Bleeding Out
Category: Angst, Darvey
Summary: Here's the deal, I will take a bullet for you... and I don't mean that literally.
Warnings: Contains spoilers for S4E16 Not Just a Pretty Face
AN: This was just something floating around my head when I couldn't sleep last night :)
The once familiar office is eerily silent, the echos of past conversations haunting the stillness and Harvey's fingers curl tighter around what used to be her desk.
'Here's the deal, I will take a bullet for you... and I don't mean that literally.'
Her image resonates in his head like the conversation was yesterday, her mouth alluring and toying with something deep inside his chest. So much has changed since then; new paint on the walls, fancy furniture, screens where there used to be whiteboards and yet the smell, the old musty scent that can only be attributed to the DA's office still hangs pungently in the air choking his throat.
'But what you do for me is, when I need something, you give it to me.'
It's not just a one way street. He can remember thinking the words before she spoke them out loud, a similar sentiment permanently etched in his yearbook; a testament to strength of a young man about to dive in with a pack of wolves. The people he's closest to now have questioned his ethics, his morals and even his conduct but never his loyalty. He'll do anything for those he cares about, to the detriment of his own dying breath.
'I will take a bullet for you."
He breathes in sharply, the hot humid air stirring a sick rush of nausea.
'And I don't mean that literally.'
Pins and needles flush his hands but his grip doesn't relent, the stinging pain keeping him standing and upright in the darkened room. The only source of light is streaming in from where a cleaning lady is working down the hall but it still blinds his gaze, tears threatening to spill from raw dry eyes.
He isn't a man that cries but once upon a time he wasn't a man that loved either.
This room, her desk, is what spawned the beginning of something that took him over thirteen years to be ready for.
Wasted seconds, minutes and hours all pour from the clock on the wall, the quiet tick mocking him as if even with a different face it always knew he'd be back here one day to mourn his regrets.
'I don't mean that literally.'
She'd been kidding around when she'd uttered the joke a mere few feet from where he's standing and yet there'd been an undertone, something reaching out to let him know that buried beneath light-hearted witticisms they were making a promise to each other; to be there no matter what.
A promise that had bleed out through his fingertips, the bright red crimson staining his calloused palms no matter how hard he tries to scrub it off. The memorie's burnt in, painting his skin every time darkness flutters behind his eyes.
'Here's the deal, I will take a bullet for you... and I don't mean that literally.'
"Harvey?"
The sound of a voice that isn't hers drags his head to the left, a suffocating weight holding him trapped as Samantha enters the DA's office- as if either of them have any right to be here. He broke in for a reason and doesn't want the company or need her pity but the protest scratches like sandpaper sputtering out of his throat. "I'm fine."
She internally scoffs at the response but out of respect swallows it down, focusing on his needs to distract from her own. Robert once implied they were cut from the same cloth and looking at him now she can read his anguish as if she were facing a mirror.
"We don't have to talk..." she insists, mimicking a similar position to his, "but you shouldn't be alone right now."
"Asshole's in custody." He mutters, anger tightening around the flimsy grip fraying his composure. He wants to beat the living shit out of something but he doesn't, for the same reason he won't cry; because if he starts he's not sure he could stop.
"Not what I meant and you know it." There's no risk to his safety, only what he's going do to himself and she has an abundance of words to waste in an attempt to keep him from doing anything stupid. "It wasn't your fault."
A sound akin to bitter amusement pushes through his lips.
Not his fault.
'But what you do for me is, when I need something, you give it to me.'
How many times did he miss that opportunity, either getting there too late or coming up short.
She needed him to protect her and he'd failed.
"You're right, I don't want to talk."
The gruff, turbulent dismissal is a warning and she heeds it but doesn't leave. She promised Donna she would find him, not that she would drag him back to the hospital and she won't- not until he's ready.
Her silence adds to his guilt and the anxiety that won't stop crawling beneath his skin- because he's here when he should be there. He could've have lost everything but he didn't and most people would be grateful.
He is, but there's a barrier of fear keeping him from reaching toward it.
'Here's the deal.'
The deal.
He'd agreed to the terms before even knowing what they were; he'd signed his heart over long before the words had come to fruition.
"I will take a bullet for you."
And she had.
Now he's the one bleeding out.