"Hey," he says.
She's mostly asleep, sprawled on her stomach across the mattress, cradling a pillow against the side of her face, rag dolled and pleasantly sore from however many hours she and Harvey had spent climbing over and into each other the night before. She's had three hours sleep, maybe, four max, and she could easily slip into total oblivion for the whole morning and not even think twice about it.
So when he says it, just for a second, she thinks they've fallen asleep by accident and left their phones on the hook overnight like they used to, years ago, before Liberty Rail, before Paula, before Thomas. He'd wake up, or she would, and their sleep-riddled 'hey' down the phone line would stir the other. They'd both say, see you at the firm later, or talk about the morning while she made coffee and he stretched and complained and got out of bed at the last possible second, and then they'd get to the office at about the same time. Donna would hand Harvey a bagel, and he'd hand her a sugar hit disguised as a coffee, and they would both pretend that this particular morning routine was normal and just something secretaries and bosses did on occasion.
This time though, the 'hey' is rumbled in her ear, and followed by the slow press of lips against that nook of skin just where her earlobe and neck meet.
He'd discovered last night that she really, really likes it when he kisses her there, or presses his teeth or tongue down along it.
She'd told him once, handsets between them in the dark, that she's had countless dreams about him, tangled in her bedsheets alongside her as the morning crept through, waking her up with his voice in her ear and his hand slipping under her, down her torso, to wake her up with lazy kisses and touches and not-so-lazy fucking.
The memory of that conversation registers sleepily in some half-hidden corner of her mind as she feels his hand steal between her skin and the mattress to cup her breast.
"Morning." She hums it more than she says it and then sighs contentedly as she feels him hitch his body over hers, pressing his chest against her back and letting his weight fall against her so he can press his face into the side of her neck and kiss, though he's really just letting his mouth drag slackly over her skin. She reaches a hand back to tickle her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck - she loves touching his hair - and shuffles her body to press solidly against his.
He's already half-erect, and she smiles and murmurs, "Jesus, don't you ever get tired?"
"Let's find out," he says, and she can feel his smile on her neck before he presses another slow kiss down and drags it along her collar bone. He slides a hand up her side, just on the firm side of tickling, and nudges her arm up over her head towards the headboard. He takes a moment to kiss over the curve of her shoulder, then works his hand back down her side and cups her hip. He spends a minute running his thumb along the curve of her hip bone, and she can feel him take a steadying breath.
"Okay?" she asks.
"Mmm." He nods his chin over her shoulder blade before turning his mouth to kiss at the top of her spine. "Just. Lucky."
She thinks, that makes two of us, but she squeezes the back of his neck instead of saying it out loud.
Harvey turns his head to kiss her arm, then sits back on his knees and taps her hip with two fingers, nudging lightly until she shifts her hips off the bed. Harvey slides a pillow under her hips, smoothing a palm over her ass and up to her waist while she takes a moment to settle again.
"Okay?" he says. He keeps checking, because it turns out Harvey is patient and attentive, almost nervous with her, and she finds it goddamn adorable. She's gotten intimately acquainted with the Harvey who demands, who takes, who grits out his fantasies at her and nearly makes her crack apart just from the way his voice says 'touch yourself' or the tight growl of the very specific way he says 'fuck' when they're both naked. That Harvey is devastating, but so is this Harvey, just in a different way, because of the way he lets out all the softness he has that he's been hiding from her.
Donna hums a yes and wiggles her butt against his hand, inviting him to push down harder. He laughs a little and leans his weight back over her so he can run his hand under her body, find her breast again, massaging lightly until she has to take a moment to push air slowly from her lungs and the tail end of her breath rags out against her throat. He thumbs her nipple, she's always been sensitive to that, and she unconsciously pushes her hips against the pillow for purchase and relief.
Harvey lengthens his body against hers, pressing her into the soft give of the mattress, and god, she doesn't think she'll ever get used to the reality of what his weight feels like against her. The imagining of him with her felt so real so much of the time, but pillows and fingers and vibrators can't ever replicate the feel of skin on skin, of body on body, and it's glorious.
He kisses along the ridge of her spine, dragging a finger down the line of her neck, along her torso, under her to press against her other breast, nudging that nipple taut as well. Donna hums and it turns into a moan when he pinches with just enough pressure. She turns her head, lifts a hand behind her and finds the curve of his thigh, scratching lightly. Harvey leans over to kiss her, loose and supple, his tongue against her lips and teeth.
He kisses her as he thumbs her nipples, and he kisses her as he slips one hand down to hug her waist back against him, he kisses her as he presses his hips against her ass, just a long, slow push, and he kisses her as he slips his arm from her waist to her hip bone and lower.
She stops kissing him because she loses track of where she is when he slides a bent knuckle experimentally along the edge of her pussy, nudging her folds apart a little and ghosting around the edge of her clit. She huffs a low moan against his mouth and turns her head into the pillow to breathe deep and center herself.
He strokes, shallow, for a long moment, busying himself in teasing and finding the right rhythm to make her hips shift and push back against his cock. Donna feels distantly smug at the way his breath catches in his lungs, once or twice, and she can feel him growing harder when she nudges properly along his length.
Without breaking the slow rhythm of his knuckle slipping along her, just a touch inside, Harvey sits back on his knees, lands a hand on the curve of her hip, and pulls her back firmly against him. "God, you feel good," he says, almost to himself, almost like he thinks that despite everything, despite the last 12 hours, he might be dreaming of her like he has hundreds of times before, like he told her more than once, on the phone, just before he told her he was going to come.
"Harvey," Donna says, but it sounds like please, and then she punches into a deep sigh when he turns his hand and finds her clit with two fingers, light even circling and the flat of his fingertips not-quite tickling and not-quite pushing, a spare finger still slipping between her lips to edge into her a little.
She pushes back, relaxes, pushes back again. His hips rock against hers in response, almost unconsciously, and she finds a rhythm that only takes a few moments to have air punching out of his lungs in time with her movements. He shunts back from her for a moment to stroke himself with the same tight precision he's circling her clit with, and Donna can feel him trying to find some relief and trying not to lose control.
Harvey, right on the edge of blind instinct, masturbating while he strokes her, bending to drop a loose kiss at the small of her back, is possibly one of the most devastatingly sensual things Donna has ever experienced. She can feel the tight coil forming low in her belly, feel her legs twitch, feel the way her hands fist into the bedsheet for some kind of grounding. She tries to tell him she's close but she can't seem to remember the words and instead just hopes he can hear it in the way her moans are getting caught on the edge of her lungs and in the rush of wet past his fingers.
A second later her orgasm rushes through her, and she's barely through the first wave of it when Harvey sets his hips back over his knees, hugs both hips under his palms, then releases one hip to stroke himself straight for a second. He positions his hips, and half pushes himself, half pulls her, slipping the head of his cock in between her folds. He pauses for just a second before hitching against her and pushing, slow and deep, inside her, pulling a gasp from both of them as her clenching muscles find and grip him. It's much, much too much, and she buries her face into the crook of her elbow to shut out some of the sensations because otherwise she genuinely thinks she'll pass out.
"Donna," he breathes, stilling, letting her adjust to him and letting the main wave slow around his cock. He lands both hands on her hips, bends to kiss her spine.
Donna slides down from the high, lets herself drift for a second, dopamine stretching out the soreness in her muscles from the previous night, and she says his name back to him. He lays his hand along her back, running his palm over her skin, and it's such a tender moment that she almost says 'I love you'. She doesn't, but she doesn't think either of them would have been surprised if she had.
He'd have said it back. They've said it in every way but using the words, a thousand times over.
Instead, he says her name again like he's discovered an ancient, forgotten language, and pulls back before stroking back in. He's big, and he's never been particularly arrogant about it - it just is, but goddamn if this isn't the position he's been designed for. The tip of his cock slides so deep that he edges right up against her back wall, forcing a guttural moan from her.
He sets up a slow, driving rhythm, stretching her around him with each thrust and stroke, gripping her hips for purchase and also, it feels like, to remind himself this is still real. Donna finds his rhythm and pushes her hips back as he thrusts forward.
He takes his time, slowly pushing into her, he's chasing touch and to be deep, not speed. She just wants him in her and he feels like he wants the same, just to be inside, just to feel her tight and clenching around him, just to know the way he fits, the way they fit, all space and breath and built for each other.
He seems like he's holding control, just, while he takes long, quiet minutes where the only sound is them both trying to control their breathing and occasionally saying each other's names into the atmosphere. But then Donna slips a hand between her legs, up to Harvey, cups his balls, and massages them in her palm.
"Fuck. Donna. Fucking hell," Harvey says, snapping his hips against her ass, his fingers gripping her hips hard enough to bruise, which she takes distant pleasure in, knowing she'll see the evidence of this moment for several days anytime she steps out of the shower.
She teases him, bracing on her other arm to press back against him, and she can feel the way oxygen is punching through him in the way his belly expands against the small of her back, and she's never particularly found the sound of skin hitting skin arousing, but it's Harvey's skin against hers and that thought tips her right to the edge.
Harvey says, "Jesus, Donna, wait, I can't -" but that's all he manages before his hips smack solidly into hers and he punches out his orgasm into her, his lungs ragging a gasp she can feel on the skin of her back.
He's deep and it's almost all she needs anyway. She lets him go, brings her hand forward to her clit, and only needs a couple of moments to flatten her hand over herself before she's clamping around him with an orgasm so strong she distantly thinks how stupid they are that it took them 15 goddamn years to get here.
"You're a fucking idiot," she says, when she can talk again.
Harvey laughs, because he knows exactly what she means. "You're goddamn stupid," he says back, pressing a line of kisses down her spine as he slips out of her to settle against her, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her to him as he shuffles onto his side.
"The stupidest," she murmurs, sleepily, and falls back into dreaming with his leg hooked over hers and her hand stretched behind her to cradle his neck.
He calls just after he leaves, which is soon after Louis stalks out of her apartment and then after they get distracted for long minutes after she tells him to fight for Robert's name and he says he'd rather just kiss her for a while and then does exactly that.
"Hey," he says, and it's been maybe fifteen minutes, but god, she missed his voice and she misses the way he takes up all the spare space in her and around her.
"Hey," she says back.
"Ray said it was about goddamn time."
"Did he."
"Handed me a spare suit and winked at me. Winked."
His voice is all treacle under the offence and all she wants to do is tell him to turn around immediately and for them both to take a day off so they can properly lose themselves in each other.
"Probably for the best," she says instead. "Your suit…"
"Smells like you."
"Like us. But yes. A fresh suit is a bit less overt."
"I like smelling like you," Harvey says, so petulant that it's only just this side of whining.
"Are you going to do any work today or are you just going to call me to complain?"
She can practically hear his smile when he says, "no, I was planning on calling you to organise meeting you in the executive bathroom at lunch."
Donna laughs, hangs up, and makes sure she picks the dress he really likes, the lavender one she got a couple of weeks ago.
She gets into the office, and he's standing in the hallway talking to Louis when she rounds the corner, and he stops mid-listen to just openly stare at her.
He's wearing the navy. It's all she can do not to strip him down and fuck him on her old secretary's desk.
Goddamn Ray really knows her too well, she thinks to herself.
He calls her a half hour later, says, "Jesus, Donna, why'd you pick that dress? I'm meant to be working and I can't concentrate on anything."
"You wore the navy. Do you know what that does to me?"
"That was Ray," he protests.
"Please, like you didn't give him that specific suit because you figured one day you'd talk your way into my bedroom again and you knew you'd want to impress me after."
"Pretty sure I didn't need the suit, you were impressed last night anyway. I distinctly remember impressing you like, five times."
"I was impressed four and a half at the most."
"Meet you in the file room? Let's get that fifth time over the line."
"Charming. Do your work. I'll let you impress me tonight."
"Deal." Then, almost as an afterthought, like he's said it a thousand times before, he says, "love you."
Donna cups the receiver, blushes, and reminds herself again that she is a grown woman and grown women do not make out with their secret boyfriends in front of everyone at their job. "I love you too. And shh. Someone might hear you."
There's a pause, and then Harvey says 'I love you' again, but he hides it behind a stage cough so obvious he could have been treading the boards off-Broadway.
She laughs. "Subtle," she says, "but you're still an idiot."
He does it for years after.
Donna's bad at it, saying she's scared.
She's especially bad at telling Harvey she's scared. Donna is his compass, his steadying hand, and she's the Harvey whisperer. It's Harvey that needs help in parsing out his feelings, knowing what to do with the conflicting emotions crackling inside of him, not Donna.
And besides, Donna has learned her lessons, paid for them in pain and in heartbreak. Every time she's told him, I'm terrified, something awful has happened to them. She gets fired and they don't kiss when he confronts her in the bathroom, or they don't kiss in her apartment when he says I love you and runs, or they do kiss when he's seeing someone and everything collapses.
She knows that it's different now, that he's different, she can see it in him when he looks at her and she can feel it in the way his hand seeks her out in the night when he turns in his sleep. She should have called him, said, it's not you, said, everything is pressing in, said, I need you.
But she only manages to almost admit it, and she picks up her phone several times, thumbing over his name, before putting it down again.
She's learned her lessons the hard way. She doesn't tell people she's scared, and now that she needs to, she doesn't know how to put the words together.
So it's him that calls and not her, a few hours after she'd left him standing confused in the file room, after trying to tell him about Faye and not being able to force the words out.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey," he says, and god, his voice - it's the soft, low, patient one he's just recently discovered, and even though it's just one word, she can hear how hard he's trying. "You okay? I tried to find you but you weren't around."
"I'm fine," she says. Her voice is harsher than she'd anticipated, but she can't bring herself to soften the clip in her tone because her heart is in her throat and it's catching her lungs. "Is this important? I'm kind of busy."
He clears his throat. "I. Ah. I feel like we left things… unresolved, back there."
"In the file room? Or in your office?"
"Both."
"Harvey, I'm not ready to talk about this -"
"Well, we need to." It's a gentle interruption, but it's firm, and she wonders exactly when he'd found the line between confrontation and support that he's managing to walk. "I don't want this to sit between us."
"Harvey-"
"Your father's wrong."
She's silent, because he's right. Harvey's right. Her father loves her, and he's just trying to protect her, but Jim has only seen the part of Harvey that everyone sees, where he sacrifices his own humanity to protect himself and the people close to him. It looks like arrogance and selfishness, but it isn't. Harvey doesn't shut off his empathy because he doesn't care, but because he cares too much. Jim, like everyone else, just about, has missed almost all of who Harvey is.
She knows it, that Harvey's right, but the words she should say don't come.
"I know I've done some shitty things to you," he says finally, into the silence. "I know it. You've already forgiven me way more than you should ever have to. But you know I'd do everything for you. You know that."
"Would you?" It comes out automatically, and she feels her fear and all the things she's spent years hiding from him, the things she's still hiding from him, bubbling up to the surface, and there's an uncontrollable swing inside her that's racing between shut up and fuck it.
She hears him suck in a surprised breath. "Donna-"
"Because you spent years avoiding doing anything, let alone everything."
"It took me too long to figure it out, I know-"
"You figured it out when I finally walked away. Do you think that was just a coincidence? You panicked."
"Should I not have?"
"I love you. I'm happy you came when you did. But it hurts, Harvey. It hurts that it took Thomas to make you see me."
There's a long, brittle moment of silence when she says it. She can feel Harvey wrestling with whatever it is he feels like he should say next, she can hear his breath shallow in his lungs, and she can feel him fighting his own pride. Maybe he wants to fight, or maybe he wants to apologise - she can't tell.
In the end, he does neither. Instead, he says, "I told my mother. About us."
"Do you want credit for that?" She flinches as she says it.
"Fucking hell, Donna. I'm trying here. I know I'm not good at this stuff. But you can't just point out everything I need to work on and then shut me out when I'm trying to talk to you about it."
Jesus, she thinks, and she can feel her heart cracking against her ribcage, the fight-or-flight of it all making her hands twitch. It's always been like this between them, the back-and-forth, the tension, the challenge, and that's always felt like a comfort, but it's not often she's been the one who's cornered, and it's not often he's the one finding all the right words and the openness while she throws walls up like her life depends on it. "I...Harvey..."
"I don't need you to be perfect, Donna. Just, be..."
"Be what."
Fucking hell, she thinks as she says it, but she's panicking, and Harvey's gentle insistence is spiking her heart rate. Her brain is screaming, tell him, and her heart is hammering 'no' at the same time. She knows, rationally, that telling him that she's drowning is what she needs to do, but self-preservation is screaming louder than logic.
"Be fucking honest."
"Harvey, if I was honest with you all the time you never would have shown up at my door."
He stops for a silent, harsh moment. She wonders if he'll hang up.
He starts, "that's not fair, Donna -"
And then, finally, it tumbles out of her. "Harvey, I'm goddamn terrified."
He takes a hushed breath, pauses, says, "... you are?"
"I'm so scared. You have no idea." It's almost a relief to say it. "You're just… you're the person people talk about in textbooks, Harvey. I'm scared of your shadow." She dips her head, tries to shake the trembling out of her hand. "I know this...us… shouldn't scare me, but…I've worked so hard for everything I have. I feel like I'm being forced to choose. I don't want to."
"Donna. This is a huge change for both of us, even without everyone else adding their piece. We're going to have to work it out. It's not always going to be easy. I'm going to screw this up and so are you. But… I love you. Whatever you need, I'm here. I'm scared too. But not of us. I'm not. We are going to make it."
"But, the firm -"
"Fuck the firm," he says, and it's the most aggressive she's heard him since she picked up the phone - rough and angry and the kind of protective that she's long known of him but layered now with love that she thinks has always been there but that he's just now letting out. "I don't care. You've earned everything you have. Everything. Nobody's making you choose."
Donna closes her eyes, lets her breath settle in her lungs. It keeps surprising her, the ferocity of his love for her. She can't decide if it's overwhelming or comforting or some unlikely combination of both.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean to snap. I'm too used to trying to win these things."
"Me too."
"We're still good at fighting."
"I let you win that one," he says, letting humour break through the rigidity in the air.
She laughs into the relief, says, "I'll pay you back later."
"Love you."
"Love you."
Her smile lasts until Faye tears her down again.
He still calls.
It's during the day now, not at night - at night they're virtually inseparable. But during the day, he'll pepper her phone with calls - when he's in the car on the way to a meeting, or in line at the hot dog cart, or in recess at court.
"Fucking judge is a nightmare," he'll say, and grouse at her while she eats lunch and waves Louis off when he comes in to offer her some of his prunie.
Or he'll ask if she wants a bagel, and she'll say no, and he'll bring her one anyway. "I know you'd just take mine otherwise," he says, which Donna admits is true. She takes his anyway; she likes the indignation on his face (it's cute) and she likes having to make up for stealing his food later (it's hot).
Or he'll call to say, did she want tickets to that show that's opened that nobody can get tickets for? He has a Wall Street trader who owes him a favour.
He calls on the way home to ask, red or white?
He calls to say he's leaving the office and he'll see her soon.
He calls to ask the navy or the grey, and she says the navy of course, and he says that's what he thought she was going to say and he's already wearing it. Donna tells him she'll take it off him later.
He calls when he's lost, neck deep in the middle of a Toys'R'Us and panicking about presents for his nieces. She asks what on earth led him to setting foot in an actual toy store, and he says it felt like a good idea at the time and please just help.
Every now and then, before he'd turned up at her door, she'd fantasised about being with him like this. Not just the longing lust, the imagination of what he'd taste like and what the warmth of his skin would feel like under her fingertips, but this - the tiny details. Conversations and texts, snatched discussions and meaningless decisions - she imagined them, and she had thought that it might take the edge off all the late night calls and fantasies they spoke out into the dark.
To her surprise, they didn't. Harvey had always been someone sat in her minds eye, devastating and mind blowing and distracting. Harvey, calling her about plans for Wednesday night or if she remembers where he left his wallet, doesn't dilute that other Harvey as much as he fleshes it out.
She's not just in love with an idea, anymore. Harvey, out of the shadows and in the light, showing her all of who he is, is… well, it's everything.
It's only a few weeks in when she has a single, clear thought.
This is actually it. This is actually it. As long as she lives, she knows in that moment, there won't be anyone else.
She isn't scared.
"Hey."
"Hey. Are you settled?"
"Just got in. Took a while to get the car back on the road."
"How's Samantha?"
"Jumpy. Focused. Angry. You know, the usual."
She can hear his pout all the way down the phone. "You tried to talk her into getting burgers, didn't you?"
"She blew me off and she wasn't happy about it. Why doesn't anyone like burgers?"
"Room okay?"
"It'll do. Miss you."
"Miss you too." Harvey's outed himself as a cuddler and he hates being away from her for a night. "I was kinda hoping I'd be able to get home to you tonight."
They'd been busy, flat tack, and Harvey and Donna had agreed a week or so ago that tonight would be a night to spend, just the two of them, camped out on her living room floor with take out and their phones off and in a kitchen drawer.
Instead, he's in some shitty motel in the middle of nowhere and Donna's in bed and thinking about how much bigger it feels when he's not beside her, reading whatever case file he didn't get through before leaving for the night (he's suddenly discovered the benefits of leaving work on time) and absentmindedly running the backs of his fingers over her arm or shoulder or back. And it's definitely too big for the times where the case file gets discarded in the entrance way with his coat because he stalks into her house like he owns it, owns her, and has her pressed into her mattress moments later.
His place is the same, he says - too big when it's just him, perfect when it's them.
"I know," she says. "I got fresh coffee beans so I could wait up for you to call." She smiles ruefully. "You probably should have told me you weren't going to get the car running again until midnight before I got through that whole french press."
"Wired?"
"A little. You?"
"I had too much soda. I'm about to bounce off the goddamn ceiling."
"I told you. Rest stop food is always a bad idea."
"I'm going to have to do laps in the pool for five hours to work out all the caffeine."
"I can think of a better use for all that energy."
"Yeah? What's that?" he says, sounding distracted and missing the clear invitation in her tone. She can hear him rummaging. Harvey is a curious soul, and he buries that under suits and cynicism, but it always shows itself in the way he has to open every drawer and cupboard the second he walks into an unfamiliar hotel room. She hears him huff his annoyance and murmur, "no bar fridge, goddamn ridiculous," and she can't help the way her heart grows three sizes for the way she loves this ridiculous, frustrating, curious, beautiful idiot.
"What are you wearing?" she says, kicking the sultriness in her tone up a notch.
"You know what I'm wearing, you tore it off me this morning while I was trying not to be late."
"You look good in that jacket, I couldn't help myself."
"It's scratchy."
God, he's a child and he's still completely oblivious, but she loves him all the more for it. "It's sexy. Take it off."
"Donna Paulsen, are you trying to seduce me?" Harvey says and she swears there's humour bubbling under there, and maybe he was just stringing her along the whole time.
"I'm just trying to get this call finished in time for my secret lover to come over."
Harvey chuckles. "Tell him not to leave his stuff all over the place next time. He's messy."
Donna laughs, stretches out, settles her free hand on her stomach. "I'll remind him."
"Jacket's off."
"Unbutton your shirt."
"I hope you're joining me."
"Three steps ahead of you," she says. She's already slipped out of her silk top and bottoms while they were talking, and she's only in her panties.
There was a world, once, where this, telling each other to get undressed over the phone, was a shadowed secret they both hid and shame chased them both in circles over it. It's different, knowing that it's now just them, lovers, finding ways to be together when distance gets in between them, but he's still got that voice, that gravel, and he's still goddamn hot when he rumbles it down the line to her.
"I'm in bed. On your side. Your pillow smells like you."
"Mmm. Camera."
Donna turns on her speaker and camera, and she's greeted by Harvey, his shirt unbuttoned and open, and he breaks into a smile that's some unknowable mixture of lust and love, says, "hey, beautiful."
This is new, and still experimental. The first time Harvey had to stay at his and Donna had to stay at hers, he'd called, turned his video on, just to talk, but she missed him, missed his body, told him so. He told her to tell him what to do, and she'd coaxed him to orgasm, and it had felt sweet and awkward and unnatural.
There's a part of her, and him as well, she thinks, that still feels like this should feel like this is something they shouldn't do. A decade of keeping each other secret doesn't undo itself easily. The camera helps, in a weird way. It feels like proof they aren't lying anymore.
"Hey," Donna says back, the word softening with want. "Shirt."
He props his phone against a pillow at the same time she does, and then Donna settles back on her side and watches him shuck his shirt off his shoulders. Harvey looks up as he does, sees Donna laid back and mostly naked, and she can see him draw in a deep breath. He sits back against the headboard, lets his hands fall into his lap.
She loves when he looks like this, shirtless, torso dipping into trousers or jeans, casting off the rigidity of the day and the suits he wears like armour. She loves that he's all at once sharper and softer without them, and she loves that it's only her that gets to see him this way.
He just cocks his head at her, doesn't need to say anything, and Donna takes a moment to imagine his lips on hers, his mouth sliding down her neck, she tips her head to the side like she needs to make space for him and slips her hand over a breast at the same time. She takes a long moment to tease her nipples upright, one and then the other, while Harvey hums lightly, tells her slowly, slowly, tells her she's gorgeous.
Donna is quick and capable with masturbation. She knows her body well, knows exactly how and where to touch. She's used it like foreplay in the past, before dates or before she called Harvey or Harvey called her, and she's also been perfunctory with it, using it to scratch an itch or relax herself before bed or in the executive bathroom in times where she and Harvey weren't on good terms and she needed to try and get the thought of him out of her head. She can take hours or moments and anything in between. It's not like it was boring, exactly. Just… efficient.
She had never expected that Harvey would change everything. But he does, with the way he looks at her, now that she can see it, with the way his voice still drags, but it's less dark and more heat, now, and with the way he doesn't try to pretend he's not thinking about her when he touches himself.
It doesn't feel like foreplay or relief anymore. It feels like how it was always meant to feel, if only she'd been paying more attention.
She thumbs over her nipple slowly, teasing more than anything else, but even when it's just her she's still sensitive there and so it's only a moment before she's shifting her hips a little, involuntarily, and she wonders dimly why she didn't pull a pillow in between her legs for some relief like she normally would.
"God. Your body is gorgeous. You're perfect," Harvey murmurs, and she thinks, that's why. He's way too distracting.
She slips a hand between her legs, over her panties, presses the heel of her palm down firmly for some friction. "You better be joining me," she says and her voice is already mostly oxygen and a half octave lower than normal.
Harvey pops the button at his waist, hitches his hips up to slide his jeans and boxers low under his hips. He sits back again, idly stroking one hand over his cock, says, "are you wet?"
There's something about the way he says it that always makes her stomach flip, and if she hadn't been wet before those three words would have done it. She feels a rush of damp making her panties slick and says, "mmm. Make yourself hard for me."
Harvey grips the tip of his cock, thumbing the slit, and then sets up a steady pattern; twisting his palm a little as he strokes down to his base, back up, then a couple of rolls of his wrist over his head, and then back down again. He spits into his palm for lubrication, and that shouldn't be anywhere near as hot as Donna finds it to be.
He says, "I wish I was sucking your clit," and that low octave he's found coils in her belly, makes her hiss his name, and she instinctively slips a hand under her panties.
Harvey shakes his head slightly. "Off," he says. "I want to see."
Donna lifts her hips, slips her panties down over her hips and off, dropping them behind her. It's perfunctory but she doesn't care and neither does Harvey - the first time they'd tried this, she'd tried to undress herself seductively but there's a reason that only happens in movies. In real life people have hips and buttons that catch and zips that stick and after all clothes are designed to stay on bodies, so they don't come off easily or sexily. They'd ended up both collapsing in a fit of giggles when she'd gotten her pants leg caught in her sock and they'd both agreed that they're more interested in the person and body underneath the clothes then how they get to the body in the first place.
He's probably remembering that as well because he's got a raised eyebrow and there's a smile playing over his face when she sits back again, and she laughs. "Don't say a word," she says, and pushes her palm over her pubic bone, edging her clit with the tip of a finger.
Harvey looks studiously innocent, but there's lust sitting underneath it all and it's only a moment before he's breathing out her name again and settling into a slow rhythm with his hand slicking down the length of his cock. "Donna," he says. "Fucking hell."
Donna copies his speed, flattening two fingers lightly over her clit slowly, dipping down to slide her fingertips between her folds, slicking them before moving back to circle again. It takes a moment for her sensitivity to settle enough for her to press down firmly, and she breathes deep into her stomach when she does.
Harvey has a thing for making Donna take that specific breath, the one she takes when she's breathing through lust and trying not to spin off into oblivion, and when she sighs over it he says, "Jesus, Donna, your voice," and pumps faster, shuffling his hips for friction, and the sounds of the wet slap of pre-come slicking between his hand and his cock shakes something primal in her loose.
She says, "Harvey," but it's all she can manage before the breath in her lungs catches in her throat and she has to stop talking so she can focus on the way her body is scrabbling towards release.
"Inside," he grunts.
Donna's fierce and independent and a feminist to her core, but there's something about being told how to touch herself, told what to do, by Harvey, by that deep gravel, that spikes a deep hum of lust and pleasure through her. She hitches her hips up and pushes a finger inside her pussy, then another, crooking her fingers until she finds just the right spot to press down, there, and the heel of her palm pushes down over her clit. "God," she says.
"Tell me."
"Feels good. I'm so wet. Fuck I wish it was you." She keeps her eyes on him, fighting the urge to close them and roll onto her back for oxygen as her walls squeeze down on her fingers.
Harvey holds her gaze, pumping his hand over his cock, his other hand sliding down as well now to cup his balls, massaging and pulling slowly. "Want you," he says, simply. "Always you. Just you."
It's his eyes that do it. He's staring at her with that specific kind of clarity he's suddenly got whenever he looks at her, since he showed up at her door after Thomas, that clarity of forever. Donna's not even expecting it, because she's seen that look so many times the last few months, but he looks into her, looks into her soul, and she doesn't even get his name past her lips before she feels her stomach rush through, her walls clamp down around her fingers, and the room around her blinks out as she breaks apart.
Harvey talks her through it, telling her she's gorgeous, she's sexy, she's everything he's ever wanted, his voice catching more and more over his words as he tenses slowly, and then when Donna manages to say his name out loud, he comes as well, stilling his hand for a moment to huff breath into his lungs. He's goddamn gorgeous, skin slick with sweat and semen, breathing her name over and over, and the sight of him stretches out the waves rolling through her until she's all dopamine, stretching and laying in the aftershocks and distantly hoping this feeling lasts forever.
When she blinks her eyes open again, Harvey's grinning sleepily, one arm tucked up behind his head, and he says, "hey."
Donna rolls onto her stomach, hugs her pillow, the one that smells of his shampoo, to her chest, murmurs, "hey," back.
"Miss you."
"Miss you." She yawns.
"You need sleep."
"Mmm. Call me in the morning?"
"Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow. Wait up for me."
"Love you."
"Love you."
Donna hangs up, stretches herself out under the covers, and marvels, not for the first time, how being able to say that without ruining everything for them both is really something.
"Hey."
"Hey."
It's thanksgiving. Donna's in her usual perch, old clothes and pleasantly full belly pressing into the waistband of her track pants, knees hitched up under her chin while she watches the fire crack and pop and draw shadow puppets on the walls.
"Are you fat?" Harvey asks, slipping through the door and closing it behind him, and she laughs without looking up from the fire.
"Working on it. Are you drunk?"
"I'll get there." As he says it, he bends over the back of the arm chair, whisky glass in one hand, wrapping his arms around her torso and dropping a kiss against the top of her head. .
It's the … tenth? eleventh? thanksgiving in a row they've had with that running gag. Even when things were bad, even when he was with Paula, he still called and they still teased each other, even when it felt hollow.
It's the first with his arms around her.
She tips her head back, kisses him lightly and slowly. Her parents have retired for the night, they're travelling up to Boston tomorrow night to see Marcus and the kids, to visit Lily and Gordon (Harvey's still hurting and raw from it but he says it helps to sit with them). They've only managed a couple of days off together - Mike's firm has come to rely on both of them - so it's felt busier than it should, and there's a lot to do and lots of people to see.
Still, doing it all with him hovering, touching the small of her back, stealing kisses in hallways as they pass by each other and murmuring into her ear that she's doing great, that he's there, that he loves her? Well, that makes everything feel much less like stress than it should.
It's the first time Harvey's met her mom, which should be terrifying but isn't. Harvey has so quickly become her forever that Donna doesn't even think about it until they're knocking on the front door of the family house with Harvey juggling the apple pie sufganiyot that he claims he'd made. She leans into traditional panic for just a second, the moment before the door opens after the bell ring.
Harvey, who had broken up her and Thomas. Harvey, who had been a subject of her bitter complaints down the phone to her mom for years. Harvey, who'd hurt Donna, however unintentionally, and who she'd probably hyperbolised into some kind of monster in her mom's imagination. Harvey, who married her daughter on a whim with a half hours notice, stealing her mom's opportunity to watch her come down the aisle, to help plan, to help fuss.
"Oh my god, what if mom hates you?" she says, suddenly horrified.
Harvey just laughs, and says, "don't you worry, I hear the Paulsen women find me irresistible." He kisses her temple - he loves doing that - and straightens up just as the door opens.
Donna needn't have worried. Harvey has this underlying love of being coddled and looked after, even if he doesn't need it, and it shines like a beacon, and not just to Donna. Clara latches onto him like a long lost son immediately. She takes to Harvey so naturally and wholeheartedly that Donna finds herself, halfway through the evening, in the kitchen with Harvey, pouting.
"I think she loves you more than me," she says as she bends to check the pumpkin pie cooking slowly in the oven.
Harvey pats Donna's ass affectionately as he shimmies behind her with a jug of heavy cream. "I can't help it if she finds me devastatingly charming," he says happily.
"You're devastatingly insufferable. You know that, right?"
Harvey laughs and turns back to her just as she straightens, slips his arms around her waist and kisses her. "I thought that was one of the qualities you admire the most about me."
"Don't tell anyone."
And so, hours later, as Harvey sets himself down in front of the fire, barefoot and in track pants and an old sweater, leaning his back against her shins, there's a kind of quiet satisfaction that's settled on her. She drops a hand to play idly, scratching his scalp and threading fingers through his hair in the way that makes him hum contentedly.
This, she thinks, is how it was always meant to be.
They talk, laugh quietly, trying not to wake her parents, which is harder when Harvey makes some stupid joke that's only funny because it's late and they're both onto their third nightcap and they collapse into a fit of giggles that Donna muffles in the collar of her sweatshirt and Harvey presses into his glass.
She eventually brings calm when she leans forward to wrap her arms around him, crossing them over his torso, and she kisses the side of his neck. "I'm exhausted," she murmurs, "and we have a flight tomorrow."
They pad upstairs, brush their teeth together, holding hands like teenagers as they do. Clara has long turned Donna's bedroom into a crafting and sewing office, and so the attic, a single bed perched under the skylight in the sloping ceiling is still her 'room', which makes Harvey laugh.
"You finally bring your boyfriend home for thanksgiving and we're still less important than the sewing machine," he says.
"She's probably seeing if you'll take first."
"Bring a lot of guys home for thanksgiving, do you?"
"Sometimes two or three at a time," Donna teases evenly. "If you're still around next year we might qualify for a pull out sofa or something." She tugs his hand. "It's cold. Come on."
She slips into bed and Harvey climbs in beside her. It's a tight fit, but Harvey opens his arm and his chest to her, and she settles, snugged against him, pillowing her hair against his shoulder. He slips a leg between hers.
"See? Not so bad," she says, hugging him around the waist and yawning as she stretches her body against his.
"I'm bringing a mattress next year. A big one," he says, but he doesn't sound like he means it.
"Mom already knows you're a cuddler. She'll see right through it."
They talk, and laugh quietly in the inky blackness, and sometimes she thinks, this is where he's really him, and he's showing him to her only.
"Happy thanksgiving, Donna." He doesn't say he loves her. He doesn't have to.
She knows.
"Happy thanksgiving, Harvey."
She waits until he falls asleep, and she smiles.
end
A/N: It's weird to send this one off into the sunset. Thanks to everyone who stuck by this ridiculous idea from a single line of dialogue that somehow stretched out over tens of thousands of words. They are beautiful idiots and I love them.
Thanks as always to Aditi for the beta and Luisa for the hostage negotiations.
If you liked it, say hi. If you hated it, say hi too.