So I'm embarking on making this a multi-chapter! This will be a challenge for me as I am almost exclusively someone who thrives in the one-shot style of writing, but let's see how we go. Enjoy the angst! As always, please let me know what you think - your reviews are so encouraging and help me write better.
Enjoy!
Chapter 2
He should have finished up his work an hour ago, but he couldn't seem to concentrate properly anymore. He'd drifted off again, only a few words further into whatever email he was working on, fingers resting on his keyboard as he stared at nothing in particular.
He's not one for day dreaming, and he's not really daydreaming now. Daydreaming, when he does do it, is for thinking about things he wants to imagine, not things he doesn't. And so he's not imagining as much as he is counting. He's not many hours away from walking through gates he doesn't have keys for, not many hours away from trading his suit in for prison blues, from his last glass of whisky. He's ticking hours off in his head and he knows he shouldn't be hiding in his office tidying up paperwork and finalising handovers. He shouldn't be lying to himself that this was what people wanted from him right now. Louis and Jessica didn't need updates on his cases, they didn't need a formal letter of resignation and they didn't need him to change the auto response attached to his email address. They needed him there, spending time, solidifying friendship with drinks and laughter, through touch and tears, shoring up the relationships they all knew were going to come under heavy artillery for the next several years. He should have been seeking them out, telling them how much they all meant, making promises he might not be able to keep, telling stories and remembering all the things they were to each other.
He couldn't. He was trying to earn all they'd done for him.
Not just the last six years and back further - and not just for the support they'd given him as he'd stood in the dock while Gibbs and the judge looked at him like he was scum, like he was a fraud and nothing else. Jessica had stood next to him, primary counsel, working day and night to mitigate the worst of the damage from his guilty plea. Mike as well, he had stood beside him like the'd always been brothers, twisting his case and the law around his finger to squeeze every drop of doubt and leniency he could out of obscure statutes nobody else could remember reading about in law school. Louis had been a fierce and loyal companion, digging up Gibbs' entire life, trading out any sniff of impropriety to get her to back off the most punishing of her impulses.
At the end of it, they'd fought and clawed and scratched until his sentence came down from seven years to two. He still had to surrender his licence to practise, effective the moment he walked through the gates of Danbury. He still had to rebuild from scratch afterwards. But he would have five more years to rebuild than he thought he would. And that wasn't bad. Two years he could do. Two years he could handle.
He could do two years.
They'd got him back five years of his life, and before that, given him a family, and a home, and a refuge. They'd made him a better person, a better lawyer, a better friend. They'd piled chance upon chance for him, and when he'd squandered all that to drag them and the firm through the mud, they'd still stood by him. They deserved all of him.
So he'd sat in his office, and then in his house, writing letters and making phone calls and organising everything he could think of. Harvey wasn't going to walk into Jessica's office, rattle off a speech about how much she meant to him, cry and hug her. He wasn't going to mope and reminisce and get lost in nostalgia. He didn't have a lot of time, and he couldn't save the firm and also spend his last few days of freedom wandering into different offices declaring his love for everyone around him. He couldn't make a gesture big enough to balance out all they'd done for him and he couldn't undo the last six years.
But he could do this. He could try to make sure the firm would survive on past him, that the only casualty from his long running deception was him.
Mostly only him, at least.
There's a quiet knock, and Harvey looks up, and Donna is standing in the doorway. She's wearing the same expression she's worn since he'd met her outside the prosecutor's office after his release, through the sleepless nights working on his case, through his sentencing and through the call to his phone for the final outcome, and the quiet hour after that when they'd stood, not talking, in his office, after two years was confirmed and they both tried to decide if they were happy it wasn't seven or devastated that it was more than nothing. She's equally full of fear and full of faith and she's somehow wearing them both on her face.
"Hey," he says. "What are you still doing here? It's late. Go home."
"I could say the same to you."
He tries a smile. "Well, you're not going to prison in three days, so I think you can afford to get some sleep." But he knows his smile doesn't reach his eyes, and it doesn't reach hers either. He holds her eyes for a moment, and then says, "I just need to get a few more things done. I won't be much longer." He's lying, but he doesn't want to admit to Donna that he's not planning on going home tonight; she'll just fuss and argue and he has so much to do before he can be certain that he can walk away from a firm that isn't about to collapse under the weight of his sin.
"Oh, you won't be too much longer?" she repeats, her eyebrows raised in the way she does when he's managed to sneak exactly nothing by her. She enters his office, sits down on his couch, and starts thumbing her way through a magazine.
"What are you doing?" he asks.
She leans over to his drinks tray, pours herself a whisky. "Well, since you're only going to be a few minutes longer, I figured I would keep you company and make sure you get home okay." She sips from her glass and sits back into the couch without breaking eye contact with him and she may as well have a neon sign over her head announcing how little of his bullshit she's buying.
He sighs. "Okay, you caught me. But I have to get through this all. I can't go without knowing I've set the firm up to survive for the next couple of years. I need to do this."
"You don't."
"I do." He stands, dropping a stack of paper on his desk as he walks around to face her. He perches on the corner of his desk. "I have the Mercer acquisition that's on shaky ground, and virtually every one of my clients is looking to jump ship so I have to get them all locked in, get them settled with other lawyers, kiss a whole bunch of ass, and even then I'm not sure how Jessica's going to deal with the bad PR around this, so I probably need to draft a press release…" he trails off and scrubs a hand over his face. He needs a break before his to-do list cripples him with its sheer size, he knows. But down time is a luxury he doesn't have right now.
The irony is that in a few days, he won't be able to do this ever again, and down time is the only thing he'll have too much of, and it isn't lost on him.
"Come on." She stands, walks towards him, and she's got the same smile on her face that she's always had since he met her - knowing, compassionate, and calling him on his bullshit. "Let's go get a drink."
"I can't, Donna. I have too much to do." He drops his head and stares at the ground, avoiding her eyes; he can feel the frailty in his excuse and he can't summon a poker face good enough to sell it.
"There'll always be more paperwork, Harvey." He can hear the unspoken there won't always be time for us to drink and laugh and talk, but he doesn't know what to do with it; he's edgy and exhausted and so goddamn weary, and there is a deep grief on the horizon that he knows is waiting for prison bars to drop to arrive fully, but it's coming for him all the same.
His hands are loose at his sides and he feels her slide her fingers underneath his palms, gripping loosely as she rubs her thumb over his knuckle. "Harvey." She tugs on his hands lightly, pulling him to his feet, trying to get him to look at her. "I know Jessica and Louis and Mike appreciate everything you're doing to try and help before…before. But I miss you." Harvey immediately looks down at his shoes again; she's always known how to make him fucking uncomfortable, hurling her vulnerability out to him like there was no way he could ever mistreat it. It doesn't matter that he's mistreated it with a regularity that borders on depressing. She trusts him. He loves that she trusts him, but it's also the most gut wrenching awfulness that she does because of how little he deserves it. He and Donna aren't... whatever they almost are. But they are something, and he can't shake the haunted certainty that he's made a decision that has fundamentally uprooted her life alongside his.
But she doesn't let him off the hook and ducks her head to catch his gaze, holds her eyes with his. "Hey. I miss you. I only have a few days left with you. I don't want to lose you to paperwork and emails and phone calls before I have to lose you to prison."
She's right, he knows she's right, but he can't quite bring himself to admit it. The walls and compartments he's built up around his emotions for years don't come down just because he's not so sure he wants them any more.
But her hands are strong, and her gaze is steady, her eyes anchoring him to her even as he avoids it because it's too much, and she has this trust thrumming through her body which is completely undeserved he thinks, but she's always seen more in him than he's seen in himself, she's always seen through he is to who he could be, and she points him towards - north? it doesn't matter, the metaphors he comes up with for her are never adequate anyway, and then, almost against his will, he hears himself saying, "I don't want to lose you. I don't want to lose you at all."
It's not what he expected to say and it's way more of a confession than he anticipated. He feels his stomach jump into his chest; it feels like he's crossed a line. When Donna said I don't want to lose you it felt like it still could have been friendship; when he'd said it it hadn't, it felt like I can't live without you and uncomfortably close to I love you and he doesn't think either of them know what to do with that.
He shudders a breath out.
She lets go of his fingers, cups his chin and nudges it up to meet her gaze. Finally, finally she's looking into his eyes and she meets his - embarrassment? anguish? He doesn't know anymore - with nothing other than compassion, her eyes open and hopeful and full of undeserved faith. "You haven't lost me, Harvey," she says. "You haven't lost me. I'm here. We're all here."
He hadn't known he'd needed to hear that, to hear he hadn't irrevocably ruined everyone and everything around him. There's so much relief in it that he feels all the rigidness go out of his spine, and he'd thought he was being strong but he'd just been tense, he'd just been scared, and now his body caves in a bit and it's not because he's being weak but because he's letting out fear; he rests his cheek into her palm as her hand slides to cup the side of his face and it's the comfort he's been chasing, and how did he not know it was Donna that had it, it's always Donna, she's always the answer.
It's only an inch or two that separates his cheek from hers, it's something he's avoided for years but not now, and he lets his face fall against hers. She's still holding his hand and his free palm comes up against her jaw, his fingertips tickling into her hair, he can feel her breath against the corner of his mouth, and this is miles away from 'just friends' and it jolts through his chest, the tickling of her breath spiking goosebumps across his neck.
He's not sure if it's him moving her chin or her shifting her neck, it's probably both of them at once but either way his mouth meets hers and she's warm and soft, her lips are just like remembers and nothing like he's imagined and he always thought kissing her again would feel like fireworks but it doesn't, it feels like looking up and finding sunrise from nowhere. She fits her bottom lip between both of his and her teeth graze across the cleft above his lip, sucking lightly, and he's glad that his legs are pushed back against his desk because he's not sure he has the focus to stay upright by himself. He feels something in his soul switch on as she nudges his mouth open and he feels her tongue slide against his, and he thinks that this moment might be worth two years.
She pulls back slightly after a minute to catch her breath, and he's breathing a lot harder than he should be as well. He leans his forehead against her, and her skin is warm and flushed under his hand, her fingers squeezing his, and he keeps his eyes shut against hers because that feels easier; just the taste and touch of her is overwhelming and he thinks adding red hair and brown eyes into the equation would finish him off altogether.
It's a lot more than a kiss, a lot more than some office tryst born from exhaustion and too-short days; whatever is sparking between them has been simmering for years and the spark is almost glorious, but it might be too much for the minutes he has left. So he draws back just a little as she leans in again, huffs out, "Donna, wait. I don't know if this is a good idea. I don't want to…"
"What?"
"… complicate things."
She laughs, and there's just enough wistfulness in it to edge out the heartache. "You have no idea how much simpler this makes everything, do you." And she's against him again before he can answer, her lips on his, making his decision for him, and any further protest is wiped out of his mind as she kisses him into blankness.
Her arms slide up around his neck so she can nudge him more fully against her, her thumbs skating lazily across the back of his head, and his hands drop almost automatically to her waist, arms wrapping and pulling her against him, and now it's not a kiss as much as it is Harvey and Donna dropping, finally dropping all their walls and guards and bullshit rules and just being. She feels like the dawn, all light and radiance and his whole body draws towards her, and there are prison bars hunting him but he's never felt closer to freedom.
—
Donna's entrance is only about twenty minutes from Harvey's office door, but it takes them a lot longer than usual this time. The hallway of the firm is a lot further than he had ever noticed before; at least it is when he's abandoned the confident power walk he's cultivated in favour of pressing Donna up against the wall every few steps to lick up her neck and push another wrinkle into her dress from running his hands over her. The elevator doesn't take any longer than usual once they've remembered to push the button for the ground floor, but that's only after Donna has Harvey's tie loosened off and several buttons undone. They hail a cab and that's the hardest moment of the night, sitting next to each other, conscious they're breathing a lot harder than they should be, stealing glances but not quite catching each other's eyes, fingers twitching towards each other but not quite touching because they don't trust themselves or each other not to ruin their driver's night.
They fall out of the cab and kiss into her entrance, up the elevator and spill into her apartment, Harvey just managing to get the door shut before she's backed him up against it, pushing his jacket off his shoulders and she's all passion and it's not just the release of holding back for fifteen minutes in a cab; it's the release of thirteen years of her having to tuck her feelings away and finding ways to love him fully but incompletely, thirteen years of waiting that wasn't really waiting because he always said we could never and that's gone now, it's done, and it's far, far too late for it but it's here and there isn't a minute to waste, and he feels all of it on her lips and in the tips of her fingers as she drags up his arms and makes short work of his shirt buttons.
Harvey starts pulling her dress up, hiking fabric around her hips, ducking his head to run his teeth over her collar bone, and she wraps her arms back around him, hugging her skin under his shirt before pushing it up and over his shoulders. He lets his arms loosen, lets his shirt and jacket drop to the floor, fresh air prickling sweat and goosebumps across his skin, and he slides a hand through to the back of her head, into her hair and pulls her mouth to his, kissing lazy and thoroughly and sliding his tongue against hers and he's in utter disbelief that this is happening, that an hour ago he was ready to bury himself in paperwork for the night and now he's in her apartment and thirteen years of dreams and what-ifs and fantasies are all paling in comparison to her, real and warm against him.
He steps out of his shoes without letting his lips off hers; she does the same and he's pushed her dress up enough to catch the hem with his hands. Donna raises her arms on either side of his temples, framing him against her door and leaning into him so he can tug her dress up and over in one fluid motion. He drops it, runs his hands up her back, and his fingertips trace her spine and her curves fit against his palms like they were built a matching pair, and he thinks that she's the single greatest thing he's ever touched.
Donna hooks a finger into his waistband, sliding her tongue against his, and draws him backwards down the hallway and into her room. His cock twitches at that; he's already pushing against his briefs and his pants and she must notice because she starts undoing his belt as they walk and he's not sure how she's managing when he can barely remember which way is up anymore and she must be magic, he thinks.
She just gets the top button on his pants loosened when her legs hit the back of the mattress and she stops. Harvey keeps on, walking her down onto the bed and sliding his body over the top of hers. In another world, in another lifetime he'd probably have spent half the night on foreplay, all flirting and laughing and teasing, but this wasn't another world and it wasn't another lifetime and he just wanted her, just wanted to be with her and in her and wanted to tell her he loved her and it's amazing how facing prison tends to clarify things.
Donna has her hands on his waistband, pushing his pants down over his hips, and he ducks his head to her neck, teasing his lips and teeth over her skin, and he feels a deep 'hmm' vibrate in the base of her throat. It's not quite a moan, not yet, but it's close, and Harvey feels a deep sigh rattle past his vocal chords when she gets her hand under his briefs and grips his cock lightly. He breathes, 'Donna,' and it's involuntarily; he's been whispering her name into his ceiling for years anyway and it's like breathing to him now.
He unhooks her bra as she teases her hand along him, and her other hand goes to the back of his head as he licks slowly down her neck to her breasts, scratching at his scalp in encouragement as he nudges his lips over her nipple, sucks it into his mouth. She moans properly then, a low murmur catching her vocal chords as she breathes out heavily. She pulls a leg up to his hip and shifts her hips against him, seeking friction, and he feels his stomach hollow out as she thumbs the tip of his cock, pushes his briefs down, and runs her palm along his full length.
"Fuck, Donna," he mutters, and he brings a hand up to tease her other nipple; she arches against him and he feels her moan more than he hears it. He skates his hand down her side, tickling her skin under his fingers, over her ribs and across her hip and stomach before nudging his fingers lightly along her pussy, drawing his name from her lips as he nudges his thumb against her clit. He circles it lazily, sucks her nipple between his teeth and she moans deep in her throat and just that nearly finishes him off, she's wanton and gorgeous and he's never known another women who could push him to the edge with her voice alone. So he slides a finger inside her, still rubbing slow circles over her clit, and she arches her head back into the bed. He licks up to her exposed neck, letting her moans hum against his lips, and she's wet and tight around his hand, and she's stroking his cock and there's no way this is real.
"Harvey. Please," she says, and she grabs his hip with her free hand, nudging him towards her. Harvey slides his finger from her, shifts his hips against her, letting his forehead fall against hers, and he opens his eyes at the same time she does, her eyes are blown black with lust and need and she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen so he just watches her, taking all of who she is in. She still has him in her hand so he just lets her guide him in and he sinks into her, holding her eyes with his, and it's still not fireworks, it's coming home, and there's something unspoken happening that's as inevitable as life and death and they both just stop and stare at each other, tangling hands slowly through each others hair.
"Donna," he murmurs, and she just smiles sadly and says she knows and it's okay. He wants to apologise, wants to tell her he's sorry he waited so long, he's sorry he pled guilty and he's sorry he's a fucking moron who's only figured this all out when he has so little time left, but there's no point and he can see she knows it all anyway, so he kisses her instead, slow and languid, and then she pushes her hips against his and he starts moving slowly. He hikes his hips against hers, drawing out and then sinking back into her, and she holds his gaze and it's almost too much straight away, so he drops his face into the crook of her neck, slides his hands to either side of her head so he can push up and find leverage, and keeps pushing in and out.
He starts slow but he can't hold that pace for long because she's all around him, rocking against him, finding his rhythm, and she's slick and tight and warm, and she's moaning in time with his thrusts now and holy fuck how had he ever managed to convince himself this was a bad idea. She says his name, he says hers, building pace and speed almost against his will. He pushes up on his hands, finding the right angle to hit her just so, and he finds it and she pushes her head back into the mattress, goddamn she's breathtaking, and he isn't going to last. If it was anyone else he probably would have felt embarrassed, being pushed so close to the edge so quickly, but this is Donna and she's always had him completely anyway so how did he think he'd be able to hold this back from her either.
He slides a hand between them, finds her clit, and strokes two fingers over her while he pushes in and out. She gasps, her voice pitching higher, says 'fuck, Harvey', and he can feel the muscles around him tensing, tightening, and he drops his head besides hers, he wants to be closer, and she breathes into his ear that she's going to come, and he thinks it's about the most profound thing he's ever heard. And then she's breaking underneath him, orgasm rippling through her stomach, and the sight of her completely gone underneath him is all it takes for Harvey to follow, and he thinks he says her name as his brain blinks white.
—
He hadn't intended to fall asleep, and he hadn't really; it was more like being with Donna had short circuited his brain and he'd blanked out in a haze of dopamine for a few moments. The world edged out and he'd just let himself drift, the sensation of her skin against his the only thing anchoring him to reality. That had never happened before. He wondered idly if it was just a byproduct of thirteen years of fantasy, or if this is how it was always meant to be when you were with your soulmate and he'd just been waiting his whole life to find out.
Light scratching at the base of his skull brings him back to reality; he's still draped over her, his head resting next to hers, she's looking at him and smiling; it's a smile he's never seen before, he thinks maybe it's just for him and just for moments like this, and it's like she's wrestled all the peace out of the universe just for them for that moment.
"Hey," he murmurs, and he shifts a little to settle next to her, his arm across her waist and his leg tangled between hers.
"Hey." She runs a hand over his face, fingertips tickling over his skin, and he thinks that he'd walk through fire for that smile.
"I'm sorry it took me so long to get here."
"I know."
"I'm sorry we only have a couple of days."
"I know." She kisses him slowly, and she's smiling against him still but he thinks he can taste the edges of grief.
"It's two years," she says. "I waited thirteen. Two more won't feel like anything."
"I can't ask that."
"You're not asking me. I'm telling you."
It's said like a joke even though it isn't, and he tries to smile but he can feel tears stinging. "I know."
"It's going to be okay."
"I know."
In that moment, he thinks he really believes her.