Just a little Darvey story written on a cold, rainy day in England... and it's wedding themed! Xxx
Harvey -
He watches her, ethereal in the candle light. Her beauty takes his breath away. He realises that he has been desperately trying to catch his breath for the last 13 years; everyday with her has been a battle to keep the oxygen pumping through his veins. Tonight she looks different. Gone are the sharp angles and bold colours that she wears to the office. Tonight she is a vision of soft pale pinks, the colour of dewy petals and rose gold. Normally they match each other, but tonight his dark steely greys contrast her light pastel hues, and yet he knows that together they would be perfect. He watches her as she moves, as if floating, through the crowd of people. He sees that she draws the attention of everyone she passes. He is not surprised, she has always known how to command a room. She is only eclipsed by the attractive young woman in the wedding dress, who dazzles under the protective gaze of her husband. He doesn't normally like weddings but this one has been special; these two people are his friends and his family. She was once his family too but now she hides from him, avoiding the echoing cavern filled with thier failed past. It is one that he has created by his own inactions and inability to say what she so desperately needs to hear. So many words said between them, so many moments of coming precariously close to the precipice, only to turn back, never willing to take that final leap into the unknown.
He realises that he has lost her in a sea of faces. He looks around until he finds her again, champagne glass in one hand, the other placed on the curve of her hip. Her eyes are luminescent and her lips are curved into a smile that he had once thought she kept only form him. The steady rhythm of his heart picks up its pace as he sees her laugh; head thrown back in free abandon. She is stunning, she always has been, but in the last year as he has watched her rise like a burning phoenix into the role she was born to play, he knows that those changes have made her more; she is no longer just magnificent, she is flawless. She is everything that he has always wanted but has never been brave enough to take. She has been brave. She has asked and taken what is rightly hers; her job, her future, his heart. She stands beside him now as an equal. They work together as partners. It has been that way from the beginning but now the world knows that Donna Paulsen is the same as him. She is better than him and she has made him better in every possible sense of the word.
But it is no longer enough. The working hours that he spends with her no longer satiated the deep thirst he feels. She is the only person that can quench that growing need deep inside of him. He wakes to thoughts of her, to the realisation in the darkest hours that she is not beside him. His bed feels empty without her there. He sees a vision of her, in a place that she has never actually been, and it tears at his soul.
It is too late. She has slipped through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. She had kissed him and she had pulled away. He had stood there, unmoving and watched as she had glided out of the room and out of his reach one final time. And now it is broken. Their relationship hangs by a thread that has started to split under the pressure of all of those unsaid feelings and unspoken desires. They cannot go back and yet he doesn't know how to move forward. The best closer in the city is down on his knees, blinded by his emotions and unable to see a way out of this self-inflicted purgatory.
Enough is enough he thinks. He starts moving towards her, focusing on the glittering of her diamond earrings as they danced in the light, casting tiny rainbows on her bare neck. He doesn't look directly at her face, or he will falter like he has so many times before. His feet would turn to stone and his throat would contract until the words that are free flowing in his mind would dissipate. But he needs her. He needs this. Even if it is just one moment; one brief second of holding her in his arms and trying to convey all of the things that he has been too frightened to tell her over the years. He will try to tell her in the way he caresses the exposed skin of her shoulders and puts his hands on her waist, and he will hope that it is enough. And if it isn't? Then he will have tonight. He will take these memories of her and will place them carefully next to all the others that he keeps secretly hidden. He will keep them and when he feels as though he can no longer carry on, he will take them out and turn them over in his hands. He will look at them and he will remember that as long as his heart beats in his chest he will love her.
Donna -
She is overcome with feelings. The magic of today pulses through her. She is alive with the sensation of happiness, of love and of friendship. But in this moment it is only him that she feels. His hand warms her skin as it rest lightly on the base of her spine. She rests her head on his shoulder and breathes him in. It's a smell that is so familiar to her. She feels it, as he finds a loose strand of her hair and starts to twist it around his fingers. His hand brushes across the back of her neck leaving a trail of goose bump as he does. She wonders why only now he has asked to be close to her. They have been so far away from each other in the last few months, since that night when she had laid her feeling out for him, that she has spent hour after hour worrying about today. But here he is holding onto her. He has asked her to dance, not the other way round. It is the first words they have said to each other in weeks. She felt a tension in her body, that she wasn't even aware of, evaporate as soon as he had said them.
'Dance with me'
She realises as he holds her to him, how little they have touched each other over the years. The space between 'that time' and then 'that kiss' has been devoid of any real contact. She hugs Louis, kisses Rachel and even has held Mikes hand, and yet with Harvey she has always kept her distance. It has meant that the few times when their bodies have connected, that she had felt the warmth of his skin on hers, have somehow become sacred. She treasures them. They are steeped in meaning and in sentiments that no one else will ever understand. They have learnt to speak their own secret language, compiled of smiles and hand gestures and lingering looks. Why should they bother to touch when he can make her feel the way she does with just a look and a smirk?
Out of the corner of her eye she sees a flash of shimmering white and midnight blue. Mike and Rachel are still dancing with each other. Mike hasn't let go of her all night. He looks nowhere but the face of his wife. Donna sees true love in his eyes. It is a look that she herself longs for. She wants that look from one man; the man holding her now. Mike and Rachel have given her hope. They have hit every sort of obstacle and every hurdle and yet they survive. Stronger, more resilient and more in love than ever before. If it wasn't for them then she would have left by now. She would have walked away from Peason Specter Litt in the hope of forging a new dream on a new path. But their enduring love makes her believe that perhaps she to is worthy. She promises to give him one more day, then one more week, then one more month, in the hopes that he will soon look at her in the way she looks at him. Is she a fool? Perhaps. But she can't walk away until she knows for sure. She has invested too much of herself to just let go of the ties that hold them.
The music starts to end and she goes to pull away. She always feels like she is the one leaving. She never wants to, but she finds herself stepping away from him nevertheless. Tonight is different. She feels as his hand travels down her back and he takes her hand is his. He holds its. His face moves until his lips are by her ear and he whispers to her
'Don't leave me. Just one more song.'
She nods her head and in doing so feels the stubble on his check lightly graze the side of her face. She feels as the muscles under his skin move as he reacts to her consent. She realises that he is smiling. He draws her back towards him, closer than before and wraps his arms tightly around her. She thinks that if he pulls her much closer then she will merge with him. She would no longer know where she ends and where he begins. She shuts her eyes, nuzzling her head into his neck as his fingers begin tracing lines up and down her spine. If this is a dream she doesn't ever want to wake.
'You can have more than one song Harvey' she says, not knowing if he can even hear her. 'If you would like, you can have forever.'