her beer. "Usually the one thing that's good for us."
"Hmm," He says, nodding slightly, before fully downing his drink, the last of the alcohol in his glass drenching out the conversation until all he can feel is the rush and acid lash in his stomach. Like oil to a flame it burns within him, igniting an impulse that he's spent his entire adult life burying deep down.
"Maybe...I don't want to run anymore." He says, half to himself. It takes a second, before his words, that are filtering out into the quiet bar, finally fold back around into his mind.
He's tired of running from the one thing in the world that he's yet to have.
And if he doesn't act soon he's going to lose the best thing that ever happened to him.
His brows knit together with an intention that lights him from the inside out, like a new angle on a case, a lead or an end game, as he quickly slips off the bar stool. "Thanks for the drink, Samantha," He says, meaning so much more in those simple words than he's willing to say outright. He glances at her once before she is able to double take the action.
He gives her points for her graciousness and lack of protest. Not many women would welcome a man ditching them in a bar. And he'll make sure that he returns the favour. He bets he's not the only one in need to redemption from a lost opportunity.
Samantha Wheeler looks on, watching her kind-of Boss slink off into the night without uttering a protest at the action.
She takes another swig of her beer, her thoughts swimming in barley and hops until the words finally fall out into the space he's left beside her.
"Atta' boy," She says, smiling to herself. She raises her glass, toasting the air, before sliding into demons of her own, ones that she's not quite ready to exorcise.
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Can we talk about us
Like we care about us?
Can we talk about love
Like we care about love?
You say let it breathe
But this pain in my heart can't let it be
If we both can't agree
Then tell me what is the point of
Nothing burns like the cold
'Nothing Burns Like the Cold' By Snoh Aalegra
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