She said call me now baby (I'd come a-running)
i.
He takes the stairs.
He doesn't do nervous, especially not nervous about sex, but his hand weirdly shakes as he opens the door to her building and there's a jittery energy running in his veins and he thinks maybe he needs to get rid of that somehow because he doesn't want to come across as some fumbling teenager on a first date.
Spotting the door to the stairs he heads in that direction without thinking it through further, starts plodding his way up twelve flights, figuring physical exertion should surely smother the odd fluttering sensation in his chest.
He knows there's a good chance she's about to turn him down, that she'll laugh and roll her eyes in that way she does when he says something she deems ridiculous. But there's something about the way she answered him yesterday that gives him hope. It didn't feel like a no, but rather a we can't under these circumstances.
But now everything's changed, because as of two hours ago he no longer works at the DA's office, which means they no longer work together. So he needs to see if the answer to his question is different this time. He needs to know immediately in fact because it's the only thing he can think about. He should be thinking about the future, deciding on his career path, but instead he's putting one foot in front of the other climbing twelve stories into the sky fueled by the hope he can have sex with his now ex-secretary when he gets there.
He feels foolish when he thinks it through, but in truth she's had him running like a fool since he met her. He's never been flustered around women, usually has the opposite effect if anything, but Donna makes him tongue tied in a way he's never experienced before. He doesn't think she's aware of this fact, he thinks he hides it well or at least he hopes he does, but she mystifies him, arouses him, intrigues him, unlike anyone else he's ever met before.
Now finally, maybe, he'll get to experience all of her. And maybe then he'll be able to figure out what it is about her that draws him in so entirely, maybe then this inexplicable fascination he has with her will end.
Twelve floors gives him ample time to run through what it is he should say, just what the best way to essentially proposition her would be, but the one point he keeps circling back to surprisingly has nothing at all to do with sex. He wants her to know he did the right thing, that he handed in the toxicology report. He wants her to be proud of him, he realises, wants to rid the look of disappointment she had in her eyes the last time they saw each other from his memory.
It's a strange concept, wanting her to think well of him before anything happens between them. Usually he doesn't really care what the women he sleeps with think of him, they're one time moments in his life, they're fun and enjoyment and pleasure and he doesn't care if they think he's shallow or cocky or arrogant. He doesn't need for them to look any further beneath the surface he projects to the world.
But with Donna it's different for reasons that make no sense to him, because he's not coming here for a relationship either. That's not his area, not on his periphery, not something he craves. He's coming here for something much more primal that he has no expectation of repeating.
So he pushes his wayward thoughts aside, refocuses on what he's really here for, sex. He's thought about it often of course, even had wet dreams about it, and his mind has a habit of drifting into fantasy at least once a day as she parades around the office, or leans over his desk, or fixes his tie. She's hot, enticing, bold, and he is beyond certain that they would be so very good together. Arousal tickles along his spine at the thought of what it would be like, what she would feel like, taste like, sound like. He's nearly panting and it's got nothing to do with the physical effort of walking twelve flights of stairs.
As he finally pushes open the door for her floor it suddenly dawns on him that maybe she's not even home and he's just walked twelve flights of stairs for no reason and his stomach drops. But then he reaches her door, pulls in a deep breath and knocks.
She answers dressed in pink silk with whipped cream in hand and he nearly drops to his knees, mentally giving thanks to God and the universe and fate and Donna herself for letting him get so goddamn lucky.
ii.
He takes the stairs.
Samantha's words are still spinning around his brain as he all but sprints for the elevator, stabbing crazily at the button that will send him to the ground floor and one step closer to his goal.
He's been an idiot, for far too long, he just hopes he hasn't missed his chance. He hopes that he's not too late.
He feels as though he's holding his breath as the elevator descends, as he sprints across the lobby floor and into a thankfully waiting taxi. His feet tap and his legs jostle and his fingers twitch on the seat as he wills the car to make the journey to her apartment at the speed of light.
He loves her. He is in love with her.
He knew it watching her step into the elevator with Thomas, cold hard reality slapping him in the face. He knew it earlier, if he really lets himself think about it. He knew it when he ran his hands over her bare back as they danced at Mike and Rachel's wedding, when she kissed him in her office, when she told him she didn't want to lose him and stopped him taking the fall and he knew it when he said those very words to her and then couldn't answer her question of how.
He's probably loved her since the second he met her, he's just been too blind, too scared, too confused to see it.
Rushing through the doors of her building he jabs the button for the elevator repeatedly, filled with an intense sense of urgency that he needs to reach her immediately. He feels like he can't breathe until he sees her. Feels that if he takes just one extra minute more than necessary to get to her that she might slip through his fingers forever.
He's bouncing on the spot waiting for the elevator to arrive and after what feels like an hour, but is probably less than thirty seconds, he abandons his wait and runs for the stairwell instead.
He's been here before, moving his way up this very set of concrete steps what feels like a lifetime ago, under an entirely different set of circumstances but yet, in the end, still headed towards the same thing. Headed towards Donna. But this time he hopes it's forever.
Just like last time he has no idea what he's going to say. He doesn't know how to put into words a decades worth of feelings and thoughts and talking about emotions has never been his strong suit.
He doesn't know what he's hoping for, what he expects is going to happen. He just knows that she is where he needs to be, and hopefully once he sees her the words will just topple out of him.
As he thunders up flight after flight, floor after floor, propelled towards the only thing he wants in his life it feels like a movie of their history is running in his mind.
That first meeting at the bar, flirtatious and both of them so heartbreakingly young. The ease at which they slid into working together, like they'd known each other all their lives. The night of strawberries and whipped cream, the memories still so vivid. Late nights with scotch in hand and his fathers records spinning on the player. Shopping expeditions and anniversary dinners and that one time he managed to convince her to go to a baseball game with him. Through every incarnation the firm has taken, from associate to senior partner and then name partner. Every step of the way she's been there by his side and he could have achieved none of it without her.
She was never just his secretary or even his friend. She was his everything and he's an idiot, a goddamn blind idiot, that it's taken him this long to see what now feels so crystal clear and obvious.
Donna Paulsen is the love of his life.
He makes the journey from ground to twelfth floor in well under half the time it took him last trip, and he's short of breath, puffed from this cross city race to her door and from the way it feels like his heart beats differently in his chest, as if finally understanding he was in love changed the very atoms of the vessel.
He doesn't pause for one second when he reaches her door, bangs his fist on the wood and prays that she's home, that she answers. He hasn't heard from her all day and that thought trickles fear in his bloodstream for a second.
But then she's there, her eyes full of questions and the words he hoped would arrive still fail to appear and he just stares at her hoping that she'll understand, that she'll just know, without him saying anything, that finally he's here and ready. That finally he sees.
And she does.