He smiles at her when she steps into his office, fresh off the plane. He needs her help, he says, and she was planning on going home, it's been a long day, made longer by the effort of having to talk Louis into doing his job from the worst of his bitterness, but then Harvey smiles, and she's never been able to say no to him when he smiles.

He has a picture from his mom, and they'd said sorry to each other, and he mentions shyly that he added her number to his phone, and she can see the trip has been hard, that it's been good, it's changed something in his bones, and settled something in his spirit, and changed that smile of his.

She helps him hang it, the picture his mom sent him back with. She's got the eye, he says, and they spend a quiet half hour measuring and plotting and then hanging, saying goodbye to people as the evening draws long and everyone else makes their way to their houses or bars or restaurants, and it takes longer than it should, but so do most things they do when it's just the two of them, for reasons they never say out loud.

He finally steps back from it, head tilted and hands jammed into his pockets, and he has the set of his shoulders pushed back the way he does when he thinks the job's done. She's got the eye though, like he says she does, and she steps forward to shimmy it the final millimetre, and probably nobody would have noticed, but it's important to Harvey and she has something inside her that wants things to be perfect when Harvey cares about them.

She steps back to his side again, and he's looking at the picture, and she does too, for a moment, but then she finds herself looking at him.

It takes a moment. And then he smiles, and he's a million miles away from her, and this smile is different to the other ones, it feels like the first time she's seen him smile in months, and it feels like the sky opening up.

There's a weight lifted off him, and it's not just the weight that's been bearing down on him since Jessica left and dropped him, knotted up and insecure, into shoes he wasn't yet ready to fill. It's also the weight of seven years of silence gone, of seven years of unmade phone calls and missed Christmases and forgotten anniversaries. Of not being able to call, when work was hard or Donna didn't answer or whoever he was dating packed and left for the final time. It's gone, the weight of loneliness. It's Harvey being released from orphanhood, and he's not an orphan like Mike is, but it's been close enough for a long time.

And maybe, she thinks, it's even back further from that. Maybe it's the weight of a scared teenager having to hide a secret away from the one person he knew he loved lifting off as well. She's not sure. He probably hasn't even thought about it.

Time will tell.

But she loves his smile.

She turns to him at the same time he turns to her, and it's just like it's always been with them, seeking each other out when there's a something big that happens for either one of them. They always find each other and fill space for each other. He's still got his hands in his pockets and his shoulders look lighter than they have in a long time and now his shirt doesn't fit quite right, because he's been hunching all day and he's pinched the fabric up too high against his neck. So it's automatic, her hands going up to run over his shoulders and flatten his shirt out against his collarbone.

"Look at you," she says, tugging his collar straight. "You look…"

"Tired?"

"Different." She smoothes the front of his shirt down, and it's something she's done a thousand times before. She tries to remember the last time she saw him without a suit on. She'd seen him without a jacket, or without a tie, but that was always at the end of a long day, when he didn't need to look like nothing could penetrate his smile or skin, when it was just him and her and empty boxes of Chinese from the walkout down the road. She secretly liked it when he dropped his jacket down next to his record player and loosened the buttons on his shirt and slouched in his couch with a mouthful of shitty chow mein and sat giggling at some joke she'd made at Louis' expense. She liked it because it made her feel like what she imagined him coming home to her would feel like, in another world and another time. She's never said it to him, but here he is now without a suit and without a tie and it feels too close to that imagining she does.

She's very close to him.

She's close, and normally smoothing her palms over his chest to shake the wrinkles out of his shirt is just something they do, but she swears this time there's a spark of electricity between her fingers and the heartbeat lurking under his buttons and it feels real, real enough that she actually wonders if it's the static electricity of fabric against skin and she's just imagining the pull of gravity towards him that's coming along with it.

She should probably be careful, she thinks.

His hands are loose again, he's slid them out of his pockets and he feels relaxed under her hands but there's a tautness in his forearms. He's not tense, but there's tension. She sees his right thumb twitch against his palm.

"Different," he repeats, and he's still smiling but he's gruff, he's low and hushed and that's new too and she thinks maybe the spark she's imagining under her hands isn't actually being imagined, maybe it's real and it's what's shifting his vocal chords and bottoming his voice out against his throat.

It goes quiet in his office and she's pretty sure she feels gravity shift as time stops.

She should Donna him, she knows. They've had this moment before, when she's been fixing his tie or jacket and he's leant into her and murmured something like you're into me or you're thinking about it right now aren't you and she's felt that spark, but she's always shrugged it away with a pause and a sideways look and a smartass comment about sharing her, or Scottie, or whatever file he's holding. Those moments always felt like something, but they were light and easily forgotten and it was a spark that snuffed out as soon as she broke eye contact and stepped away, and this time it just feels dangerous and way, way too close to lines they've blurred but never crossed; this time it's gasoline and she's holding matches.

She gives a slight shake of her head to break the spell, and tips her head back to smile at him, the smile she throws him that's mostly eyebrows, and she opens her mouth to tell him to try not to look so underdressed tomorrow because he's managing his own firm now and he needs to make a good first impression in his new job, but then the thumb twitch in his right hand turns into movement, into his hand against her hip and he hooks her with his hand, tugs at the same time he ducks his head and whatever part of whichever word she'd started to say is swallowed by the lightning bolt of his mouth over hers. He kisses her, pushes his bottom lip in between hers, it's strong but not forceful and there's an inevitability about the way he tastes, familiar and new all at once, and then he steps into her orbit and she feels him nudge himself against her and

good god

he's fire, heat and the universe colliding with her, and she's kissing him back, there's no automatic pull away from him and no what are you doing and no someone might see us like she always told herself there would be, because time has stopped and there's nothing but her and him and the feel of his cheek under her hand and his shoulder blade under her other palm as she wraps her arms up to meet him. His hands slide to her hips, then around them, and he pulls her flush against him, hip to hip, and he can't seem to figure out if he needs to catch his breath or slide his tongue against her teeth so he just does both, and she can feel him heart and skin against her under his shirt and she slips one hand in under his collar at the back of his neck.

She doesn't know what he wants, exactly, isn't sure what he's feeling and if this is just intended as a moment, a split second loss of control, or if it's a way for him to remind himself she's still there and isn't going anywhere and that she will never leave him, but whatever it was and whatever he'd intended, and whatever her lines and rules and okay just his mouth and just this once fantasies are, it spirals past them both so fast they don't even see the warning signs flashing.

And so as she sucks the cleft of his upper lip between her teeth he huffs out a cross between a moan and a breath and it's half surprise she thinks, but his hands around her waist slide to cup her butt and then he's hoisted her against him, and that's already more friction than she knows how to handle, but she wraps her legs around him and her arms around his neck so she can grab handfuls of his shirt and yank them free from his waistband, and she pushes her hips against him as he pulls her tight against him and she catches herself against his belt buckle in just the right place and there and she grunts against his teeth.

She feels him move, he's not looking where he's going, not really, running on pure instinct and memory as she tips his head back and he runs a line up her neck with his tongue and she pushes her finger tips through his hair. She catches a glimpse of him, heaving breath and his hair pushed, dishevelled and rebel against his scalp, the blush of five o'clock shadow promising the best kind of scratch and pull against her skin and goddammit he's fucking gorgeous.

His shins bump against the edge on his couch, and she feels him tip her, and it's gentle but it's also not, her knees buckling over the armrest as her hips sink into the cushion, and she plants a hand behind her to shift backwards, her other hand gripping his shirt collar, and the secretary part of her thinks distantly that those wrinkles are definitely not coming out now as she tugs at him, and he works some kind of magic where he lets her drag him against her by his lapel and at the same time he ducks his head and shrugs his shoulders and by the time her shoulder blades hit cool leather he's dropped his shirt behind her and he's all skin from waist up for her to thrill her fingers against, and she scratches lightly up the curve of his spine while he nudges his teeth against the spot where her neck and collar bone meet and sucks just hard enough for her to gasp "fucking hell Harvey," and then "if you leave a hickey there I swear to god," and she feels him smile as he nips at her and then smoothes his tongue over the same spot.

There's a world where she and Harvey are all night lovers, gentle and patient and all tenderness, thoughtful touches and kisses and foreplay, but this isn't that world and this isn't that night, and she gets her hands around and over him with an almost agitated abandon, needing warm skin under her palms and wanting the slick of sweat that makes her grip loose and slippery, and she's got a dress on that defies them, but Harvey is sliding his tongue down her sternum anyway, and then to her breasts, teeth worrying at her nipple firmly enough to peak them against her bra and against her dress and she thinks it's probably good there's fabric there because she's so close to being completely overwhelmed that she can barely think to get her hands around to his belt buckle, and she feels him pushing against his seams as she undoes it, nudges against him with her knuckles and the backs of her hands and he stills for a moment, gasps "fuck, Donna," against her breasts, damp fabric tickling cold with his breath.

His voice is still gravel and it stutters up her spine and she's heard him swear a million times before but never like this, the word 'fuck' is always on his lips but it's never meant what it means now, never promised release and mindlessness like it does tonight, and she doesn't think she'll ever be able to hear that word again from him without the thrill of it spiking goosebumps up her back like it does when she gets him free from his pants and he says it again and has to lean his forehead against her because he knows like she does that this is everything.

She supposes she should want his hands and his mouth on her first, she supposes she should want to feel his knuckles inside her and his thumb rubbing lazy against her clit and then his tongue chasing her until she grabs his hair for support and swears guttural as she comes against his mouth, but she doesn't. That's for couples that don't have to be satisfied with glances through glass doors and sideways smiles and late night phone calls where they don't admit anything. That's for couples with a world different to theirs and date nights and for couples who can say I love you without ruining everything.

Donna and Harvey aren't that and they don't have that time. So she just slides her hand over him as he pushes up on his elbows to get to her mouth with his lips and tongue, and she rubs precome down the length of him and then pulls gently, guiding him to her as she nudges her underwear aside, and then he sinks into her and she pushes a breath that's actually a moan against his mouth as he does and they both say god damn at the same time instead of each other's names.

He hitches her knee up for purchase, and then he's thrusting, against and over her, and she catches her eyes with his and this feels like it should just be fucking, it's the physicality of what's going on and there's no romance and no tenderness, it's him finding her deep and hard and no this? and no tell me where and no tell me what, it should just be fucking, but his eyes are blown wide and there's lust but behind that there's something else, something that looks like waiting and hoping and it kicks something in her stomach that isn't the sex, it's … it's something.

She's tight around him, he can feel her stretching against him, it's too much and not enough all at once, and when he leans his weight on one hand so he can slide his other between them and nudge his thumb against her clit, she hears herself gasp and her hips push up against his, finding his rhythm, her arms pushing up over her head for purchase and grounding, and it's far too soon when she hears herself say yes and there and fuck Harvey I'm going to come and he just tells her to let go and then chases her into the static.

—

He takes slightly longer than her to come back to himself, and she watches him with a smile until his eyes focus again, and he smiles, and something gets said that neither of them say, because they never talk, not really. And they know.

This isn't change.

This is fantasy.

She sees him, he nods, an almost imperceptible shift of his head, and his smile tweaks a fresh wistfulness behind his eyes.

She still loves his smile.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey." She smoothes his hair, and it's not how it should be, they're not lovers, they're not Harvey and Donna, they're just Harvey and Donna, and this is her finding back to her place as his secretary and his protector and if only there could be more.

"Don't wear that shirt again," she says and it's with a smile but she doesn't think she feels it in her bones.

"Too scruffy."

She plays with the curve of his jaw. "Too … you."

—

They don't talk about the picture again until she gives it back to him.

A/N Please go check out isabellaposters on instagram! She drew the most gorgeous image that inspired this fic. She's a hugely talented artist and it's been a blast collabing with her on this.

As always, reviews are so appreciated and help us writers feel like we're part of a big community and not just typing words into our laptops by ourselves.