Summary:
Mike is still in Jail. Rachel is a lonely island. Harvey and Donna are split in the middle.
Notes:
Post 5x10.
Apologies I've literally been MIA. Unlike a lot of fabulous writers out there, I haven't been able to get myself away from the way Suits left thier mid season finale enough to write! Here is a fic. I think.
Merry Christmas guys! xx
Christmas Time is Here
By Atheniandream
The ongoing situation has put a strain on every single person in the firm.
And the word 'Fraud' hangs over Pearson Specter Litt like a red mark in a condemned part of town, like a scarlet letter that they've all been forced to wear out in the open. A mere contrast to their usual close-door policy.
The glittering world of New York suddenly has Sin City written all over it. Scandal flowing freely like freshly mulled wine.
Donna the Great has is...late. Fumbling through her things, her woollen coat flapping about herself.
She's been like that lately. A bridge between two cities. A steadily wearing bandage on a still seeping wound.
She balances her job, Louis, her boyfriend Mitchell and Rachel too, with the arms of an omniscient octopus and an gradually addled mind.
Over-effiency with just a dash of revolving panic.
And to be honest, it's driving her a little crazy now. This flitting between the two. In her job, she can handle it in spades and more. But not in her private life, and certainly not when it concerns two people she loves the most. In effect, it drags them all in like a slow moving tornado; threatening to knock all of them down like a row of uneven cards.
She pauses for a moment, finding the card she was looking for, as it rests in a pale pink envelope underneath a stack of papers.
She huffs, pausing briefly, looking about the place at the scattering of her life.
Her beautiful apartment has never looked so unsettled.
The passing of time jolts in her memory, as she fishes her phone out of her deep pocket.
She's really very late. Well that's just great, she thinks to herself, grabbing her bag.
As she opens the door, she almost gasps at the person stood on the other side, her body taking in the surprise before a torrent of spiking anger rips into her voice:
~She gasps, thready and feminine when his thumb pokes under her ribcage. Something so seemingly sexual about the act when he's in her so deeply that she can almost feel him at her back teeth with every demanding thrust….~
She blinks the memory away. "What the hell are you doing here?" She spits at the offending visitor, taking a step forward, as her coat swishes like a bell. "I told you never to come here." She breathes, adding "Again."
"Donna," The voice drops with a timetable disappointment.
"Harvey," She sighs, looking exasperated. "Now is not the time."
Harvey Specter pushes past her and back into her apartment, a sweeping motion as his own darker wool coat brushes past hers. A motion akin to batman, and oddly out of context of their somewhat ordinary life.
Considering that there are no real heroes in this world.
"We need to talk. Now." He says gruffly, his hands sliding into his pockets like a limp defence.
Harvey Specter has been under a mountain of shit.
And coping well, by all accounts. Despite all that is at risk, the wild seriousness of his life seems to be tuning him back up from his previous low point.
If Donna weren't so annoyed at his presence, she might perhaps regard the face.
Her shoulders slump, as she quickly turns, her eyes following his retreating form.
He's smart, going deep into her lounge and far away from the door. The thought aggravates her further.
Back to the scene of the crime. The typical kind of shit only he would play...:
~He'd never kissed like that before. Hungry and possessive. He'd never projected that passion that she suspected he had in fact hidden all those times. She knew deep in her gut that it had always been there. Lying under a cracked veneer of unfeeling. But only when his moist cheek slid against hers it was truly as if they had finally found each other. The two halves, separate and hidden so very long ago…~
"Harvey," She demands, slamming the door behind her in frustration before she walks over to meet him. "Look," She states, her eyes wide and commanding. "It was...just sex. Okay?" She states. "Just. Sex. It was a...stupid, drunken mistake at a really difficult time for both of us and we just...channelled it...in the wrong way. That's all. A mistake." She repeats.
"A mistake…?" His eyebrow twitches to match the determined and challenging look in his eye. "Really? That's all you got?"
"Harvey," She sighs deeply. Of all the things going on with all of them, this is oddly at the bottom of her list right now. There are truly bigger things than them. "I have a boyfriend. You know that...you've met him. So...why are you even here?" She asks, letting half a beat to rest before the thought occurs to her. "And for that matter, why are you not disgusted at the fact. At me. Considering what your Mother did?"
It's a gamble to bring her up. But she's already played with fire. And now she has a waning schedule to line back up in record time...
"What the hell does she have to do with this?" He fires at her, gesturing between them as his temper rises quickly, all the prominent angles in his face peeking out. "Donna, this is not that." He tells her.
"What do you want from me, Harvey?" She bends then, her voice peeling with unnecessary feeling like a dog lying down on its own intent. This would all be fine...handleable at least on any other day. But she's late. And Rachel is fragile right now. And she needs her. "Look, I'm late to see Rachel." She gestures defensively. "I can not do this with you right now."
His eyes narrow at her words, a disbelieving look that reaches all the way to his puffed out chest. His stance squares at her then. Examining the cracks. Her head tilts at him in a silent question. Something he used to do and she used to copy not so long ago.
His face is unreadable for the smallest of moments, and a trickle of fear laden sweat runs down her back at the many prospects, until he suddenly says. "Fine. Let's go." His voice is resolute as he strides past her once more.
"Oh, ho. No!" She objects with a roundness. "You are not coming with me to see her."
"Why not?" He shrugs, poker faced then.
It only occurs to her in that moment.
He doesn't believe her. Doesn't believe that this is merely a moment of bad timing.
He thinks she's fobbing him off.
Her shoulders slump against the annoyance. She doesn't want him to come. Rachel doesn't know and doesn't need to know right now. Or ever.
She wanders to the elevator and curses him when she notices two more feet step into the elevator beside her. She leans forward to press the button, and isn't entirely surprised when he presses it before her. She looks up to his slightly higher eyeline, watching his cheekbones twitch with an oddly entertained smile.
"You're an asshole." She says plainly.
"Now, that's not nice." He plays, somehow entertained and wounded at the same time.
She rolls her eyes.
Jerk.
How she ever let him in her vagina a second time she'll never quite work out.
When the elevator opens, she walks out first and onto the sleat ridden sidewalk.
There is no snow this year. It's a shame. New York is so beautiful in the fall. And it's nearly almost followed by a White Christmas.
Like in the movies. Glistening and Romantic and inviting. An intense sense of magic and cinnamon in the air.
However, this is year the air is a tense and unwelcome mixture of fog and grey skies. Cold and warm spells that catch you buy surprise.
It couldn't represent the greyness of their lives any better than right now.
"Where's Ray?" She blinks, a mottled confusion on her face as she glances along each direction of the street.
"It's almost Christmas time." He shrugs. "I gave him an extended holiday."
"Wow." She regards. Not what she expected given the chaos surrounding them. "And Gretchen?" She asks.
"Gretchen likes to work." He clarifies, rolling his eyes.
"You used to give me the holidays off?" She queries the discrepancy.
He gives her a look then. "Your family live three hours away," He says. "Gretchen's family live in the city." He reasons defensively, shrugging then.
She doesn't know why she's challenging his motive really.
She's understanding now. Very painstakingly. How she is so very different to all the others.
She looks away after a moment, taking one more step towards the road as her hand flags down a yellow cab.
They slide into the cab in silence. Donna makes a point of placing her bag of things in between them.
So he can't get close. She mentally shakes herself. She never had to arm herself against the advances of Harvey Specter before.
Oh, How times had changed.
"Where to?" The cab driver calls vaguely into the back.
Everybody knew that it would hit Rachel hard. Problem was...she had nowhere to go now.
Everybody knew. Her parents. The Justice department. Everybody.
She was a virtual laughing stock. The rookie Lawyer in training with a Fraudster for a fiance.
All eyes were pointed firmly on them. And Rachel had never been emotionally solid. Soft at heart and heart always showing.
She was holding up as best she could.
But it didn't make her feel any less than a fraud by proxy.
She had been holding onto her cup of coffee so tightly that she almost split the whole thing when the knock from the door echoed out into the winding hallway.
She had taken to ignoring the many pictures on the walls. The carefree splattering of Mike calling out from every corner.
When she finally opens the door she frowns minutely, looking at her friend's strange expression and then to:
"Hey Donna. Harvey?" She blinks, frowning with mild interest at her Boss.
"Yeah." Donna sighs incredulously. "Harvey…thought he'd come see you too." Her voice bends unnaturally at the end with what both assume is sarcasm.
Rachel nods intently. "Actually that's good…" Seeming un-fazed by the nuance.
"Why?" Donna frowns then, worry etching her face.
"Because I need to see Mike." She tells them both.
They look at one another. Then back to her.
"I know it's only been a week...but...I need to see him." She states, nodding herself into the decision.
Rachel had only seen him once. Snowed down with the backlash of press and gossip surrounding his arrest, Harvey had demanded she keep a low profile. And that meant not making too many visits to see him.
She had to appear innocent. Blind to the fact. Because if they found out that she knew then she could be a likely accessory in the eyes of the court. And should the firm go down, it would leave her nowhere to go after graduation. Even if her father changed his currently discordance tune.
Harvey - with Mike's assistance - had devised an escape route for every single one of them. Jessica. Louis. Both uninformed and deemed innocent. Rachel. An unfortunate bystander, of course. Leaving only Mike, Harvey and Donna.
Now Donna had first been deemed innocent. By both of the men. Until she'd insisted that given her reputation she would have known from the off. Given her and Harvey's past closeness and almost felony to her, it seemed the likeliest account of the truth.
The dispute of that fact, of Donna's seeming involvement had started as Harvey's impassioned attempt to leave her exempt from all of it. A silent token. But following Donna's refusal to accept this as a plausible course of action, and partly because she just couldn't help it, their situation had quickly escalated to a fight.
A fight...that led them to their current...situation.
And one more appearance of the definitive 'L' word.
In order to avoid Harvey's strange insistence now, Donna had somehow managed to ensconce poor Rachel in between the two of them as a well needed buffer. She had only begun to relax, the thought of being once again pressed against the man whom she'd been so recently and intimately engaged with throwing up red flags of anxiety when they had hailed the cab.
They sat in silence now, three little mice on the way to Mike's location.
Mike Ross had received bail two days after the shit hit the fan.
Harvey had offered, rather pointedly that the only way to keep everyone out of it was if they made out like he had...operated alone. A lone wolf in a sea of innocents. And that meant not returning to his home with his supportive fiancé.
It wouldn't put Rachel in the best of lights, given the circumstances.
Had she just been a mere housewife, there would have been a little more rope to play with.
But they were members of an inner circle. Every single one of them with a red and white target on their back.
And too many enemies lying in wait with poison arrows.
Mike ended up holed up in his old apartment of all places - which had been vacant - much to everyone's lack of surprise.
Donna watches, Harvey in tow next to her as Rachel knocks rather abruptly on the door.
"Who is it?" A voice calls rather angrily.
"Your fiancée!" Rachel answers abruptly.
The pounding of feet stops, an almost silence emitting through the door.
"You shouldn't be here." He calls through the closed door.
Rachel's shoulders slump then, her voice regaining its sombre quality. "Open the door, Mike." She asks.
They all wait, as the two locks disengage, the door swinging open to reveal an image that Harvey hasn't seen for a very long time.
Mike. In his boxers. Scruffy looking. Defeated. Lacking any drive and resolute to an oncoming defeat.
Rachel glide forwards instinctively, wrapping herself around his unruly form.
"What are you doing here?" Mike mumbles into her hair, a shock in his voice as his eyes flick between his friends.
Rachel looks up then, a look of defiance on her suddenly animated face.
"I know you did this to protect me. I get it. But...I love you. We've come so far. And I...want to face this together." She tells him.
He looks at her for a moment, judging her words against her seeming state of mind. Those pearly browns that seem so light despite the colour.
Finally he nods tiredly. "Okay." He agrees, pulling her close once more. "If that's what you want."
The decision is in the air.
Christmas time is here.
And they're all going down.
Donna sighs, feeling Harvey's presence not a foot away from her.
Christmas time is here
Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of the year
Snowflakes in the air
Carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share
Sleigh bells in the air
Beauty everywhere
Yuletide by the fireside
And joyful memories there
Christmas time is here
Families drawing near
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year
Vince Guaraldi Trio - 'Christmas Time Is Here'
Merry Christmas Everybody!
A~