Things have shifted. Finally.
He'd once asked, and she'd once said no, because she doesn't date people she works with, and she had genuinely thought after everything, it wouldn't ever happen, and if it did, it would never work. All the sparks between them, all the looks, all the teasing and flirting and edging the line of professional and personal whenever they were in the same room or on the phone, it didn't mean anything really. She'd learned that the hard way. From Stephen, and from him.
And then, he'd pushed. Unexpectedly, he'd pushed, even though it was obvious in hindsight that it was always going to end this way, at the end of a long night of conversations she hadn't expected to have and phone calls she hadn't expected to miss, that he'd be at her door and she wouldn't think this is too much too soon or how are we going to make this work but instead it was just come in and just be here now. She realises right there, with him unexpectedly at her doorstep, and with him saying fuck it, be mine tonight, that there's no such thing as timeline, no system, no need for professions of love or apologies or yet more goddamn conversations.
Just him.
Just him in the suit she loves but only told him she liked.
Just him with his arms around her before they even get her front door shut.
Just him, taller than she ever realised, stronger than she remembers when she's touched him in the past, and has she ever had to press up on her calves quite this much to kiss him before?
Just him in the cool dark of whatever the hour it was when they'd both taken a moment, before sleep, to look more than speak.
Just him, finding a way to be straightforward that she was, for years, terrified to admit out loud she always hoped for, and then in the middle of that, he found a way to tell her he finally realised what he was missing, and it was her.
When he finally leaves her, the morning after, dressed in the same clothes he'd shown up in, he says, tonight as well, with all the confidence of a man who knows he's really found someone this time. And she smiles and bites her lip when he says he'll call as soon as he can, and he does.
"Hey," he says, when he calls, and his voice is different to all the other times he's called her before. Because something's shifted. They'd said tonight, when they were both still not quite believing their luck, in her apartment that morning. And then like clockwork, tonight almost doesn't happen, because of work, because work is always fucking there, it turns out, but there's something in both of them that refuses to take no for an answer and they push back against it when they decide it's not going to derail them.
"Hey, she says, when he calls back again, later, to find out where and when. He's not just assuming she'll organise, pick a place she knows he'll love, because something has shifted. It's not Carbone's and it's not Del Posto, it's a new place, and that's different as well. Him trying feels like something else all together, something she hasn't experienced for a long time, and it's something she hadn't even realised she was hoping and waiting for.
Maybe, she thinks, maybe this is actually going to work. Maybe this is something.
"You look good today. In that dress," he says, after they've worked out the details.
"You haven't even seen me dressed today," she says.
"I know. Law of averages. You always look good," he says, and she feels her smile press unbidden into the corners of her eyes. It feels good to smile freely, because the boy she likes is complimenting her.
"Careful, you, people are going to think you're soft," she says, and can't quite keep the push out of her voice, the one that sounds less like teasing and more like yearning.
"I'll take my chances," he says.
"Soft looks good on you," she murmurs.
She can almost hear him smile down the line. "See you tonight?" he says.
"See you tonight."
"Bye, Donna."
"Bye, Thomas."
They're spending just about every night together, and even so, he calls during the day. He doesn't call with sideways comments and strained pauses or with hushed, illicit whispers. Instead, he calls to ask about dinner, about what time she'll be free, and he tells her he's looking forward to seeing her, that she's beautiful, that he misses her.
It's different, because it's allowed, and she loves that it's allowed.
She tells Rachel that.
"So, he openly admitted to you he was attracted to you, and told you that he wanted to take you out, and then he set a time and place, and then he showed up?" Rachel had asked, one lunch break when she'd called Donna to check in.
"He did."
"Huh," Rachel said, and there was just enough to the word even though she was trying to be neutral with it that Donna said, "what?"
"Nothing."
"Rachel."
"Well… what about Harvey?"
"... what about Harvey?" Donna's trying not to be defensive and she can hear the failure in the clip in her tone, the one she almost never uses on Rachel. Rachel's not the first person to squeal excitement at Donna's news that she's seeing someone, only to then fall off the edge of her joy when Donna doesn't say Harvey's name. Donna is tired of the polite, hidden disappointment that keeps following up the word 'Thomas' and she's also starting to feel like people think she's doing something wrong, and she hates that.
She's a grown woman, making a grown decision,and she won't be made to feel guilty for moving on from Harvey. Harvey will ever be a wistful could-have-been-but-never-was. They could have been, really could have been something. But she's learned that her path is what it is and his is what it is, and the occasional pang of 'maybe' isn't worth a hundred years of pain. They just never got the timing right, and it is what it will ever be.
But Thomas - Thomas.
Thomas and her, she thinks, really could have it all, and Donna loves the feeling of falling for someone she's allowed to fall for.
"I just.." Rachel sounds like she's searching for the right words. "It's a lot different to how things have always been with Harvey."
"Thomas is the opposite."
"Yeah."
"Thank God," Donna says with a laugh, and she doesn't even wonder if she means it.
She keeps missing Harvey's calls.
Scottie calls her that evening and says she hopes one day that Harvey will see what everyone sees, and Donna can't figure out if she agrees with her or not.
Harvey talks to her at the elevators, it feels like he corners her, or maybe he's cornered himself, and she can see something in him she doesn't think she's seen before - not courage, exactly, but she can't put her finger on precisely what it is until she's staring at him in a way that she distantly thinks is far too obvious for how happy she is with Thomas, and then, like she's conjured him out of thin air with the thought of his name, Thomas arrives with an easy, straightforward innocence that makes Harvey's shaking hands seem out of place.
Donna realises that the shaking is fear.
Harvey is terrified, and if she didn't know any better, she'd guess maybe he's realised that Thomas is making space for himself inside her where there never used to be room for anyone else.
He looks away as the elevator doors shut and she sees his shoulders shift uncomfortably, and she gets the overwhelming sense that he has had the sudden realisation of time passing, and along with it the revelation that nothing ever stays forever. Not even Donna. Not even if she wants to, an eternity ago when she wanted to. Not even if she had once felt like she'd die if she had to.
He looks so fragile in the second where the doors slide shut that something shatters in her as well. Donna edges her way gingerly through dinner and doesn't go back to his place after, doesn't invite him back to hers. She says she's tired and he believed her because he's not nursing a decade of covert looks and he'd never shove her up against his office wall at 2am after everyone had gone home. He'd just tell her she's beautiful and he'd like to be with her.
Donna gets home to the kind of unlit dim in her apartment that still springs forth memories of corridor kisses, of texts starting are you alone and of her own gasp echoing, and she tries so hard not to remember that she draws them in ever more vivid lines even though they don't ache as much as they used to. She picks her phone up and massages it in her hand for a long while.
She pauses for a long time at H, her finger hovering, before she scrolls on to T.
She wants to call him and corner him, ask him about that panic sitting behind his eyes and what it meant. But she knows it's only one of two answers, and either one would ruin her.
She calls Thomas, and he's just getting home. He jokes about the waiter who'd spilled their water and calls her beautiful and part of Donna hates how much she loves how easy it is with him. How had she thought for so long that sleepless nights and uncertainty was just part of adult relationships?
"Are you okay?" Thomas asks. "You seemed distracted tonight." He's not second guessing himself or her, not trying to dig out hidden meaning, not reading into any lines. She was distracted, and he's asking her why, and he wants to help.
Donna's thinking about Harvey, but in the same breath she's also thinking something else. That, genuinely, Thomas might be it.
"I.. ah. Yeah, I'm fine. Work is just a lot at the moment," she says.
"Well, you know if you need to take a sick day, I can come over right now, and I'm sure we can make sure you don't get enough sleep so that you definitely need to take tomorrow to rest."
Donna smiles into her phone in a way she thought she'd never be able to without feeling the bittersweet pull of secrecy and silence. "I think it might be a bit transparent if I call to take a personal day and they can hear you making coffee in the kitchen."
"I'll bring chicken soup," he says without missing a beat. "Nobody can argue with chicken soup. Especially not my grandmother's recipe."
"You always have your grandmother's secret chicken soup ready to go in case your girlfriend needs to play hooky?"
"Of course. Always be ready with an alibi. That's the other thing my grandmother taught me. You never know when you're going to need to beat the flu and you never know when you're going to have to ditch the cops."
Donna laughs, and he talks with her into the night.
Thomas soothes things, with the whole way of how he is, and by the time she goes to bed, she's smiling, and she's forgotten that six months ago she would have hated that too. Because that's what she saw in Harvey while the doors were closing - not fear he was losing her or that she's done, but fear she's just … forgetting him.
Forgetting him is far, far worse than hating him.
Donna falls asleep with Thomas on her mind and lips.
That look at the elevators keeps popping up.
She'd woken up in Thomas' bed, his hand splayed out over the curve of her hip. He has strong, large hands, and even though he's not a cuddler, he's also never far from reach or from light touch. He's got an instinct for Donna, balances the way she loves touch with the way he likes to stretch out. He takes up space but he also makes space. He has a way of shifting when she wakes, onto his back, opening his arm and chest out to her to fold herself into, and he busies himself for long moments playing with her hair. Donna loves it when he does that.
There's only one other person that likes her hair more than Thomas does.
It's a problem, Harvey edging back in. That goddamn look, at the elevators, had fucked it all up. Other people had looked at her the same, finding out about Thomas. Louis, and Samantha, Rachel, when she'd FaceTimed her after that first night. The look that said 'you're moving on'. And they'd all looked crestfallen, because they realised she was serious about it this time. They could see it, knew it, and Donna knew it too.
Or, in the dark of the evening and away from the distraction of the day, knowing that she's only trying to move on. The actual moving on is slower, and getting a lot harder than she'd thought.
The last part is something she never says out loud. Harvey's always felt like a phantom pain, like a limb that's not there anymore, making itself known through sting and tears.
Maybe that's how everyone feels. They aren't unhappy that Donna's with someone. They're not even unhappy about Thomas - Thomas is universally liked and respected through the firm. He and Donna are a great match, everyone agrees.
They just don't know how to be happy for her and reconcile the aching bittersweet on her behalf at the same time.
Donna knows how they feel, because Thomas has almost done it.
He's almost found his way in, properly. Donna wanted him to, invited him in, to her heart and her soul and her life. He fits in well - so well that late night calls with Harvey on the other end of the line, joking and talking and, later, fucking, all fall by the wayside. She's not cutting him out, not deliberately, it's just… Thomas is there now, instead.
She isn't sure but the fact she keeps missing Harvey's calls because she's on the phone with Thomas feels like it means something. Some days she doesn't even think about Harvey, once she leaves the office.
She doesn't call Harvey back, when she misses his calls. He never asks why.
And then, that look, and that look coming from Harvey feels much more significant than it does coming from Louis or Rachel or Samantha.
That look brings back memories of him, feelings of phantom limbs, and worst of all, doubt.
It feels like Thomas is starting to find the spaces that she's been keeping for Harvey.
Or maybe she's trying to make him fit into them.
Thomas stirs, next to her, cracks an eye, and says good morning. He shifts, stretching and lazy, onto his back, throws his arm across the pillows, opens his chest up to her. He's got mussed hair, but his beard doesn't grow as quickly and wildly as Harvey's does, so his chin still feels smooth to the touch when she shuffles into his orbit and stretches an arm across his torso. Thomas knocks his hand, sleep drunk, into her hair, somewhere between tangling and tickling.
"Hey," he says, and Donna remembers how well he fits, and how Harvey refuses to.
"Hey," she says back, and smiles into his chest.
There's a knock at the door, and it must be Thomas. He said they should talk more. He'd left after she'd admitted to him that Harvey was always wherever she was. He's ever straightforward and deserving of the same, so she told him, but she's still not used to it and it felt like something shaking, unhooking, loose and dull inside of her when she'd finally admitted it, finally admitted that Harvey's just … there. Because he is, he's in all the spaces where Thomas should fit, where she wants Thomas to fit, where she's tried to make him fit. She wants Thomas to be the person who fits inside her soul, but she finds, out loud and only as she's saying it to him, that he doesn't. Because Harvey is already there.
I can't cut him out, she'd said. It's the first time she'd said it, out loud, to anyone, ever. She's never said it - to Rachel, to Mike, to her mom, nobody, and she thinks about how it's Thomas that she said it to, and that means that Thomas must mean something. And he does. He really does.
There's a feeling that she can't name; that feeling of wanting so desperately for Thomas to take up space in her even as she knows he can't because it's Harvey shaped, and, it turns out, she can't remake her needs, the things her soul keens for, into different shapes, even if she wants to. Not even though she needs to.
She needs to because she realises nobody else will ever fit the way Harvey does in the same moment that she realises he's never going to have the courage to fill it, because if he was going to, if he was ever going to, the elevator was it. Surely, the elevator was it. Because Harvey isn't afraid. If he wanted her, really wanted her, then Thomas would have been just another wall to break down, and he would have said something.
Scottie said something to him, Donna knew. Scottie had said something to her, and Harvey knew, so there's no way Scottie hadn't said something to him. She'd said, why can't you see it, or she'd said, you need to pull your head out of your ass, or she'd said, do it now or you're going to lose her, but whatever it was, she'd said something.
Harvey hadn't, though. He's not one to back away, even if it meant a confrontation, even if it meant saying something, anything, in front of Thomas. And he hadn't. And that, she knew, was it. He's trapped her.
He's trapped her with the way he is, his looks and his glances, his breath and the way his heart feels when she's felt his pulse, steady rhythms but somehow unique. He's trapped her with his gaze and gait, the way he walks and the way he takes up space in the room and in her soul. He's cornered her with his touch, before, but it's more than that, because way before she'd ever had to clarify she doesn't date people she worked with he'd cornered her with his soul and all the brightness in it he tries to hide but lets her dig out (just her). He's trapped her with all his jealousy and lust, all his light and the way he throws himself into the storm for her, all the bad in him as well as the good, she needs it all. She's done, she knows, for anyone else. She thinks she could have loved Thomas - genuinely and deeply, and they were the perfect people at the perfect time. It's just that it wasn't until she admitted Harvey would never be on the same page or in the right place at the right time, and that it didn't matter, that she knew it couldn't be Thomas, even though she wished.
Harvey's always there, and soulmates don't do timing.
But he doesn't want her.
He called, after the hearing, and she didn't answer. She realises that she hasn't been missing his calls. She's been avoiding them, because every time she answers the phone to him he takes a bit more of her shape for his space, and if she doesn't stop, there'll never be any way someone who actually wants her could find a corner.
Maybe Thomas could have a corner.
She's thinking about how Thomas could have a corner when Thomas knocks.
She thinks about what to say, and how to say it, while she crosses her living room and her entrance. She thinks about how to say she wants him to fit and she thinks about how to say she's terrified he won't. She thinks about how to ask him to give her time to remake all the Harvey shapes into Thomas shapes, and she thinks about how to tell him even if he gives her time for that she doesn't know if it'll work. She isn't sure how to say it all, but she knows she has to.
The problem is that all the things she wants to say to Thomas die in her throat when she answers the door.
Because it's Harvey.
He looks at her, and he looks like he wants to blink but is terrified that he'll wake up if he does. He's looking at her like nothing else she's ever seen, he's looking at her like he's seeing her for the first time, and like he's realised that she's it, and she's in all his spaces too.
But she's hoped before and she's seen him look at her in just a certain way so many times. She's seen him bump into coincidence and use it to kiss her, in the dark up against door frames and office walls, and then act like it never was. She's watched him realise something deep about her, about them, and then back away from it in the same breath. She'd seen him fit himself into the spaces inside her and then slip out of them again.
She can't do it again. Every time she'd thought, maybe, he ran, and every time she'd dared to let her heart hope, he'd turned back, shied out. Her mind and her heart don't have it, can't go through it again. And so, it's not her brain that hopes this time, not even her heart. They're done.
But her soul takes three steps back.
And he meets her.
He kisses her, not like he's ever kissed her before. There's a now and an always in his kiss that she hasn't tasted before. It cracks through her body like a sudden unexpected moment, like waking up from nowhere to sudden daylight, but she doesn't have time to think about it, only grab onto it and hold on, slip her hands around him, let him shift and push and press her back into her apartment.
There's a strength in his arms unlike anything she's felt from him when he lifts her against the side table like it's nothing. He's held her against walls and counters, he's told her darkly about how he wants to strip her naked in his office, push her up against his desk, but this feels like fate itself in his touch, not so much effort as inevitability. Something else is pulling them together, has been for fifteen years, and they've just finally, finally, stopped pretending.
She always thought that if this moment happened it would feel like the heavens shifting, but it just feels like relief and home.
He's everywhere, kissing or not kissing, just pressing skin against hers, and she can feel the shaking disbelief under the certainty in his hands and in the way his fingers find her back, her sides, her breasts. He's pressing his mouth against every inch of bare skin he can find, and he feels like floodgates collapsing in on themselves. Every other time something like this has happened, it's felt dark and illicit. It's felt like oblivion, like throwing reality away, like fuck it. This, shifted, feels like letting reality in, like truth, like fucking finally. She thinks if he wasn't crowding out every other thought she might land on an appropriate metaphor, but it's only that, only the one thought, only thank god, finally.
He doesn't say anything, not a word, and neither does she, because there's nothing to say and anyway they've been doing almost nothing but talk for a decade and nothing has come of it, nothing that they really wanted for each other and from each other, and it's only now in the silence that he's finally found his way to her.
Her hands take over because her brain isn't working properly, Harvey's short-circuited it with his taste and the weight of his legs against hers and the way he's there and has heft and is real. She can't coherently form more than the thought, Harvey, but her hands hold all the memories and hope and want of 15 years and they press through his hair and over his skin like she's planned this moment down to every breath. They circle his jaw so she can kiss him back, nudge her lips over his mouth, over his hollow breath, over his ear.
He hooks his hands around her waist and cinches himself against her, and Donna's hands lock down instinctively as he does, and she just holds on as the feel of him punches through her, settling against her and finding his way into all the spaces she'd kept aside for him, and she thinks she might fall backwards into an orgasm just by the way he's trapped his hips against hers.
He threads his fingers through hers, eyes locked, and she thinks she looks in love, and probably much more in control of herself and of this situation than she feels, but Harvey … Harvey is looking at her like he almost can't comprehend it, the feeling of all the things that he'd never let himself dare to hope for unfolding all at once in front of him like it must have been when god first watched the universe spark into breath. He looks in awe and like he's just woken up and also utterly terrified that maybe it's a dream and when he really does snap awake it'll be on his own with the soft dim of the screen of his phone sitting between them again.
She draws him into the bedroom, because he looks too stunned to move, and they're taking turns to take charge as they swing in and out of disbelief, Donna finding him under her fingers as he stares at her dumbly, like she's sunrise, like she's oxygen.
"Donna," he says, finally, and it's the first thing across his vocal chords that isn't pure need.
It's almost a question, and she says, "I'm here," squeezes the butt of his thumb between her fingers, pressing to show she's real, and convince herself he is too, and they're really not going to panic, to be interrupted, to lie, to run.
"Yeah," he says, a half-surprised breath, and then his mouth is on hers again, his hands on her waist, her hands at the knot in his tie, and there's been fantasies buried in her where it's him taking his tie off and cinching her wrists together but that isn't tonight, and it's just loose when she backs into the foot of her bed, and Harvey keeps on until she's laid back heavy against her mattress and he's walking his weight over her on braced elbows.
He settles.
They've been here before, a hundred lifetimes and twice as many years ago, and it shouldn't be this that feels like the ground shifting under her. He's been over her before, his weight pressing, and more - cock slicked inside her, naked and tacky from sugar and cream, with his infuriating smile and that look in his eyes like he knows something nobody else in the world does, pressed up on his arms so he can hitch his hips a little more deeply into her. She knows what it is to have his weight on her, shunting her into her own mattress, his body finding all the spaces where he fits against her, and so this should feel familiar more than anything else, but it doesn't. It feels like the first time she's been here with him, and maybe ever, and her hand goes from the button at the collar of his shirt to the back of his head, so she can feel him and remind herself it's real.
He cups her jaw in both hands, eyes on hers, and opens his mouth a few times, trying to pick words, and she doesn't know if it's the words themselves or the fact they're here in this too-much moment, but he can't find them. He huffs his frustration at himself, and instead, he kisses her, and she thinks, I know exactly what you mean.
It's the kiss that slows things down, and Harvey seems to remember there's time, there's time now. He pushes his bottom lip between hers, pauses to give her a moment to press her tongue against him, tug lightly, and he sucks down and takes a long minute to just kiss, just taste, just be, just tickle the edges of his fingertips along her hairline.
She touches his cheek, feels the evening rough of his light stubble, and she loves all of him.
Harvey's thumb slips under her silk strap, guides it over her shoulder and he follows it with his teeth along her collar bone. He presses his hand down her side, fingertips scratching lightly over silk on the way down and then skin when he slips it up back under her shirt, tickling goosebumps in his wake.
There's a tense kind of patience in his touch, and it's also under her palms as she pushes her hands over his hips, catches his shirt, pulls it out of the waistband of his pants. She just wants to get her hands to his skin, in the same way he needs his on her, and it's the first time she's felt the supple warmth at the base of his hips since he'd shown up at the same door years ago. Then it had been oblivion and fun and losing the night in each other. This is ages past, and gravity.
He finds the hem of her shirt at the same time that she gets his free, just enough buttons at his collar loose, and he slips her top off at the same time she pulls his over his head. He presses a long breath out from his lungs as he seats his belly against hers, looks almost awed as he slips his hand up and over her breast, watching her turn her head into the crook of her arm to take a moment to gather herself, because she can feel any semblance of control she had rapidly flicking out, and Harvey looks the same.
He presses his mouth into her neck, where she's opened it up to him, and she huffs a shallow moan into her elbow ditch when his tongue finds that exact pressure point just where her jaw starts to curve against his chin. His teeth scrape, accidentally, then experimentally, and then with more confidence when Donna's breath sits up high in her lungs in response. He circles his palm over her breast, pressing lightly, then finding a rhythm with his thumb that's somewhere between art and chaos. Donna instinctively arches her back against his hand, her belly pressing up more firmly against his, enough of a hitch to catch his lungs, and he has to stop for a moment because they're both way, way too overstimulated by the pressing reality of it all. He pushes up on his spare hand to relieve some of the friction of his legs over hers. Donna hitches a knee up for purchase, pushes against him, and Harvey breathes, jesus, in the same moment that he drops his forehead to her sternum. He takes a moment before, almost unconscious of it, he turns his head a little so he can open his mouth over her breast, teeth and tongue against her nipple, nudging it tight. Donna pulls her hands over his back, nails catching into the dip of his spine, and she lifts her head to kiss into his forehead and breathe low into his skin.
It's almost clumsy, the way they're hanging onto each other like gravity might spin them apart at any moment. Distantly, she loves the artlessness of it all - it's not an absence of skill as much as it is a relentless instinct that overrides anything else. Every touch cracks against her skin, and when he closes his mouth over her properly to suck her nipple against the rough of his teeth, a low moan punches automatically out from her soul and her hips kick up involuntarily.
There's an artlessness to the way Harvey gets his hand between them and pops the button on his pants, just to relieve pressure more than anything she thinks, because a second after that he has his hand down her waist band, catching it with his wrist and nudging it low on her hips, and then Donna lifts her hips so he can slide them and her underwear off. He lets his hips fall against hers, and there's something wanton and thrilling in the feel of her bare skin hitting air and the rough of his pants. She hitches against him, seeking pressure and friction. He hisses when she does, she can feel the shake in his arms, and he's trying so hard to hang onto control.
He shunts his hips back from hers, slicks his hand between them instead, taking a moment to undo his fly before slipping the tip of his thumb between her folds, slicking them in her wet and then over her clit, finding a slow rhythm that's as maddening as it is satisfying.
He sits up over her as she presses up towards his hand, shuffling his hips forward, and he's close enough that her reaching hands fall at his pants, and Donna pushes them over and down his hips, freeing his cock. She takes him in hand, strokes him slowly and firmly, thumbing over his head and the taut ridge on the underside, until his own thumb falters. He takes a moment to breathe heavy into his stomach and then pauses to pull his pants and boxers off and toss them aside, but he's probably just gathering himself.
They're walking a tense line of tentativeness and passion, because Donna doesn't think she's going to be able to last long at all given the way Harvey, with just his thumb back on her and the flutter he's shunting into her torso with his light press from his other hand, is kicking her body into the instinctive feeling of nearly.
She's just on the verge of saying, "Harvey, please," when he reaches between them to guide the head of his cock between her folds, and then slowly and firmly sinks into her. He hikes her leg up so he can press in deep, nudging right up into her back wall. He buries his face into the side of her neck as he does, gasping, "god," and then sounds like he's trying to say her name but can't get his brain to focus enough.
There's a moment, where time and night stops, where Donna feels the sharp relief of him, of him inside her, of countless calls, texts, of hidden looks and outright staring, of snatched kisses and held hands, all converging, all leading here though they'd never have known it and definitely never would have admitted it.
He kisses, slow, into her cheek, his fingers splaying across her bent knee, and just the feeling of him shifting his hips to settle properly feels like waking up.
There's a moment, and then he's leaning his forehead against hers, not moving, thumb stroking lightly over the edge of her face, and he's not even kissing, he's just breathing, and breathing her in, and she thinks that maybe he feels like she does, that there's spaces inside her that are only made for him, and now he's here and fitting them, and that's it what he's longed for. Not sex, not fucking, not even making love.
Harvey just needed to find where he fits, and so did Donna, and now that they've collided, it's more than they could have dared whisper in hope. They're not talking, but she swears he's thinking it like she is.
He kisses her then, maybe so he doesn't cry, and shifts his hips, drawing back and then pushing in again, and the stretch around him is slow, and it's glorious.
There's a thread of tension that's always underpinned them both, and how they are, and it's only a minute before the slow, long push gives way to something more urgent, Harvey holding her gaze, his arms braced either side while she pushes hands and fingers along the curves of his hips, over his back, up his arms, thrilling the feel of muscle, his weight and warmth and reality.
He shifts until he finds the right angle, until his pubic bone nudges just right with every thrust, until she's punching air out of his lungs in time with him, until she has to turn her head to the side to find oxygen, and then loses it anyway when he takes the opportunity to lean his head down and nudge his nose along her temple.
She remembers, in the haze, all the times they've looked at eachother or stolen hidden touches, or the times he's kissed her or she's kissed him, the time he pushed her roughly into orgasm against the glass of his office and she'd leant the bridge of her nose against the side of his head, almost domestic, and she thinks,
Harvey.
She turns her head back to him, to kiss him or at least try, her mouth open and loose against hers. She kicks her hips up against his, finding his rhythm and matching it with hers, pushing her knees up to angle her hips so he can sink in deeper and then pushing to nudge her walls against him. He leans on one hand so he can palm over her breast and she moans against his lips, holding on across his shoulders, her stomach coiling, muscles twitching.
At some point, he drags fingers down her body, over her stomach, and the rough of his thumb finds her clit, and he presses down just right, pulling a gasp from Donna's lips and a rush of wet past his cock, and she's pretty sure it's been maybe ten minutes since he cracked his knuckles against his door, which is a record, but it's completely overwhelming, she's completely overwhelmed and so is he, and he strangles her name past his throat as he tries to hold off his own orgasm, but he can't which doesn't matter, because she throws herself after him a moment later anyway.
They're trying to talk.
He's slowed down, somewhere in the middle of round … something, and she has no idea what time it is but it's still inky blackness hiding them from the world, both late and early enough that there isn't a hint of daylight starting to steal through her bedroom window.
Harvey's always had a way of making time stand still and shift around him.
He's settled beside her, lying on his stomach with his arm slack over her stomach, leaning his jaw on his crooked hand, somewhere between recovering from the last time he shattered apart and hitching his hips against her to press inside again. He's spent long moments running the backs of his fingers over her skin like it's meditation, pausing to thumb over freckles, over hip bones, over places where her skin is taut and places where she's just not twenty anymore, and he seems fascinated by all of it.
He's started several times, saying "Donna," and then losing his courage, or his train of thought, or both. She's waiting, waiting him out, her palms pressing through the hair at his temple and around the back of his neck. She's said everything, they both know, she'd laid herself bare in conversations and stolen kisses, and they both know it's his turn. Harvey, who ran, who hid, who pressed in and pulled back, and who appeared out of the blue and out of nowhere - it's his turn.
But he's still struggling.
"You weren't…" he starts, before trailing off, shaking his head, muttering, "goddammit," to himself.
Donna, running her hand lightly over his torso, can feel his heart hammering against his chest, and he's caught his breath back so it's not that, and he looks in love and certain and also somehow completely terrified.
And so, Donna slips her hand to her side table, palms her phone where she'd left it at Harvey's knock several hours ago, and arches an eyebrow at his slack confusion while she pulls a number and hits the call button.
On the floor next to them, Harvey's phone hums in the pocket of his pants. Harvey rolls away from her, leans his arm over the bed, fishes it out, and smiles self consciously when he brings it to his ear and Donna tickles the hair at his other temple.
"Hey."
"Hey," she says, smiling up into his eyes.
"So."
"So."
"It happened."
"It did."
"Finally."
"Finally."
He sighs then, and says, "I'm terrified." It feels like the first honest thing he's said to her in months. Maybe it's the first honest thing he's said to her since Paula.
"Me too." She finds his hand in the dark.
"But ...I feel like I shouldn't be scared." He's frustrated, like he doesn't know why he feels anything but bliss.
"Harvey." She drifts a hand along the side of his face, tilts her head to the side. He's ragged and worn through but he also feels fresh, feels different, feels… complete, somehow. "This is big. This is a big thing that's happening."
"Yeah."
"I need you to know. This isn't like before. This isn't getting champagne drunk and kissing in some alley and it's not phone calls we're going to pretend don't happen. This is real." He nods, and she has to take a second to keep the shake out of her voice. "It's a lot. And it's scary. But that's okay. This is worth being scared."
"Is that why you weren't there? At the trial. I looked around. And… you weren't there." He doesn't say I needed you, but it's in his eyes.
"I know. I was confused. I was hurt. I thought you were going to say something. At the elevator."
"I wanted to. You have no idea. I fucked that up."
"You could have called me to talk about it."
"You might not have answered. You've been..." He shrugs his shoulders and she can see him deciding not to say the word, whatever it would have been. Distant, maybe. Reserved. Whatever the word would be that he'd pick for her trying to fit Thomas in where he was meant to be. There's no blame in his shrug, because he knows that it's just as much him, but it's still there.
She takes a moment, because he's right and it hurts that he's right. It hurts that she pulled away, and it hurts that she had to. "I'm here now."
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry I tried to cut you out." She knows she doesn't need to apologise, and it isn't one. It's just sorrow. Real sorrow, not for Thomas, not for unsaid words in elevator lobbies, not for Paula or missed calls or even right back to let's put it out of our minds and never speak of it again - but for the way it's all rolled together and stolen years from them. Moments. Years. All the individual times they didn't talk, didn't admit it, didn't get the hell out of their own way, it's all moments that built empires. Seconds of fear that drew them both in decades of shadow It's grief and loss and nothing to do with blame.
"I'm sorry," she says again. "I didn't want to," she says, and it's inadequate but she hopes it's enough, and she doesn't manage to stop her voice from cracking.
"I'm sorry I made you think you had to," he says, with a clarity she hasn't heard from him in a while, and his voice cracks too.
There's a long moment, and they're both caught in between thank god finally and why so long and it's threatening tears for her, and maybe him as well. Tonight won't solve everything, she knows. Not even close. But it feels like they could actually do it, now.
Finally, she blows a watery sigh between her cheeks, and says, "this is a lot more depressing than I thought this night would be."
It breaks the heaviness around them, and Harvey laughs lightly, settling back on his side, pillowing his head on his elbow. He crooks an eyebrow at her in the moonlight. "You thought about this night huh?" he says.
Goddamn cheek, always near the surface.
She loves that about him.
"Only most days," she says, and she shifts as well, onto her front. Harvey's hand automatically finds her back, tickling his fingers along the dip where her spine curves along her back.
"Me too," he says.
"Please, thinking about how you want to be with me and thinking about how great my ass looks are not the same thing."
"They're not?" he asks innocently, drifting his hand down to cup her butt.
She laughs, and drops her phone in the same moment he does, and he slips over her, his chest against her back, kissing into her shoulder, sliding a hand under her to explore and hitch her butt against his hips, and it's only a moment before they bypass the need to talk anyway.
A/N: Oh my god you guys FINALLY.
If you want to leave a review, please do, this is exhausting, I can't with these two idiots.